Blusician wrote:
Quote:
Haskell has said that he devised his D&X procedure because he wanted to find a way to perform second-trimester abortions without an overnight hospital stay, because local hospitals did not permit most abortions after 18 weeks
linked earlier.
The D&X (you call it partial-birth) abortion was developed for
"second-trimester aborions. It was developed so that the woman would have a better chance to bear children in the future.
Yes. The problem is that the procedure has been increasingly used to perform elective
third trimester abortions.
The problem is that everyone insists that they don't think third trimester abortions should be performed unless the life of the mother is at risk, and yet almost none of the third trimester abortions actually performed are performed for that reason. But, strangely, when those same people are shown this information, instead of acknowledging that there is a legal loophole which needs to be closed (such as the law which Obama opposed on the grounds that it wasn't needed), they fall back onto platitudes about the right to abortion and freedom of choice. That, or they run full circle back to the "It's only to protect the life of the mother!!!", even though it's already been proven that this isn't the case being addressed.
Quote:
0-12 weeks = first trimester
13-28 weeks = second trimester
29-40 weeks = third trimester
Those don't actually match what doctors use though. An abortion is considered "late term" if it is performed after the 22nd week (although there is some variation, it's usually close to that point). You're quoting time frames from 35 years ago, which are no longer medically accurate. At 22 weeks, a fetus is potentially capable of being viable outside the womb.
Interestingly enough, while there is some variation here as well, most D&X procedures are only performed for pregnancies past 22 months, for pretty much the same reasons. So it's a non-starter really. In the vast majority of cases, any pregnancy which would require a D&X procedures to prevent damage to the woman would also involve something many would refer to as "infanticide".
Quote:
So publivarus, do you want to ban all D&X's or just the ones after 28 weeks? The bans put-forth so far don't make a distinction. Do you?
Can't speak for him, but the issue isn't just the procedure. It's the timing and viability of the fetus that's at question.
It's a reasonable and medically supported position to argue that no abortions of any kind should be performed after 22 weeks unless the fetus is significantly malformed and unlikely to survive anyway, or the womans life is at risk.
As I pointed out the last time this subject came up, what has happened is that a broad exception for the "health of the mother" has been allowed, which in turn has been expanded to include mental health, and which in turn has become the overwhelming reason all late term abortions not including the two categories I outlined above end out being performed. Last time I showed statistics indicating that almost 2/3rds of all late term abortions were performed purely on the basis of the "mental health" of the woman.
It's a great big gaping loophole in our abortion laws and it ought to be closed. What surprises me is that even those who based on their own arguments for when abortions should be allowed should support the closing of said loophole still oppose it. Oh. They insist that they're still doing it for other reasons, but it's like they're afraid that if they allow a restriction on abortion which is completely reasonable and rational and which matches their own stated opinions that it's still wrong because it moves the law in the direction they don't want.
It's silly IMO, but that seems to be the overriding position of those who oppose closing this late term abortion loophole. While I don't agree with many of the things Varus says on this specific topic, he's absolutely correct that Obama pretty clearly played semantic games with this very issue in order to keep laws on the books which kept this loophole open. He was not acting to protect a womans rights, nor was he acting to ensure that women who's lives were in danger were protected. He acted purely to ensure that a woman could show up at an abortion clinic at any point in her pregnancy, up to and including 32+ weeks, claim that she'd suffer mental harm if she gave birth, and get an abortion.
I'm sorry, but no matter how you weasel the words, that's disgusting.
