I think I am opposed to abortion. It is not that I want to inflict an unwanted pregnancy on a woman, and I make an exception in the case of rape or incest. I have no problem with stem cell research ? in fact I condone it, and I have no problem with the morning after pill. But, my wife recently gave me a litmus test on the issue and I failed. She asked me what I would do if a woman told me that she wanted to have an abortion. I said that I would try to talk her out of it. But, she asked, would I physically stop her? I had to say no. Therefore, she stated, I am allowing her to choose. I still believe that I am against abortion, but I would not stop a woman from entering an abortion clinic. The five people running for the Fifth Congressional seat of Martin Meehan may disagree with me, but they seem to be at varying degrees of disagreement.
Some of the five person field openly embrace the concept of choice. But Jamie Eldridge attacked opponent Barry Finegold for Finegold?s vote on the twenty-four hour waiting period enacted by the legislature that made it the law to wait an additional twenty-four hours before getting an abortion. During that twenty-four hour period, the woman is peppered with literature designed to get her to change her mind. That is not a step that I would take if talking to a woman determined to have an abortion. But, as Eldridge pointedly asked Finegold to explain his vote on that law Barry Finegold clarified his position by saying that he felt that the recent Supreme Court position outlawing partial birth abortions was wrong. Since then, Finegold has written that he is a strong supporter of a ?woman?s right to choose.?
The efforts by each man to garner the favor of the women?s movement were inept and amateurish. Paul Tsongas and Martin Meehan openly espoused freedom of choice. They did not temper their viewpoint by demanding partial solutions to a complex problem. While I did not necessarily agree with them, I admired their tenacity. They stuck to their records and voted their consciences. Jamie Eldridge and Barry Finegold seem to want the women?s vote at all costs.
I voted for Paul Tsongas and Martin Meehan. I disagreed with them on this issue, but I voted for them. I will not vote for these two champions of the flexible spine. If Mr. Finegold cannot determine how he feels about this core issue, how will he decide his course when the legislative road gets rocky with other issues?
laurel says
you seem to lump Finegold and Eldridge together in the statement “I will not vote for these two champions of the flexible spine.” How has Eldridge been spineless? I don’t see it in your narrative.
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You also say “Jamie Eldridge and Barry Finegold seem to want the women?s vote at all costs.”**. Can you provide examples? Finegold’s support of a waiting period would seem to be doing just to opposite – that is, alienating the pro-choice vote.
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**”The women’s vote” is a term that I find hilarious. women are not a monolith. some forced-birthers, for example.
laurel says
that should read:
**”The women’s vote” is a term that I find hilarious. women are not a monolith. some women are forced-birthers, for example.
bob-neer says
Terrific. Might “forced breeders,” also be a possibility? How about “Enslaved wombs,” or “Commandeered wombs,” or “Involuntary birthers?”
laurel says
is really what it’s all about. Forced birthers are all about womb control.
sabutai says
I’m inclined to agree with Amanda Marcotte — not something I do that often — that it’s more about sex control than womb control. I think there’s a large component out there that things that women should be punished for having sex that doesn’t lead directly to babies.
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Abortion is one perversion of such persons’ view of pregnancies, but so is contraception — as in the current case of CBS and Fox refusing to allow ads on our airwaves wherein Trojan advertises condoms for pregnancy protection. That’s a no-no to conservatives, as condoms are disease prevention only. I chalk it up to Fox’s America-hating conservatism, and the fact that anyone watching CBS is past their child-bearing years anyway….
centralmaguy says
in a comment on another post, so this current post is nothing more than vitrol thrown at non-Tsongas candidates, particularly [Jamie Eldridge http://www.jamieforcongress.com].
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It’s clear from this other post that Kayot has it in for Jamie Eldridge, probably because of Jamie’s assertive positions on the issues and his willingness in debates and in the press to hold the apparent front-runner accountable for the lack of substance in her positions.
