The law removes the requirement that a doctor being involved in the decision-making. That pretty much guarantees it will end up being allowed. There will be very little accountability. Some low level health worker that isn't really in a position know anything about the woman's health condition, or ascertain her medical needs, will just mark on a form that she "needed" it for "health reasons". In other words it will be obvious that the law is set up to fail, with virtually no real safeguards to prevent late-term abortion for reasons which are not legitimate. On top of that, the language of the law says that a woman has the absolute right to get an abortion. Which is peculiar because this law is specifically about late-term abortion. So the law will give the strong impression that it is allowed.
It was always allowed if the mother's life was in danger, the law just codifies it so doctors and the mother are protected from possible persecution from overzealous prosecutors. Late term abortions amount to about 1% of total abortions - they are performed in hospitals and because of the dangers, are only done in instances of extreme harm to the mother or when the odds of a successful birth are very low. They aren't performed at the whim of the mother. To put that in perspective, 91% of abortions are performed in the first 13 weeks. No premature baby has ever survived under 21 weeks.
Again, late term abortions are very rare (about 1%) and are only performed in hospitals because of the risks to the mother. One major concern of doctors was to codify the law so that when this procedure is required - when the fetus is no longer viable ( would not survive the birth in such cases as say a Zika baby - which can develop with the brain either exposed or outside the skull or in the case of multiple fetus where it becomes necessary to remove one fetus so that the other two or three can survive) so that they can perform said operation without fear of possibly being charged with a crime. There are simply a number of fetus who do not develop properly in the womb, and would either not survive outside the womb or do so in extreme pain - to force a woman to carry such a fetus to term would just be cruel punishment. If the woman decides she wants to carry such a child to term, then that is her choice - but to force it to happen? That's cruel.
That's a partial lie. For one thing, it's playing a semantics game, because often those "statistics are only counting abortions after 24 weeks. The second thing is that those statistics typically only count medical late-term abortions in hospitals, and will not be so complete when it comes to the ones performed in clinics. The third thing, even a small percent of a huge number can still be a very big number. Lastly, a substantial percentage of abortions after 24 weeks (though definitely not a majority) are not done for real legitimate health reasons. If pro-choicers actually cared about that, they wouldn't be passing these new laws like they did in New York that makes it really easy for a woman to get an abortion after 24 weeks even though there was no real health reason.
Planned Parenthood doesn't perform abortions after 24 weeks - no matter the laws in the state - it's too dangerous for the mother to have it done outside a hospital.
That is totally not true. Plenty of late-term abortions go on in clinics. I know abortions after 24 weeks weeks are (at most) rare in Planned Parenthood clinics specifically, but do you have any evidence that there are no Planned Parenthood clinics that do it?
It is their official policy NOT to perform abortions after 24 weeks. Their insurance would not cover it because after 24 weeks, the possibility of harm to the mother is too great. The only clinics you are going to find performing late term abortions will be back-ally variety - no accredited clinics is going to risk losing their liability and malpractice insurance beyond the 24 week point.
I looked at their site. It seemed to imply that some of their clinics will perform abortions after 24 weeks if there are "health reasons". Am I wrong about that? (Now Planned Parenthood is not as bad as some of these other clinics, and I am sure they would probably be more likely to apply at least some scrutiny to these health reasons, if the state law required them to do so)
After 24 weeks, they will council you, but they will not be the ones performing the abortion. Again, we are talking about an average of 100 abortions per state per year performed after the 24th week.
Well, I'm not so sure about that. It seems like neither one of us is willing to do the research here to verify this.
If 100 people were being killed by assault rifles in each state every year, or 100 people were being killed by terrorists, there would be calls that something needed to be done. Your argument here seems to be "Why worry about whether it's legal or not if the numbers are so small?" Of course, we are talking about intentional killing itself being legal, not something else that could lead to killing, or increase the rates of accidental deaths.
No, my argument is that it needs to BE legal because of medical necessity. You can pretend that every uterus is perfectly formed to carry a child and that every fetus is viable - but it simply isn't true. There are millions of miscarriages every year because crap happens - it isn't a perfect world and not every woman is perfectly formed ( mentally or physically) to carry a fetus to term.
