Roe v. Wade Potentially Dead

[smac97]

2 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

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Murder is also rare where I come from but we don't discount the importance of having laws to govern it.

I am not discounting the importance of allowing for an exception to a general rule prohibiting elective abortions.  Murder, meanwhile, has no such corollary function as an "exception."

Self defense? 

 

I don't follow.  When is murder "self-defense"?

 

Killing is something covered by all sorts of laws.

Right.  But we weren't discussing "killing."  We were discussing "murder."

2 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

For the most part forbidden. Wether it’s murder, manslaughter, euthanasia, or self defense.

You are conflating a self-defense killing with murder.  That's just not the way of things.  One is a crime, the other is not.

2 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Despite self defense being the very rare exception to the general rule we spend a lot of time on it. 

Murder and self-defense killings are mutually exclusive categories.

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

2 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

Another thing that annoys me are those who say Roe vs, Wade is the law of the land.  NO it is not.  The supreme court is not a law making body.  It consists of judges not lawmakers.  All laws are made in congress. The court simply is like refs who decide whether something is constitutional or legal.  I does not make the rules or laws anymore than a ref in a basketball game can make the rules. 

Most referees do not have a “master rulebooks” that supersedes all the local rulebooks or the authority do decide the master rulebook invalidates some of the local rules. While no law was created the Supreme Court ruling that required that arrested people be given their “Miranda Rights” upon arrest practically creates law.

The Supreme Court is like continuing revelation. A new ruling on scripture doesn’t alter the scripture but it does change emphasis and practice. Okay, that was a bit of a stretch but I like it.

[smac97]

5 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Yep, and if current abortion laws being drafted are any indication the procedure will be humiliating, laborious, and out of the realistic reach of many of the disadvantaged.

It is the American Way!

USA! USA! USA!

The legislative process, as difficult and error-prone as it is, is preferable to sheer fiat by a handful of unaccountable judges.

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

Just now, smac97 said:

The legislative process, as difficult and error-prone as it is, is preferable to sheer fiat by a handful of unaccountable judges.

The comparison is pointless as the judges writing the specifics is not an option.

I am not suggesting it will be difficult to draft or might contain unintentional errors. I am saying I expect the legislation to be deliberately malicious.

[rpn]

I don't think it has ever been constitutional.   And the Congressional members who are talking about doing away with the filibuster to pass a law don't seem to get that THAT would also be unconstitutional because the issue is NOT one of the limited powers of Congress.

Having said that, and being opposed to abortion generally, I will be lobbying in my state for a constitutional amendment that does not make abortion illegal.   My version includes the following items:

1)  Until or unless the legislature includes at least 51% women, the state legislature cannot pass any law about abortion.   I hate that men are deciding what is right for women and society.

2)  Those who are pregnant because of rape can terminate that pregnancy whenever they choose.  (This is the only way to give back their power to these survivors so that they can freely choose to birth and place for adoption or raise.   As a rape survivor, I am appalled that legislators don't understand that they are raping the survivors all over again when they insist on controlling such decisions.  That it is only when a survivor has full power to choose that they may be able to be able to give birth without further and long lasting personal damage.   And there should be laws against anyone who raped anyone having any legal rights involving any child born out of that event, whether it was reported or prosecuted or not.  (Not sure how to adequately protect the survivor and child when the perp didn't perceive it as rape.)

3)  Married women or women who are spending time overnight at their partners homes ("living with them", though it would probable have to be spent at least 5 overnights in the last 30 days or something) should be required to tell the father that they are considering aborting the child before an abortion provider can do it.    I don't think that fathers should have veto, but I do think it wrong for the state to fail to recognize both parents should at least have a discussion about it, absent domestic violence.

4)  Abortions for fetal deformities that are not fatal (or for expected disabilities) should be prohibited, but the state should have a fund to support parents financially who have and raise those children.

5)  I also think that if legislatures prohibits abortions, then it also ought to agree to pay the parents of newborns a monthly sum to raise the ones that aren't aborted.  The US is following the rest of the world in limiting births and if the US also continues to discourage immigration, we are soon going to find ourselves without a sufficient workforce to support our population.   We need to be encouraging new births and that means we absolutely should be paying a stipend to parents (whether they work or don't) to make having/raising children easier.   Maybe we should tie some of the amount to whether the parents are also raising the children in ways that produce good outcomes, but there should be a basic amount.  (Much of the abortion research suggests that mothers who get a little support choose not to abort.) 

