Why people are afraid of universal health care

[Toni]

Neither scenario is sufficiently plausible as to be worthy of consideration. Doctors don't behave in the way described*, and would not do so, regardless of the legality of the situation.

Is it your belief that no doctor anywhere would ever provide a voluntary abortion to a woman who was 8 months pregnant?

Why would a doctor kill a normal healthy fetus at the 8th month of development rather than deliver it via a cesarean procedure? And why would a doctor do it on demand?

Because some doctors, just like some people (@laughing dog), believe that an infant isn't a person as long as it's inside the womb. Some doctors, just like some people believe that a woman should have an absolute right to an abortion, no matter what stage of development the fetus is at.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4521013

Table 3. Percentage of women reporting specific reasons for delay in seeking abortion services, by timing of abortion

Any barriera	88	80	94
Not knowing about the pregnancy	43	40	45
Trouble deciding about the abortion	37	33	40
Disagreeing about the abortion with the man involved	18	16	20
Not knowing where to go for an abortiona	30	18	38
Difficulty getting to the abortion facilitya	20	12	27
Raising money for procedure and related costsa	51	31	65
Difficulty securing insurance coveragea	32	20	41

[th]
Reason

[/th][th]
Allb (N=384)

[/th][th]
First-trimester (N=166)

[/th][th]
Later (N=218)

[/th]​

60% of the 218 women getting third trimester abortions cite trouble making a decision or a disagreement with their partner.

Correction: It is bilby who doesn’t believe an infant is a person until they basically are intelligible to him.

 

[Toni]

Speaking for myself, I suspected I was pregnant in the first trimester but Planned Pare this refused to schedule a pregnancy test because I still had ‘periods’ which continued u til I was 4 months pregnant—at which point I went to the doc who informed me I was 4-5 months pregnant—more than I thought. It would have been difficult to find an abortion at that point but as little sense as it made, I was deliriously happy. It made no sense—we had no money and in those days, insurance companies worked hard to deny maternity care so we paid for maternity care and labor/delivery, being too stupid to realize we actually qualified for Medicaid benefits and WIC.

So we were very fortunate that we were both happy about the baby. And that I lived a very healthy, if somewhat low calorie life style. I knew of women who discovered they were pregnant when they were in the hospital with severe abdominal pains, an hour before delivery. Not everyone knows soon after they conceive that they are pregnant. Some women have been told a pregnancy is not possible for them…until they are actually pregnant. There are many reasons women do not know early on about their pregnancy—including denial, partial vulgarly for young girls or for those whose pregnancies are the result of rape or incest.

 

[Elixir]

At some point in a pregnancy, it's no longer a random lump of cells that can be viewed as a parasite to be disposed of.

That is not in dispute. What is on the table is the valuation of the life of that "unborn child" (granting a definition that I think is a major stretch) vs that of a biologically adult human with friends, memories, aspirations and maybe even people who depend on her.
IMHO, no contest. You differ. Why?

 

[laughing dog]

Only in the most trivial sense - that there exists a negligible number.

There's only a negligible number of people placed on death row and sentenced to death. And of those, only a miniscule number are innocent of the particular crime that landed them there.

Do you consider that negligible number to be acceptable collateral damage, small enough that nobody should worry about it?

There is important distinct difference between a person and a fetus. BTW, I oppose capital punishment.

Which then leads to the question are these current attempts to limit abortion access to deal with a negligible number of abortions worth the cost of actual health problems, traumas and death to actual people?

What health problems, traumas, and deaths would be caused by allowing later abortions when the pregnancy presents a risk to the mother's health?

I was referring to health, problems, trauma and death of women who are denied abortions because of these laws.

This same "it kills women" thing keeps getting echoed over and over. But it's not relevant. Requiring that there be a medically justified reason based on a health risk to the mother or previously unknown health and wellbeing risk to the infant seems like it would address that concern adequately.

Who the fuck are you to judge what is in the best interests of a pregnant woman seeking an abortion in the last trimester?

 

[ZiprHead]

Neither scenario is sufficiently plausible as to be worthy of consideration. Doctors don't behave in the way described*, and would not do so, regardless of the legality of the situation.

Is it your belief that no doctor anywhere would ever provide a voluntary abortion to a woman who was 8 months pregnant?

Why would a doctor kill a normal healthy fetus at the 8th month of development rather than deliver it via a cesarean procedure? And why would a doctor do it on demand?

