The big abortion rant thread.

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OK sweet but why are you telling me? I know it's a good point....

 

When do we break a pool cue over someone's head and slam someone into a Jukebox? I got dibs on putting someone through the Pool Table...

By what you've said, if the fertilized egg fails to implant, then it is dead and ejected before the woman knows there's anything different. But when the fertilized egg succesfully implants in the uterus, I call it a baby, for the purposes of the abortion debate.

Were it my choice, only in cases of Rape, Murder or grave danger to the mother. The failing of the Pro Life movement is that they try to force that standard as opposed to plead for the life of the unborn child. I recognize that at some point, I can't stop the abortion, but I don't have to like it. Were I the father of the child, I don't know that I could forgive the woman for an abortion...

This is another thing where Society as a whole needs to look at. If such supports were in place, could that prevent a few abortions?

The problem is that nobody can agree on who should decide on these standards. You make a law on one subject, one group is happy, another group is not happy. Maybe there is a consensus on big things like murder, but even there there is disputes on how it shoulde be punished.

 

Because there are times that I think abortion should be seriously considered, even when the mother's life isn't at risk. (OK, that was the obvious answer, I'll explain.) We don't even have to go into the standard arguements of abortion being OK in the case of rape or incest, I'll give you an example of a case where I would have considered it with my own son.

As you probably know, humans have 46 chromosomes, broken down into 23 pairs. Sometimes, you get an extra chromosome. The general term for having a third copy of what is supposed to be a pair is called trisomy. The most well-known form of trisomy is Down's Syndrome. The reason that it is the most well-known is because it's one of only two trisomies where the afflicted person lives (the other is when a woman gets a third X chromosome - I think it's called Kleinfelter's Syndrome, but don't quote me on that).

While I don't want to get into a lesson on genetics, there is a little more information I should give. While we name the different trisomies (e.g. Down's Syndrome), the most common way to refer to them is by number. Each chromosome pair is assigned a number from 1 (the biggest pair) to 22 (the smallest pair). The sex chromosomes are pair 23. Down's Syndrome is trisomy 22. So if you have trisomy 22 or 23, you'll live, and I would not advocate an abortion in these cases.

However, if you have any of the other trisomies - trismoy 5, 13, and 18 are the most common although it is possible to get any of the other 21 numbers - all result in defects that are non-survivable. And when I say non-survival, I mean big time. One of them causes the baby to be born with a large open cavity where the face should be. Another causes massive spinal cord deformation (think spinal bifida but much worse). Another causes massive brain underdevelopment where there are actually air pockets within the baby's skull.

As I said, all of these conditions are fatal. The difference between these examples and the hypothetical example you gave is that you won't have 8 years with your child. Most of the time the baby dies within hours of birth, although there are a few remarkable cases where the baby lives a few weeks.

What does all of this have to do with abortion? Well, as a relatively new father, there is a test that they perform when your wife is around 10 weeks pregnant, where they take several measurements of the fetus. Based on the ratios of those measurements they can determine if there is a high probability that your baby has a trisomy. An amniocentesis can then be performed to verify which trisomy is present. When my wife was pregnant with our son, Jack, we were lucky. When they did the first test the results came back that the odds of him having a trisomy were 1 in 3500. As a result, we never bothered doing to more invasive amniocentesis. However, if the tests results had been different, and Jack did have a lethal form of trisomy, I would have seriously considered abortion. While it would be a heart-wrenching decision, I think it would be easier to abort than to go through 9 months of pregnancy, all the hospital visits, all the discomfort for my wife (who has rhumatoid arthritis - it was hard for her being pregnant without any meds) only to have our son die in our arms hours after it was born.

Now, if in a case like that, you still would have the baby I will respect your right to make such a decision - I just won't agree with it.

 

Sadly, Aldeth, there are those out there who would not even allow the abortion if the woman's life were in grave danger. IMHO, THOSE are the whackjobs we should fear.

As I mentioned before, I am a believer in the rape, incest, and grave danger exceptions for an abortion ban. Otherwise, a woman should take responsibility for the choices she makes, as should the man who ALSO made choices. I argued earlier that if we give women options to avoid the consequences of her actions, we should also make options for them men to avoid their responsibilities. Of course, I was shot down. That irks me -- why is it Western society is obsessed with MEN fulfilling their responsibilities while consistently yapping about WOMEN and their rights. It was sexist crap in the 50s when men got the green light, and it's sexist crap now that women are getting a pass.

 

LKD: "THOSE wackjobs" would include Hyppocrates:

I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.​

Hyppocrates did not believe in abortion even to save the mother.

 

Silvery, I pointed it out to you because I thought your last post was specifically targeted at Count's post directly above it, which could be percieved as inflamatory (i.e. bar brawling). If so, I wanted to point out that there was merit in the post. If not, the sorry for the confusion.

