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Abortion Ban in Alabama Designed 'To Directly Challenge Roe v. Wade'


Muda69

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A Post-Roe World Would Pave the Way for a New Black Market in Abortion Pills: https://reason.com/2018/06/28/post-roe-abortion-market/

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The graphic was simple but gripping: a black background with a wire coat hanger floating in the middle over one all-caps phrase: THE END OF ROE. HuffPost's editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen tweeted out the image on Thursday morning, one of a string of left-leaning media nods to the same conclusion: Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court is the beginning of a certain end to legal abortion access in America.

No one can say for sure how Justice John Roberts would go on either overturning or weakening Roe, and any number of hiccups could snag state plans to outlaw abortion, but there's a real chance that the Court opening created by Kennedy's departure will mean a rough patch for reproductive freedom, abortion access, and women's autonomy in this country—and, yes, perhaps even an overturning of Roe and the outlawing of abortion in some areas.

But in a modern world where abortion is outlawed, the coat hanger is probably an ill-fitting and anachronistic symbol. The availability of easy-to-administer abortion-inducing pills and the impossibility of stopping their flow from foreign pharmacies would create a situation unlike in previous eras when it was difficult or illegal to terminate pregnancies.

Right now, the U.S. allows women to obtain what are known as "medical abortions"—the kind induced via pharmaceuticals, not surgery—through the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, using the two-step drug combo of mifepristone and misoprostol. This kind of abortion makes up a growing share of total abortions in America (a number which has been declining more or less steadily since the early 1980s).

While the regulations regarding abortion pills vary by state, most require a physician to dispense the pill. But other than confirming pregnancy and determining gestational age, there's little (non-bureaucratic) reason why medical abortions require a doctor or even an office visit at all. Complications can certainly arise after taking the pill, necessitating further care in some cases, but these are pretty rare. For the vast majority of pregnant people who take the pill as directed, the process may be painful but can be undertaken at home.

...

If abortion were illegal in parts of the country, women these days would be much more likely to attempt abortion with black-market pills than coat hangers or other more dangerous measures. That's not to say that these pills wouldn't be without their dangers: Any drugs bought on the black market can pose quality-control problems. But with foreign pharmacies relatively easy to order from online, and abortion pills still legal in many states, opportunities to obtain legit abortion pills in an underground market may actually be pretty expansive.

In this way, pregnant women's options and outcomes in a post-Roe world might not be a grim or gruesome as they were in an earlier era. And efforts to actually eradicate abortion stand less of a chance than they ever have before, when the only reliable ways to terminate pregnancies involved invasive and dangerous medical procedures undertaken in specific locales. As it stands now, anyone with an internet connection and a little cash can pretty easily obtain the pills, and no special or sterile setting is required.

...

With our current state of medicine and technology, eliminating abortion anywhere in the country could prove more difficult than the pro-choice side fears—a small consolation, but a consolation nonetheless. Meanwhile, the police-state antics, disastrous policy, and rising prison populations that come from outlawing abortion could prove every bit as devastating to American women and the general state of freedom in the country as any return to back-alley abortion doctors could be.

The War on Drugs has been a colossal failure, and so would a War on Abortion Drugs.  But in a possible post-Roe America what is safer, the drugs or the "back alley coat hanger"?

 

 

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36 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So you support the tactic of restricting access to an abortion by criminalizing the medical procedure?  

 

 

No.

36 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Do you believe medical professionals who currently perform abortion procedures are murderers?

 

 

No, from a legal perspective.

From a moral perspective, I can't say for sure. It seems very unlikely to me, but is not inconceivable that there could be some doctors with psychopathic personalities traits, who willingly perform "on demand" abortions when they personally consider the fetus a human life.  I don't normally go around judging people's action from the premise that they are a psychopath, however. 

