No, Republicans are NOT okay with ripping human babies limb from limb!

National Right to Life ^ | Feb 14, 2003

[Jim Robinson]

Key Facts on Partial-Birth Abortion

(excerpts)

In a partial-birth abortion, the abortionist pulls a living baby feet-first out of the womb and into the birth canal (vagina), except for the head, which the abortionist purposely keeps lodged just inside the cervix (the opening to the womb). The abortionist punctures the base of the baby’s skull with a surgical instrument, such as a long surgical scissors or a pointed hollow metal tube called a trochar. He then inserts a catheter (tube) into the wound, and removes the baby's brain with a powerful suction machine. This causes the skull to collapse, after which the abortionist completes the delivery of the now-dead baby.

The January 2003 Gallup poll found that 70% favored and 25% opposed “a law that would make it illegal to perform a specific abortion procedure conducted in the last six months of pregnancy known as ‘partial birth abortion,’ except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother.” (margin of error +/- 3%)

The term “partial-birth” is perfectly accurate. Under both federal law and most state laws, a “live birth” occurs when a baby is entirely expelled from the mother and shows any signs of life, however briefly -- regardless of whether the baby is “viable,” i.e., developed enough to be sustained outside the womb with neo-natal medical assistance. Even at 4½ months (20 weeks), perinatologists say that if a baby is expelled or removed completely from the uterus, she will usually gasp for breath and sometimes survive for hours, even though lung development is usually insufficient to permit successful sustained respiration until 23 weeks.

Some prominent defenders of partial-birth abortions, such as NARAL's Kate Michelman and syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman, insisted that anesthesia kills the babies before they are removed from the womb. This myth has been refuted by professional societies of anesthesiologists. In reality, the babies are alive and experience great pain when subjected to a partial-birth abortion. [Documentation on request.]

[Convert]

Because it is less invasive to the mother than the alternative you propose, namely, cutting her open, which will only increase the loss of blood, and likely kill her on the spot. Run that by ACOG

[Convert]

Because it is less invasive to the mother than the alternative you propose, namely, cutting her open, which will only increase the loss of blood, and likely kill her on the spot.

This bears repeating - run that by ACOG - American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

[Mia T]

By 'futile,' I suspect you mean your mind is closed.

I have an open mind. If I am wrong, please enlighten me. But with logic and ethics, not emotion.

To add another wrinkle to the debate, I believe the abortion issue will, in the near future, be mooted by medical science. If that is the case, then how will this impact on the politics? Where will all this energy be redirected? It's something we should consider, in my view.

[Convert]

Huh?

[Mia T]

What I mean: Medical advancement will render abortions obsolete.

Oddly, when I made that argument privately to a friend here at FR, the very next day Tony Blankley wrote a piece on precisely the same point. You can probably find it in his archives.

[Convert]

What I mean: Medical advancement will render abortions obsolete

Induced abortions ARE obselete

[hosepipe]

[ This is exactly Rudy Giuliani's position. ]

I read your quote of/by Giuliani...
AND you don't see anything WRONG with that quote eh!...
Mia I suggest giving it another read..

The boy signed legislation ALLOWING partial birth abortion in New York.. What he SAYS MEANS NOTHING.. He is quite Clintonesque.. in that way..

[SJackson]

To add another wrinkle to the debate, I believe the abortion issue will, in the near future, be mooted by medical science.

How is that going to happen?

[Mia T]

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Roe v. Wade v. technology
Tony Blankley (back to web version) | Recommend to a friend

July 27, 2005

As the John Roberts' Supreme Court nomination fight opens, the predicted battle to save or kill Roe v Wade already has taken to the streets, the Internet and the media. But the 32-year-old constitutional right to an abortion may face its gravest challenge not from red state values triumphing on the Supreme Court, but from medical research being carried out in elite blue state universities and in Europe and Asia.
 
It is the very language of Roe that carries the seed of its own possible irrelevance within the next several years. Roe enunciated the more or less unencumbered right of a woman to obtain an abortion prior to fetal viability. After viability, the right of states to regulate or prohibit abortions arise. The court defined legal viability as "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid."

 But medical science is remorselessly advancing on two fronts along paths that may fairly soon seize and destroy in a scientific pincer movement the viability of Roe's reasoning.

 When Roe was handed down in 1973, the survivability of prematurely born babies was not medically possible before 28 weeks of gestation. Today, babies born after only 20 weeks of gestation routinely survive -- and thus are viable under the Roe definition (and thus potentially legally safe from the abortionist's medical weapons).

 But radical research may soon reduce that 20 weeks to just a few -- or perhaps no weeks. At Juntendo University of Tokyo, Dr. Yoshinori Kuwabara and his team of scientists have successfully removed goat fetuses from mother goats and placed them in tanks of amniotic fluid stabilized at goat body temperature, while connecting the baby goat's umbilical cord to machines that pump in nutrients and dispose of waste.