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I’ve seen nothing of substance from this blogger about Niki’s substance (or lack thereof). Instead, it’s been nothing but bashing of other candidates.
karen says
The thought processes you describe in your first paragraph are exactly why the movement is called “pro-choice,” and why those who oppose it are “anti-choice.” I applaud your ability to see beyond your personal feelings. I mean, no one is pro-abortion–in the ideal society, all pregnancies would be planned and/or wanted, and all women and babies would have health care, day care, and opportunities for education and jobs. That’s why the centrist aphorism of “keep it safe, legal, and rare” is, despite the attempt to distance itself from the words “choice” and “abortion,” is a good place to start to work with the anti-choice folks (which won’t work due to their refusal to do what’s necessary, like sex ed, condom availability, etc etc etc).
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The majority of women who have abortions are not casually using it as birth control. It is a tough decision, painful, lifelong.
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From what I’ve read about the debate you mention, and the interaction between Eldridge and Finegold, I can certainly see why you wouldn’t vote for Finegold (I wouldn’t either)–resorting to the “I don’t know how my name got on that bill” (Eagle-Tribune) and blaming his office is, well, bogus, and Eldridge had every right to call him on that. I don’t see that as pandering, or wanting “he women’s vote at all costs,” however.
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bob-neer says
Almost certainly only a very small fraction of women use abortion as a method of birth control. According to Planned Parenthood, “More than one-third of all U.S. women will have an abortion by the time they are 45 years old. About six million women in the U.S. become pregnant every year. Half of those pregnancies are unintended. Nearly 1.3 million women choose abortion to end their pregnancy each year.”
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In addition to being a, “tough decision, painful, lifelong,” it might also be worth mentioning that it can in some cases be an expensive and relatively complex medical procedure.
karen says
So can childbirth.
bob-neer says
If one doesn’t want to have a baby. Prophylactics are a lot cheaper and safer than having an abortion.
sharoney says
also fail. Frequently.
raj says
…when combined with birth control pills, almost never.
sharoney says
And your suggestion to women who fit into that “almost” group who don’t want to be forced into giving birth is…?
rockside says
mr-lynne says
…
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There is a huge hole that opens up when this exception is cited. If you have two cases of potential abortion and the only difference is that in one case a woman got pregnant as a result of sex with her partner, and in the other case she got pregnant as a result of incest, then what are you really objecting to here? Is it abortion? No… it the behavior that created the pregnancy… has to be since that is the only difference in our example. Because it is the only difference itt is also the only thing that could be the basis for a moral decision that results in one case being excepted and the other prohibited.
raj says
…It seriously does. The fetus itself doesn’t know whether it resulted from rape or incest, consensual sex or date rape, but the female does.
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So, query, whose interests in the matter do you want to prefer? The female’s? Or the fetus’s?
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A bit of a dilemma.
anthony says
…of Pro-choice…it is not a dilemma, the woman gets to decide about what gets to grow inside her body. It is her dilemma and no one elses.
centralmassdad says
when viewed from the perspective of the other person involved, is abhorrent.
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Safe, legal, rare is the best route out of the dilemma.
raj says
The issue that I was addressing is a common one. Most laws against abortion have exceptions for rape or incest. The question was why the exceptions. Not whether or not there should be laws against abortion.
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Quite frankly the issue is an interesting one. If one assumes, arguendo, that there should be a law against abortion, why should there be an exception for rape and incest. One might liken allowing abortions under those exceptions to capital punishment for an entity that had no choice in how it was conceived.
anthony says
…..and if there are limits to abortion with exceptions such as those you detail obviously the woman’s interest is being protected. If there were an all out ban with such an exception it would probably also include an exception for the health of the woman and in this case being forced to carry a child conceived in rape would be so detremental to the woman’s mental health that it would rise to the level of an overall health risk. This is not that complicated.
