Roe v Wade is on deck

[ideologyhunter]

You collect by attaching author's royalties, starting presumably with Zondervan or Thomas Nelson Publishing.
You can narrow the list of God-murdered babies by calculating Texas population/world population and multiplying this fraction times the estimated population of earth at Floodtime. I'm shaky with numbers, I know. Hire a forensic statistician.
In my summation to the jury, I would point out: "If the Bible account is true, you must convict. If my scheme -- strike -- if my legal formula is no dumber than the Texas abortion law, you must convict. If you acquit, then your judgment asserts that God is either fictional or non compos mentis deus, ipso facto delirium tremens. That's fancy lawyer talk. Now go do your duty."

 

[lpetrich]

Here's What It’s Like to Flee Texas and Drive 200 Miles for An Abortion

After being turned away from a Texas clinic, a 26-year-old mother went to Oklahoma for an abortion. We went with her."

It took Jasmine and her boyfriend, Alex, 20 minutes to drive back to their apartment from the local abortion clinic. It should have been a short, easy drive.

But Jasmine was six weeks and one day into her pregnancy, and providers at the clinic could detect “cardiac activity” on an ultrasound.

That meant no abortion, and J had to decide what to do next.

“I'm not even in my 30s yet. I'm not ready for that,” said Jasmine, who is 26. “I'm not ready to bring another life into this world that I can't support.”

She didn’t even know, that first day, if she could afford to leave Texas. The preparations required weeks of scraping together money and hammering out scheduling. But Jasmine managed to secure an appointment at the Trust Women abortion clinic in Oklahoma City—some 200 miles away.

The trip was a big expense.

There was the gas Jasmine would need to drive to Oklahoma City ($50). There was the oil change she needed ahead of the drive ($60), and the new tires ($150). There was the hotel for the night before the abortion (another $150). Jasmine’s mother had agreed to watch Jasmine’s two kids; her mom is disabled and Jasmine's kids "are a handful,” so she paid her mom for the child care. That cost $70. Food and toiletries added up to yet another $150. And, of course, there was the abortion itself: A medication abortion, which is induced by pills, would cost her at least $650.

Jasmine took out a loan of $1,350 to pay for it all. With interest, she believes that it’ll balloon to around $1,500 by the time she’s paid it back. Had she been able to get an abortion that day, in Texas, the whole thing would’ve likely cost Jasmine $650.

“I actually am currently in debt already, so this just adds fuel to the fire,” Jasmine said.

She joined the many other Texans who have gone out of state to get abortions.

Last week, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, which runs clinics across Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, announced it had seen 106 Texan patients in September—a 130 percent spike. The group that runs the Oklahoma City clinic where Jasmine got her abortion, Trust Women, also has a location in Wichita, Kansas. That clinic saw just one Texan patient in August 2021; by the end of September, it had seen 51.

The Trust Women Oklahoma City dealt with an even bigger surge in people coming from Texas for abortions. In August, it saw 11 Texans. In September, the clinic saw 127.

 

[lpetrich]

I checked on Greyhound - the bus company

J could have gone to Dallas and taken a Greyhound bus to OK City. It would have been about $21 - $27 and 4.5 - 5 hours each way. She would likely need to go by taxi or the local buses in her destination.

From Google Maps, the Ft. Worth - OK City trip is 200 mi and 3 hours by car.

A big difficulty with abortion tourism is that Texas is just plain big. "Before the Texas ban took effect, those women had to drive an average of 17 miles each way to the nearest abortion clinic, per Guttmacher. After its implementation, that distance increased to 247 miles."

Jasmine’s abortion appointment was at 9 a.m., so she and Alex decided to make the three-hour-plus drive to Oklahoma City the night before. The pair have now been dating for about a year, long enough for Jasmine’s kids to start calling Alex “Daddy,” even though he’s not.

In the darkness, everything that could have been vaguely interesting was gone. The river that separates Oklahoma from Texas had gone missing. The stars were lost in the haze of light pollution. The drive was a boring, exhausting trek through a thicket of highways, strip malls, and the odd neon sign.

