Abortion II

[GrayMouser]

The day after this came up, there was a headline in the paper about a mother giving birth, and then killing her baby- she lived with her parents, no-one noticed she was pregnant, gave birth in the basement- I thought it was the same story, but this one was in Tennessee-

District Attorney General Ray Whitley said he will argue during a Monday bond hearing that Lowe should remain in jail and that there is potential for the death penalty in this case. She has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/...d_8685465.html

I guess that's better.

These cases are depressingly common, and almost always follow one of two patterns

1) a young street kid /poor woman alone who feels she has no-one to turn to

2) a woman/girl who doesn't want her family to know

Given all the options available, including safe haven laws, these are obviously women with problems.

I think some kind of institutionalisation is required, but murder/manslaughter charges are too much.

[Insidious Rex]

I would say these two cases and the many others like them are excellent examples of exactly WHY abortion should be safe and legal. So women arent resorting to horrible extremes that result in death anyway.

[inked]

Hmm, IR, your conditions are met in Canada and Tennessee and Virginia. What went wrong?

On the other hand, pre-Christian Rome utilized this sort of control. It was subsequently "stigmatized" by the Christians. So, the concept is not new at all.

At what age do you think "retroactive abortion" or infanticide ought be made punishable? The thinking here is apparently that it should not be in the peripartal time frame.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally Posted by inked

Hmm, IR, your conditions are met in Canada and Tennessee and Virginia. What went wrong?

The point being imagine how many MORE of these kinds of cases there would be as you make it harder and harder to have safe legal abortions. Take away safer better choices and people resort to all kinds of desperate madness. The notion that you wipe abortion out overnight by making it illegal is about as much of a fallacy as thinking you can wipe out drug use overnight by making IT illegal. But if drug use is legal a lot fewer people are going to resort to prostitution or sticking up convenience stores to finance their drug habit.

[inked]

The point is that your conditions were met and these folks did not advantage themselves of them.

Why limit the act to infanticide by the mere definition of infant? Why not make allowances for pediacide, adolescentcide, fratricide, gynicide, patricide, or matricide, etc., etc., etc.? Just do away with the whole concept that taking another's life is somehow "wrong"! That will certainly solve the problem of inadequate safeguards for "persons" by removing the main one: the right to life.

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

The point is that your conditions were met and these folks did not advantage themselves of them.

Why limit the act to infanticide by the mere definition of infant? Why not make allowances for pediacide, adolescentcide, fratricide, gynicide, patricide, or matricide, etc., etc., etc.? Just do away with the whole concept that taking another's life is somehow "wrong"! That will certainly solve the problem of inadequate safeguards for "persons" by removing the main one: the right to life.

As the father of three teen-age boys...don't tempt me.

This is a good point- we have to watch out for the slippery slope.
For instance, I don't think we'd want to excuse the same action taken by a young father faced with the prospect of a lifetime of child support as the consequence of what might have been a brief encounter.

OTOH I do think that the women's actions in these cases show evidence of psychiatric problems. The one in Tennessee withdrew to her bedroom for most of the latter stages of pregnancy- her family and friends thought she was going through a bout of depression. She'd been described as cheerful, outgoing and active in her church.

They had a picture of her house- solidly suburban middle-to-upper-middle class.

Just as a practical issue, these babies were healthy, new-born, and white (yes, it matters) making them very desirable for adoption- heck, they'd be worth tens of thousands of dollars on the black market.

And, unlike the widespread practise in the ancient world, these two at least were boys.

I think part of the reaction is that the idea of a mother killing her children seems so unnatural- a father much less so- that the tendency is to say "She must have been crazy", even when the children are older.

Though there is the case of Susan Smith, currently serving life for killing her two sons age 3 and 1, so she could pursue a relationship with a wealthy man (she was married to the children's father at the time), which seems to be a test case for the limits.

Still,

It was disclosed in her trial that Smith was molested in her teens by her stepfather, who admitted that he had molested Smith when she was a teenager and had consensual sex with her as an adult. Her biological father committed suicide when she was 6 years old and she very rarely had a stable home life. At 13, she attempted suicide. After graduating from high school in 1989, she made a second attempt.[8]

[Rían]

I think some types of diminished responsibility, like post-partum issues, are right and just. For me, I think the issue in this case is more how it was treated in the press. And of course, cold-blooded calculating people will see things like this with truly sick people and try to copy it and plead diminished responsibility. It's one of those no-win things where we just need to do as good as we can. But that judge was just so cavalier about it ... "gee, it's rough being a mom - makes you miss you mani/pedi sometimes - I can totally understand why she did what she did". Like inked said, it wasn't like she was living on the street.

