The Glade 4.0

If you're going to dismiss some of these as 'edge cases' can we also dismiss abortions after 24 weeks as an area of discussion? Since they make up less than 1% of abortions in the US? That sounds pretty 'edge case' to me.

You absolutely disgust me.

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"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice R. Longworth

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash Williams

Nope. The aforementioned fringe case was dismissed because the baby was born brain-dead. Why are you wanting to allow killing viable babies simply because the number of them will be low? What number of viable babies would actually make you concerned about the frequency of taking life? Why does your concern not grow with increasing gestational age when medicine almost certainly can provide the pre-term baby a good shot at life?

Are you going for gotcha's here or are you going to make a case for when a fetus becomes alive? Your argument earlier in this thread was life was based on sentience. Your further clarifications on that position effectively declare half the babies in my NICU right now as not alive. What limiting principle are you guided by that would prevent unnecessarily taking life?

If you care, the neonatologist I work with says the prestigious neonatology institutions/fellowships are currently saving babies as young as 22 weeks gestational age. The statistic I see is that >21 week abortions account for 1.4% in the U.S. I believe that number would be much higher if it were legal everywhere to the extent these new laws propose.

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The Dude abides.

I actually thought that there was a chance when this question didn't get a reply... that perhaps it made him think...that even the slimmest possibility of being wrong about his position would force him to err on the side of caution. Oh well, you can lead a horse to water...

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In time, this too shall pass.

I suspect the words "imminent" and "requires" are doing a lot of work there. I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that induced labor involves more risk to the mother than a D&E procedure (which obviously involves killing the baby). If nothing else, I would expect that to be the case when there are other complicating factors to the pregnancy (e.g., mother has a heart condition, symptoms of pre-eclampsia, etc.). I'm not saying that necessarily justifies allowing D&E to be used instead of induced labor in all or perhaps even most ordinary circumstances, but I think it's important to grapple with the actual trade-offs involved when we're deciding what should and should not be permitted.

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In time, this too shall pass.

tl;dr: C-section still appears to be a safer practice than abortion but the data are not easy enough for me to find (or may not exist) to make a good comparison.

From just about everything I've studied, something posing imminent danger goes straight to C-section (C/S) because the OB does not want to risk any further deterioration. So major things would be like for placental abruption (placenta tore from uterine wall and actively hemorrhaging), uterine rupture (baby's now in abdominal cavity), or like an uncaught placenta/vasa previa (placenta or blood vessels laying over the uterine exit-hole and tore or may tear, so you can't deliver through it). These would be situations where mom can go into shock or die within a matter of minutes.

Even in preeclampsia that's going downhill, the evidence does not absolutely contraindicate normal birth though it seems C/S is probably preferred. If I understand you right, you're arguing that perhaps it's safer to perform an abortion than either induction or C/S. I'm having a hard time finding data to support that. On the CDC website, I found this quote on the page with all their abortion-related data tables:

Perhaps I'm completely missing it, but I could not find a similar table for C/S's on the CDC's website. UpToDate (a physician resource) estimates it as 0.2 to 0.6/100k cases:
PubMed reference this quote is based on.

The bolded part above may also apply to abortions. I don't have apples-to-apples data to make a valid comparison, let alone stratify it by emergent cases. CDC even states for their abortion data: "excludes 16 areas (California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York State, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) that did not report, did not report by method type or gestational age, did not meet reporting standards, or did not have medical abortion as a specific category on their reporting form."

All this is to say what I've said earlier. Abortions due to medical danger are not the vast majority of cases taking place. We are dealing with life, or from the other side's perspective, that which becomes life at some point. If the left is going to say the baby is not alive yet, they should be declaring when it is alive, if for no other reason than to assuage their own consciences they're not legislating murder in the cases of abortion for convenience's sake.

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The Dude abides.

I also find late term abortion to be reprehensible but defining life as beginning at conception comes with a whole host of problems. You do that and you're actually getting into the realm of outlawing birth control. In the first trimester I think the distinctions are arbitrary enough that abortion should be allowed, but not after. This is how it actually works in most countries that allow abortion, the US is significantly to the left of almost everyone else in the world on this issue and I'm not sure why. No one else allows third trimester abortions unless it's going to kill the mother to not have one.

There’s already a host of problems in this world, X. I don’t see where recognizing the rights of humans to not be slaughtered adds to them in any meaningful way.

I’d be OK with making birth control freely available and implantable so abortion for convenience would be legally forbidden, but that’s not what the left wants. Best I can tell, they want themselves to be the moral authority and subvert the ideals of folks that feel there’s a divine authority.

