Janice Turner- the US left is harming the pro-choice cause

[DomesticatedZombie]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-us-left-is-harming-the-pro-choice-cause-8fv6pkzjm

An interesting and level-headed look at the issue in the US over abortion rights and 'progressive' politics.

I don't think the way this is being described in the UK is very accurate though. It's in many ways creating a narrative that's meant to make people angry without really understanding what is going on legally.

Roe vs Wade was never really about enshrining abortion provision, not in the way that you see in British or European law. Which of course has limits, it recognizes that as the pregnancy progresses there are real claims to rights or consideration to the fetus. Whatever feminists want to say about that it is what the vast majority of the population believes, a 30 week abortion is not ethically the same thing as a seven or 12 week abortion and people think that should be reflected in the law.

In the US, it's arguable that abortion provision is a state level issue, and RvW was really a court case about privacy and was recognized at the time as a weak judgement. Some states have gone on to pass their own laws through the legislative process in the years since.

The pro-choice and pro-life lobbies have been happy to maintain focus on that judgement though because what they really want is their own visions of what the law should be to win out, rather than see any real democratic process unfold. The pro-choice lobby does not want laws like those in the UK, they want no laws at all. The pro-life lobby wants to make abortion limited in the extreme. Neither really reflects what most people want which is something like what the UK or most European countries have.

"When the Pope Plays Doctor, Women Die," Margaret Polaneczky

tbtam.com/2012/11/savitas-death-when-pope-plays-doctor-women-die/

The Blog That Ate Manhattan has frequently emphasised that banning abortion doesn't ban the practice, it makes safe practice illegal. One of her blog posts gave me chills back in 2006 and whenever I've remembered it since.

A few days later, I was privileged to listen to an esteemed gynecologic oncologist give a lecture about his life’s work. Amidst his tales of the lab, the operating room and the chairman’s office, he told us stories of the old days before abortion was legal. In those days, the hospital wards were packed with septic abortion patients. He told us how many lives they saved by not waiting for cultures to diagnose clostridial sepsis. They used to mix the patient’s secretions with milk right there in the ER, and look for bubble formation (clostridia is a gas forming bacteria). He told of how he stayed up all night long in the ICU with women who had attempted self-abortion with lye, only to have them die in the morning despite all his efforts. And although he had enormous responsibilities in his specialty, he served for years on the board of his local Planned Parenthood. “It was just something I felt I had to do”, he said. “I hope you never live to see the things I saw”.

That same night, I learned that South Dakota has passed a law that outlaws abortion under any circumstance.

Today, I emailed my colleague that I would accept the position.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, in 1962 alone, nearly 1,600 women were admitted to Harlem Hospital Center in New York City for incomplete abortions, which was one abortion-related hospital admission for every 42 deliveries at that hospital that year. In 1968, the University of Southern California Los Angeles County Medical Center, another large public facility serving primarily indigent patients, admitted 701 women with septic abortions, one admission for every 14 deliveries. (AGI also source for graph above)

tbtam.com/2006/02/doing-the-work-that-has-to-be-done/

Thanks for the insight into US legal situation, Mangy.

Best case scenario, then, is perhaps something that is far clearer and sturdier than Roe V Wade? That firmly sets out women's rights to choose?

Appreciate your balanced posts MangyInseam.
I wonder when the pro-choice lobby morphed into such an extreme position.

I can't comment on when the left (in US terms) did but the moral permissibility of abortion to the point of delivery and infanticide after is an (admittedly extreme) libertarian position that has existed for some time.

blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2012/02/28/liberals-are-disgusting-in-defence-of-the-publication-of-after-birth-abortion/

Trying to find balanced info on the Netherlands' position. Euthanasia for children under 12 is permitted?

nltimes.nl/2020/10/13/euthanasia-proposal-readied-children-aged-1-12

For terminally ill children, yes.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/dutch-government-backs-euthanasia-for-under-12s

Yes, is that what the reference is to 'infanticide', or is it something else?

This is the article referenced above:
(on 'after-birth abortion - content warning, some may find discussion of the ethics of infanticide upsetting)

jme.bmj.com/content/39/5/261

The law needed to be regularised so the Groningen Protocol was introduced.