Again, I'm not saying it's easy, but so many people are just so accustomed to having it easy and having their problems dealt with by someone else that when something more difficult comes along, their thought is to get rid of the problem instead of deal with the problem.

Our oldest son just went to college across the country, and my husband and I were talking about if he should get to take a car with him or not (we got a used truck for him when he first started driving - mainly for my convenience, so he could go to work and school and leave me with a car - the bus didn't go to where his college was, and it was far away). I was STRONGLY against him taking the truck to this new college. I went to school and didn't have a car - I used the bus, walked, rode my bike, caught a ride, or just didn't go. It's SO important to learn to work for things, and SO many parents, in either mistaken love or selfishness (they want to be liked by their kids) give their kids so many things, and it's just bad for them. I can't tell you how many kids at my kids' school in California got brand-spanking new luxury cars on their 16th bday . Darn it, my kids deserve BETTER - they deserve a USED CAR or NO CAR!!!!! Then they learn how to be an adult and deal with problems!!!!

Whatever way you cut it, it's a tragedy.

[GrayMouser]

Yes, to both Rian and inked, the Canadian judge's reaction seemed to be way too biased toward the mother, and downplayed the horrific nature of what happened:

“While many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,” she writes… "Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.”

Not exactly- try to understand, yes; hope she can be made to realize how wrong her actions were, yes- but grieve for her? No.

[Midge]

Just a thought -

http://www.180movie.com/

[inked]

Thanks, Midge.

[inked]

Roe vs Wade - abortion for any reason in the USA.

Sex selection is a reason.

Abortion for sex selection is legal in the USA.

Abortion for sex selection is favorable to boys.

Abortion to favor boys is legal in the USA.

Abortion to favor male births is discriminatory.

Abortion for any reason is legal in the USA.

Abortion versus anti-discrimination, now there's a terrain!

See http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/10/4149 for an interesting discussion.

Of course, the NYT thinks that personhood is just a cover for anti-abortion folks to talk about the subject in a different way:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us...ions.html?_r=1

And there are the incoherent arguments that "zygotes" are the enemy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...GQM_story.html

Apparently there is an inability to grasp that abortion does end up hurting women by making fewer of them.

What do you think?

[GrayMouser]

In Canada abortion is completely legal, but sex-testing (other than for sex-based medical problems) is banned.

Canada’s Assisted Human Reproduction Act states that no person shall:

[f]or the purpose of creating a human being, perform any procedure or provide, prescribe or administer any thing that would ensure or increase the probability that an embryo will be of a particular sex, or that would identify the sex of an in vitro embryo, except to prevent, diagnose or treat a sex-linked disorder or disease.[5]

There are reports of a few home sex-testing kits being shipped to Canada from a company in Britain; these are supposed to work as early as five weeks and be 95% accurate. Anyone wishing to do this could easily circumvent the law.

This is not the case in the US:

There is evidence that some Americans want to choose their babies’ sex. At the Fertility Institutes, a set of clinics in Los Angeles, New York and Guadalajara, Mexico, 85 percent of roughly 500 couples each year seek sex selection, although three-quarters of them come from overseas, said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, the medical director.

“It’s jumped over the past four years,” said Dr. Steinberg, whose clinics determine sex through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, an embryo screening that also detects genetic disorders. He said that “if a woman calls to make the appointment, the couple almost always wants a female. If a man calls, they almost always want a male.”

But clinics and some ethicists say this type of sex selection is more acceptable because it occurs before embryos are implanted, before pregnancy.
........
After all, one concern is whether immigrants from countries like India and China would use sex tests to abort female fetuses here. Dr. Egan and Dr. Chapman’s study found that Asian-American mothers, especially with third pregnancies, had more boys than girls in ratios strongly suggesting sex selection.
.......
Most mothers in Dr. Egan’s data were born overseas, suggesting the possibility that American-born generatiolns might become less concerned about having male heirs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/su...ted-a-girl.htm



Note this would be illegal in Canada- in America, Arizona and Oklahoma have passed laws banning sex-based abortions, but not sex-testing, showing they're not really serious about the issue.

Read a thought experiment about this a few weeks ago.

After all, the people getting these abortions don't want to have abortions - they want to have a baby- just just not a girl baby.

So say scientists come up with a pill that suppresses either the X or Y chromosome in males. If you want a boy, the man takes the blue pill and produces two YYs; if a girl, the pink pill and two XXs.