Best indicator of that is the perversion of the word "privilege". The left wants what was traditionally known as a "blessing" to be considered a privilege, but a privilege by definition is granted by a human authority. I was blessed ( if you want to call it that) to be born in the US instead of Somalia, but that's not a privilege. I'm not obligated by being the recipient of either a blessing or a privilege, but the left wants me to be. The obligation I have to my fellow man is the same regardless of the color of my skin or any other factor social justice warriors would have me think.

There is one privilege I do enjoy that many these days do not. The year I was born, all babies had a right to live starting at conception. I'd like everyone to have that privilege.

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In time, this too shall pass.

For those who may be squeamish


As for 'mental health' -- is it better to ask a woman/family to deliver a non-viable fetus, that will never survive the first year, ask them to rack up massive medical bills that will ultimately do nothing, and then have them lose that baby after having whatever limited bonding with it. (The fact of the matter is that mammals bond with things that are small and cute, particularly when the right mix of hormones (such as those around birth) are in the system. Kind of a non-sequitur, but for example, a cat will bond with what would otherwise be a prey animal if it happens to run across it right after giving birth) ) -- Which is more destructive? To terminate in utero? Or to ask them to destroy their financial situation, then go through the loss of a live birth.

Taskiss likes to spin this as some evil on pro-choice leaning individuals; he seems unable to fathom that anyone could come to another conclusion than the one he has reached, based on the available facts.


I've attempted to explain this before, to little effect, but I'll give it one more chance:

We'll go step by step through the logical argument (No jumping ahead to the conclusion, because that means you've already settled on the conclusion based on feeling rather than logic) Feel free to debate any individual point, if you feel like I gloss over any logical step, I fully expect you to call me out.

Premise 1: Murder is morally wrong in all circumstances.
Premise 2: The best solution is generally the one that causes the smallest harm to the smallest number of people.
Premise 3: Not every voluntary, deliberate termination of a human life constitutes murder; exemptions exist for self-defense, protection of others.

Slightly more controversial
Premise 4: Not every voluntary, deliberate termination of a human life constitutes murder; exemptions exist for action on behalf of the state in the form of war or in the defense of the state.
Premise 5: Not every voluntary, deliberate termination of a human life constitutes murder; in the defense of property, self-determination, or liberty it is permissible.

I'm assuming there is general consensus on the above. I don't think we have any Buddhists or pacifists among us.

Not every post will include this many points, but I'm assuming we are not going to quibble over the above statements.

So now we come to my first point that I think we might have a discussion around:
Why is murder wrong? I agree that it is. The question is why? What is the quality of that action that makes it wrong? I've already answered that question at the start of this thread, but I challenge you to answer it. Don't give me some BS Answer like "because God says so" --Given the above premises that (I assume) we agree upon, how does that interact with the reason you listed?

The issue is even hormonal birth control technically causes an abortion a not insignificant percentage of the time. Hormonal birth control works by overlapping probabilities, it usually prevents ovulation but if it fails to do so it also usually prevents implantation, and the high effectiveness comes from the fact that it's very, very unlikely for both of those things to not work at the same time. But if life is defined to begin at conception, a failure rate of a few percent on preventing ovulation (and thus allowing for conception of an embyro that's almost certain to die) would simply not be acceptable. No drug that has a significant chance of killing someone would ever be approved unless it's going to be used as a treatment for something even more likely to kill you. If, as you say, an embryo has a right to life, these drugs can not be used. This isn't even getting into the birth control methods that don't prevent ovulation at all, like the copper IUD, which probably causes dozens of "abortions" every year in the average woman using it.

"Life begins at conception" as a hard rule rules out most forms of birth control other than the barrier methods, (condoms, etc.) and that's not really an acceptable state of affairs.

Well, for starters, murder is the illegal premeditated taking of a life. Morality is subjective, especially in society at large, and it's only legally applicable when applied preemptively. While laws are made because of perceived morality issues, it's not a factor in a judicial reckoning outside of perhaps being a mitigating factor when deciding sentencing, so points 1, 3, 4 and 5 are interesting but haven't been part of the conversation about abortion since it was legalized in 1973. Exemptions for murder don't exist, very specific legal criteria for self defense and/or combat death situations do. Ask William Calley. Ask the guy that shoots his attacker in the back as he's running away. Ask the guy that sets a booby-trap.

