The Way it Was (Pre-Roe v Wade)

[Delia]

The Way It Was | Mother Jones

This is a very hard article to read, and will be for both sides of the discussion. I'm pro-choice, though that is not a choice I would ever make for myself. The first page is quite graphic, giving specifics of abortion. The rest is graphic as to what happens when it's not a legal option.

It's a long article, but I believe it to be worth the time it takes to read it.

I really wouldn't want to see Roe v Wade repealed.

 

[Politico]

Then do something about it.

 

[Delia]

Will you be addressing the article.

 

[Politico]

I did. If you wanted more than that you shouldn't have posted this in the safe zone.

 

[Delia]

No. You didn't. You addressed me, not the contents of the article.

 

[Newby]

The Way It Was | Mother Jones

This is a very hard article to read, and will be for both sides of the discussion. I'm pro-choice, though that is not a choice I would ever make for myself. The first page is quite graphic, giving specifics of abortion. The rest is graphic as to what happens when it's not a legal option.

It's a long article, but I believe it to be worth the time it takes to read it.

I really wouldn't want to see Roe v Wade repealed.

No offense, Delia, but I found the article just another endless excuse for why women should be allowed to murder their unborn children. Especially disgusting is that she's trying to rationalize partial birth abortions, we all know that if they weren't illegal, it wouldn't be '12 year olds raped by their uncle' that would be getting them. Just like it isn't '12 year olds raped by their uncles' that are responsible for the millions of babies killed every year in this country, and the millions of dollars in literal blood money the abortion industry makes off of these 'poor women who are just victims'. Just so tired of hearing it.

 

[Underhill]

Abortion sucks. And the article underlines this.

It's a lousy procedure that nobody wants to endure and who's morality is questionable. The alternative, of making it illegal is just as fucked up for very similar reasons.

There is no easy answer. And in the absence of easy answers I think Roe v. Wade had the right idea.

As for late term abortions, I think making them generally illegal is the right thing to do.

Saying that, I think the author makes an excellent point about our responsibilities to women. We should be educating young people, making birth control available and giving out the day after pill to anyone who wants it.

What I really don't understand are those who are against abortion yet at the same time are against these measures which could actually reduce them. And to make matters worse, these are all too often the same people who think we should gut social services and any form of government healthcare.

One third of high school teens are having sex. And this hasn't changed in decades even with abstinence programs. So it's time people face the facts and move beyond the fairy tail of abstinence as a working alternative to real education and action.

 

[Newby]

Abortion sucks. And the article underlines this.

It's a lousy procedure that nobody wants to endure and who's morality is questionable. The alternative, of making it illegal is just as fucked up for very similar reasons.

There is no easy answer. And in the absence of easy answers I think Roe v. Wade had the right idea.

As for late term abortions, I think making them generally illegal is the right thing to do.

Saying that, I think the author makes an excellent point about our responsibilities to women. We should be educating young people, making birth control available and giving out the day after pill to anyone who wants it.

What I really don't understand are those who are against abortion yet at the same time are against these measures which could actually reduce them. And to make matters worse, these are all too often the same people who think we should gut social services and any form of government healthcare.

One third of high school teens are having sex. And this hasn't changed in decades even with abstinence programs. So it's time people face the facts and move beyond the fairy tail of abstinence as a working alternative to real education and action.

We are already doing that and have been doing it for years, yet abortions go up every year. Plain and simple, it's used for birth control, which is unacceptable. When there are no consequences to deter behavior, the behavior will continue, not only continue but expand and flourish. The further this country moves to the left, the more consequences are taken away. It's not a good thing, and we will pay for it down the road.

 

[MHunterB]

Newby: The PROPER INDICATION for what you are calling 'a partial birth abortion' does exist: the 'dilation and intact extraction' is the method least harmful to a woman whose life and future childbearing is threatened by a fetus having extreme hydrocephalus - which is always and absolutely fatal to that baby.t

The outlawing of a medical procedure which is the best way to minimize the tragedy of mother and baby dying in childbirth is an outrage: no evidence was ever presented to even suggest that diagnoses of 'extreme hydrocephalus' were being faked or that this procedure was being over-used or mis-used.

As a result of that "law", sometime or other a woman who might otherwise have been able to give birth to a child after suffering the ordeal of miscarriage and surgery and death of a baby, is going to be denied that joy. Because the 'alternative' methods are fraught with peril for her fecundity, if not her very life - and some idiots who don't comprehend the certainty of 'death due to no brain matter in the skull' have made her best option illegal.

Before you so blithely condemn something, it's best to learn what that something (ie, 'partial birth abortion') actually entails.