mr-lynne says
… and it shows a common flawed set of ethical thinking, which was my point. Any answer for the question “why should there be an exception” necessarily demonstrates against, not for, the fetus, in favor of other interests (behavior regulation in this case – shown by the nature of the exception being considered). Odd position to take for a (hypothetical) self described pro-lifer.
mr-lynne says
mr-lynne says
… that the primary interest for those that make this exception seems to be the regulation of behavior, not abortion. As you say, there is a conceptual error when one asserts that they are interested in preserving a fetus, but only when that fetus resulted from one type of behavior and not another. It shows that what is really at interest in that case is not the interst of the fetus. So what you have is an allegedly pro-fetus party ignoring the interst of the fetus. Conceptually that is a disconnect. How can one say you are pro-life when the life part ignored or overriden in the moral decision.
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Here is another question that often shows that the “thinking behind the thinking” often differs. If you’d like to make abortion a crime, what should the penalty be for a woman who has an abortion? How about an attempted abortion? Same as murder? Years or decades in prison? Death?
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There was a video of someone interviewing pro-life protesters with this very question and the almost all the answers were that ther shouldn’t be a punishment. So which is it? Is it murder or not? How can their be a crime on par with murder with a completely alien and antithetical sense of justice to it?
raj says
I was pointing out that the primary interest for those that make this exception seems to be the regulation of behavior, not abortion.
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I suspect that the primary reason for the exceptions is to make the bill more palatible to the fence-sitters. Most anti-abortion laws target doctors, but the logical thing would be to also target the women, the male impregnators and anyone who was involved in financing the abortion.
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Lawmakers won’t do that, of course, because, if they tried to do so, they would never get anything passed.
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I’m a Libran, so I have the disadvantage of being able to see all sides of an issue. One side–the anti-abortion side–would suggest that women should not be facilitated in avoiding the obvious consequences of their actions, and pregnancy is one of the obvious consequences of consensual sex (this would not apply to rape, of course). The other side–the pro-choice side) would suggest that women should not be enslaved to the consequences of their action–the fetus.
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Where do I come down on this? I believe that we need a Manhattan Project-like program to develop decanters. Then the issue would go away.
centralmassdad says
What the heck is a Libran?
raj says
…generally between Sept 22 and October 22.
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Libra is the sign of the scales (weight scales, not musical scales). Librans have been reputed as living under the problem of being able to weigh every side of every side of every issue. It’s not true of course, but, being a lawyer, and a Libran, I actually have argued many sides of many issues, many of which I don’t agree with.
centralmassdad says
I guess I did not recognize the personal noun form.
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Many tanks.
raj says
…”decanter” is a reference to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
centralmassdad says
Anxiously awaiting my first visit to the “feelies.”
mr-lynne says
… I understand the palatiblitiy issue. The palatablity of such a stance only exists because so many people are content to live in the ethical cognitave dissonance that results from holding a pro-life with exceptions stance.
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The exception is untenable if the fetus’ interests are really what you are guarding. If this is one’s stance then the paying lip service to an exception is hypocracy, but a useful hypocracy in order to get the ball rolling.
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If one embraces the exception, the logical conclusion is that one isn’t really very pro-life at all, in the strict sense of the word, but pro-‘legislate my ideas of sexual moral behavior’.
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Nobody wants to confront their own beliefs with these contradictions so cognative dissonnance is the only happy alternative.
mr-lynne says
… your ‘doubting it’. I do think the exception shows what I said above, but I do also think that most people who are in such a position do not see it for what it is and instead live in comfortable ignorance of their beliefs’ underlying premises and implications. Just like many people misunderstand the abortion argument as a choice/muder debate when at its core it is really a ‘when does life/rights’ begin debate. Just because they assert one thing doesn’t mean the underlying premises are not the real culprits at play.
centralmassdad says
Cognitive dissonance is a virtual necessity in the abortion debate, isn’t it? This is because the issue is a collision of two mutually exclusive rights, both of which are absolute from their own perspective.