That solves the abortion issue, but not the gender gap- note that it would be illegal in Canada, but not in the US.

Would that be acceptable? IOTW, is this a real issue to these people or just another excuse to limit abortion rights?

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

Of course, the NYT thinks that personhood is just a cover for anti-abortion folks to talk about the subject in a different way:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us...ions.html?_r=1

Maybe that's because that's exactly what the pro-'personhood'backers are saying? Your objection seems to be that the NYT is accurately reporting their comments. I know anti-abortionists often like to engage in stealth campaigns, using other motives to cover their real aims, but I think this case is pretty straight-forward.

And there are the incoherent arguments that "zygotes" are the enemy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...GQM_story.html

That's "zealots", not "zygotes". The author describes how she faced a life-threatening condition while pregnant, and cites other cases to show where courts overruled a woman's right to have a life-saving operation in favor of the rights of the fetus. Under the 'personhood' rules, the certainty of death for a fetal 'person' would override the mere possibility/probability of death for the woman.

As well as banning IUDs, the morning after pill, possibly the birth-control pill itself (recently made a target of the anti-abortion movement) it would also ban abortion in cases of rape, incest, an as seen above, give at least equal rights to the life of the mother and the fetus.

From the WaPo article:

In response to the outcry over the Mississippi ballot measure, which would effectively ban abortion, even in cases of rape, Personhood USA spokeswoman and lawyer Rebecca Kiessling has frequently said, “A baby is not the worst thing that could ever happen to a rape victim — an abortion is.”

Apparently there is an inability to grasp that abortion does end up hurting women by making fewer of them.

What do you think?

Speaking of having fewer women around, I notice Mississippi sanctions execution for murder, so, as in the case in Tennesse above, the death penalty can be applied to women who have abortions- and so it should, according to the philosophy of the 'personhood' movement- or at least very lengthy prison sentences.

So judging from your comments on the infant murder cases above, you support executing or imprisoning women for life for the crime of having an abortion, yes?

(Another interesting legal point: US citizens travelling by air to any foreign country must have a passport. (Travellers to Canada or Mexico by land or sea or the Caribbean can get by with a passport card). All minors including newborns must have their own passports- so presumably this will apply to fetuses- and both parents/guardians must bring the minor to the passport office in person. I guess a woman could get by with a pregnancy certificate from her doctor- but then how do we know a woman is not illegally taking an American citizen out of the country? Mandatory pregnancy tests for all fertile-age women travelling abroad?

[inked]

Wow, GM, I didn't know that freedom of abortion was curtailed in Canada. Thanks for the information.

Besides, we know that in Canada one can limit the baby's right to life after it is born (op cit). So Canadians have the same recourse as the Romans - exposure - if the child is wrong sex.

Seriously, though, the facts of abortion for fetal sex selection are abundantly available and the sequelae well established. I personally don't find Canada's regulation that sex selection is not permitted as a cause for abortion to be onerous. As a medical practitioner, I don't find it to be onerous. It is, however, a profound limitation of abortion rights. And I do not find that onerous either. I think society has a duty to protect its most vulnerable. You and I disagree on when a person becomes a worthwhile societal member, but we seem to disagree that abortion can be limited. Yet you applaud Canada's limitations and reject proposed limitations in Mississippi, if I understand you correctly.

Now, who's zealous about zygotes?

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

Wow, GM, I didn't know that freedom of abortion was curtailed in Canada. Thanks for the information.

.....
Seriously, though, the facts of abortion for fetal sex selection are abundantly available and the sequelae well established. I personally don't find Canada's regulation that sex selection is not permitted as a cause for abortion to be onerous. As a medical practitioner, I don't find it to be onerous. It is, however, a profound limitation of abortion rights. And I do not find that onerous either. I think society has a duty to protect its most vulnerable. You and I disagree on when a person becomes a worthwhile societal member, but we seem to disagree that abortion can be limited. Yet you applaud Canada's limitations and reject proposed limitations in Mississippi, if I understand you correctly.[
Now, who's zealous about zygotes?

I think that was supposed to be "we seem to agree that abortion can be limited", yeah?

I checked up on the Canadian law and it only applies to artificial insemination. A woman's right to abortion remains paramount, even if she declares (which she is under no obllgation to do) that she is having the abortion because of the baby's sex.

The other point is that this came up, and the law was passed, because these abortions were noticeably happening among immigrant groups from South and East Asia. This is certainly a problem, but again it's a problem of sexism within certain cultures.