Aldeth, I'll admit that's a very good arguement, and I'd understand abortion in cases like that. I suppose I should ammend 'desperate need' to 'dire circumstances', which I think would include such trisomies as you've discribed. I do take issue, though, with the claim that abortion should be a given in cases of rape. As rare an event as it is, and as drastically traumatizing to the mother as it is, this child has as much a right to live as anyone. If the mother were highly likely to attempt suicide or abort the child herself, then I'd understand an arguement, but short of that (and I have no idea how likely those are to be the result), I don't see why one should kill the child, even as a foetus. The mother's mental well-being (she'll recover, even if it does take a long time) is not worth the child's life (it won't recover, period). Now I wouldn't begin to insist that the mother keep the child, adoption is a good option, but abortion is going too far. Likewise with incest. I wouldn't ask the mother (or in the voluntary case, since all others would be rape, let the mother) keep the child, but killing it is going too far.

LKD:

On that, I think we can all agree. The doctor is sworn to 'do no harm', but sometimes that isn't an option. When both action and inaction will lead to harm, the doctor must decide which choice will lead to the least harm. In cases like this, I'd say the doctor must confer with the parents if at all possible (things go wrong durring labor, too). Personally, if it came down to a pregnancy that threatened the life of my wife, I'm not sure what we would do, other than pray for guidence.

 

I don't force the abortion, but I say shut up if they do have an abortion in that case.

 

Oh no darling, I didn't even see counts post! I was thinking that if we all had a better attitude about this subject in general then we could stop having silly fights about it!

 

I thought you would, which is why I specifically said I wouldn't work my arguement around rape or incest. I mentioned them only to point out that there are reasons beyond them when the mother's life was not at risk. The vast majority of women won't be victims of rape or incest in their lifetimes, and because of this the number of pregnancies resulting from rape or incest must be very low. I'm not trying to minimize how traumatic rape or incest can be - I'm just saying that pregnancy due to rape or incest is not something that most women will ever have to deal with and using such as a justification for supporting abortion does nothing for the 99% of abortions that are performed for other reasons.

On the other hand, all pregnancies - even the ones that are planned - have a chance (albeit relatively small) to have the child be born with a trisomy. The odds are higher the older the mother gets. Down's Syndrome is much more common when the mother is in her 40s than when she is in her 20s or 30s, but there are certainly exceptions. There are Down's Syndrome babies born every day to mothers who are in their early 20s.

Actually, NOG, I think the choice is easier than you would expect. If the mother to be is already 7 or more months pregnant, doctors usually recommend a C-section to get the baby out rather than aborting it. Medical technology has advanced to the point that babies at 30 weeks almost always survive. If it is very early in the process, I also think it's a no brainer, in that if the mother dies, so does the baby. It may sound callous, but if the baby dies either way, then the decision must be doing what is best for your wife.

 

Silvery:
Well, on me, then.

Aldeth:
I'm glad you feel that way about cases involving rape and incest. I'm also glad to hear such things about modern pregnancies. My medical know-how is more than a little patch-work. I'd still like to hear what you would consider the turning point for the human status of the foetus.

 

I don't have a flippin' clue NOG. If there was some reasonable means of determining this, I don't think that abortion would be nearly as contentious an issue.

I can only tell you that because of cases like I mentioned above, the current legal rule of abortion allowed in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy seems reasonable. Seeing as how you cannot even go for the initial test until you are 10 weeks pregnant, and that there is another procedure after that to determine if it is a fatal trisomy, the current law seems like a reasonable timeframe.

 

To be brutally honest, unless it's a personal issue, it's pretty much a non-issue for me. Not because I don't care enough, not because I don't think killing babies is horrible, but because I'm prioritizing other things.

It's a bit of a blind spot for me. There's abortions and killing babies and whatever you'd like to call it going on, and I'm just trying to do my bit that there'd one day be societies in which pre- and postnatal mortality rate is close to nil.

Unless we get proper sex-education in schools and education levels around the globe to at least 70-80%, shucks it's possible to get it into over 90% within the next 100 years (if only this and this and this would happen first)... Then we can start talking about the moral implications of abortion...

So when we're talking about abortion in the western world, and more precisely the abortions that are done by and to the middle-classes and up, it's quite justified to say that it's just simply wrong, preventable and it should not happen unless there's serious health concerns....otherwise...well like I said, a lot of things should happen before morality comes into question...

 

Ok, that's understandable, from both of you. I'm not sure I agree with Iku, but I understand the logic that led him there and I find no fault with it.

Iku, if that's what you believe, what exactly did you mean by the posts on the economic value of human life?