In the 1990s, end-of-life issues for neonates and infants became a concern for the Dutch pediatric community. A nationwide survey (Van der Heide et al. 1997) in 1995 showed that of 1,041 deaths of children within the first year after birth, 62 percent of deaths were preceded by an end-of-life decision; in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) the frequency was 87 percent. End-of-life decisions were to forego life-sustaining treatment in 57 percent; to administer potentially life-shortening drugs to treat the pain and suffering in 23 percent; and to give a drug to hasten death in 8 percent. A drug was given to cause death in 1 percent (fifteen to twenty cases) of neonates who were not on life-sustaining treatment. The motives for this act were no chance of survival in 76 percent of cases, and poor prognosis if remained alive in 18 percent. A repeat survey (Vrakking et al. 2005) that included the years 1995–2001 showed similar results, with 68 percent of deaths preceded by end-of-life decisions. Most of the decisions were to withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment. Deliberate ending of life of babies remained at 1 percent, or fifteen to twenty cases yearly. An average of only three cases per year of neonatal euthanasia had been reported to the authorities. Obviously, most were not being reported.

These surveys showed that euthanasia of neonates and infants was common practice in the Netherlands. In 2002, the Groningen Protocol (GP) for neonatal euthanasia was developed with the intent to regulate the practice of actively ending the life of newborns and to prevent uncontrolled and unjustified killing (Verhagen and Sauer 2005). The GP for neonatal euthanasia proposes five criteria: (1) diagnosis and prognosis must be certain; (2) hopeless and unbearable suffering must be present; (3) diagnosis, prognosis, and unbearable suffering must be confirmed by at least one independent doctor; (4) both parents must give informed consent; (5) the procedure must be performed in accordance with the accepted medical standard. The authors of the protocol affirm that when these criteria are met, neonatal euthanasia is ethically permissible. The Dutch supporters of neonatal euthanasia state the legal and social climate in their country is receptive to the practice of euthanasia (Verhagen and Sauer 2005).

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240050/

However, my initial reference to extreme libertarians should not be interpreted as a reference to liberals as I do mean libertarians. I was trying (and failing) to find a less difficult item to read that the standard ones on libertarianism.

The full Medical Ethics paper is this:

air.unimi.it/retrieve/handle/2434/813845/1695038/JME%20AfterBirth%20%2bISSN.pdf

For the Dutch law, it needs highlighting that abortion is banned for ANY reason after I think 26 weeks (maybe 30). Before that you don't need a reason, so we get a lot of women traveling from Poland to the clinics here. However, Dutch women have to travel to Belgium for an abortion if they discover generic abnormalities after the limit that will cause still birth. The neonatal euthanasia is necessary because the kinder choice isn't available. There are campaignes to try to change the law

Sorry, I lie. I think late abortion is an option to save a mother's life, so it's not as barbaric as some places

I've just been a labelled a homophobe for complaining about their attitude to the actual birth mother. That and the people on radio here freaking about ' their Ukrainian babies ' annoyed me. I've deactivated FB as a result. It's beyond depressing.

Thanks, stollen.

I have said similar on here several times. There are posters on here who don't help their cause.

@Abhannmor
I read the initial article in the Irish Independent and was shocked by their attitude. They fact that they claimed it was homophobia that was preventing them from adopting a baby in Ireland wa particularly annoying. I know a couple, younger that Mr Dowling and his husband who were told that whilst there was no upper age limit for adoption, at 38 and 39 they would be unlikely to adopt an infant but were considered for adopting an older child, which is what they did. Mr Dowling's sense of entitlement is off the chart, proven in another interview where he espoused his learned beliefs on Irish surrogacy laws
"But I think in Ireland, the rules around surrogacy are absolutely ridiculous. The fact that the female egg is put into the surrogate, and then the surrogate is named as the biological mother just isn't right - it's not even related to the child."

Nothing misogynistic about paying to a woman to fulfil your wants and needs in one of the most difficult ways imaginable then referring to her as 'it'.

On Janice Turner's article, yesterday the NPR (the public television and radio organisation) tweeted about seven myths concerning abortion. Number 4 was that it's not only 'cisgender' women who get abortions, in 2017 462-530 trans men and nonbinary female people also got abortions!

But there has been no such myth at all, because there hasn't been the concept of 'cisgender women.'

I dug the overall US abortion numbers for the same year, from the same source, and found that the total was 862,320.

This means that the percentage of abortions carried out on people who don't accept the label* 'women' or 'girls' was around 0.06% So more than 99.9% of all 'people' who had abortions that year were women and girls.

This places the erasing of the term 'women' into an interesting perspective.

*I use that language, because the vast majority of people are unlikely to possess an abstract gender identity 'cis'. Most people define themselves as women or men on the basis of their biological sex, but that is no longer the way the progressives use the words.

Nicely done, nepeta. This is very telling.

This means that the percentage of abortions carried out on people who don't accept the label 'women' or 'girls' was around 0.06% So more than 99.9% of all 'people' who had abortions that year were women and girls.