Because some doctors, just like some people (@laughing dog), believe that an infant isn't a person as long as it's inside the womb. Some doctors, just like some people believe that a woman should have an absolute right to an abortion, no matter what stage of development the fetus is at.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4521013

Table 3. Percentage of women reporting specific reasons for delay in seeking abortion services, by timing of abortion

Any barriera	88	80	94
Not knowing about the pregnancy	43	40	45
Trouble deciding about the abortion	37	33	40
Disagreeing about the abortion with the man involved	18	16	20
Not knowing where to go for an abortiona	30	18	38
Difficulty getting to the abortion facilitya	20	12	27
Raising money for procedure and related costsa	51	31	65
Difficulty securing insurance coveragea	32	20	41

[th]
Reason

[/th][th]
Allb (N=384)

[/th][th]
First-trimester (N=166)

[/th][th]
Later (N=218)

[/th]​

60% of the 218 women getting third trimester abortions cite trouble making a decision or a disagreement with their partner.

Clearly that the women could give multiple reasons because the percentages add up to over 200%. So a better interpretation is that 60% is the upper limit for those troubles. That study does not indicate which reason(s) played a predominate role in the decision.

So I find that data is not very supportive of your position. Nor are your hypotheticals, because there is no reason to believe responsible physicians would acquiesce to the reason.

It's entirely supportive of my position that it CAN AND DOES happen. It directly contradicts the oft-repeated "Oh that would never ever happen, no woman would do that, and even if a woman wanted it, a doctor would definitely never ever do it!"

Well guess what - some women DO want it, and some doctors DO perform them. The claim used to argue against *limitations* past viability are demonstrably false.

Third trimester begins at six months, not eight months. You've found 130 people over who knows how long a time span that got abortions sometime after six months. I quite suspect there was far more going on in these women's lives than just "trouble making a decision or a disagreement with their partner." But what's a little misogyny when there's a higher purpose involved?

Also, from your own link:

Indeed, we know very little about women who seek later abortions. Random samples of abortion clients capture few women at gestations past the middle of the second trimester. For this reason, the most commonly cited research on post–first-trimester abortion focuses primarily on women in the early second trimester.22-24 The most salient findings are that women seeking second-trimester abortions did not realize they were pregnant until much later than women seeking first-trimester abortions, and that myriad logistical barriers slow down access to abortion once a woman is beyond 13 weeks. Certain physical health conditions, such as obesity25, 26 and a lack of pregnancy symptoms,26 increase the risk of late discovery. Research from the United Kingdom has identified uncertainty about what to do if pregnant and changing personal circumstances, such as dissolution of romantic partnerships or job loss, as associated with delay in seeking abortion.27 Jones and Finer24 offer some empirical data on later abortion, but because of the constraints of random sampling, they report only on women who have abortions at 16 weeks or later.

Without adequate understanding of who has later abortions and under what circumstances, the effect of legislative bans on procedures at or after 20 weeks cannot be known. This renders the question of who will be affected by these bans of increasing and timely importance. The current study addresses this question by analyzing data on women who sought and received an abortion at or after 20 weeks’ gestation for reasons other than fetal anomaly or life endangerment.

 

[bilby]

Neither scenario is sufficiently plausible as to be worthy of consideration. Doctors don't behave in the way described*, and would not do so, regardless of the legality of the situation.

Is it your belief that no doctor anywhere would ever provide a voluntary abortion to a woman who was 8 months pregnant?

Why would a doctor kill a normal healthy fetus at the 8th month of development rather than deliver it via a cesarean procedure? And why would a doctor do it on demand?

Because some doctors, just like some people (@laughing dog), believe that an infant isn't a person as long as it's inside the womb. Some doctors, just like some people believe that a woman should have an absolute right to an abortion, no matter what stage of development the fetus is at.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4521013

Table 3. Percentage of women reporting specific reasons for delay in seeking abortion services, by timing of abortion

Any barriera	88	80	94
Not knowing about the pregnancy	43	40	45
Trouble deciding about the abortion	37	33	40
Disagreeing about the abortion with the man involved	18	16	20
Not knowing where to go for an abortiona	30	18	38
Difficulty getting to the abortion facilitya	20	12	27
Raising money for procedure and related costsa	51	31	65
Difficulty securing insurance coveragea	32	20	41

[th]
Reason

[/th][th]
Allb (N=384)

[/th][th]
First-trimester (N=166)

[/th][th]
Later (N=218)

[/th]​

60% of the 218 women getting third trimester abortions cite trouble making a decision or a disagreement with their partner.

Correction: It is bilby who doesn’t believe an infant is a person until they basically are intelligible to him.

