Think hard, because while you dance around stating outright that you think the law should interfere, that’s exactly what it sounds like you’re advocating.

I personally find many reasons offered for late term abortions deeply offensive and dehumanizing. Some of those abortions seem less based on safety or privacy than on consumerism: that is, the view that babies are commodities; that they must, on pain of death, conform to social standards of beauty or intelligence.

You find certain medical care offensive. Fundies draw the line at finding women who want to live offensive. We’re all free to determine our own medical care within our line of offense. But what you’re doing is dancing around the question of whether your morals should be the law.

This discussion, for what it’s worth, is why I think Backlash should be required reading, particularly the last part where anxiety about late term abortion causes a court to overrule medical reality, Angela Carder’s family’s wishes and her wishes and perform a C-section instead of a late term abortion. What happened was a classic example of what happens when hypothetical viability is prioritized over what should be priority number one for doctors, which is the current patient’s health. From NAPW:

At the hearing almost no attention was paid to what was clinically best for Angela or to what she would want since, according to the hospital, it was “the apparent desire of the patient and her family” that no intervention be done on behalf of the fetus. Instead, the hearing focused on whether to “rescue” the fetus. Balancing Angela Carder’s life expectancy as a cancer-ridden patient against that of the fetus (based on the neonatologist’s unduly optimistic guesswork), the court ordered the Caesarean. Despite the court’s order, the obstetricians refused to carry it out. The hospital was then in the ironic position of being in contempt of an order that the hospital itself had sought. Reluctantly, a staff obstetrician agreed to perform the surgery.

Although assumed to be near death and unconscious, Angela was lucid and able to communicate when, after the court made its ruling, one of her obstetricians told her about the court’s decision. When her doctor explained that she might die as a result of the ordered surgery and that he would not perform the surgery without her consent, she said repeatedly, “I don’t want it done.” However, this declaration did not sway the hospital to withdraw its petition or the court to amend its order. A three-judge appellate panel upheld the decision during an emergency telephone appeal. Minutes later, having just been told that she probably would not survive the surgery, the woman who had courageously cheated death for fourteen years was rolled into the operating room. The fetus died within two hours. Two days later, Angela Carder died, never having received the cancer treatment she requested.

It’s an extremely important case because it’s the classic example of what happens when the law demands that they know better about things like viablity than doctors and that the lines they have drawn are appropriate. Yes, I know you said “not every pregnancy”, DA, but this is what you’re advocating for more of—doctors being held in contempt of court, judges who don’t understand medicine determing that they think a fetus is viable, and women dying during C-sections they don’t want. And for all the wonderful advances in medical technology to keep premature babies alive, the fact of the matter is that the fetus really is part of its mother’s body and therefore its health is dependent on hers. Women who are getting late term therapeutic abortions—which you yourself concede are the majority of late term abortions, not the “want to fit in my prom dress” monsters of anti-choice imagination—are generally too sick to deliver a baby, so even if they’re forced to against their will (which does happen in this “lines drawn” environment), you’re not likely to produce the sort of premature baby that has much chance of survival anyway.

What we fail to understand is that doctors are trained extensively to weigh competing factors and yes, sometimes they don’t make the right decisions. However, the court systems already have a way to exert quality control, which is the threat of medical malpractic suits. A perfect system? No, but what is? We’re talking about the most effective system and the most effective is to allow doctors to terminate pregnancies at any stage if they and the patients feel that’s the best idea. Will this mean that there’s a possibility of abortions occuring for reasons that make Devil’s Advocate uncomfortable? Definitely? Is preventing that more important than giving doctors and patients the freedom required to maximize lives saved? Not in the slightest.

Sounds an AWFUL lot like you think a “line� should be “drawn� at 7 months, meaning that you think that the law is better able to diagnose a pregnant woman than a doctor.

I think abortion should remain legal and be free for the asking; but that yes, there is a line past which one is no longer terminating a pregnancy, but killing a child. If not at the point of viability, when a fetus could live independent of its mother, should that line be drawn sometime after a full-term birth? If viability isn’t the test, what is?

Now, if you have the super secret medical knowledge that means that doctors who prescribe late term abortions can avoid having to undertake this unfortunate event, please, give it up. It’s wrong of you to be coy. Because you’re talking about fetuses and brains and whatnot, but since we’re talking about abortion, a medical procedure, you need to provide the evidence that doctors are misdiagnosing foul pregnancies and aborting for no reason whatsoever.

I don’t think doctors perform late term abortions for shits and giggles, and I don’t think any woman would undergo one if she didn’t see a pressing reason. But – and I’m digressing from the topic a bit here – sometimes I think people undertake late term abortions based on misinformation or unproven assumptions (e.g., that an otherwise wanted fetus with Down’s Syndrome or Spina Bifita would be better off terminated through a late term abortion than born, or that fetuses with clubbed feet or cleft palates would.)

Where late-term abortions are concerned, this has less to do with whether abortion is right and more to do with whether a viable (and otherwise wanted) fetus capable of surviving without further draining its mother should be destroyed based, perhaps, on prejudice.

I personally find many reasons offered for late term abortions deeply offensive and dehumanizing. Some of those abortions seem less based on safety or privacy than on consumerism: that is, the view that babies are commodities; that they must, on pain of death, conform to social standards of beauty or intelligence.

And doctors, for all their medical knowledge, are notoriously ignorant of effective habilitation strategies for children with disabilities. Their information may be wrong, and trusted only because of its source.

