Personally I feel this is long over-due. Hopefully we will see the eventual over-turning of Roe v Wade.
Oh, yes, I can't wait until that happens! You think the world has a population problem now? ha. Just wait and see, should your wish come true.
Just remember that since 1960, the human population has been steadily rising 1 Billion every 12 years.
Should your wish come true, and every pregnancy conceived be forced to come to full term by law, I shudder to think what will happen next.
There's a simple solution to this problem, readily available in Europe, but not in the U.S. It's just a little pill which a woman needs to take to cause her to have her period. Very simple, and nothing nearly as gruesome as "partial birth abortion". Unfortunately, it's also currently illegal in the U.S., last I heard. Don't ask me why.
Oh, well, when the unwanted children in North America become too numerous for our social systems to handle, and that seems to have already happened in the U.S., we can always turn to the method of that bastion of virtue, Brazil.
There, abortion has never been legal, and when the street gangs of homeless and abandoned children become a nuisance, beginning when the kids are about seven and can snatch and grab, the night squads of cops go out and shoot them like rats. This is so much more Christian and humane than the morning-after pill, if you're a conscienceless fool.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,
Posts: 6257 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
Ah, yes, thank heavens we have a bunch of old white men deciding what is best for the women of this country, rather than leaving such important and personal decisions to the women themselves and their doctors. Heaven forbid a woman be allowed to make her own choices. If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a baby?
Posts: 4497 | Location: Rochester, NY, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
Originally posted by Lighteningrodd: So what gives women the right to murder the unborn???
What gives five old men the right to deny women the right to "self defense"? Shouldn't murder be defined by a secular and equally divided judiciary. Or is it only presidents who have the right to murder women, children, and foreigners?
Originally posted by Lighteningrodd: So what gives women the right to murder the unborn???
What gives you the right to accuse innocent women of "murder"?
If you really believe that women who receive abortions are murdering somebody, you are not doing nearly enough to stop it. In fact you're not doing anything. Why?
Afraid?
Too much trouble?
Posts: 1945 | Location: Boise, Idaho, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
The ruling applies to a procedure rarely used - the significant point seems to be that there's no exception to its ban:
'For more than 30 years, the Supreme Court has required every major restriction on abortion to include an exception waiving the law if a woman's physical or emotional health is at stake.
As a result, many abortion bans have been largely symbolic. At least 40 states outlaw abortion of viable fetuses. But because of the health exception, doctors can still terminate such pregnancies if they certify that the woman suffers depression or anxiety...
..."The state's interest in the fetus has now been elevated above the woman's health, whereas before the women's health always trumped," said Grainger, who directs state policy for the Center for Reproductive Rights.'
I don't think words like 'murder' help. It's not a simple, black-and-white issue. We can surely all agree that, late in pregnancy, shortly before birth, there is a human being, with all the rights humans should have.
But early in the pregnancy? About half of all fertilised eggs fail to implant in the womb and are naturally 'aborted'. Clearly, there's a difference. A new life doesn't start at a simply defined point; the choice of conception (actually a process itself which takes a couple of days) as such a point is arbitrary. At one end of the process there isn't a human being, and at the other end there is. It's impossible to pinpoint the moment the change occurs - there is no such moment.
Many countries' approach to abortion legislation is to try to minimise use of abortion - 'safe, legal and rare' - and to set a limit on how late abortions can be carried out. It's a messy compromise, but that's maybe the best the law can do in this area.
I doubt that religiously motivated people, operating under the certainty that they are absolutely right, could improve things.
Originally posted by Lighteningrodd: So what gives women the right to murder the unborn???
Aborting a fetus is not, in legal terms, murder.
It is unfortunate but true that not every fertilized egg is desired, not every embryo is wanted and intentional. And while I do not particularly care for the so-called “partial birth abortion” procedure, it is not my business what another woman feels is the best course of action.
To put the so-called rights of a fetus before the rights of the woman whose womb it inhabits is insulting, dangerous and invasive.