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51 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

A Post-Roe World Would Pave the Way for a New Black Market in Abortion Pills: https://reason.com/2018/06/28/post-roe-abortion-market/

The War on Drugs has been a colossal failure, and so would a War on Abortion Drugs.  But in a possible post-Roe America what is safer, the drugs or the "back alley coat hanger"?

 

 

It's not a question of post-Roe ... with some of the actions of some of the states, for example, Texas, that's a reality that's already here. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-rise-of-the-diy-abortion-in-texas/373240/

https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2014/03/state-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights-state-texas-cautionary-tale

 

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39 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

So what abortion restriction tactics do you personally approve of and support?

 

I'd use the word "reduction" instead of "restriction":

1. Personal interaction with and support of women who may be contemplating an abortion to see if they may have interest in some alternative course of action that is viable for them. 

2. Prayer. 

Edited by Wabash82
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10 minutes ago, Wabash82 said:

I'd use the word "reduction" instead of "restriction":

1. Personal interaction with and support of women who may be contemplating an abortion to see if they may have interest in some alternative course of action that is viable for them. 

2. Prayer. 

So a law requiring women contemplating an abortion to visit a "crisis pregnancy center" or equivalent facility before they schedule an appointment with an abortion clinic?

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38 minutes ago, Wabash82 said:

I'd use the word "reduction" instead of "restriction":

1. Personal interaction with and support of women who may be contemplating an abortion to see if they may have interest in some alternative course of action that is viable for them. 

2. Prayer. 

Found this item of interest in reduction ... Want to Limit the Number of Abortions? Make Men Pay Child Support.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/want-limit-number-abortions-men-215224363.html

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1 hour ago, Wabash82 said:

No law. Voluntary human interactions. 

Good to know that we are on the same page when it comes to the myriad of state laws designed to restrict access.

 

 

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I wonder how many people weighing in on this subject have ever read - much less understood - the Court’s opinion in Roe v. Wade. Here’s what the Court said, in a nutshell:

Previous cases have established the existence of a constitutional right of privacy, and the Court ruled that allowing a woman to control her own body,  including the decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, falls within this right of privacy. Therefore, until the point where the fetus could not survive outside the womb, i.e., “viability,” the mother’s right of privacy trumps any other decision. However, once viability is established, the state’s interest in safeguarding the well-being of its citizens, including its unborn citizens, starts to become more important, and more restrictions on the mother’s decision-making process are justified.

 

I don’t expect the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, I look for them to reaffirm the basic principle. But as always, the devil will be in the details. Technological advances since Roe have pushed the threshold of “viability” back. I expect this conservative court to give states a little more leeway in determining when the state’s interest trumps the mother’s. But that’s all.

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Life Begins At Conception. That’s Not the Point: https://rewire.news/article/2012/11/04/life-begins-at-conception-thats-not-point-0/

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“Life begins at conception.”

This is perhaps the favorite phrase of anti-choicers seeking to eliminate women’s basic right to control over their own bodies. It is, for example, the premise of policies pushed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and fundamentalist evangelicals. It is the cornerstone of the so-called personhood laws defeated by large margins in ballot initiatives undertaken in both Colorado and Mississippi. And it is the basis for the “Sanctity of Life” bill co-sponsored by Congressmen Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Todd Akin (R-MO) in the House of Representatives. The end game in all of these efforts is a radical shift in women’s lives, including a total ban on abortion without exception, and bans on many forms of contraception, in vitro fertilization, and health care for women who are or who may be pregnant.

“Life begins at conception,” is repeated incessantly by politicians such as Richard Mourdock, as though this were a revelation, something not previously known, that should inform our thinking on whether women are people with the same fundamental rights as men, or if they are essentially incubators whose ability to participate in society and the economy, and, quite literally, whose ability to live is dependent on whether they are, might be, or might become pregnant.

But the phrase is highly—and purposefully—misleading because it confuses simple biological cell division both with actual pregnancy and with actual, legal personhood, which are all very different things.

...

