let's give the competitive "elective" definition a rest, hmm?
I’d favor abolishing it altogether. Its only common use outside of its legitimate medical meaning, is to portray women who have abortions as baby killers.
In the event that a healthy woman 30 weeks pregnant decides to terminate her heathy fetus, I absolutely consider her a baby killer.
On the other hand, if there’s a medical risk to her, or if the developing baby is materially unhealthy, I consider that a tragedy.
Terminate her healthy fetus, or terminate her pregnancy?
Those are two very different things.
Terminating a fetus means the fetus dies. Terminating a pregnancy means the fetus is delivered at whatever stage of development it's at, pre-term or full term.
Suppose a 30 weeks pregnant woman is showing signs of sleep deprivation caused by pregnancy related insomnia and she wants a doctor to induce labor. Suppose initial treatment doesn't help and the insomnia persists. If a doctor agrees that premature delivery is safer for her and her fetus than waiting around a few more weeks and seeing what happens, are you going to call it an attempted murder if they go with the early delivery plan?
I wrote terminate her fetus, and that’s exactly what I meant. Your leap to an early delivery is an intentional red herring.
No, it's not a red herring.
It's an intentional clarification so those two things don't get conflated.
There are those who hear "abortion" and think "kill a baby". I
That’s literally what an abortion is.
No it is not.
A spontaneous abortion at 2 weeks of gestation is not "kill a baby" unless you are making the argument that God is the Greatest, Most Prolific Baby Killer of All Time.
The only potential argument is with respect to when in a pregnancy it counts as a ‘baby’. Three weeks in, probably not a baby. Three weeks before due date, probably a baby.
If you want anyone to believe that a doctor performed an abortion on a woman 3 days before her due date, you'll have to provide a link to that story so we can all see the details and understand the context.
If a woman had a spontaneous abortion 3 days before her due date, I can believe it (premature birth happens all the time) but if she was charged with a crime for endangering a baby, link to that too. She might have been reckless or she might not. Maybe the DA is being a vindictive dick and going all Old Testament on an unfortunate, traumatized victim or maybe laws were broken.
But if this is just you saying you would be opposed to a doctor performing an abortion 3 days before the due date without a damn good reason, then everyone who has posted in this thread agrees with you.
Some folks might disagree on what constitutes a damn good reason but the idea that there needs to be one is not controversial.
t's mindless emotional knee-jerk assuming the worst about women who aren't virgins and for some reason don't carry a fetus to term. A lot of folks indulge in it regularly, especially conservatives.
If you mean terminate a fetus, then please provide examples where a fetus was terminated for what you think are good reasons and an example where one was terminated for what you think are bad reasons. And be specific, especially about the ones for bad reasons. Where and when did it happen, were there any alternative treatments considered or available, etc.
Have you not read this thread? I’m tired of playing word games and gotchas. It’s a dumb waste of everyone’s time.
Any abortion in the first 2 trimesters is fine by me for any reason at all, I don’t care. In the 3rd trimester, there should be some reasonable medical necessity. This isn’t a difficult or novel concept.
You're right. It
isn't a novel concept. People here have been saying that over and over again.
Where I think the argument is rooted is in who gets to decide what's reasonable, what's necessary, and whether this is a matter for a pregnant woman and her doctor to decide.
Your arguments indicate you think the woman and her doctor shouldn't have the final say, that there should be laws they cannot transgress. Others obviously think they should, that the laws should never disallow medical procedures that a pregnant woman and her doctors think is needed. I think the politicians and preachers who want to criminalize abortions should become better educated about women's health because some of those folks are so ignorant they don't have a clue just how clueless they are. If they weren't so ignorant they wouldn't write
terrible laws just like the one that prevented doctors in Ireland from providing the medical care Savita Halappanavar needed.
Here is an example of a pregnant woman making a decision about abortion:
Gianna Beretta Molla
In 1961, during the second month of her fourth and final pregnancy, Molla developed a
fibroma on her
uterus. The doctors gave her three choices following an examination: an
abortion, a complete hysterectomy, or the removal of the fibroma alone.
Molla opted for the removal of the fibroma since she wanted to preserve her child's life. She told the doctors that her child's life was more important than her own. On the morning of
Holy Saturday, 21 April 1962, Molla was sent to the hospital where her fourth child, Gianna Emanuela, was delivered via a
Caesarean section. But Molla continued to have severe pain and died of septic
peritonitis one week after giving birth, on the morning of
Easter Saturday, 28 April
I don't know what I would have chosen if I had developed a fibroma during pregnancy in the 1960s. I don't know what it would have been like to have three young children and be endangered by a tumor growing next to my fetus. I might have chosen to have an abortion so I could be there for my husband and children. I might have said "meh, I have kids already and pregnancy is dangerous" and had a hysterectomy, too. Or I might have decided to have just the fibroma removed and hoped for the best.
The thing is, it would have been
my choice. I refuse to let someone else decide what potentially fatal conditions I must endure just because they get a warm fuzzy feeling when they think about babies and heartbeats.
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