Posts: 4497 | Location: Rochester, NY, USA | Registered: 06-03-02
So what gives women the right to murder the unborn
What gives men the right to demand the abortion, becasue they don't want to support another child? And if the woman refuses, the man will leave her, and the children he has already fathered?
My own father did that. Twice. My mother begged to have the two little male babies (as she learned afterward) which would have been born.
I agree with my father's decision. It was the middle of the depression and he was in and out of work.
But what I don't agree with the the false and cruel assumption of the likes of Lighteningrodd seeing it, as he so obviously does, as a male power issue. Men will decide when their women may abort. And when they want them to abort they will send them to a backstreet abortionist, and pay for the abortion.
It is not legal abortion they hate and detest, but that women should have the legal right to decide.
What gives the men of Brazil the right to shoot down little kids who should be in elementary school ? Is it your disgusting god?
No, what is deified here is a brutal tribal concept. There is no god to blame it on. You invent the brutal god, then you pin all your innermost desires on the god, then you preach the god.
"Ahhh, of course we wish things could be more humnane, but it's god's will!"
That's a perverse concept. Real courage, instead of the macho strutting masculinity and posturing, would be to take responsibility not only for your own offspring, but of the world's unwanted children. They should never have been born. If they are born, they should be well looked after: fed, educated, loved. But hypocrites like you care nothing about the children. It's just male control you care about.
Stop assuming a false virtue as the defender of the innocent. They were conceived by men and women. If they are aborted it is because they are unwanted.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,
Posts: 6257 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
Originally posted by coldfuse: The Supreme Court's Opinion should probably be read before we get into highly charged, emotional arguments.
Having read all 73 pages of the Court's opinion, I conclude that Justice Ginsburg's dissenting opinion is indisputable. There will be cases in which a doctor is faced with the choice: perform the only available known procedure to try to save the woman's life or go to prison. A high price to pay because of someone else's religious beliefs and a price paid exclusively by women and doctors!
To address a point made by Mr. Frank, that is performing an abortion due to medical circumstances to save the life of a woman. Most pro-lifers will agree this should be available if that's what it takes to save a woman's life.
Posts: 2277 | Location: Martinsville, IL | Registered: 06-03-02
To address a point made by Mr. Frank, that is performing an abortion due to medical circumstances to save the life of a woman. Most pro-lifers will agree this should be available if that's what it takes to save a woman's life.
But the court ruling that you said is "long overdue" is notable largely because it removes the option of using this procedure due to medical circumstances to save the life of a woman. This particular procedure (which does sound gruesome) is rarely used, but some campaigners apparently see it as a start - the thin end of the wedge:
'I’m ecstatic,” said Leslee Unruh, an antiabortion activist in South Dakota. “It’s like someone gave me $1 million and told me, ‘Leslee, go shopping.’ That’s how I feel.”
Yes, in actual fact the procedure is only used when the situation is critical. The odds have to be really stacked against mother and baby or fetus, depending on age.
In the 'old days' before modern surgical methods, the baby would surely die from smothering because it could not pass through the birth canal. The reason might be a very, very large baby (15 lb. or over) or the mother's having a constricted pelvis due to injury, disease such as tuberculosis, or some congenital problem.
If the baby has not exited the uterus, the mother can hemorrhage as the placenta detaches even if the baby has not been expelled.
A friend of mine had a pelvic deformity due to poliomyelitis. But there are many causes.
Then the mother would die from septicemia unless the physician cut the blocked dead baby from the canal, because the dead body would quickly begin to decay. And midwife-attended births were even more tricky, because the midwife lacked the skill and training needed to remove the dead baby without cutting the mother and causing septicemia.
Bu nowadays this can all be often avoided if the mother is seen before the birth process is well under way, and a cesarean is done, often saving both mother and child.
It has always been the Roman Catholic position that the child must not be aborted to save the mother's life, even if it looks as if both will die if no abortion is done. The Roman Catholic position has also been that the mother's life may not be sacrificed to save the child. (This problem has come up in pre-cesarean times when the child was very valuable, say a royal heir was hoped for, and the mother just couldn't seem to produce the child.)