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The pro-choice proponents must maintain their own alternate reality, when they studiously ignore that the procedure is intended to cause the death of a person, or proto-person.
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The line between two rights is by necesity an arbitrary one. We have decided, for instance, that the further into the pregnancy, the closer the proto-person is to being an infant, and the more restricted the option to terminate the lift of that infant. The line between “early” and “late” is an arbitrary one.
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This is just another arbitrary distinction that is drawn, and it is no more comfortable than any of the others.
raj says
The line between two rights is by necesity an arbitrary one. We have decided, for instance, that the further into the pregnancy, the closer the proto-person is to being an infant, and the more restricted the option to terminate the life of that infant.
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…is one of the reasons for the trimester regime in Roe vs. Wade. The problem, as Sandra Day O’Connor noted in one opinion is that, as medical technology advances, the likelihood that a fetus becomes viable becomes a bit earlier, sending the trimester regime to smithereens.
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BTW, I was not kidding about the decanter reference.
mr-lynne says
… core strategy of the Snowflake people. Although implantation is (obviously) possible for frozen embryos right now, some day it might be possible to ‘transplant’ an embryo from the mother to a surrogate. Even if you we can’t grow people outside of the womb (yet) you can then alwasy argue viability via surrogate.
mr-lynne says
… the assumption is that viability is a useful measure of how fare along the fetus is in the continuum toward personhood. However it is somewhat arbitrary in that it is only useful coincidentally, since nobody would say that viability defines personhood… by some present day definitions of viability a brain-dead fetus could certainly be at least as viable as many premature infants. So viability and personhood seem not to have a causal relationship, but do seem to have a corralative relationship. This corralation will get stretched as medical technology stretches what could be considered viable, potentially beyond its usefulness. This will certainly confuse the issue when it happens. The problem is we don’t really have an agreed upon way to consider defining personhood. It will be very interesting (possibly in the Chinese proverb sense) when the correlation gets stretched and our intuitions and the legal system grasp for alternative definitions of personhood, or at least some other correlative property that is easier to agree upon.
centralmassdad says
I’m pretty sure that you implied that a brain-dead fetus cannot qualify as a person. That seems to me to be pretty dangerous territory, because there are an awful lot of people presently receiveing long term care whose families would be surprised to learn no longer qualify as people. It was bad enough that the government inreuded into a private matter in the Shiavo case; if the husband’s stance were different, would we be comfortable if the government forced the family to remove food and water, because this is a waste of medical resources on an inanimate object?
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Viability seems to me to be a reasonable place to draw the arbitrary line. If technology moves that line closer to the beginning than to the end of a pregnancy, then it is still a reasonable place to draw the line.
raj says
…one thing that is generally overlooked is that it wasn’t the husband’s stance that was dispositive. What was dispositive was the court’s determination of what Terri herself would have wanted, based on the evidence. The courts determined that she would have wanted to die with dignity, instead of having her body be kept going hooked up to a bunch of machines–similar to the 1960s Outer Limits–and finally allowed her to do so.
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Finally, requesquiat in pace.
mr-lynne says
… a brain-dead fetus is just as much a person as a brain-dead adult or a dead-by-other-means adult. That is to say… they are dead.
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Also, as I have pointed out,… viability seems reasonable now, but I still find it a bad line to draw if, in the future, we can make any blastocyst viable. What happens then? Assuming abortion is outlawed becase blastocyst viability gives blastocysts full person-rights, what are the ethical issues for doctors with regard to frozen embryos? I think the technology impact on viability shows that viability is a substitute (albiet one that works reasonably right now) for the real question of personhood.
mr-lynne says
… about it not being a ‘line’ so much as a ‘continueum’. This discussion has the potential to get very very deep into moral theory. I would say that on one side of the continuum I am very comfortable with the idea that it is unreasonable to equate the ‘personhood’ of a young woman with the collection of a few hundred mildly-differentiated cells. You literally do more damage to sentience when you swat a mosquio that when you abort a blastocyst.