Correction: bilby doesn't believe a newborn infant is more of a person than a cat or dog.

 

[Toni]

Neither scenario is sufficiently plausible as to be worthy of consideration. Doctors don't behave in the way described*, and would not do so, regardless of the legality of the situation.

Is it your belief that no doctor anywhere would ever provide a voluntary abortion to a woman who was 8 months pregnant?

Why would a doctor kill a normal healthy fetus at the 8th month of development rather than deliver it via a cesarean procedure? And why would a doctor do it on demand?

Because some doctors, just like some people (@laughing dog), believe that an infant isn't a person as long as it's inside the womb. Some doctors, just like some people believe that a woman should have an absolute right to an abortion, no matter what stage of development the fetus is at.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1363/4521013

Table 3. Percentage of women reporting specific reasons for delay in seeking abortion services, by timing of abortion

Any barriera	88	80	94
Not knowing about the pregnancy	43	40	45
Trouble deciding about the abortion	37	33	40
Disagreeing about the abortion with the man involved	18	16	20
Not knowing where to go for an abortiona	30	18	38
Difficulty getting to the abortion facilitya	20	12	27
Raising money for procedure and related costsa	51	31	65
Difficulty securing insurance coveragea	32	20	41

[th]
Reason

[/th][th]
Allb (N=384)

[/th][th]
First-trimester (N=166)

[/th][th]
Later (N=218)

[/th]​

60% of the 218 women getting third trimester abortions cite trouble making a decision or a disagreement with their partner.

Correction: It is bilby who doesn’t believe an infant is a person until they basically are intelligible to him.

Correction: bilby doesn't believe a newborn infant is more of a person than a cat or dog.

With all due resiect, in respect with this issue, bilby is entirely fucked up. Which I find surprising because he’s intelligent and has extensive education in biology,

I totally understand preferring cats as dogs to babies. Pets are easier than children and grow up more quickly, are easier to house train and you can leave them home alone. They frequently smell better, too. Obedience school is much cheaper than college and they do not ask to borrow your car or wreck it.

But babies are more of a person than dogs or cats can ever be, as adorable and wonderful as dogs and cats are.

 

[bilby]

With all due resiect, in respect with this issue, bilby is entirely fucked up

With all due respect, this translates as "bilby refuses to agree with my strongly held opinion".

 

[Toni]

With all due resiect, in respect with this issue, bilby is entirely fucked up

With all due respect, this translates as "bilby refuses to agree with my strongly held opinion".

Not really. Babies grow up to be productive adults, capable of both good and evil but mostly the gray areas between. They even grow up to be pet owners who provide loving care to cats and digs and lizards and parrots and all manner of creatures.

Well trained pets can and do help raise human children and teach them a great deal about how to be good people.

And pets can also teach the most curmudgeonly of us to be better people as well.

 

[bilby]

Babies grow up to be productive adults

Not always.

The potential to do something at some future date is not that thing.

When babies grow up merely to personhood - usually in a few weeks or months, then they are people.

Until then they are not.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Exactly. Even if the data in the report is accurate (and I very much doubt it--I see none of the usual hallmarks of proper research and I see it's done by simply asking) we are already up to three sacrifices that have gone public, plus another who died without seeking medical help.

This is stupid.

The situations you mention wouldn't happen if abortion were in place as it was under RvW. It would be legal prior to viability, and risks to health would be a legitimate reason past that point.

These cases have all been completely clear--the fetus had zero chance in any of them. The only question was whether it took the woman with it. The doctors are doing what the government ordered. Note that no sacrifice has resulted in any attempt to change or clarify the rules--in other words, it's working as intended.

See why we don't trust a reasonable evaluation of risk to health?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Frankly I have made decisions that I am certain scared the shit out of my parents. I think my father expected my marriage to fail from the day I got married up until the day he died—and here we are, 46 years later, stil glad to be married. But who could blame him? We started out at 22, with no money, a baby in the way and precious little help from our families.

I've come around to thinking that the secret to a happy marriage is 1) don't overthink it and 2) don't give a fuck about the wedding.

I was 21, neither of us had any money, both of our families were relatively poor and couldn't help out. He brought a bed and a dining room table to the marriage; I brought a couch, a coffee table, and a skillet. We didn't have a baby involved, but we pretty much just jumped in feet first. 30 years later... and we're still happily married and enjoy each other's company.

22. 36 years now.

 

[Elixir]

Do you consider that negligible number to be acceptable collateral damage, small enough that nobody should worry about it?

No. People are not disposable or subject to material valuation.
Non or marginally sentient aggregations of cells … not so much.