Jasmine had never driven out of state before, and doing so at night made her anxious and irritable. The sheer injustice of having to do this at all pricked at her. She did everything right, she told me. She was on birth control. She’d taken Plan B. She had a normal period. The only reason she took a pregnancy test, Jasmine said, was because she had one lying around and, as a woman who’d been pregnant before, she felt a familiar shifting deep in her body.

“Alex, imagine if I didn’t take that test. I would have never fucking known,” Jasmine said as they drove.

“You would have never known. You would’ve missed your period this month,” Alex, 24, agreed. That kind of delay could have made the trip even more expensive. The cost of a surgical abortion, which is necessary past a certain point in pregnancy, starts at $700 at the Oklahoma clinic. The further into pregnancy the patient is, the more expensive an abortion can get.

“That’s what pisses me off,” Jasmine continued. “I should be able to make that decision, not y'all. Y'all aren't the ones carrying the fucking thing. Y'all aren't the ones that are having to deal with my life and deal with what I got going on. I did what I needed to do.”

They arrived at an OK City hotel at 1 am and checked in.

 

[TomC]

The trip was a big expense.

The trip was not a big expense. $700 for a short overnight is ridiculous. It needn't have cost $120. That she spent another $580 isn't about the abortion. It's her expensive habits.

And where's Alex the sperm donor in all of this? Why is Jasmine paying anything at all? If she's going through the procedure the very least he could do is pay the expenses. The Very Least!

When my girlfriend and I "got in trouble", one thing so obvious we didn't even talk about it was that I would be footing all the bills. Any guy who doesn't understand that much should get his tubes tied.
Tom

 

[lpetrich]

No one really believed that Jasmine’s abortion would happen at 9 a.m. Instead, Jasmine was prepared to wait for as long as eight hours.

She couldn’t walk in, take a pill, and walk out. Oklahoma has its own slate of abortion restrictions, including a requirement that all abortion patients must undergo counseling at least 72 hours ahead of undergoing the procedure. By state law, the counseling includes the warning, “Abortion shall terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”

Jasmine underwent that counseling before she even left Texas. But at the clinic, Jasmine still needed to sit through another ultrasound, per state law.

Good use of loopholes. Get the counseling before going on the trip.

When she walked into the waiting room, Jasmine told me that her first thought was, “I see a lot of women of color in here.” This was not unexpected: In a lawsuit filed over the summer, in an effort to halt the Texas ban, abortion providers alleged, “The burdens of this cruel law will fall most heavily on Black, Latinx, and indigenous patients who, because of systemic racism, already encounter substantial barriers to obtaining health care, and will face particular challenges and injuries if forced to attempt to seek care out of state or else carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.”

Some anti-abortionists use this sort of thing as "evidence" that abortion is some plot to exterminate non-honkies.

Out of the 18 patients who got abortions that Saturday, just two were from Oklahoma. The rest were from Texas.

Samantha, a 24-year-old in a pale pink bandana, was one of them. Like Jasmine, she’d driven in from the Dallas area the night before—but she’d brought along her mom, Pamela, who has undergone three abortions of her own. As the pair spoke about Texas, Pamela was by turns angry and teary, while Samantha grew more indignant.

“Secretly, I think they're trying to shame us. They're trying to shame all women,” Samantha said of Texas.

I don't think they’re trying to shame women. It's my opinion,” disagreed Pamela, who wore a cross around her neck. “I think they just want to put us back 200 years, where we have no rights.”

The man with whom Samantha got pregnant had agreed to help pay for the trip to Oklahoma, which would likely end up costing about $1,000, according to Samantha’s estimates. If he hadn’t stepped up, Pamela would have offered to pay for it.

“I'd do anything for her. If it meant we had to go to Albuquerque. I would have done it. If it meant going to Wichita or Illinois, I would have done it,” Pamela said. “Because it’s her choice. And it's just tough that we had to leave our state for all of this, because it's just ridiculous and it hurts.”