6) And then legislators should spend funds campaigning on the value of children in society to persuade mothers not to abort, that there is a manageable outcome other than abortion.

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Most referees do not have a “master rulebooks” that supersedes all the local rulebooks or the authority do decide the master rulebook invalidates some of the local rules. While no law was created the Supreme Court ruling that required that arrested people be given their “Miranda Rights” upon arrest practically creates law.

The Supreme Court is like continuing revelation. A new ruling on scripture doesn’t alter the scripture but it does change emphasis and practice. Okay, that was a bit of a stretch but I like it.

We have allowed the government to go way off the rails in regards to the Constitution.   Congress is the body that declares war.  Yet the executive branch has taken over much of that role now.   The war powers act is evidence of that.  It turned the whole issue on its head by suggesting that President has the power to do whatever he wants but Congress gets a say later.    The founders did not create a second, unelected law making body.  Yet we have allowed it to become one over time. 

[Calm]

54 minutes ago, smac97 said:

would think that the change in the law would be an inducement to report.

Right…inducing/forcing a woman to report if she wanted to be taken seriously who is likely already in a state of terror, that’s compassionate.

[Meadowchik]

53 minutes ago, pogi said:

I was talking specifically about your second point (which was distinct from your first) regarding the woman and the state.  Your point neglected to include the other human involved in the equation.  

Yes, the womb belongs to the woman, and the penis to the man.  This bodily autonomy and ownership of domain doesn't make it right to violate other humans with our body parts.  When it comes to the unborn child, that is the domain of both the man and the woman.

I am not convinced that the welfare of the unborn will improve, as you suggest, if left without protections. 

Per the second point, both dynamics are part of the whole. The first is the biological relationship between woman and unborn. The second is the competing powers of woman and state. Both dynamics matter.

How is the unborn the domain of the man? I am very skeptical of that.

[provoman]

2 hours ago, pogi said:

You were trying to make the argument that abortion should be legal on the basis that religious beliefs should stay out of legislation.  Well, when your religious beliefs align with your conscience (which I feel pretty safe assuming is the case for probably all religious based pro-lifers, then you are making a distinction without a difference.   Your argument isn't going to make religious...I mean conscientious (lets keep it secular, after all)...pro-lifers go away.  Your argument changes nothing. 

I don’t care whether my standpoint changes anything….I really really really don’t care.

”Do what I say because my flying spaghetti monster can beat up your flying spaghetti monster” has been the bain of humanity for thousands of years. When Jesus comes again, we can have a Theocracy, until then, keep religion out of government and government out of religion.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

I would think that the change in the law would be an inducement to report.

It is an inducement to go to the illegal underground “clinic” that offers abortions with no questions asked.

[bluebell]

35 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I suspect various jurisdictions will develop protocols and procedures for this sort of thing.

I'm sure they will.  Whether or not those protocols and procedures will be moral is less of a given.

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Could you elaborate?  We seem to be talking in big generalities here.

I think you know enough to understand that a woman or girl would likely not be functioning in a healthy mental or emotional way after being raped.  I'm not going to elaborate on that.  

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So let's educate them.  

I'm dealing with trying to educate my 7, 8 and 17 year old.  I'm not going to deal with educating grown men who are comfortable wielding political power without the knowledge necessary to wield it successfully.  

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Legislatures have also been making laws that have legalized the elective killing of tens of millions of unborn babies.  Seems like the legislature's job is fraught with peril either way.

The difference, though, is that now the legislatures will have more control, more accountability, and so on.

Yes, and left in their "competent" hands everything is a huge mess, with extremists on both sides just making it worse as time goes on.  And even more fun is that more control does not necessarily equal more accountability.  

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This seems like an eminently fixable thing, though.  By all means let's make sure legislatures are properly equipped with clinical and objective medical data as they craft legislation to manage this very difficult issue.

These people already are equipped with the proper clinical and objective medical data.  They've apparently ignored it.  "You can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink" seems pretty applicable here.

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And yet the status quo for 50 years has been based on the say-so of a handful of life-tenured, unaccountable judges.  Now it looks like state legislatures will be the ones needing to craft policy.  

The states have already been crafting their own abortion policies for years.  That's why every state approaches abortion differently.

