A Request Directed to Sciforums' "Atheists"

I see..

Did they mean women like the two women described above by an abortion provider?

Also, could you please provide the link to the article you quoted? Because I found one that is virtually word for word, except a few parts were somewhat different, so I am curious as to which one is correct.

So why did you even use the argument?

I want you to think about something. Late term abortions fall into the smallest category of women who get abortions. About 1% of women get 3rd trimester abortions. I think in the States it works out to being about 11,000 women. Where do you think those women will go if you ban them? What recourse do you think those women would then have if they want to have an abortion? Since they can no longer obtain one safely - and there are only 3 doctors who perform late term 3rd trimester abortions (there used to be 4, but Dr Miller was murdered for the service he provided), where do you think these women are going to go? We know that if abortions are banned, access limited in any way, women are simply going to go by way of a backyard and unsafe and often deadly abortion. This is the reality. Is this acceptable to you? The WHO's directives are clear, women need to be able to access safe abortions to stop the pandemic. And you wish to restrict their access further?

What is wrong with still having providers to cater for those 1% who obviously have valid reasons to have waited or found themselves in the 3rd trimester and needing an abortion? You can get late term 3rd trimester abortions now in several states. So it is available. Do you see a dearth of women just waiting until right to the end to abort? The greater majority of abortions occur in the first trimester. So even though it is available now, women aren't being "irresponsible" and leaving it too late. So what's wrong with how it is now? Why do you want to ban it so that those 11,000 women are put at direct risk per year? Where is the merit in that?

What do you gain in knowingly and purposefully endangering 11,000 per year? Because these women are going to get one regardless if they need to have one. Personally, I'd rather they be able to access safe health care and not have to resort to Mary with her coat hanger or a shove down the stairs or punch to the stomach until she bleeds. Do you think this is acceptable?

Or as Quinnsong dismisses, these women can simply be arrested and prosecuted. Ermm okay, so then we fall into the issue where these women won't then seek medical care if and when something does go wrong with a backyard abortion and that 68,000 dead and millions scarred for life figures just goes up. Women who miscarry later on in their pregnancy could find themselves being charged if they did anything that could have caused them to miscarry or naturally abort their baby. Don't think that's a possiblity? That's already happening now. Hundreds of women are in prison for miscarrying and stillbirths because they ingested something or came into contact with something that could have endangered the baby. Not directly did, but could have. So the mere possibility of danger to the foetus can result in women being jailed for many years. What do you think is going to happen if you ban abortions outright from 27 weeks?

Because once you open that can of worms, how do you go back?

What about women who were denied the ability from accessing an abortion earlier?

What about women who were raped? What caveats would you put in place there? Will she have had to have filed a police report as proof that she was raped? Many victims of rape do not report it for various and obvious reasons. So how will you know she was raped? What happens to that large majority of women who do not report their rape? What about women who are raped at home by their abusive spouse?

Danger to the woman? Okay.. Is her life really in danger? We already have politicians declare that a woman can simply carry it to term, even if the baby is dead. We already have hospitals forcing c-sections on women, some to their death, because of the 'danger to women' argument. Do you see the dangers of such rules and laws? What if the doctor disagrees that her life is in danger? We already have doctors letting women having to travel 90 miles for treatment for their miscarriage and the baby's arm sticking out of their cervix because there was still a foetal heartbeat. And we already have women going septic in some hospitals because of infections that set in after a miscarriage that the hospital refuses to treat due to a foetal heartbeat still being present. So they already ignore danger to the woman, what makes you think they are going to take notice of it in the 3rd trimester?

So that's your response is it?

Well I don't know. You already gave in to several myths about abortion in your previous response. What other ones can you think up?

Noble goals and exemptions. The 1% of women who get 3rd trimester abortions have valid reasons. Women who are unable to access one earlier (there are some women who are even jailed to stop them from accessing one earlier) should not be forced to have to carry it to term against their will and they certainly should not be forced to having to consider an unsafe illegal abortion that could cost them their lives.

You want to reduce the 1% figure? Make it easier and cheaper to access one in the first trimester. Provide safer and cheaper abortions earlier on and provide a safe place for women to be able to access them without the law and pro-lifer's continuously attempting to restrict them - to the point of threatening to kidnap women who are seeking earlier abortions. This is what women face when they attempt to get an abortion. Harassment, abuse, threats of kidnap, threats of death if they attend a reproductive health clinic. Not to mention the stigma involved, the financial cost that many younger and disadvantaged women cannot afford so they have to wait and save up for it, threats and harassment from their families, inability to access one in their state (with forced closures of clinics and laws enacted to restrict doctors ability to provide the service at all).. Then of course you run into the areas of the myths who claim that abortion is used often as a form of birth control, that women are simply irresponsible and don't get one earlier because they keep changing their minds and are somewhat slack.. All of this is what prevents women from getting one earlier. Banning 3rd trimester abortions won't reduce that figure. It'll just mean that women will be forced to resort to unsafe and often deadly alternatives.