But Protestants didn't used to take this position. Until now. When they see it as the thin edge of the wedge needed to oust Rowe-Wade.
Politics makes strange bedfellows.
Anyhow, the situation does not often arise. From now on, they'll just have to wait till there's no heartbeat from the baby before surgical extraction.
Unless the lunatic fringe demands that the dead baby be put on life support, in situ, and require a court order in order for the support to be withdrawn and the baby extracted. I wouldn't put it past them.
Posts: 6257 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
babthrower, I just wanted to say that I agree with your position. I am also "pro-choice", as I have already indicated. But, don't you agree that it should be the choice of both parents? As you pointed out, it takes both a man and a woman to create a child, so why should only the woman get to decide what happens to that child? It seems to me that that is just as wrong as saying that only the man should, or that the Government should.
I believe that both parents should equally decide on what happens to their offspring. No matter what happens, both parents rights should be observed and respected. Personally, I don't believe in Child Support. I think the whole organization is just a big racket. This is an informed opinion, from one who speaks from the unfortunate experience of having dealt with these man-hating feminists. And, one who knows many people who will tell you the same. Trust me when I tell you that they are far from being equal or just.
I say that if the child is unwanted, and abortion is not something both parents can agree on, then give it to one of the millions of stable but sterile families waiting for years on waiting lists just for the chance to raise a child. To them, such a child would be a blessing, not a burden. But, noone should be forced into anything. That includes paying for a child unwanted. You want to be a single parent? Fine, that's also a choice. But, then be financially responsible for it.
'...As far as we know, Mr. Kennedy and his four colleagues responsible for this atrocious result are not doctors. Yet these five male justices felt free to override the weight of medical evidence presented during the several trials that preceded the Supreme Court showdown. Instead, they ratified the politically based and dangerously dubious Congressional claim that criminalizing the intact dilation and extraction method of abortion in the second trimester of pregnancy - the so-called partial-birth method - would never pose a significant health risk to a woman. In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found the procedure to be medically necessary in certain cases.
Justice Kennedy actually reasoned that banning the procedure was good for women in that it would protect them from a procedure they might not fully understand in advance and would probably come to regret. This way of thinking, that women are flighty creatures who must be protected by men, reflects notions of a woman's place in the family and under the Constitution that have long been discredited, said a powerful dissenting opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer...
...For anti-abortion activists, this case has never been about just one controversial procedure. They have correctly seen it as a wedge that could ultimately be used to undermine and perhaps eliminate abortion rights eventually...'NYT
Valor D says: "... don't you agree that it should be the choice of both parents?"
Yes. If both parents agree to be 100% responsible for every single step of the child's support -- physically, financially, educationally and emotionally -- and agree to submit disputes to a lay therapist.
Yes I mean that mother must be prepared for 100% financial, care-giving, emotional, and all other parental responsibilities. And father must be prepared for 100% financial, care-giving, emotional, and all other parental responsibilities.
I say that so that if either party wishes to use the child as a weapon for controlling or manipulating the other parent (and at least formerly a sexual partner) then there will be little advantage. And I say that to show how vanishingly slight is the chance that both parents will agree. Most people are too shallow, vindictive, silly and possessive to share child responsibilities and control while putting the child's interests first if there is even a trace of sexual or economic tension left in their relationship. (People are pigs.)
To this devil's brew is the admixture of stepmothers and stepfathers and step-siblings.
So. Since the carrying of the fetus to term is biologically and unarguably and irrevocably the responsibility of the woman, and since that biological task cannot possibly be shared by the man, the necessary balance is not possible.
That is why I believe that the woman has a special right to refuse to carry to term a fetus she does not want to rear. The male cannot make the corresponding contribution.
However if the male parent can find a surrogate mother within the medical timeframe which will allow for viable transfer of the fertilized egg, and if there is a more-than-likely chance of it surviving to birth, then I think the female parent should be required to co-operate. But I think the male parent should bear sole financial responsibility for the cost of the procedure, to counterbalance the physical discomfort and health risk that the female parent must undergo during the procedures.
Pay the piper.
Posts: 6257 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