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I've never liked the formulation of "legislat{ing} my beliefs," as it makes it sound like religionists are doing something wrong when voting and legislating according to their conscience.  Atheists and agnostics never profess unease about them legislating their beliefs.

This is not a "Church and State" issue.  Religious people can enact their preferences and moral judgment calls to their heart's delight, as long as they do so in compliance with the Constitution.  As regarding abortion, the issue is left to the states and their elected legislatures to decide how to proceed.

 

I agree.  But none of that has anything to do with what I said.  

Christ taught that divorce for anything other than adultery was immoral, but He allows the church to recognize the legitimacy of divorce for any reason, even ones that have nothing to do with adultery.  This is likely because the church could not possible "legislate" (not the right term but I trust you know what I mean) divorce with any degree of fairness in today's world.  

This is what I mean when I say that sometimes--and with some issues--trying to "legislate" morality is too complicated to be plausible in the fallen world that we live in.  

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Getting rid of slavery was even more difficult, and yet it was still worthwhile.

And William Wilberforce did so based on religious conviction.  How very, very awesome that was.

Thanks,

-Smac

 

No it wasn't.  Legislating slavery is fairly straightforward.  It's either legal or not.   Getting people to agree with making it illegal was the hard part.  Legislating it after the decision was made was simple.

If we were trying to get rid of abortion, or make it legal no matter what, then that would be comparable to slavery.  But we aren't. 

We believe, and the church teaches, that abortion is the moral choice under specific and rare circumstances.  It's that "but" in the discussion that makes legislating it so hard.  Legislating exceptions to the rule (especially ones that would be based on being able to prove rape), and doing it justly, is incredibly hard.  Our country has never done it that well when the issue is a political firebrand. 

[The Nehor]

29 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

We have allowed the government to go way off the rails in regards to the Constitution.   Congress is the body that declares war.  Yet the executive branch has taken over much of that role now.   The war powers act is evidence of that.  It turned the whole issue on its head by suggesting that President has the power to do whatever he wants but Congress gets a say later.    The founders did not create a second, unelected law making body.  Yet we have allowed it to become one over time. 

War making power getting pulled away from Congress is more a function of the “rules of war” we have created in the world don’t work anymore and declaring formalized war is basically more trouble than it is worth considering the laws applicable to neutral nations and all the rest. Add in that under current law from the World Wars it gives the President extensive control over the economy, production, trade, etc. This is a good thing when you are fighting Nazi Germany but not so much when you are fighting a local conflict. No one declares formalized war anymore. Military interventions without declared war are also not a recent development. In practice Congress still controls the use of military force through the power of the purse. Congress could stop a military intervention quickly by just making sure the military has no extra money to prosecute the conflict.

[Calm]

5 hours ago, SteveO said:

You think that’s evil, you should see an abortion at 26 weeks…

Two wrongs don’t make a right…

[Calm]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

The protocols and procedures for these things will be sorted out in time.

How long do you estimate it will take and how many victims, including children will have to carry through the pregnancies while it gets sorted out?

And once the protocols are in place, do you believe there will be a timely way to proceed through them for appeals.  Iirc, there was a court case over an abortion that took so long she was into the third trimester, too late.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

34 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I'm not going to deal with educating grown men who are comfortable wielding political power without the knowledge necessary to wield it successfully

Trying to educate them has worked so well so far.

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Andeven more fun is that more control does not necessarily equal more accountability.  

Can you sue lawmakers personally?  For example, if a state was somehow to make it a requirement that an ectopic pregnancy not be terminated unless reimplanted and a woman died because her doctors refused to actively remove it because they knew implantation is impossible with our technology at this time and instead they waited to act until the tube ruptured, leading to her death…could the main sponsor of the bill making it illegal be personally sued as responsible for this woman’s death?

Edited May 4, 2022 by Calm

[sunstoned]

10 hours ago, Nofear said:

I suspect some precedents you were quite happy to be “trampled” upon (e.g. marriage redefinition). I know there are some things I am happy are changing too (just not necessarily the same things).

There are no marriage precedents in American law concerning gay marriage.  No one lost any rights.  Some people gained the right to equable treatment.   This assault on 50 years of settled law and woman's rights is something way different.  It was orchestrated and planned over years by minority elements.  Yes, the majority of the population of the U.S. supports Row.  

