Posted on 11/07/2002 2:21:10 PM PST by GeneD
A worthy goal, but it's a drop in the bucket. Of all abortions, those performed after 21 weeks gestation amount to about 1.5%. The overwhelming majority of abortions (88 percent) performed in the US are done at or before 12 weeks' gestation, or within the first trimester.
Snidely
Uh....um. You sure about that? All the doctors I've heard talk about the procedures covered by the term use the medical term for those procedures - intact dilation & extraction (D&X), or dilation & curettage (D&C). The fact that the term "partial-birth abortion" is overbroad is the main reason laws outlawing it have been overturned time after time. The rhetoric has in fact proven counterproductive.
Snidely
According to the CDC, 884,273 legal abortions were reported in 1998 (the most recent year I could find). Even figuring, say 5% underreporting, that's less than a million per year. Fortunately, the trend's downward already.
Snidely
Here are my thoughts... a prolife judge gets confirmed to the court. An abortion case is challenged, and Roe is overturned. Surprise number one to MANY people is that abortion isn't automatically illegal. (If we are worried about politics and elections, this can give us some wiggle room.) WE say to the people in all 50 states, now it's your choice. This takes the issue out of the Federal arena and we stop getting hammered on it during every freaking election.
Can all the different permutations (first trimester always legal, first trimester only for health of the mother, parental consent, etc) be put on the ballot? Let the people decide on the mores of their community. A few states (or counties, perhaps?) will have very restrictive laws, a few will have very liberal laws. Most, I think, will decide abortion on demand for the first trimester with some exceptions for mother's health, and maybe severe deformity of the baby.
And the battle, at this point, is mostly over and ceases to be much of an issue. I think both groups have to realize a few things. Pro-lifers have to accept that some accomodation for safe abortion will be with us for quite awhile. People don't want to put themselves in the position of dictating to others on this issue. How many women say they would never have an abortion themselves, but want it legal? Tons! Why? Because not knowing someone's life, their limitations, who am I to DEMAND she maintain a pregnancy? I'm not the one who has to live with those consequences.
I think the pro-aborts have to see that we will never agree to abortion on demand all the time for any reason at all. We will fight them to the end. And most people are somewhat "moderate" on this issue. If it is all or nothing, moderates will go with the pro-aborts out of fear of being controlled. If the choices are laid out, most people will elect to put some restrictions on it.
This is where the pro-aborts start to look really nutty and extreme. If they continue to fight, their goal is to kill more babies (clearly, if the community decided second trimester abortions are illegal, then these "products of abortion" are going to be seen and perceived as babies.) Pro-lifers who push beyond what "the people" think is a reasonable view, (perhaps outlawing first trimester abortions, although I think religion gives us some justification for our view and perhaps it's not viewed as so nutty. Definitely trying to ban things like birth control pills under the ideology that it aborts by preventing implantation of an embryo will be seen as nutty and extreme.) And both extremes will end up being ignored. Or one side or the other will so irritate the middle by agitating that they will push others to the opposite extreme.
In any case, I'd rather have this argued out on a local level.
I am going to answer you as honestly as I can.
Absolutely. The government does not demand that I remain in close proximity to anyone who causes me enough turmoil to make me want to kill him/her. I can move, quit my job, get divorced, ship the children off to a grandparent. In situations where a person CANNOT escape, say battered women who have seen that the men are going to hunt them down and harrass them endlessly, it is called self-defense.
Not a great analogy because many of these men will kill given enough time and proximity. But given a situation where a woman (or man) is being repeatedly stalked and harrassed, frightened and embarrased but not physically endangered, on a jury I might vote to acquit. Depends upon the extremity of the circumstances.
Huh, that close, huh? Well, what are we waiting for? Let's push that sucker into the dung heap of history, where it belongs.
As an absolute? As in any drop of alcohol and if you get behind the wheel of a car, you're busted? No way. I believe one must be demonstrably impaired.
The problem with drunk driving is that it can cause great harm AND it is an easy thing to avoid. Once one is drunk, one can walk home, call a cab, have a friend provide transportation. It's pretty senseless to put yourself in a position to cause such harm when alternatives are so painless.
Once a woman is pregnant, that's it. She either remains pregnant or she does not. Remaining pregnant can cause issues. This is where emotion gets factored in. We can say, it's only 40 weeks, suck it up and move on. But it is too easy for me, and other women to relate to those issues. Here is your big stumbling block. We know how easy it is to be a stupid teenager. We know what it's like to struggle to make ends meet, to feel overwhelmed with the demands that you have.
I know that working through difficult times, and pushing past what you thought you could endure brings strength and growth and character. But I imagine that's cold comfort for someone without faith, struggling to fulfill the responsibilities she has and finds out she's pregnant with a Down Syndrome baby. Does she give away her children's sibling? When you have children you love and hold how do you give up one newly born? Can you persevere without hurting everyone?
I won't make their decisions. God knows our hearts. He will be merciful or not. I'll leave it to Him.
First of all, they are VERY careful not to go past the "right to choose" very often. The press ignores it and the rank and file don't hear it. We have been so sucessfully demonized that if WE try to articulate their agenda, we are summarily dismissed as being delusional.
The people DON'T want us in charge of this decision. They've been convinced that we want absolutely NO abortions ever, and most people aren't there yet.
Contrary to an above post, I don't believe this election was a referendum on abortion. We are pro-life and voted in droves and simply outnumbered everyone else. The rank and file non-ideologues who voted with us found an issue more immediate to their lives than abortion...terrorism and the war.
We have the opportunity to show them the direction we want to go. We have enough time for some of those results to come through and prove that we know what we're doing. We've gotten their attention, now we can start to teach.
I oppose on principle, but it would be a salient observation that more Rats than Pubs abort. So there could be worse things for pro-life than to let Darwin have his say (rhetorically speaking; I'm a creationist).
Abortion on demand is a heinous malignancy growing and alternately shrinking (barely), I think, based upon the voices speaking out to condemn whimsical abortion. [Trends follow the permissions implied by society; when voices speak out coherently against abortion on demand, abortions go down, when voices speak out defending the slaughter as some enlightened policy that 'should' be the 'American way', abortions go up. It is time to have a national dialog which addresses the wrong while not marginalizing the voices debating the issues. Keeping abortion sanctioned by laws defending 'a woman's right to choose a serial killer to off the unborn' is not an alternative any longer, for the preciousness of the unborn, their humanity now proven through scientific means, must be addressed and protection afforded to them. There are rare conditions for which a credible physician will prescribe aborting the nascent life in the womb. But abortion is currently being used to prevent acceptance of responsibility for new individual human life (societal and individual responsibility), conceived and on life support. That is the perspective which holds greatest promise for raising the debate to a higher level, applying the already existing precedents in our society.
Men are required by the courts to extend life support for the products of their conception, to the child conceived and implanted into the womb of a woman and delivered into the community. That is precedent which should be applied more evenly to the female involved in the conceived and life support-needing individual human life.
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