 

[southernhybrid]

Wait a minute. I thought this thread was about universal health care, not abortion. There is actually a thread about abortion somewhere. Why aren't you all there?

Has the election made us all confused or what? Is there one thread left on IIDB that hasn't been derailed? Enquiring minds want to know! Btw, in my opinion, dogs are much better than humans, so please let me derail some more, so we can talk about how dogs are the best and humans are destroying the world as well as being far more cruel compared to other species, especially dogs. There should be universal health care for dogs! Isn't there a laughing dog somewhere among us?

 

[Elixir]

There should be universal health care for dogs!

I agree. We have come a long way, though.
Not long ago, you couldn’t even get private health insurance for your dog without going to Lloyd’s of London and paying more than ten times the cost of normal out of pocket veterinary care. Now the insurance Companies are falling all over themselves!
Soon it will have enough public acceptance to start thinking of it as a right. It might get voted down a few times, but eventually, resistance is futile.

 

[Emily Lake]

Correction: It is bilby who doesn’t believe an infant is a person until they basically are intelligible to him.

Umm...

Both are unrealistic hypotheticals. No responsible physician would say yes in either case. The 1st case is different than the 2nd because it is charitably assisted suicide of a person. In the 2nd, a fetus is not a person.

In your opinion... a 38 week old fetus is not a person so long as it's still inside a uterus? Is it a person if it's delivered prematurely at 38 weeks?

Yes to both.

Unless I'm reading this wrong, LD expressed that a two-week-before-natural-delivery fetus isn't a person while inside the womb, but the act of being delivered confers personhood upon it.

 

[Emily Lake]

At some point in a pregnancy, it's no longer a random lump of cells that can be viewed as a parasite to be disposed of.

That is not in dispute. What is on the table is the valuation of the life of that "unborn child" (granting a definition that I think is a major stretch) vs that of a biologically adult human with friends, memories, aspirations and maybe even people who depend on her.
IMHO, no contest. You differ. Why?

We have a fundamental disconnect here, and I don't know how to bridge it.

Can you express, in your own words, what you believe my position to be with respect to later abortions? Can you elaborate on how you think that view suggests that I value the life of the infant more than the life of the mother?

 

[Emily Lake]

Only in the most trivial sense - that there exists a negligible number.

There's only a negligible number of people placed on death row and sentenced to death. And of those, only a miniscule number are innocent of the particular crime that landed them there.

Do you consider that negligible number to be acceptable collateral damage, small enough that nobody should worry about it?

There is important distinct difference between a person and a fetus. BTW, I oppose capital punishment.

At what point do you think a fetus becomes a person?

Which then leads to the question are these current attempts to limit abortion access to deal with a negligible number of abortions worth the cost of actual health problems, traumas and death to actual people?

What health problems, traumas, and deaths would be caused by allowing later abortions when the pregnancy presents a risk to the mother's health?

I was referring to health, problems, trauma and death of women who are denied abortions because of these laws.

Laws that allow abortions when the health of the mother is at risk result in the deaths of women?

This same "it kills women" thing keeps getting echoed over and over. But it's not relevant. Requiring that there be a medically justified reason based on a health risk to the mother or previously unknown health and wellbeing risk to the infant seems like it would address that concern adequately.

Who the fuck are you to judge what is in the best interests of a pregnant woman seeking an abortion in the last trimester?

Someone who values the lives of both the the mother and the child. Who the fuck are you to judge that a baby capable of staying alive outside the womb can be killed for convenience?

 

[Emily Lake]

With all due resiect, in respect with this issue, bilby is entirely fucked up

With all due respect, this translates as "bilby refuses to agree with my strongly held opinion".

Without any due respect at all baby humans are unquestionably and objectively more human than non-human species are. Similarly, kittens are more cats than colts are.

 

[Emily Lake]

Wait a minute. I thought this thread was about universal health care, not abortion. There is actually a thread about abortion somewhere. Why aren't you all there?

Has the election made us all confused or what? Is there one thread left on IIDB that hasn't been derailed? Enquiring minds want to know! Btw, in my opinion, dogs are much better than humans, so please let me derail some more, so we can talk about how dogs are the best and humans are destroying the world as well as being far more cruel compared to other species, especially dogs. There should be universal health care for dogs! Isn't there a laughing dog somewhere among us?

Dogs might be better than humans... but polecats aren't. Nor are orcas. And dolphins are some downright cruel and fucked up critters.

All that said, I'll take nature's most effective killing machine - the domestic cat - over a dog 90% of the time.