My argument is that there should be reasonable checks and safeguards to ensure that it actually is because of a legitimate medical necessity. We shouldn't just hand these clinics a virtual blank check to do late-term abortions as they see fit. A reasonable check would be to require someone like a licensed doctor to provide verification that there was a real health reason, and report what that is, and make this doctor subject to disciplinary action or losing his license if he is found to be lying on multiple occasions about it. Someone that actually had to go through medical school is going to take their legal obligation a lot more seriously than some low level health worker who can always just switch careers to Starbucks if their job in the abortion clinic doesn't work out. And why, oh why, would this new NY law allow someone to "determine" if the woman needs the abortion if they would have no real idea? Unless of course this new law wanted them to be able to give the woman her late-term abortion.
You realize that one of the leading causes of death for pregnant women in late term stages of pregnancy is suicide, right? Health reasons aren't always going to mean a physical problem. For the small percentage of women getting abortions that late in term, the stress factor is huge.
So now we're venturing down the grey hole of "mental health" reasons. Oh my, isn't that a slippery slope. "I feel like I'm going to kill myself if you don't let me have my abortion"
I documented crime scenes for 9 years. One of my first cases involved a the suicide of a 16 year old girl who was afraid to tell her parents she was pregnant after being raped by her Uncle. So basically what I like to tell you after reading the asinine post you just posted would get me banned.
That's a very difficult situation, but you do realize that the legalization of a late-term abortion might not have solved this girl's problem? If she didn't go to someone for help and obtain an abortion before, would you not agree that it is unlikely she would have done so later? You don't know that the suicide was because she knew it was too late for her to get an abortion. It is just as likely the suicide was because she knew she would no longer be able to conceal the pregnancy, and then her parents would start asking the questions and then what had happened would all come out. I suspect the suicide had more to do with shame, her not wanting her parents to know that she was pregnant and had been raped by her uncle. Again, let's remember that she didn't get an abortion before (which would have been legal), so the issue was more likely about her access to abortion. In addition to that, I'm also going to point out that even if this girl had gotten an abortion in that situation, there's no way to know that she would not still have ended up committing suicide. A teen girl with a slender body frame will start looking obviously pregnant by 16 weeks. Abortion would have still been legal to her at that point. So something tells me this girl probably did not commit suicide because she knew abortion would be illegal after 24 weeks.
But if it's not an option - then it is one more roadblock to her health. She wasn't mentally ready to carry a fetus to term and certainly not her rapist's baby to term. What you want is to FORCE women - some who have been raped - to carry to term - irregardless of the mental and physical trauma that comes with doing so. You simply don't care. A woman is nothing more than a sperm receptacle and incubator for you.
But she didn't get an abortion before, so there was obviously something stopping her, and it wasn't the law. Just admit that your story is not very applicable to the topic being specifically addressed in this thread.
Under Trump we had ZERO new wars and peace around the world. Even Afghanistan and Iraq are about done. So to say we conservatives and Trump supporters want a war is not true. I'm happy with world peace.
I have never understood how it makes sense to carve out an exception for late-term abortion in the case of rape. A woman who happened to be the victim of traumatic impregnation against her will will have plenty of time to take care of the situation, probably more time than a normal woman who got unintentionally pregnant during the course of continued sexual relations.
Speak Out: Cuomo Celebrates Abortion Legislation - YouTube Why Is New York Celebrating Abortion Up To Birth? - YouTube Here's a video of the New York legislature enthusiastically applauding after the bill was signed into law: https://twitter.com/i/status/1087830306823041024 Loud whistles and shouts of enthusiasm can be heard across the floor. (The video is only 7 seconds)
You don't understand because you think women are NOT HARMED during rape....a very naive view.. Women are HARMED during , before and after rape, they are tortured, beaten, SOME DIE......they do NOT "have plenty of time" to take care of a pregnancy. They may be in surgery, in a coma, mentally traumatized so as not to be able to make a decision at that time. Your cold hearted attitude that women are NOT harmed by rape shows a complete and toal NON-understanding of the whole issue...
