Supreme Court upholds partial birth abortion ban

I agree with that. And it is playing politics with medicine. I just don't respect medicine and doctors like you apparently do.

 

I certainly don't see doctors as omnipotent, but I surely trust them more with medical decisions than politicians.

Besides, Mr. Frist can't be available to diagnose via videotape at all times. Someone has to fill the gap.

 

With all our technological advances, medical science is now able to save premature babies -- not all, but quite a few -- from about five months on.

Partial birth abortions are done in those later months.

If you haven't read how they're done, do a google search. Just make sure you have a strong stomach.

I find it hard to justify, especially after having felt a baby move inside me at four months, to see how this procedure can be justified by 'saving the life of the mother,' especially with all the other medical technology out there. There are always options in this day and age.

For those who are adamantly in favor of this procedure, let me ask you this. If you see a pregnant woman drinking, if you see a pregnant woman smoking. Do you think to yourself that's a woman who's in control of her own body? Or do you think to yourself what the hell is wrong with her, she's harming her unborn baby?

 

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, unless you plan to legislate that too....criminal charges against pregnant women who smoke? Laws about smoking in a car with your children?

The question isn't what would any of us choose for ourselves...it's allowing everyone else to choose for themselves.

(And for the record, I'm personally horrified by partial birth abortion, but I sure as hell don't want politicians deciding what a doctor can and cannot do for his patients.)

 

Trust me, Rosie, I've read up. Then again, there aren't too many surgical procedures that I find appetizing.

And unless you know of a doctor who is telling those women to drink and/or smoke while they are pregnant, your situations are not analagous.

As far as, there are always options this day and age, there might well be. What makes you think a doctor isn't qualified to make that decision? What makes you think the Supreme Court or average state legislator is more qualified.

 

Clarence Thomas, of all people, has left the backdoor open for the eventual overturn of the ban.

Long story short, this appeal never raised the commerce clause as an issue. Which is odd, but I'm no attorney.

The court would likely be willing to consider an overturn of the ban on that basis.

Wheels of the gods, and all that ...

 

They already do.

Say there's a patient that the doctor has deemed terminal and is going to die a slow, painful death. The doctor decides to administer a lethal dose of meds to save the patient from pain and suffering.

The doctor, if found out (and some medical personnel have been found out doing this), will be brought up on murder charges. Even if that person asked the doctor to do it.

Isn't that a choice too?

Zeke, a big part of the abortion argument is the woman's right to do with her body as she pleases. So it is pertinent. She want to ingest alcohol or nicotine, that's her choice. She wants to have an abortion, it's her choice.

 

Thanks for that list. Now I know where to send the thank you cards.

 

But politicians already do. Doctors can't treat patients however the hell they please, even if the patient wants it. It has to be more than that, doesn't it?

I mean, hell, the doctor could deliver the baby at nine months, get it all the way out of the womb, chop its head off, and call it an abortion. Or, better yet, a few hours after the baby is born, the mother could say "I don't want it!" and the doctor could stroll down the hall, give the baby a little injection, and kill it. Of course these scenarios seem laughable. They're meant to. They're also illegal.

 

It depends on how you look at the abortion issue. Is it one of technology and medicine? Should we merely consider it through the lens of science?

If so, where does that put us on cloning? If we can clone, do we legalize it because doctors assure us it does no harm to the cloned zygote? Do we genetically enhance our children because medicine says it won't harm the fetus? Is our standard <i> merely and only </i> the medical safety of the procedure?

I would contend it's not, and I would contend medicine plays little to no role in the abortion debate either; rather, it's just an arguing point abortion rights activists use to buttress the source of their belief.

To me, it's basic: Abortion rights activists must commit to the central idea that a woman's right to her privacy, to choose what happens to her body and her fetus, is more important than the fetus's right to become a human outside of the womb. And I'm not being sarcastic; that, to me, is the central argument. I think if you're an abortion rights activist, you have to believe that; buying into anything short of that is just being phony.

Which is why Ginsberg's dissent is absurd. Her dissent should be: The gruesomeness of the procedure is completely immaterial to a woman's right, just like the awfulness of hate speech is immaterial to the freedom of speech. Since the premise of abortion is built on a woman's privacy rights, what difference should it make to abortion rights activist whether the brains are sucked out, scraped out, or squished? Certainly we don't view our rights to personal sovereignty by such semantics. If I want to eat my toast with mustard, I eat it with mustard. If I want to dine on my own shit, I dine on my own shit. What's behind closed doors is behind them.

But Ruth's dissent latches on to the caveat of "health," when she knows fully well that a doctor can size that up, determine that a birth would be difficult for the mother's psychological health, and perform the abortion. Any woman in physical danger of dying would just have it done an alternative, less convenient method. Know this: If the baby was necrotic, or could even become that way, or its presence was killing the mother, this prohibition is worked around quite easily, efficiently and without harm.

To me it's lame. Abortion rights activists should stake their ground and hold to it. Preach rights until the ears bleed. Eventually, they're going to have to anyway.

 

OK, here's me.
1) A zygote has no rights. None. Nada. Zip. Zero. As far as I know, nothing I need an electron microscope to see has rights.
2) I have more faith in doctors regarding the practice of medicine than I do politicians.
3) I believe Roe, whatever you may think of its legal reasoning, was as good a compromise as we're likely to get.
4) I believe the anti-choice community has failed to act in good faith politically since it coined its dishonest -- "pro-life" -- name. I believe it made peace with extremists who kill doctors and blow up clinics, and I believe it has profited immensely in its political goals through these acts.
5) I believe that now we're going to see half-a-dozen new state laws enacted, all of which will be upheld, and which will require a legal infrastructure to keep the citizens of those states from making a mockery of them. People will be prosecuted for going from an anti-choice state to a pro-choice state. We're back with the Fugitive Slave Law again.
6) I believe the real agenda is to demolish the concept of an implied right to privacy IN ALL CASES, and that this is just the thin edge of the wedge.
7) I believe all of this started today.

 

1. So you have no issue with cloning?
2. Me too, but laws regulate doctors anyhow. And this isn't really a medical issue. All medicine did was advance enough to make easier to do. Convenience is not alone a reason to secure - or not secure - privacy.
3. Compromise of what?
4. Agreed. The anti-abortion rights community is largely made up of buffoons.
5. Eh, we'll see. I don't know how many partial birth abortions by this specific method will be performed across state lines and I don't how much money an attorney general's office is going to spend to pursue it. The laws will be on the doctors, after all, not the patient. I presume an alternative will be pursued, or Planned Parenthood, which is nothing if not diligent, will make damn sure the women in those states know, as crudely as this sounds, the truncated hands of their abortion clock.
6. In all cases of what? Abortion?