Here is a startling revelation: I am a mother of two and a woman who earlier in her life had an abortion. I am unapologetically pro-choice. And I know life *begins* at conception (which itself is the product of a complex process), because I kinda already knew that having a child required, as a first step, the successful integration of a sperm and an egg, or fertilization.

In other words, “life” begins at conception, if by “life,” we mean the essential starting place of a potential human being. Neither my 16-year-old daughter nor my 13-year-old son would be here if they were not first conceived, if the fertilized eggs had not gone through the process of cell division, successfully implanted in my uterus and developed into healthy embryos, and subsequently gone successfully through the many other phases of development leading to their births.

...

The question is not when life begins. That just obfuscates the real issues.

The fundamental issues are:

* When does pregnancy begin?

* Does personhood begin at conception? Is a fertilized egg, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus a person with rights that trump those of the woman upon whose body it depends?

* Do women need “evidence” that if they are pregnant, odds are they are going to have a baby?

* Do women have the moral agency and fundamental rights to decide whether or not to commit themselves not only to the development of a life within their own bodies, but to a lifelong tie to another human being once a child is born?

...

In the end, when you hear the phrase “life begins at conception,” remember the implications. In debating the “personhood” of eggs, embryos, and fetuses prior to viability, we are also implicitly and explicity debating the personhood of women. Because if you have no choice and control over your body, you are less than an actual person in the eyes of the law. If the right is so worried about abortion the closer a pregnancy gets to viability, then anti-choicers would be making sure both contraception and early, safe abortion were widely available. That really is not their actual concern.

The development of a potential human life requires conception as a first step. But that is not the same as either pregnancy or personhood. You can’t reduce complex reality to a slogan, and when you try to do so, you actually minimize the personhood of women.

 

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31 minutes ago, Bobref said:

I wonder how many people weighing in on this subject have ever read - much less understood - the Court’s opinion in Roe v. Wade. Here’s what the Court said, in a nutshell:

Previous cases have established the existence of a constitutional right of privacy, and the Court ruled that allowing a woman to control her own body,  including the decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, falls within this right of privacy. Therefore, until the point where the fetus could not survive outside the womb, i.e., “viability,” the mother’s right of privacy trumps any other decision. However, once viability is established, the state’s interest in safeguarding the well-being of its citizens, including its unborn citizens, starts to become more important, and more restrictions on the mother’s decision-making process are justified.

 

I don’t expect the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. In fact, I look for them to reaffirm the basic principle. But as always, the devil will be in the details. Technological advances since Roe have pushed the threshold of “viability” back. I expect this conservative court to give states a little more leeway in determining when the state’s interest trumps the mother’s. But that’s all.

SF has always felt the heartbeat would be a fairer point at which to establish viability than the point of conception.  Point of conception is the start of the "mass of cells", heartbeat means "life".

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If a fetus is a person, it should get child support, due process and citizenship

The logic of Alabama’s abortion law should permit you to claim a fetus on your taxes and collect insurance if you miscarry.: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/if-a-fetus-is-a-person-it-should-get-child-support-due-process-and-citizenship/2019/05/17/7280ae30-78ac-11e9-b3f5-5673edf2d127_story.html?utm_term=.bea7ba0db095

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Alabama has joined the growing number of states determined to overturn Roe v. Wade by banning abortion from conception forward. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act, as the new statute is called, subjects a doctor who performs an abortion to as many as 99 years in prison. The law, enacted Wednesday, has no exceptions for rape or incest. It redefines an “unborn child, child or person” as “a human being, specifically including an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.”

We ought to take our laws seriously. Under the laws, people have all sorts of rights and protections. When a state grants full personhood to a fetus, should they not apply equally?