Personally, I'd rather women be allowed to access safe health care. But I guess that's just me.

Why do you keep perpetrating this myth about 3rd trimester abortions?

Enough literature has been provided to show that women who get 3rd trimester abortions are for the most part, prevented from accessing one earlier. So why do you carry on as if women are leaving it to that point because they couldn't decide?

Do you want me to ask Fraggle to lecture you on the push to end the drug war laws?

The decades-long global war on drugs has failed and it's time to shift the focus from mass incarceration to public health and human rights, according to a new report endorsed by five Nobel Prize-winning economists.

The report, titled "Ending the Drug Wars" and put together by the London School of Economics' IDEAS center, looks at the high costs and unintended consequences of drug prohibitions on public health and safety, national security and law enforcement.

"The pursuit of a militarized and enforcement-led global ‘war on drugs’ strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage," says the 82-page report. "These include mass incarceration in the US, highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political destabilization in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights abuses around the world."

The report urges the world's governments to reframe their drug policies around treatment and harm reduction rather than prosecution and prison.​

You were saying?

The war on drugs policies is an absolute failure. Everyone recognises this. I'm surprised you actually went there as justification to deny women access to safe health care if they require an abortion in the 3rd trimester.

How is he doing that?

 

Oh I didn't realise that was not allowed. Burn him at the stake!

 

I would say that any and all options available to the mother should be offered. And women who get 3rd trimester abortions are often counseled on those options and asked to weigh up the options and in cases where it is a healthy foetus, they are oftentimes encouraged to deliver it and give it up for adoption if they have not weighed up those options. More often than not, these women know what they want and what they need for themselves and their families. They have factored in their options and I think it belittles them to assume they were just irresponsible and waited that long to decide. But this is also dependent on the time factor. If she is 30 weeks pregnant, the risks to the foetus having no issues that could affect later in life are reduced. Is society prepared to pay for its medical costs and able to place it in a home and with a family that will be able to reach its needs? Could she be charged or arrested or sued for having had the baby at 30 weeks to avoid aborting it?

A third trimester abortion takes days. It is painful, uncomfortable, risky and can take up to 4 days if not more, depending on the woman's cervix and it destroys your mind. I know someone who went through it and it's been close to 15 years now and she still cries about it, she still cradles the baby clothes that she had bought for her baby who never got to wear it. This is not something trivial that women just decide to do as some in this discussion seem to believe. These women aren't changing their minds constantly for 6 months as Kitta seems to assume they do.

I find such arguments to willfully and dishonestly ignore the reality that these women face and it sets a tone that women are either having abortions willy nilly as a way of birth control or they are just stupid or irresponsible. No woman would simply wait that long to have an abortion if she had the choice or the ability to have it sooner. It is long, painful, risky, stressful and emotionally draining for these women to go through this and I think trivialising it as though it's just a case of irresponsibility that led them to that point or their stupidity is offensive and demeaning. Then of course we delve into the realms by which some have tried to argue that women are waiting until just before the baby comes out to abort. This does not happen in reality. This is the reality that many women face:

I read an interview with you recently where you talked about Aron Ralston, the mountain climber who cut off his hand in order to escape being trapped underneath a boulder. You said that women having third-trimester abortions need them the way that Aron needed to cut off his hand. Can you tell me more about that? What's the difference between how people perceive late abortions and what you see at your clinic?

I think that the public perceives first of all that late abortion could be completely eliminated if people would only get their act together and have their abortions earlier, which is completely untrue.

I also think that people assume that women do this casually—that they've known they were pregnant for thirty weeks and then were on their way down to the hair salon and they saw the abortion clinic and they decided to just walk in to avoid the inconveniences of motherhood. That also is completely untrue. No matter how available birth control and first-trimester and second-trimester abortion is, you are always going to have the need for later abortions. A woman would never do this casually. The procedure lasts three or four days, and is fairly disagreeable.

Three or four days, I had no idea.

Yes. It depends on what kind of a cervix you have, but in some cases it can go from Tuesday to Saturday.

Can you tell me more about the "these people need to get their act together" argument?