I don’t think anything can be said of all pregnancies, but I think the above is very true of some.

That, or you’re one of those people who sincerely thinks women wake up one day and go, “Shit, I’m hugely pregnant. I forgot to deal with that. I don’t fit in my clothes anymore. Why don’t I get a wildly expensive, extremely painful surgery done by a mythical doctor who will do it without actually inquiring how I got into this situation.� I know you’re a woman; is this how you think?

Heeeeeeell no, I don’t believe that.

Uninterrupted, that clump of cells probably will grow into a human being – and this, by month seven. With medical support, a baby born two months premature can survive outside the womb. That, I think, should be where the line is drawn.

Sounds an AWFUL lot like you think a “line” should be “drawn” at 7 months, meaning that you think that the law is better able to diagnose a pregnant woman than a doctor. Now, if you have the super secret medical knowledge that means that doctors who prescribe late term abortions can avoid having to undertake this unfortunate event, please, give it up. It’s wrong of you to be coy. Because you’re talking about fetuses and brains and whatnot, but since we’re talking about abortion, a medical procedure, you need to provide the evidence that doctors are misdiagnosing foul pregnancies and aborting for no reason whatsoever.

Are you a doctor, Devil’s? Your medical advice about how all pregnancies going wrong at 7 months can safely be handled with a delivery strikes me as different from what most doctors say. Pray tell, what’s your secret? I’m sure a lot of people would like to know.

Why, I got it from that bastion of Conservative values, Planned Parenthood (http://www.ppacca.org/site/pp.asp?c=kuJYJeO4F&b=139571) They talked about medical advances increasing survivability for babies born between 24 and 28 weeks (six and seven months). And they didn’t question viabilty after seven months, although they did add the caveat it must be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Here’s another: “Of fetuses born at 28 weeks, approximately 80% survive.”

The Aussie Government Health page gets the last word: “The odds of survival depend on the baby’s degree of prematurity and birth weight. A full term pregnancy is said to last between 37 and 42 weeks. Recent figures (1998) found that at 24 weeks the odds of survival are 58 per cent, rising to 98 per cent or more by the time the baby reaches 28 to 30 weeks gestation. These statistics will continue to improve as neonatal care and research evidence evolves.”

And I never said, “all pregnancies.” But please, don’t let what I actually said get in the way of what you want to hear.

Heh. Good luck.

not to mention completely empty of any rational argument.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Okay, Jane. Whatever you say. That’s an interesting bit of horseshit, but let’s pretend you’re arguing in good faith, even though we know you’re not. What legal ramifications do I propose against women who don’t make choices I agree with? Please, examples, because I thought long and hard about it and realized that not only do I think women should be empowered to make all sorts of choices, I think this even when I strongly disagree that it’s the right choice. For instance, I think having 6 kids is wrong. But I think you should have federally subsidized daycare and public education all the same. Can’t say the same about these so-called “feminists”.

Face it, you _are_ advocating for Teh Devil here. As I expounded at some length above, there has been _nothing stopping_ the self-named “pro-life� people from being _actually_ pro-life. Never mind checking if they also are against the death penalty; if they consistently advocate for peaceful options before throwing in with the latest jingoist national crusade; Heaven forfend we ask them to consider whether the domestic policies they support are in fact just ones or rather based on systematic violence or not! Let them just, in this one narrow category they have been making so much noise about since Roe v Wade, point to their track record of positive support for women who choose not to have abortions.

A “pro-life� agency can’t be expected to broaden its scope to include an answer for every social ill before it’s freed from accusations of hypocrisy. If such an agency states in its mandate that it wishes to reduce the number of abortions through lobbying for positive social change (and through offering effective birth control), that’s all it has to do. It doesn’t have to take on advocacy to end the death penalty (though I can’t imagine how anyone could seriously be pro-life and, at the same time, for capital punishment). It doesn’t have to provide food and shelter for homeless men. It doesn’t have to be all things to all people.

It just has to be what it says it is: an organization that links women who are pregnant (and those who have young kids) with helpful services such as affordable housing; an organization that supports sex education and distributes birth control products to people who can’t afford to buy them.

My, my, those crickets sure are soothing, aren’t they. You can hear the whipporwhils in the distant trees too.

Get it. They are not “pro-life.� They are never going to be “pro-life.� They won’t reverse the deep attitude of shaming women they are all about; they won’t help take care of the kids. Not gonna happen.

First, why don’t you tell me who “they� are, exactly? Because not everyone who espouses a pro-life philosophy is anti-choice and anti-privacy.

I’m not defending “Feminists for Life,” or the “crisis pregnancy centersâ€? that exist solely to lie women into childbirth. While I may bed with the Devil from time to time, I’m certainly not doing that here.

Now on the other hand if you hang around your typical feminist activists, you will find lots of support for actual born human beings of all types as well as support for women who have decided to roll the dice and attempt to bring _potential_ people into the world.

You won’t hear any disagreement from me.

/snip/

Frankly, I think it will do just fine to just guarantee the right to abortion for all women as late as they choose, and rely on women not to carry to late in the term feti they have no firm intention of birthing.

And that is where we part company. The potential for life does begin at implantation. Uninterrupted, that clump of cells probably will grow into a human being – and this, by month seven. With medical support, a baby born two months premature can survive outside the womb. That, I think, should be where the line is drawn.

What’s your exact beef?