mr-lynne says
… confuses the issue when talking about “the two rights”. If rights come with personhood and personhood develops, for a fetus, along a continuum then what we are talking about is an established right vs an ’emerging’ right. Lynne and I, for now, are settled on the issue of not having children. Many react (strangly) be instinctively feeling that we are somehow being selfish. It is interesting to watch them resolve their cognative dissonnance when I point out that, wherever these instincts to feel that we are selfish come from, it makes no sense because there is no child against whose interests we are acting if we haven’t concieved.
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Similarly, unless you consider a blastocyst to have the same rights as the ‘post-born’, then it must be said that the fetus’ ‘rights’ cannot be considered equal until some particlar (however arbitrary) point of its development. To talk about them as ‘one against the other’ as if both were well established confuses the issue.
centralmassdad says
You are quite right to refer to think of the rights of the fetus as “emerging.”
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I think the progess from zygote to infant is in some sense similar to the progess, in evolutionary terms, from bacterium to homo sapiens. Whether randomly or non-randomly, homo sapiens emerged over time.
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So it is with the developing fetus. The voting public understand this instinctively, I think. That is why there is no great outcry, except among the absolutists (who necesarily deny the existence of the woman’s side of the rights equation) over RU-486, IUD, and other very early termination mechanisms. Moral unease grows as time passes, and the infant’s rights emerge, and that is why there was little opposition, except among absolutists of the other side, to the ban of so-called “partial birth” procedures.
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Truly, I think it is a shame– and a real misfortune for Democrats– that the Supreme Court thwarted am emerging reasonable political settlement of the issue by emanating a penumbra. Raj rightly ponts out above that this reasonable settlement is exactly what Blackmun tried to acheive in Roe, but a reasonable settlement imposed is no subsitute for a settlement arrived at through the political process. In my opionion, which I understand to be a minority here, political litigation ssuch as Roe v. Wade poisons the courts and politics.
raj says
peter-porcupine says
…to think that the government has no business regulating a medical procedure for reasons other than safety and sanitation.
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You cannot legislate morality, as a moral compass – or lack thereof – is a personal perception, and thus legislation cannot enter into a person’s thoughts.
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HOWEVER – under the umbrella of safety, I would include parental notification. If you cannot perform a tonsillectomy on a minor, why an abortion? I also don’t have trouble with information on the procedure being required – knowledge is power, and women should make up their own minds with the fullest consent possible.
mr-lynne says
… but the information usually provided is not intended to inform but to dissuade. Should the Government be taking a stance on dissuading a medical proceedure? Is that sticking its nose too far into something clearly between a patient and their doctor?
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The waiting period is particularly insidious. When factoring in the difficulties among the poor in taking time off from work for a doctor’s appointment, having the state regulate two such appointments when one is all that is medically necessary is criminal. Especially in large states that have few actual places that will do the procedure (Mississippi comes to mind).
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For those interested in further details, I highly reccommend this episode of Frontline (some of the best investigative journalism in the country right now) called < href=”http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/clinic/”>The Last Abortion Clinic. You can stream the whole program for free from the website.
peter-porcupine says
Who said government should dissuade OR persuade? A clinical analysis is all that is called for – of the procedure and it clinical results.
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I agree about the waiting period. This isn’t an impulse purchase. In fact, we’d be better off legislative a waiting period for purchasing an automobile, if we want to protect people from the consequeces of dumb decisions they are free to make.
mr-lynne says
… when you read the actual legislation that legislators (not doctors) wrote for these informed consent laws, they often include specific language whose biased non-medical position is naked. I wish I could trust legislators to pass an informed consent law that included language limited to clinical analyises. Actually,… before that I’d like to see that such a law is necessary. That is,… I’d like to see evidence that without such a law doctors could not be trusted to advise their patients with adequate clinical information. Absent such evidence, even a law mandating ‘unbiased’ informational disclosure might but butting in too much on doctor patient relationship that isn’t broken.
karen says
In the best of all possible worlds, parental consent would be no problem. Informed consent would be no problem.