[LoudmouthMormon]

4 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

Just about every stat I've seen points to abortion regret being uncommon. Not that it never happens, it's just not likely.

Something else that folks occasionally miss:  The US has lost 171,000 lives in 2022 to COVID.  The US has also had 302,411 abortions in 2022.  So yeah, COVID deaths are uncommon.  Not that they never happen, it's just not likely.  And COVID deaths happen less frequently than abortions.  

Covid source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Abortions source: http://www.numberofabortions.com/?mid=5708452

 

[Calm]

I wonder how many here have had to choose between doing the moral thing to prevent substantial suffering (not of the inconvenient type, but of the ‘if this goes on, please let me die’ variety) and obeying the law…where being found out could be a life altering consequence (will those who discover the crime have mercy or will the law tie their hands and the ax fall?)  Some posts come across with almost a flippant attitude towards individuals, the ‘exceptions’, having to struggle to survive while lawmakers take their time determining what is and isn’t allowed.

I cannot imagine what a doctor who is faced with having to withhold life saving techniques (because lawmakers believe they have a right to insert themselves into areas they are profoundly ignorant and experienced in) must feel like, also knowing that if they save the life, instead of a relative quick recovery, it could take months, years even.  What the mother and her family must feel knowing her life could get back to normal quite easily, caring for her family and community and instead she has to wait, staring at the unknown with no control over her life even when she did nothing wrong or immoral.

I can imagine very well the conflict in less than life and death situations though.  Been through that.

Also so very grateful that living wills and DNRs are allowed now as if we had not been allowed to refuse the treatment that likely would have been highly successful at bringing my dad back from dehydration and major organ failure, albeit in a wheelchair and requiring dialysis, my dad might have had to live for another ten years in his version of a living hell.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Calm

[Calm]

I am not pro-abortion by a long shot; I am very, very pro subsidizing programs that lower rates of abortion and putting into place and having them full up running, in working order programs which remove the need for abortion in most cases prior to criminalizing or otherwise severely limiting abortions.

What is the impact of no abortions on the children:

https://www.statnews.com/2018/12/05/how-abortion-denial-affects-children-well-being/

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For the past decade, I have been leading the nationwide Turnaway Study at the University of California, San Francisco. My colleagues and I have followed more than 200 women who were denied abortions because they showed up at abortion facilities too late in pregnancy. More than two-thirds of these women carried the unwanted pregnancy to term and gave birth. Our study shows that denying a woman a wanted abortion has a negative impact on her life and the lives of her children…

More than half of women who seek abortions are already mothers. There are three sets of children whose lives may be affected by whether a woman receives or is denied an abortion:

the child or children a woman already has when seeking an abortion

the child born from an unwanted pregnancy

the child or children born from a pregnancy after an abortion

By comparing the outcomes of children of women who were denied abortions to those of more than 400 women who received abortions, we have been able to see the impact of abortion on women’s existing and future children.

Our latest research, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, shows what happens to women’s existing children. Consistent with mothers’ concerns that raising a new child would limit their ability to care for their existing children, we found significantly worse socioeconomic outcomes for children whose mothers were denied abortions than those who received them: a greater chance of living below the poverty level (72 percent compared to 55 percent) or living in a household without enough money to cover food, housing, and transportation (87 percent compared to 70 percent).

We also saw a small but significant reduction in achieving developmental milestones among children whose mothers were denied abortions compared to those who received them, possibly related to the increased financial strain on the family.

Among women who seek an abortion but are denied it, more than 90 percent choose to keep and raise the child rather than place it for adoption. What is life like for these children? We compared children born after their mothers were denied abortions to the next children born to women who received abortions. Writing in JAMA Pediatrics, we showed that children born to women who were denied abortions fared worse. They were more likely to live in households where there wasn’t enough money to pay for basic living expenses. Women are also much more likely to report poor maternal bonding — feeling trapped as a mother, resenting their baby, or longing for the “old days” before they had the baby — with the child born after abortion denial than with the next child born following a wanted abortion.

One explanation for these differences is that pregnancies after an abortion are much more likely to be intended than those for which an abortion was sought. As we wrote in the journal Contraception, women who received a wanted abortion were more likely to have an intended pregnancy in the next five years than women who carried an unwanted pregnancy to term. In other words, being able to access abortion gives women the opportunity to have a child later with the right partner, at the right time.