 

[lpetrich]

Around noon, Dr. Maya Bass, who was performing abortions at Trust Women that Saturday, walked Jasmine through how it all worked. After Jasmine took one pill at the clinic, she would need to follow it up with subsequent pills, each of which she would tuck into her cheeks. She could take ibuprofen for cramping. She should have some bleeding, but not too much. Her pregnancy symptoms should vanish within two weeks.

A medication abortion.

Bass, a cheery family medicine doctor, had traveled farther than both Jasmine and Samantha to get to the clinic that Saturday. For the last three years, Bass has flown into Oklahoma about once a month to provide abortions. That’s not an uncommon arrangement among abortion providers; clinics can struggle to find local doctors who are willing to not only do abortions but to also put up with the potential harassment and danger that comes along with them.

“I just have to keep reminding myself that that is enough. Being here and doing what I'm doing is enough. And yet they're being forced to go through all of this just to get the care that they want and they need,” Bass told me. “So on the days that you feel really tired, because you're seeing people have to deal with things that are so unnecessary, that are completely medically unnecessary, it can get really hard.”

So a lot of abortion doctors commute from more abortion-friendly states.

Her doctor explained what to watch out for afterward. Then the abortion itself, J taking an abortion pill.

Even though it was a long drive to get back to Texas, J felt a *lot* better.

 

[lpetrich]

Comedian Tricks Charlie Kirk Into Declaring A Dolphin Fetus Is 'Without A Doubt' Human
noting
Ben Gleib on Twitter: "Charlie Kirk SCHOOLED on Abortion in 15 Seconds. (vid link)" / Twitter

From the looks of it, it was a dolphin embryo at when its limbs were starting to grow. Mammalian embryos at around that stage look remarkably similar; they are hard to tell apart. I've found online pictures of human, mouse, rabbit, bat, dog, cat, horse, cow, pig, and dolphin embryos.

Looking at non-mammalian amniotes - turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodilians, and birds - one also finds a very similar appearance, though they start out with bigger eyes. Some snakes have vestigial hindlimbs, while others don't -- and don't even develop them as embryos. Snakes also start growing very long as embryos, very long relative to their widths.

Non-amniote vertebrates look more different, typically being slender instead of stubby. But they still have much in common.

 

[Toni]

The trip was a big expense.

The trip was not a big expense. $700 for a short overnight is ridiculous. It needn't have cost $120. That she spent another $580 isn't about the abortion. It's her expensive habits.

And where's Alex the sperm donor in all of this? Why is Jasmine paying anything at all? If she's going through the procedure the very least he could do is pay the expenses. The Very Least!

When my girlfriend and I "got in trouble", one thing so obvious we didn't even talk about it was that I would be footing all the bills. Any guy who doesn't understand that much should get his tubes tied.
Tom

Being poor is expensive. It would have cost me the price of gas and a hotel bill. I’d have brought food. I would t have had to get my oil changed or new tires because I can afford to keep my car maintained.

No way I would have done greyhound in a pandemic. But then again, I can afford to keep my vehicle in good shape.

 

[Trausti]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

 

[laughing dog]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

Only in conservtardia is drowning five children aged 2 through 7 the equivalent of aborting a fetus.

 

[Trausti]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

Only in conservtardia is drowning five children aged 2 through 7 the equivalent of aborting a fetus.

Psychopaths make up all sorts of justifications for their killings. Gacy described his victims as human garbage. So no loss, really.

 

[laughing dog]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

Only in conservtardia is drowning five children aged 2 through 7 the equivalent of aborting a fetus.

Psychopaths make up all sorts of justifications for their killings. Gacy described his victims as human garbage. So no loss, really.

Can always count on you to miss the point. Your observation was based on a truly stupid false equivalence.

 

[Toni]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

I dunno. Your attitude towards women seems pretty much stuck in the 14th century.

 

[Shadowy Man]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

I dunno. Your attitude towards women seems pretty much stuck in the 14th century.