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But we live in what’s getting nearer to the worst of all possible worlds (when a kid can’t even hold up a sarcastic sign in public). And you can’t equate a tonsillectomy with an abortion (unless you’re a Christian Scientist). The “moral” baggage that comes with abortion changes the circumstances radically. For now, this has to be a decision made by the woman (or girl) about her own body. Maybe we’ll get to the best of all worlds where everybody talks openly and there’s no judgment or blame or shame. But right now, it’s the person with the womb whose life will be changed, maybe tragically or horribly, and she is the ONLY person who should make that decision (barring medical safety issues, not “moral” safety issues). I mean, why would it be safer to have parental notification? Abortion is legal and therefore, theoretically, women don’t have to sneak to back-alley hacks who use coat hangers. It’s actually safer NOT to have parental notification, because that often shames girls into using the back-alley methods.
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The waiting period is just another word for anti-choice. Waiting is a luxury only the rich have.
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Informing women of their options: same thing. Right now it’s hard to decide who I would want the arbiter of good taste or even correct knowledge to be. Certainly not anyone in the administration. Planned Parenthood, most likely. But dollars to doughnuts anything official women see right now doesn’t go into the consequences of having the baby–financial, educational, employment, housing, all that REAL stuff. Most likely the consequences of having an abortion are given, with the modern equivalent of hellfire and brimstone.
peter-porcupine says
If you choose to regard abortion as anything BUT a medical procedure, then you are as guilty of trying to manage women into an outcome you endorse as any ardent pro-lifer. You use avoidance of shame to deny women information about the consequences of abortion in the same way that a pro-lifer might use sanctity of life to obscure information about the consequences of child rearing.
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Either way – pro-choice or pro-life – you are trying to superimpose what YOU think might be best into the decision process. BTW – don’t assume that al doctors are goodsources of information. Many still wil not perform abortions, and will dramatize consequences. Objective information is needed.
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Due to in-womb photography, it is known that fetuses are more active and advanced than was previously believed at a younger age. That should be considered. The mother’s history may be at risk for Tay-Sachs, or spina bifida, or Down’s. That should be considered. Either way, it’s the job of the woman in question.
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As far as parental notification goes – why should an exception be made, if this is a medical procedure instead of a moral one? Parental notification is needed to treat STD’s, to get a pap smear or get HPV vaccine, all of which are sexual in context. Enough already with ‘good taste’ – let’s concentrate on just the facts, ma’am.
raj says
I think you hit on the core strategy of the Snowflake people.
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The problem that we have is that the pace of technology is outrunning the developments of the law. So, we have the capability to implant embryoes into 60 year old female incubators, the question is, who are the bio-parents and what are their obligations to the resulting children? I don’t know. You don’t know. And therein lies the question. Do the bio-parents (the egg and sperm donors) even want the embryoes to be implanted, for fear of their potential future liability to the resulting child? If they don’t, what is to become of the embryoes? Is the fertility clinic supposed to make space for them forever?
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It was bad enough that the government inreuded into a private matter in the Shiavo case; if the husband’s stance were different…
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What you seem to be missing is that the Schiavo case did not turn on the husband’s stance, it turned on a court determination of what Terri would have wanted. For the life of me, I cannot understand why people do not understand the distinction. The courts in FL took evidence of what Terri Schiavo said she wanted, and ruled accordingly. It was never an issue of what the husband wanted.
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Going up a bit
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And your suggestion to women who fit into that “almost” group who don’t want to be forced into giving birth is…?
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Some people believe that people should endure the obvious consequences of the choices that they make. Apparently, you do not.