MANY medications - including such 'simple' ones as aspirin and penicillin - can injure or even kill a person. We have safeguards in place already to prevent such mistakes in diagnosis and treatment.

Outlawing 'dilation and intact extraction' as a procedure has saved NOBODY's life. Enforcing the already-extant laws against 'unnecesary' surgeries and false diagnoses and such would have been enough. The ban was simply grandstanding, a cynical ploy on the part of extremist legislators pandering to the extremists of their political base.

I say this as a mother whose first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. IF the goal is to ensure that every viable fertilized egg becomes a neonate, then that ban actually caused the very harm it claimed to prevent - by forcing more women to endure a hysterectomy along with the miscarriage.

I would be happier with a requirement that every pregnant woman get free ultrasounds regularly: that is how the extreme hydrocephalus could be diagnosed earlier than the end of the second trimester when some less drastic procedure might be used. It would also alert medical staff to expect certain problems, spina bifida, etc. which can be diagnosed fairly reliably with ultrasound.

 

[MHunterB]

I have no problem with abstinence: it worked for me.

IMHO, at birth a DNA sample should be taken from male infants and the results recorded in a nationwide bank. Then whenever a girl or woman is pregnant, we should be able to ID the 'sperm donor' and take appropriate action .....

 

[Newby]

Newby: The PROPER INDICATION for what you are calling 'a partial birth abortion' does exist: the 'dilation and intact extraction' is the method least harmful to a woman whose life and future childbearing is threatened by a fetus having extreme hydrocephalus - which is always and absolutely fatal to that baby.t

The outlawing of a medical procedure which is the best way to minimize the tragedy of mother and baby dying in childbirth is an outrage: no evidence was ever presented to even suggest that diagnoses of 'extreme hydrocephalus' were being faked or that this procedure was being over-used or mis-used.

As a result of that "law", sometime or other a woman who might otherwise have been able to give birth to a child after suffering the ordeal of miscarriage and surgery and death of a baby, is going to be denied that joy. Because the 'alternative' methods are fraught with peril for her fecundity, if not her very life - and some idiots who don't comprehend the certainty of 'death due to no brain matter in the skull' have made her best option illegal.

Before you so blithely condemn something, it's best to learn what that something (ie, 'partial birth abortion') actually entails.

MANY medications - including such 'simple' ones as aspirin and penicillin - can injure or even kill a person. We have safeguards in place already to prevent such mistakes in diagnosis and treatment.

Outlawing 'dilation and intact extraction' as a procedure has saved NOBODY's life. Enforcing the already-extant laws against 'unnecesary' surgeries and false diagnoses and such would have been enough. The ban was simply grandstanding, a cynical ploy on the part of extremist legislators pandering to the extremists of their political base.

I say this as a mother whose first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. IF the goal is to ensure that every viable fertilized egg becomes a neonate, then that ban actually caused the very harm it claimed to prevent - by forcing more women to endure a hysterectomy along with the miscarriage.

I would be happier with a requirement that every pregnant woman get free ultrasounds regularly: that is how the extreme hydrocephalus could be diagnosed earlier than the end of the second trimester when some less drastic procedure might be used. It would also alert medical staff to expect certain problems, spina bifida, etc. which can be diagnosed fairly reliably with ultrasound.

Do we have one instance in the U.S. of a woman who has died because of not being able to have this 'procedure'? The procedure is allowed if the baby died, i.e. a miscarriage.

Every pregnant woman that I've known, including myself, has had an ultra sound mid way thru the first trimester.

 

[Delia]

Abortion sucks. And the article underlines this.

It's a lousy procedure that nobody wants to endure and who's morality is questionable. The alternative, of making it illegal is just as fucked up for very similar reasons.

There is no easy answer. And in the absence of easy answers I think Roe v. Wade had the right idea.

As for late term abortions, I think making them generally illegal is the right thing to do.

Saying that, I think the author makes an excellent point about our responsibilities to women. We should be educating young people, making birth control available and giving out the day after pill to anyone who wants it.

What I really don't understand are those who are against abortion yet at the same time are against these measures which could actually reduce them. And to make matters worse, these are all too often the same people who think we should gut social services and any form of government healthcare.

One third of high school teens are having sex. And this hasn't changed in decades even with abstinence programs. So it's time people face the facts and move beyond the fairy tail of abstinence as a working alternative to real education and action.

We are already doing that and have been doing it for years, yet abortions go up every year. Plain and simple, it's used for birth control, which is unacceptable. When there are no consequences to deter behavior, the behavior will continue, not only continue but expand and flourish. The further this country moves to the left, the more consequences are taken away. It's not a good thing, and we will pay for it down the road.