Well, a large percentage of our patients had no idea that they were pregnant. People go, "How could this possibly be?" Well, look at that reality show. It happens. Maybe you're a little heavy and you already have irregular periods, or you had intercourse once, several months ago, and the guy said he pulled out and there's no sex education in your school so you think everything's fine. Or you never have periods because you're very thin, or a doctor has told you you were infertile.

I could tell you a million reasons why women who are perfectly smart—and they are, these are not stupid women—don't come to know they are pregnant. They have no weight changes, they don't feel sick, they don't feel movement, or if they do they think it's gas. Suddenly someone says, "Hmm, your stomach's looking big, have you taken a pregnancy test?" And the person may have taken a test, and it may have come out negative—I've had women that only got a positive on their third test. And either way they think they just got pregnant. They have no idea they're in their 24th week. So they make an appointment for an abortion, and it takes a few weeks, and they have their ultrasound and find out that they're at 27 weeks, which is too far for an abortion anywhere. So then what happens? They either give up or have a baby, or they go on the Internet and they find us.

[HR][/HR]

The decision on whether to carry out these abortions is up to you completely. In what sort of situation do you say no?

It gets tricky, of course. The further along a woman is with a fetus that's healthy—that's really where it gets hard. If someone finds out about a significant fetal anomaly that's bad enough that they want to terminate the pregnancy, then I believe that's their discretion. Some feel like, "Sure, I can take care of a kid with Down's no problem," and then two months later they're told that the baby also has an irreparable cardiac defect. They're told that the baby will have to have a dozen surgeries in its first year, with a very small chance that it will live past a certain age. And in those cases I see it as the parents' discretion, if they think their child's life will be filled with too much pain and suffering.

There's a disabled-rights side to this, and I don't doubt the ability of people with disabilities to find happiness and fulfillment in their lives, but what I have a problem with is the "I could have been aborted" line. Hell, I'm glad I wasn't aborted too! I just find that argument specious. When parents are saying, "We do not feel we can adequately cope with that issue," I believe them, and I don't think they'd have an easy time putting a child with severe disabilities up for adoption successfully.

So how do you draw lines in the case of a healthy fetus?

It's hard. Essentially I have to say to myself, "Is this a very compelling story?" And I feel very bad about that because who am I to say, "Well, it's compelling because you're 11," and then I see a similar case when the girl's 14 and I think, okay… but then, what if you're 15, what if you're 16? How do we draw these lines? What is the ethical difference between doing an abortion at 29 and 32 weeks? Is there a meaningful ethical difference? Can I justify it? Will I have to justify it, and to whom?

It comes down to a question of safety, many times. If I feel that there is a likelihood that there will be complications, and I won’t be able to finish the procedure in the office—and we’re an office, not a surgery center—I will only do the procedure if there is a fetal anomaly. Not for elective procedures. And I say “elective” as if the woman is choosing between pairs of shoes, and it’s not like that, not even close, but I will turn that patient down. For example, in the movie, I had a patient from France and she just desperately did not want to be pregnant—but she was 35 weeks, and gestational age is plus or minus three weeks, so she could've been at 38 weeks, and that’s just too far along. It wouldn’t be safe.

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So when I hear about bans with exceptions for rape, for example, I think great. So how do you know she has been raped? Will she be required to file a police report? What if she does not, as so many rape victims do not file police reports? Will she be denied as a result?

I don't think people participating in this discussion realise that 90% of counties in the US do not provide early abortions because they are banned or the doctors who provide them are driven out of town or threatened with death or laws are enacted which make it impossible for them to perform them, so in many instances, have no choice but to get one later.

And all the doctors are very worried about that. I mean look at the last couple of years, there has been more restrictions against abortion passed than ever since Roe v. Wade. And just women being in a place where they just can’t get to a clinic, having to travel real far, low-income women having to raise the money to travel far and take time off work to get childcare—all this stuff that women have to go through just to get an early abortion, let alone a late abortion.

Even for early abortions, there’s no provider in 90 percent of counties in the U.S. So I think that’s a big concern for the doctors—what’s going to happen with that in the future? ​

This is the reality.

So why do the people who advocate a ban for late term abortions refuse to discuss it or acknowledge it? How can they dismiss the fact that women will just seek unsafe and illegal options if they ban it, risking their lives in the process? How is this acceptable?

I think any option available is great. But I also think that denying women based on preconceived and sexist notions that women are irresponsible, slack and the like that are so far from reality that it's not even funny to read about them anymore, will only result in women dying.