Your #2 is ill conceived. The best solution is always "win-win with no harm done” and if any “harm” is the taking of a life or refusal to recognize rights, it's only done after all due process considerations. Without due process, your premise would pretty much legitimize any situation that denies individual rights in favor of social rights - if the "smallest harm to the smallest number of people” criteria is taken to its logical conclusion, "the end can justify the means". If you look at the things most folks identify as historically heinous acts, your #2 legitimizes them. Convictions needing proof establishing guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt” would be unnecessary, enforcing an optimal social outcome would be the primary criteria - the corollary to "smallest harm to smallest number" is "greatest good to greatest number". Like I wrote earlier, I'd have been accused of a slippery slope argument had I pointed out the logical conclusion to the liberal position on the abortion debate, so given current events, identifying the logical conclusion of your assertion should be considered as a valid observation.

Which is exactly my point... it's all about not having the equal application of due process for everyone but picking and choosing based on an arbitrary "person" status. The indicators presently used for determining life isn't consistently applied. When you die, it's because you have no heart beat, respiration, or brain activity. That happens, go ahead, pull the plug. Outside those parameters, it's murder, unless you're a baby and the person doing the killing is authorized... and at that point is where it all goes sideways, because in all other cases the rights of all humans are recognized and nothing can legally justify the premeditated killing of an innocent human. Murder a pregnant woman, you've got state "Fetal Protection" and the federal Unborn Victim of Violence Act, laws that identify that both the lives of the pregnant woman and the fetus should be explicitly protected.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Like I said, my belief is that life begins at conception. Legally, factually, beliefs are irrelevant. A belief is an acceptance of something without available proof, and no laws should be made that require acceptance without proof in determining an outcome.

I don't insist my beliefs have greater weight than yours, I insist that the burden of proof should be on the accuser. There's no doubt that the legal right to life applies to the overwhelming majority of a human lifespan, abortion proponents believe that there is some point in that life where human rights don't apply. They should have to prove it with the same level of certainty that any court would need to deny the right to life.

A line needs to be drawn identifying a baby as a person, and I'm willing to accept a social compromise that recognizes where that line is, as long as abortion for convenience be forbidden past that line. The how's and why's of where that line should be drawn must be made using something beyond someone's beliefs as the deciding factor.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I personally feel:

I disagree with abortion. I also disagree with telling other people what they can do with their bodies: I also disagree with the idea of making them illegal and then having back alley abortions where women are hurt/killed.

As such, I would not support anyone aborting a child I produced, but what I support could well be irrelevant to another person.

So abort, don't abort: I do not care... unless it is mine, in which case we need to talk about things first. I refuse to look down on anyone who has gotten one for any reason. I do not know their story, it is not my place to judge them.

Who are we to tell a woman who is in an abusive relationship and knows that her husband will beat her/the baby incessantly and maybe even kill the baby, or sexually abuse it; that she cannot do what she must?

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

We are all human, we are all created equal. Seems to me, speaking up for those that can't do it for themselves isn't straying from my lane.

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In time, this too shall pass.

You don't list a reason for the italicized part above. If you feel this way because you see the baby as alive, then I don't understand how you can reconcile that with the bolded part. Nobody on this board, nor conservatives at large, are looking to tell people what they can do with their bodies in any other capacity. Conservatives see this fundamentally as protecting life.

So who am I to tell a woman she can't abort a baby because her man will beat her? Well, I do not feel I have to be a woman to decide if taking an innocent life is immoral. In just a single month I've seen 3 babies that were supposedly the product of rape and all three were immediately given up to and immediately placed in foster care, 2 of which already had adoption papers in the works before discharge. Of course I recognize how hard it would be for a woman to bear that pregnancy out. I think most conservatives would have some level of compromise in cases of rape. But again, the Left could propose laws that specifically allow women to terminate the child in such cases. Instead, we're seeing laws where the author admits babies should be allowed to be aborted literally when mom is in labor for vague reasons of mental health.

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The Dude abides.

So what exactly about this case precludes C-section? Macrosomia is frequently a big problem for diabetic mothers and C/S has always been the answer. I saw a 10.5-pounder last week as a matter of fact. C/S works just fine for breech presentations also - I witnessed that today for the first time. From what I gather from the aforementioned CDC stats, C/S likely has a safer record anyway.


Again, you keep coming back to fringe cases. We can make laws to cover these rare diagnoses where baby comes out braindead or literally has no chance at survival. I don't know what things you have in mind here, except maybe like the really rare trisomies or something. I'd probably argue against some congenital/developmental conditions because what is a death sentence today may be treatable in the future (see Neonatal Respiratory Distress Syndrome and the advent of surfactant). But the laws we're seeing don't isolate those unfortunate instances for allowing abortion.