My own standpoint....hmmm- theoretically, I have no problem with sex selection, if practised in a society where gender equality is strongly established; whether such a situation exists anywhere is another matter.

I have three sons, but all I originally wanted was one daughter....

Oh, and congrats to the good people of Mississippi in rejecting the "personhood" law so strongly, though some part of that was due to tactical choices of the anti-sabortion movement i.e. the Catholic Church and National Right to Life, who feared it would have been struck down by the Supreme Court.

[inked]

So, it's okay to suppress the cultural expression of the Asian culture's errors by that of the superior Canadian understanding that doesn't limit abortion to the properly enculturated. Gotcha, GM. Now, could you make some intellectual coherence out of that frank colonialism? (Ignore the ethnicity of the fetus as beside the point as its life.)

[GrayMouser]

Originally Posted by inked

So, it's okay to suppress the cultural expression of the Asian culture's errors by that of the superior Canadian understanding that doesn't limit abortion to the properly enculturated. Gotcha, GM. Now, could you make some intellectual coherence out of that frank colonialism? (Ignore the ethnicity of the fetus as beside the point as its life.)

Never having been a cultural relativist, I don't have any problem with that "colonial" attitude.

Certain ideals, like sexual equality, trump cultural norms. In fact almost anything, other than ethnic restaurants, trumps cultural norms.


As that old Canadian saying goes , "Canada, love it or leave it- well, you don't have to love it, but at least admit it's not that bad, not that we're condemning your ethnic and/or national background...."

[ender_petra]

Ok, so I'm jumping in to warm water here! I'll go ahead and straight out tell ya'll- I volunteer at an abortion clinic a couple times a month. I get called a murder and I'm accused of being money hungry (ummm, unpaid volunteer here!) and all sorts of other names, I've been condemned to hell, followed down the sidewalk, confronted in the grocery store and so on- all by "compassionate" pro-lifers.

So here is my response, as someone who communicates with an abortion doctor, sees the fear on her nurses faces and looks the protesters and the patients dead in the face. I see the tears and fear in the woman walking into the clinic, I see the ones who are dragged in (then sent away by the doctors) the ones who are crying because they are pro life but their fetus's heart has wholes in it, the rape victims, the teenagers, the 40-something year old adults. I hear the words of the protesters over the loud speakers, the ones they save for the volunteers, the patients and (worse of all) the doctor, but we're use to it. The patients are already dealing with something hard, and to have these nasty and uncompassionate words thrown at them ("You will hear the screams of your son or daughter for the rest of you life" for example) is beyond disgusting, and they have the hardest time, by far, with the protesters.

My response to it being legal in the case of rape: as a past rape victim, this is extremely insulting to me. Thank you for caring about rape victims, but until you've been through it, you have no clue how much pain and shame we deal with. It took me months to stop feeling numb, to stop blaming myself and to stop questioning if it even happened or not. I was in denial, big time. Thankfully I did not get pregnant, but it I did, I couldn't imagine having to explain my situation to a judge to be granted the "right" to an abortion.

Underage abortions: parents should not have to sign off on these! In many cases, underage girls are made pregnant by family members, should they have to explain this to mom and dad? How about the teens who were raped, or even the ones who willingly had sex with a boyfriend or just to experiment, they should not be forced to carry a fetus to term just because they chose to do something completely natural, something that every teen has at least wondered about, and something that many adults partake in freely. Let's be real- the sex education in public schools suck, and with a lack of education, combined with shame and trying to hide from there parents, there will be teen pregnancy. With abuse, religion etc, it is NOT safe to force teens to get there parents to sign off on every abortion. If a kid is 15 or 18, they should still have the right to make decisions about there own body.

Relating to anyone else- we all have the right to our own bodies. If I decide to go out and have a one night stand with Mr. What's-Your-Name? then that's my choice. If I decide to have sex with my husband, boyfriend, fiancee or whatever, that is, again MY choice. If I have a f*ck buddy, heck, it's still my choice. If birth control fails or I don't use it, then it is MY choice to become a mother, go through adoption serves, or have my fetus terminated. Please note: MY body, MY choice, MY life. I have never had a one night stand, but if I did, it would not be your place to judge me. When I'm married to my fiancee, even though we plan on having kids someday, it is still my right to have an abortion if I choose one. If I had millions of dollars and hired help, I could still choose an abortion, and rightly so! The economic position of the woman in question, way that she got pregnant and age should never be factors in weather she has the right to an abortion, these should be factors that the woman in question takes into consideration when trying to decide what to do with her body.