For example, should child support start at conception? Every state permits the custodial parent — who has primary physical custody of the child and is primarily responsible for his or her day-to-day care — to receive child support from the noncustodial parent. Since a fetus resides in its mother, and receives all nutrition and care from its mother’s body, the mother should be eligible for child support as soon as the fetus is declared a person — at conception in Alabama, at six weeks in states that declare personhood at a fetal heartbeat, at eight weeks in Missouri, which was on the way to passing its law on Friday, but at birth in states that have not banned abortion.

And what about deportation? Can a pregnant immigrant who conceived her child in the United States be expelled? Because doing so would require deporting a U.S. citizen. 

....

If personhood begins in utero, a fetus will need a name and a Social Security number to begin exercising private rights and using public resources. A Social Security number is necessary to claim a child on taxes. It is also a requirement to act on behalf of a child privately, like opening a bank account, buying savings bonds or obtaining insurance coverage. Typically, parents apply for a Social Security number when they obtain a birth certificate, but if states declare that personhood begins at some earlier arbitrary point in time, they will need to provide evidence, perhaps through a life certificate, that this new person exists and resides in their state. Once the life is established, can a mother insure a six-week fetus and collect if she miscarries? Will the tax code be adjusted in these states to allow parents to claim their unborn children as dependents at conception? If so, can a woman who suffers more than one miscarriage in a fiscal year claim all of her children?

 

Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution requires a census every 10 years to count all persons residing within the United States. If a fetus is granted personhood, it should be included in the count. The census currently asks about the age and date of birth of each household resident. Will it now include the date of conception in select states so that fetuses may be counted? There is the potential to unfairly skew census data and disproportionately apportion representatives and resources to those states.

These questions highlight the unintended and potentially absurd consequences of sweeping abortion bans. At the heart of the issue is how the 14th Amendment’s definitions of personhood and citizenship should be applied.

....

Interesting questions.

 

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1 hour ago, swordfish said:

SF has always felt the heartbeat would be a fairer point at which to establish viability than the point of conception.  Point of conception is the start of the "mass of cells", heartbeat means "life".

It’s just as arbitrary as any other stage of fetal development, IMO.

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17 hours ago, swordfish said:

SF has always felt the heartbeat would be a fairer point at which to establish viability than the point of conception.  Point of conception is the start of the "mass of cells", heartbeat means "life".

The heartbeat can start as early as 5 weeks.  Certainly not viable at that point.

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Anti-abortion clinics that try to trick women face new Google ad policy: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/anti-abortion-clinics-that-try-to-trick-women-face-new-google-ad-policy/

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Google will roll out a policy next month to crack down on deceptive advertisements dealing with abortion—a topic rife with misleading and false health information.

The policy changes come amid backlash from a report in The Guardian saying that the tech giant granted $150,000 worth of free advertisements to The Obria Group, which runs a network of clinics across the United States that are funded by Catholic organizations. Obria's advertisements have suggested that the clinics (aka Crisis Pregnancy Centers) provide abortions and other medical services. But the clinics are in fact opposed to abortion and all forms of contraception, including condoms. According to The Guardian, the misleading advertisements are an attempt to bait "abortion-minded women" so that the clinics can then deter them from terminating their pregnancies.

To ostensibly address this problem, Google will now require all advertisers in the United States, Ireland, and the United Kingdom who run abortion-related ads to submit to a pre-certification. The process is intended to identify the types of services that the advertisers provide. All of their subsequent advertising will then be automatically and clearly labeled with either "Provides abortions" or "Does not provide abortions."

The transparency step could help steer users away from the misleading or outright false information that runs rampant in communications regarding abortion, particularly from anti-abortion groups. Google's efforts to address this long-standing problem come at a critical time. Several conservative states in the US have worked to enact highly restrictive laws around the medical procedure, largely with the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade. Alabama passed a near-total ban on abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, for instance.

With the political pressure around the issue ratcheting up, so is the misinformation. Many anti-abortion groups continue to propagate falsehoods, such as the myth that induced abortions increase a woman's risk of breast cancer (they do not) and depression (nope).