 The purpose of Dr. Kuwabara's research is to provide a safe home for human fetuses prematurely expelled from the mother's womb. According to the British Guardian newspaper, it is expected that such methods capable of sustaining a child for the full nine months "will become reality in a few years."

 Meanwhile, at Cornell University's Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility, Dr. Hung-Ching Liu and her team of scientists have been approaching the problem of fetal out-of-womb survival from the other side. She is developing a full artificial womb that can receive a just-conceived embryo -- with the hope that it will successfully gestate for the full nine months.

 Her team's method is to remove cells from the mother's endometrium (the lining the womb), and grow those cells in a hormones-and-growth-enzymes "bath." Then they let the cells rapidly grow on a scaffold made of biodegradable material molded in the shape of a uterus, into which she plants the embryo. By this method Dr. Liu has already successfully kept alive a brand-new human embryo/fetus for six days -- after which she voluntarily ended the fetus's existence to comply with current medical ethics regulations.

 While Dr. Kuwabara's technology is being designed for normal pregnancies cut short by miscarriages, Dr. Liu's technologies will have special appeal to homosexual couples who want to have a child, as well as women with defective wombs and women who just can't be bothered to be pregnant (although the first few minutes of such pregnancies might still be valued for extraneous reasons).

 But both, or either technology, once routinely available, could have a profound, if unintended, effect on the constitutional right of abortion. Once such technologies make it medically possible for a fetus to be "potentially able to live outside the mother's womb, albeit with artificial aid" the language of Roe v Wade will not have to be overturned. It could stay on the books as legally valid, but factually meaningless.

 Of course the irony of all this cut so many ways, it is hard to count. A technology designed to help homosexual couples and radical feminists have wombless babies may come into the service of conservatives (who oppose homosexual marriage and feminist values) as a means of ending abortion.

 Cutting the other way, it is the technology of stem cell research and cloning (which many right-to-life conservatives want to outlaw) that may be needed to develop a technology that could be used to effectively legally end abortion -- thus creating for such conservatives the moral dilemma of supporting the use of what they judge to be unethical or immoral technologies to end the greatest slaughter of the innocent (millions of abortions a year).

 These emerging technologies give academic ethicists (as well as the rest of us amateur ethicists) plenty to think about. Remember, in Aldous Huxley's disturbingly prescient "Brave New World," the normal people were genetically cloned and gestated in artificial wombs, while the savages living in remote locations were the only ones who still naturally conceived, carried their own babies and then breast-fed them.

The "normal" cloned people thought the natural people were animals to procreate naturally. As it always has in history, the definition of normal is subject to unexpected and seemingly abnormal change.

 And, it would seem, that advancing medical and genetic technologies will benefit conservatives and liberals in a promiscuous manner.

©2005 Creators Syndicate

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[SJackson]

Interesting article, but it will expand rather than moot the article.

There are legal ramifications to having a child.

For healthy children, combined with adoption, this is an option. Though until medical science can guarantee a healthy child, I suspect some will opt for abortion. Women in marital stress may not avail themselves of this procedure.

In my view existance of the procedure enhances the pro-life case, but I doubt pro-choice people will embrace it as a reason to ban abortion, it's simply another choice.

Woman having abortions to avoid the inconvenience and expense of having a handicapped child will not avail themselves of this technology. We already argue about whether it's worth funding care for children who survive partial birth abortions, Obama says no way, that arguement will intensify.

[Convert]

Posted by Mia T to Convert; All On News/Activism 02/08/2007 8:40:00 AM PST · 209 of 209 QUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | MEETUP | C-LOG | ISSUES townhall.com Printer-friendly version Roe v. Wade v. technology Tony Blankley This is weird and spooky

[SJackson]

Interesting article, but it will expand rather than moot the article arguement.

[Mia T]

I think you may be referring to the content of the Blankley piece, but the fact that I made an almost identical argument the day before Blankley was really weird. My argument even contained Blankley's 'pincer' concept.

[Mia T]

In another direction, yes.

[Mia T]

Are you referring to Giuliani's statement of position in the Hannity interview? That statement is what I am referencing.

[Convert]

I am referring to the content of the article - it is weird and spooky

[Convert]

By this method Dr. Liu has already successfully kept alive a brand-new human embryo/fetus for six days -- after which she voluntarily ended the fetus's existence to comply with current medical ethics regulations

conceiving life to destroy it is mean

[Convert]

By this method Dr. Liu has already successfully kept alive a brand-new human embryo/fetus for six days -- after which she voluntarily ended the fetus's existence to comply with current medical ethics regulations. Conceiving life to destroy it is mean

[hosepipe]

[.. Are you referring to Giuliani's statement of position in the Hannity interview? That statement is what I am referencing. ..]

Yes and past statements too.. The man is a liberal..
Worse... a New York City liberal... his agenda is questionable..

[bcbuster]

That 14th Amendment analysis is right on the money. I hate to see the Commerce Clause used to justify EVERYTHING, so I'm glad to see a true Constitutional justification for the federal ban. Now I have no issues at all with this. Thanks!