[inked]

"An increased scrutiny of Illinois abortion clinics ... revealed that some facilities had gone up to 15 years without inspections, and two now have closed after regulators found health and safety violations."

One death reported so far: "One of those facilities _ the Women's Aid Clinic in Lincolnwood _ closed when the owner decided to surrender its license rather than pay a $36,000 fine or endure an expensive legal fight with the state. The fine was for violations including the clinic's failure to perform CPR on a patient who died after a procedure. Its owner told the AP her clinic was safe and she felt victimized by the surprise inspection after 15 years."

"Abortion-rights advocates are worried the state's heightened surveillance will restrict access to abortion for Illinois women."

Read more:
http://tdn.com/news/national/apnewsb...#ixzz1kQ0NxS6f

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1219897.html



"Here is a list of clinics inspected last year and the years they'd gone without full health inspections:

—Aanchor Health Center in Glen Ellyn. Nine years without a full health inspection. Inspected May 5, 2011.

—Access Health Center in Downers Grove. 13 years without a full health inspection. Inspected May 18, 2011.

—ACU Health Clinic in Hinsdale. 14 years without an inspection. Inspected May 24, 2011.

—American Women's Medical Center in Des Plaines. Seven years without a full health inspection. Inspected June 23, 2011.

—Forest View Medical Center in Des Plaines. Six years without a full health inspection. Inspected June 1, 2011.

—Michigan Avenue Medical Center in Chicago. Seven years without a full health inspection. Inspected June 23, 2011.

—National Health Care Service in Peoria. Nine years without a full health inspection. Inspected June 16, 2011.

—Northern Illinois Women's Center in Rockford. 15 years without a full health inspection. Inspected June 8, 2011.

—Women's Aid Clinic in Lincolnwood. 15 years without a full health inspection. Inspected Sept. 6, 2011.

___

Source: Illinois Department of Public Health documents on pregnancy termination center inspections"

Read more:
http://www.wbez.org/story/illinois-c...clinics-95723#


REALITY BITES, doesn't it? Especially since the current President of the US, formerly a Senator from Illinois, clearly did not and does not know about abortion in his home state:
Obama Defends Roe v. Wade As Way for ‘Our Daughters’ to Have Same Chance As Sons to ‘Fulfill Their Dreams’
"Obama, while serving in the Illinois State Legislature and as president of the United States, has taken a hard line on abortion rights."

Not a hard look at the actual places where they are done in Illinois, though!
And not if you are the aborted son or daughter, but hey, try not to get picky!

Read more:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obam...l-their-dreams

[GrayMouser]

Starting to worry about you, inked- you seem to be turning into some kind of Big-Government-loving liberal-socialist-hater of the free market.

I thought real conservatives hate all those intrusive government inspections.

State officials attribute the lag to a lack of funds and resources, noting that the state's 24 trained health inspectors are responsible for inspecting nearly 2,000 facilities.
........
The state's inspectors are spread thin, responsible for on-site safety and health inspections of facilities ranging from hospitals to dialysis centers to home health agencies. Lack of money prevents the state from hiring more inspectors, said health department spokeswoman Melaney Arnold.

"The department would like the regulation of all licensed health care facilities to be on par with how long-term care facilities are regulated," she said, "meaning a survey is done at each facility every year and whenever we receive a valid complaint."
........

Sharon Levin, vice president of the National Abortion Federation, a standard-setting body for providers, said the Philadelphia case is unusual and shouldn't be used as a basis for a crackdown.

State regulators should inspect abortion clinics as often as they do other similar medical facilities, Levin said, but 15 years between inspections is excessive.

"We have clinical policy guidelines and we regularly inspect our members ..." she said, "but we would consider 15 years too long."

Illinois Rep. Jack Franks, a Marengo Democrat who supports abortion rights, is glad the state has stepped up its inspections.

"Abortions are legal in this state. They need to be safe," Franks said. "I want to make sure women getting these aren't being treated improperly."

As was said the last time this came up, I absolutely agree that women need to have safe, high-standard facilities for obtaining abortions

And I'm sure you support an increase in government inspections in all other kinds of medical facilities, in food-processing plants, in mines, factories etc.

Otherwise someone might think you're actually a follower of e. coli conservatism

http://www.google.com/search?q=e.col...NQN_zh-TWTW463

who doesn't actually give a damn about women's (or men's) public safety but is simply using this an excuse to restrict women' access to abortion.