Can I see your citation proving that they are going up?

 

[Delia]

I have no problem with abstinence: it worked for me.

IMHO, at birth a DNA sample should be taken from male infants and the results recorded in a nationwide bank. Then whenever a girl or woman is pregnant, we should be able to ID the 'sperm donor' and take appropriate action .....

That's a great idea. Of course, Maury would be out of a job.

 

[Newby]

Abortion sucks. And the article underlines this.

It's a lousy procedure that nobody wants to endure and who's morality is questionable. The alternative, of making it illegal is just as fucked up for very similar reasons.

There is no easy answer. And in the absence of easy answers I think Roe v. Wade had the right idea.

As for late term abortions, I think making them generally illegal is the right thing to do.

Saying that, I think the author makes an excellent point about our responsibilities to women. We should be educating young people, making birth control available and giving out the day after pill to anyone who wants it.

What I really don't understand are those who are against abortion yet at the same time are against these measures which could actually reduce them. And to make matters worse, these are all too often the same people who think we should gut social services and any form of government healthcare.

One third of high school teens are having sex. And this hasn't changed in decades even with abstinence programs. So it's time people face the facts and move beyond the fairy tail of abstinence as a working alternative to real education and action.

We are already doing that and have been doing it for years, yet abortions go up every year. Plain and simple, it's used for birth control, which is unacceptable. When there are no consequences to deter behavior, the behavior will continue, not only continue but expand and flourish. The further this country moves to the left, the more consequences are taken away. It's not a good thing, and we will pay for it down the road.

Can I see your citation proving that they are going up?

Approximately 1.2 million abortions a year in the U.S. Why isn't education and easy access to birth control making that number significantly drop every year? No one would ever personally have an abortion, it's only needed for those women who are victims of crimes, etc... yet we're at 1.2 million a year.

 

[Delia]

We are already doing that and have been doing it for years, yet abortions go up every year. Plain and simple, it's used for birth control, which is unacceptable. When there are no consequences to deter behavior, the behavior will continue, not only continue but expand and flourish. The further this country moves to the left, the more consequences are taken away. It's not a good thing, and we will pay for it down the road.

Can I see your citation proving that they are going up?

Approximately 1.2 million abortions a year in the U.S. Why isn't education and easy access to birth control making that number significantly drop every year? No one would ever personally have an abortion, it's only needed for those women who are victims of crimes, etc... yet we're at 1.2 million a year.

No. Citation. I want to see documentation to back up what you're saying.

For instance:

Abortion rates plummet with free birth control | e! Science News

Providing birth control to women at no cost substantially reduced unplanned pregnancies and cut abortion rates by 62 percent to 78 percent over the national rate, a new study shows. The research, by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears online Oct. 4 in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Among a range of birth control methods offered in the study, most women chose long-acting methods like intrauterine devices (IUDs) or implants, which have lower failure rates than commonly used birth control pills. In the United States, IUDs and implants have high up-front costs that sometimes aren't covered by health insurance, making these methods unaffordable for many women.


"The impact of providing no-cost birth control was far greater than we expected in terms of unintended pregnancies," says lead author Jeff Peipert, MD, PhD, the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "We think improving access to birth control, particularly IUDs and implants, coupled with education on the most effective methods has the potential to significantly decrease the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in this country."

 

[Newby]

Can I see your citation proving that they are going up?

Approximately 1.2 million abortions a year in the U.S. Why isn't education and easy access to birth control making that number significantly drop every year? No one would ever personally have an abortion, it's only needed for those women who are victims of crimes, etc... yet we're at 1.2 million a year.

No. Citation. I want to see documentation to back up what you're saying.

For instance:

Abortion rates plummet with free birth control | e! Science News

Providing birth control to women at no cost substantially reduced unplanned pregnancies and cut abortion rates by 62 percent to 78 percent over the national rate, a new study shows. The research, by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears online Oct. 4 in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Among a range of birth control methods offered in the study, most women chose long-acting methods like intrauterine devices (IUDs) or implants, which have lower failure rates than commonly used birth control pills. In the United States, IUDs and implants have high up-front costs that sometimes aren't covered by health insurance, making these methods unaffordable for many women.


"The impact of providing no-cost birth control was far greater than we expected in terms of unintended pregnancies," says lead author Jeff Peipert, MD, PhD, the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "We think improving access to birth control, particularly IUDs and implants, coupled with education on the most effective methods has the potential to significantly decrease the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in this country."