Currently, the Christian-niche, anti-abortion movie Unplanned is thriving among conservative audiences while falsely suggesting that a 13-week-old fetus has the ability to feel pain and be aware of an abortion procedure. "There is no neurological capability for awareness of danger—that part of the brain is simply not there yet," an obstetrician noted to The New York Times.

In perhaps the most egregious case, a Ohio bill would allow health insurance plans to cover "[a] procedure for an ectopic pregnancy, that is intended to reimplant the fertilized ovum into the pregnant woman's uterus." An ectopic pregnancy is one in which a fertilized egg implants in the wrong place, such as a fallopian tube. The pregnancy is always nonviable, and the condition can be life-threatening for the mother. There is absolutely no medical procedure that can move the fertilized egg or save the pregnancy. One obstetrician called the bill's provision "pure science fiction."

 

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2 hours ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

The heartbeat can start as early as 5 weeks.  Certainly not viable at that point.

And it's not really the sound of an actual heart:  https://www.livescience.com/65501-fetal-heartbeat-at-6-weeks-explained.html

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But what exactly do we mean when we talk about a "fetal heartbeat" at six weeks of pregnancy? Although some people might picture a heart-shaped organ beating inside a fetus, this is not the case.

Rather, at six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect "a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby," said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children's Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future "pacemaker" of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.

But the heart is far from fully formed at this stage, and the "beat" isn't audible; if doctors put a stethoscope up to a woman's belly this early on in her pregnancy, they would not hear a heartbeat, Aftab told Live Science. (What's more, it isn't until the eighth week of pregnancy that the baby is called a fetus; prior to that, it's still considered an embryo, according to the Cleveland Clinic.)

It's been only in the last few decades that doctors have even been able to detect this flutter at six weeks, thanks to the use of more-sophisticated ultrasound technologies, Aftab said. Previously, the technology wasn't advanced enough to detect the flutter that early on in pregnancy.

Although a lot of weight seems to be put on the detection of this flutter, "by no means does it translate to viability of the heart" or viability of the pregnancy, Aftab said.

The heart still has a lot of development to undergo before it is fully formed. Indeed, the entire first trimester of pregnancy is a time of "organogenesis," or the formation of organs, Aftab said.

....

 

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20 hours ago, swordfish said:

SF has always felt the heartbeat would be a fairer point at which to establish viability than the point of conception.  Point of conception is the start of the "mass of cells", heartbeat means "life".

 

2 hours ago, BARRYOSAMA said:

The heartbeat can start as early as 5 weeks.  Certainly not viable at that point.

As noted, viability -- having a substantial probability of being able to live outside  of the womb -- does not align with the presence of a heartbeat, at least under current medical technology.

Strictly from a medical ethics standpoint, it would seem like development of brain wave activity not associated with just automatic nerve function would be a more logical point to draw the line, since the inverse of that is essentially the standard ("brain dead") we apply at the other end to decide that a human life has ceased to exist. That aligns roughly with week 24 of a pregnancy. 

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On 5/21/2019 at 3:06 PM, Muda69 said:

And there is the rub.  Is an 8-week old lump of cells inside of a woman's womb really a "human child"?  

 

Muda.   If NASA would find something with that same old lump of cells on Mars, would they consider that there is life on Mars?

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52 minutes ago, 77Jimmie said:

Muda.   If NASA would find something with that same old lump of cells on Mars, would they consider that there is life on Mars?

Life, probably.  But not human life, which is what we are discussing.  After all a mosquito has a beating heart.....................

 

41 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

Then why do the vast majority people get excited when they hear the heartbeat for the first time?

Human emotion.  Not knowledge or logic.  So should our system of laws be based on human emotion?

 

 

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1 minute ago, Muda69 said:

Life, probably.  But not human life, which is what we are discussing.  After all a mosquito has a beating heart.....................

 

A human egg and a human sperm do not create a mosquito.  That we can agree on.

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