Make America Medieval Again.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Americans poll consistently above 55% in wanting Roe left alone. Just checked google, and a new poll done last month puts it at 62%. Similar majorities have been reported for decades. So, if you're pro-life and think the way some pro-lifers have expressed themselves in this thread, you're living in a nation where 3/5 of the citizens are, morally, the equivalent of Nazis. But we have a Supreme Court that is unrepresentative of the citizenry -- so we may have TX style laws, draconian and bizarrely structured as they are, forced on us. I'd like to think the GOP will pay a price for this, but I doubt it.

 

[lpetrich]

Looking back at post #740 I note that the dates are relative to the last menstrual period, about 2 weeks before conception.

Justice Dept. sues Texas over state's new abortion law

Pregnancies are often divided up by trimesters: 1-13, 14-26, 27-39 (and more for pregnancies)

I'll look at stages of embryonic development for all the dates. They are measured from the last menstrual period, about 2 weeks before fertilization.

The most restrictive one is Texas, at 6 weeks after the last menstrual period, or 4 weeks after fertilization. That means Carnegie stage 10.  Carnegie stages - Virtual Human Embryo - Home page - The Carnegie stages

The Texas law is a "heartbeat law", restricting abortion from when a heartbeat can be detected.  Heart development goes into detail about heart development. The heart starts off as two "endocardial tubes" that form at day 19. They then merge to form a single heart tube, and when the merging is done at day 22, the heart tube starts beating.

The heart then folds itself and does various other sorts of development, and by the end of week 9, it has four chambers and valves.

Taking a broader view, at that stage, the embryo is an elongated disk about 1.5 to 3.6 mm long.

The central nervous system has started to form, by embryonic tissue moving downward on a center line, making a groove, and then a tube from skin around the groove meeting and closing up, making the neural tube. At this stage, the tube's ends are still open, though they will later close. Spina bifida is from an inadequately-closed neural tube.

The outer edges are still stretched out, but they will soon go downward and make the gut in much the same way.

In between in the embryo, "somites" (body segments) have started to form. The first ones form a few days before, and they continue to form until a week from then.

 

[lpetrich]

I should also note that eyes have barely started to develop and that limbs won't start to grow until a few days after this stage.

This growing from a disk is shared across vertebrates, as far as I can tell, and the details are broadly similar, like folding in to make the neural tube and the gut.

Looking at the dolphin fetus that Ben Gleib stumped Charlie Kirk with, it looks roughly Carnegie Stage 13 to 16.

-

Looking at the other states' restrictions, they at 20, 22, and 24 weeks, 3rd trimester (27 weeks), and fetal viability. All since the last menstrual period (LMP).

That is well after the last Carnegie stage, stage 23 at 8 weeks, with a body length of 23 - 32 mm. Pretty much all the major structures are in place at this point, however.

 Fetal viability - how prematurely can one be born and survive? The numbers jump around a bit in that page, but that may reflect the varying degrees of intensive care locally available for such extreme premature babies. For example, "According to studies between 2003 and 2005, 20 to 35 percent of births at 24 weeks of gestation survived, while 50 to 70 percent at 25 weeks, and more than 90 percent at 26 to 27 weeks, survived." Weeks of gestation: since LMP.

So the viability limit is roughly at the end of the second trimester or a few weeks before.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

She would be just as vilified today. What you don't understand is that we don't think embryos are children yet. Potential, not actual.

 

[none]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

She would be just as vilified today. What you don't understand is that we don't think embryos are children yet. Potential, not actual.

That's odd.

 

[zorq]

It is inspiring to see how attitudes about women have changed in Texas. 20 years ago Andrea Yates was vilified for killing her children. Today she'd be a progressive hero.

She would be just as vilified today. What you don't understand is that we don't think embryos are children yet. Potential, not actual.

That's odd.

A flower isn't a berry, yet.
A berry isn't a sprout, yet.
A sprout isn't a mature plant, yet.

A lot of things have unfulfilled potential.