Yeah, wouldn't that be nice if the government forced abortion clinics to keep accurate records and report how many they do each an every year. Yet they don't, and the reason they don't is just so people like you can refute the numbers put up. So is your stance that they're going down? There aren't 1.2 million abortions per year. Put up your statistics to show what the actual number is then.

Participation is completely voluntary, and they have no data past 2008, isn't that convenient?

Abortion Surveillance --- United States, 2008

Description of System: Each year, CDC requests abortion data from the central health agencies of 52 reporting areas (the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and New York City). This information is provided voluntarily. For 2008, data were received from 49 reporting areas. For the purpose of trend analysis, data were evaluated from the 45 areas that reported data every year during 1999--2008. Abortion rates (number of abortions per 1,000 women) and ratios (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) were calculated using census and natality data, respectively.

Results: A total of 825,564 abortions were reported to CDC for 2008. Of these, 808,528 abortions (97.9% of the total) were from the 45 reporting areas that provided data every year during 1999--2008. Among these same 45 reporting areas, the abortion rate for 2008 was 16.0 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years, and the abortion ratio was 234 abortions per 1,000 live births. Compared with 2007, the total number and rate of reported abortions for these 45 reporting areas essentially were unchanged, although the abortion ratio was 1% higher. Reported abortion numbers, rates, and ratios remained 3%, 4%, and 10% lower, respectively, in 2008 than they had been in 1999.

http://www.mccl.org/us-abortion-stats.html

Doesn't look like they've changed, other than they have significantly gone up since 1973, and then went down slightly, and haven't changed much within the last 10 years or so.

 

[MHunterB]

The number of abortions could be going up, but it's not a simple single number: it's *in proportion to* the size of the population of child-bearing age. It's a frequency.

 

[Cassandro]

This is why abortion was, and still should be, a matter for States to decide. Instead of allowing voters to decide this issue, just like other laws concerning marriage, rape,incest, manslaughter, etc. Instead, seven members of the SCOTUS decided to take a private poll as to their personal opinions about abortion and impose them on the rest of the country. Even the most rabid abortion supporters know the Roe v. Wade decision was a joke when it came to legal reasoning.

The fact of the matter is that 70% of the public believes that there should be some restrictions on abortions. The problem is that they encompass a variety of views as to specific restrictions (e.g., first trimester), whereas the remaining 30% are unified in their opposition to any restrictions whatsoever. Unfortunately, this minority is politically and journalistically influential and has been able to control the terms of this debate.

 

[Underhill]

Abortion sucks. And the article underlines this.

It's a lousy procedure that nobody wants to endure and who's morality is questionable. The alternative, of making it illegal is just as fucked up for very similar reasons.

There is no easy answer. And in the absence of easy answers I think Roe v. Wade had the right idea.

As for late term abortions, I think making them generally illegal is the right thing to do.

Saying that, I think the author makes an excellent point about our responsibilities to women. We should be educating young people, making birth control available and giving out the day after pill to anyone who wants it.

What I really don't understand are those who are against abortion yet at the same time are against these measures which could actually reduce them. And to make matters worse, these are all too often the same people who think we should gut social services and any form of government healthcare.

One third of high school teens are having sex. And this hasn't changed in decades even with abstinence programs. So it's time people face the facts and move beyond the fairy tail of abstinence as a working alternative to real education and action.

We are already doing that and have been doing it for years, yet abortions go up every year. Plain and simple, it's used for birth control, which is unacceptable. When there are no consequences to deter behavior, the behavior will continue, not only continue but expand and flourish. The further this country moves to the left, the more consequences are taken away. It's not a good thing, and we will pay for it down the road.

Sorry but no. Consequences don't seem to matter a whole lot as the behavior has always existed. Not to mention the largest reason we don't consider teens adults is a lack of judgement. As a father of three teens I can tell you it pisses me off almost daily, but it's a fact.

So the evidence, the physiology and the psychology says consequences simply won't matter to most youth.

As for education, yes we have been working on that since the 80's. But birth control and the day after pill are not universally available.

And anyone who tells you that the day after pill is abortion needs to educate themselves. It simply isn't the same thing.

I honestly think anyone who truly believes abortion is murder should be advocating for giving the day after pill out like candy. Oh I know, they use the same argument you do. But the idea holds no water. On the one hand, you believe abortion is murder. On the other you are not willing to stop the murder because someone may have premarital sex.

Think about that. If I have the choice between a murder, and a teen, or even a bunch of teens having premarital sex, sex wins every time. Hands down.

 

[Politico]

IMHO, at birth a DNA sample should be taken from male infants and the results recorded in a nationwide bank.

Good thing you're in the clean zone.