 

 

[Duncan]

One thing too is if abortion is outlawed women will be getting unsafe abortions. I wonder how that will play out. 

[BlueDreams]

32 minutes ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Something else that folks occasionally miss:  The US has lost 171,000 lives in 2022 to COVID.  The US has also had 302,411 abortions in 2022.  So yeah, COVID deaths are uncommon.  Not that they never happen, it's just not likely.  And COVID deaths happen less frequently than abortions.  

Covid source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Abortions source: http://www.numberofabortions.com/?mid=5708452

 

That’s a confusing comparison. I’m talking about the uncommoness of abortion regret, not just abortion. To me you’re comparing a Potential risk (death from covid) to a preliminary event (getting abortion). It makes more sense to compare a preliminary event to event or potential risk with potential risk. Abortion regret as a risk is around 1% after 5 years…2.5% around the first week according to 1 study. That means out of that 302k, only about 2k regret the decision in 3-5 years (numbers staid roughly the same after 3 years). That’s a lot less that 171k. 

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953619306999?via%3Dihub#tbl1

with luv, 

BD 

Edited May 4, 2022 by BlueDreams

[pogi]

39 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am not pro-abortion by a long shot; I am very, very pro subsidizing programs that lower rates of abortion and putting into place and having them full up running, in working order programs which remove the need for abortion in most cases prior to criminalizing or otherwise severely limiting abortions.

What is the impact of no abortions on the children:

https://www.statnews.com/2018/12/05/how-abortion-denial-affects-children-well-being/

 

I agree with any emphasis on prevention.  

We talk a lot about regret after abortion, but what about regret after giving birth, despite originally wanting to have an abortion.  Does this study answer that question?  Does the study give any percentages of how many of those children wish they were not born?  Does it take their voice into consideration?

Does the study offer any solutions to this suffering other than extreme measures of killing human life?  Are we to assume that is the only, or best solution?

It seems to me that the best measures are to prevent unwanted pregnancies and support mothers and children and leave extreme measures for extreme cases.

Edited May 4, 2022 by pogi

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Trying to educate them has worked so well so far.

Can you sue lawmakers personally?  For example, if a state was somehow to make it a requirement that an ectopic pregnancy not be terminated unless reimplanted and a woman died because her doctors refused to actively remove it because they knew implantation is impossible with our technology at this time and instead they waited to act until the tube ruptured, leading to her death…could the main sponsor of the bill making it illegal be personally sued as responsible for this woman’s death?

Hope so!

[katherine the great]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

 

Can you sue lawmakers personally?  For example, if a state was somehow to make it a requirement that an ectopic pregnancy not be terminated unless reimplanted and a woman died because her doctors refused to actively remove it because they knew implantation is impossible with our technology at this time and instead they waited to act until the tube ruptured, leading to her death…could the main sponsor of the bill making it illegal be personally sued as responsible for this woman’s death?

Let’s test it on Idaho legislators. They are trying to pass a law that allows the relatives of an aborted fetus to sue the doctor or any medical professional that assists in an abortion. These are the same legislators who don’t believe in welfare or helping single mothers in anyway whatsoever. They even turned down federal funding for pre-school because women should be in the home and not working. I am not kidding.

[Hamba Tuhan]

49 minutes ago, pogi said:

Does the study give any percentages of how many of those children wish they were not born?  Does it take their voice into consideration?

I taught at an alternative high school in America during an election year. Keen to make our English lessons more topical and relevant, I printed out party platforms and created some classwork around them, culminating in a persuasive writing exercise. Most of the kids in our school were genuinely 'alternative': coloured hair, frayed jeans, chains, piercings, long criminal records, etc. They liked the sound of 'anarchy' as a political concept, and most of them were openly pro-drugs. I didn't give it much thought, but I just assumed they'd tend to be pro-abortion as well.

On the final day, I invited any student who wanted to to read out some or all of her/his persuasive writing (I will/would vote for party X). To my shock, every single student who chose to share had written in support of voting for Republicans. In every case, the single reason was opposition to abortion, and the explanations provided fell into two broad camps: 'I have spent my entire life being told by my mum/parents that I should have been aborted' and/or 'I'm certain that if abortion access were easier, I wouldn't even exist'.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Hamba Tuhan