Why is the Left never willing to discuss the large amount of babies aborted because the man and woman willingly had sex and don't want deal with the consequences of it?

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The Dude abides.

I honestly don't know the answer to that question Screeling, I can try to ask. I claim no knowledge in this area beyond what is gleaned from having (unfortunately dinner table) discussions on the subject, and 10 years of the only 'coffee table' reading in our house being JAMA etc.


As for the second point, 'fringe cases' require the use of experts in the field to help define them.

As we've seen time and again, the GOP has gone out of their way to strip the input of experts from policy making.

I'll agree to a policy of specific laws to govern such 'fringe cases' as long as a) They're in place long before large scale bans occur, AND b)the policies are laid out by scientific experts in relevant fields without input/consideration from lobbyists and religious zealots.

Because too often it seems like the Right is just trying to use 'consequences of sex' as a punishment for people to help inflict/force their morality on others.

If the Right's real concern were avoiding aborted fetuses, then free birth control, better sex education, getting rid of (proven ineffective) abstinence only sex ed, etc would be the top of their agendas; you know, policies that ACTUALLY reduce unwanted pregnancies.
But that isn't what is done. Stated or un-, the Right wants to push their sexual mores on the rest of the country, and one way they seem to want to do that is make sex so consequence-laden that its no one would risk it.

This strikes me as a convenient self-deception on the part of pro-choice folks. Even if it's true that we could decrease X (here, abortion) by increasing Y (availability of birth control and safe sex education), if one thinks both X and Y are wrong, there's no inconsistency in opposing both. And "consequences" is not synonymous with "punishment". One can believe that a person has an obligation to mitigate any harm done to others as a result of their actions if that harm was foreseeable without viewing that obligation as a punishment for wrongdoing. It's just the basic assumption of risk doctrine we already have in our laws - e.g., you have no general duty to attempt to rescue someone in distress, but if your actions caused them to be in distress, you sometimes do. Similarly, one can believe that casual, non-procreative sex is awesome (or at least something people have the right to engage in) yet also believe that if the entirely foreseeable result of pregnancy occurs, then you owe a duty of care to the fetus because you assumed the risk when you engaged in the action that ultimately put that fetus in harms way.

Do I think most pro-life people actually analogize their position to broadly applicable legal and moral doctrines? No, but I absolutely do think most of them are motivated more by the belief that people are responsible for the consequences of their actions than by a belief that people need to be punished for their sins. Or to put it another way, I think most pro-life people view carrying a child to term more as a responsibility than a punishment.

I think you over-think it, at least in what I believe are most cases where folks are objecting to abortion. It's about the babies that are being killed and how they're considered less human somehow as justification for killing them. The criteria for being "less than human" is being expanded to the point where I believe that folks are finding that they can't sit it out on the sidelines anymore.

I won't impose a solution on anyone, folks can take more responsibility and raise the kids themselves, they can put kids up for adoption, heck, if they want they can drop the kid off at the nearest firehouse. I don't care. I just feel obligated to do more than I've done in the past to get it turned around where babies have rights.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Damn them for wanting to let the will of the people prevail!

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In time, this too shall pass.

Uh huh.. What are those poll numbers on pro choice, the 'green new deal', the EPA, Affordable Care Act, a progressive tax rate, etc again?

So stop making baseless claims that the GOP is somewhere in the majority; and ruling by some bizarre popular mandate.

But then, when there is a difference of OPINION-- perhaps we should let facts decide; the facts that science helps us uncover.

Nevermind. I'll do it for you.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/publ ... -abortion/
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-envir ... n-new-deal
https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-america ... rate-to-70
https://www.kff.org/interactive/kff-hea ... ge=twoYear

But lets forget at that:

WHEN THE **** HAS MOB DECISION MAKING BEEN BETTER THAN EXPERT OPINION?

Popularity does not make something correct. I'm amazed that you would ever suggest it. The best solution to a technical problem is NOT what the hive mind tells you it is.

Elite much? Polls are meaningless, the only thing that matters is votes, and we each get only one. Really burns you, doesn’t it? All those deplorable...having as much say as you in determining the future.

Technocracy is just another way to disenfranchise the folks that have to live in the same world with the arrogant idiots that feel they’re better than the rest. I can’t say I’m surprised that the “we’re all equal” argument carries so little weight with you.

Get ready for change. Your arrogance blinded you two years ago and it’ll continue doing so because you only see what you want.

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In time, this too shall pass.