Then why is it so important to the pro-choice movement to allow women to abort later into the pregnancy? Why the resistance? I suppose if pro-lifers wanted to bump the (elective) abortion limit down to 6 weeks, you wouldn't have any big problem with that?
Well, can we first agree that in about 90% of these cases pretty much everyone would be able to agree? The vast majority of these cases can easily and objectively be separated out with a clear line. Look, even if the doctors were told that in any kind of borderline case, the woman should be given the benefit of the doubt and the decision left up to her, that would still be far better than the current status quo. Besides, even the majority of the remaining abnormalities that are contentious could fit into a handful of easily predicted categories, such as encephalitis or Down Syndrome. So we could debate each of those conditions individually. And maybe we would allow a later cut-off point for the pregnant woman if her fetus had one of these borderline conditions.
Not going to get into this with you. Everybody has their own personal feelings about abortion, nobody is going to agree. You know this is a contentious issue, you have managed to start a fight. You have succeeded.
People have no right to judge what someone else 'needs', or the validity of that need. I've not seen anyone say that women 'need' abortions, I've seen 'women need access to abortion'.
That is a misrepresentation of the issue. The issue is that the right wing wants to have the legislature and the prosecutors make those decisions. Suggesting that would be "better" is just plain ridiculous. There is a reason that doctors are doctors.
Is it really? I don't think it is. Isn't it true that for the majority of these cases, we could all agree whether they were severe "abortion-justified" abnormalities or not? So, for the majority of these cases at least, it's not going to be an issue of the legislature deciding something that is controversial. (I mean when everyone can either agree that the fetus either has a very severe abnormality or it doesn't) Your argument here seems to be one of unpredictable ambiguity. But I'm arguing the level of unpredictable ambiguity with such a law would be far less than you're trying to make it out to be. Yeah, but the truth is you don't actually support the doctor making the decision. So that is irrelevant, isn't it?
What can't YOU get about it's the WOMAN who determines if she needs it....NOT YOU... It is a simple concept...what TF is your problem with it ? LOL, that's really spinning the message to change it to what YOU want it to say... YES, women IN GENERAL need abortions. That doesn't say every woman needs abortion..It says every woman should have the right to an abortion.[/QUOTE]
Do you have a specific argument why they need abortions later in their pregnancies? I see. So this is actually not about "need"?
Why don't you start looking at EVEERY woman as an individual instead of a one-size fits all baby making machine. If a woman is pregnant with triplets, and the doctor tells her at 22 weeks that one of the triplets might be endangering the survivability of the larger two, then that woman NEEDS to be able to MAKE THE CHOICE to possibly terminate the one, even if it's not a sure thing one way or the other. If a woman with 2 kids already develops cancer at week 20 - she MIGHT have to make the choice of starting Chemo right away and aborting this fetus so she can be around to raise the other kids. Now the cancer probably won't kill her during the pregnancy - so it's not going to meet the requirement for "life saving" in the moment, but in two or three years, the delayed chemo might kill her. So who are YOU to determine the choice she makes? So TRY and look at women as individuals instead of shoving them into a box where everything is the same. Don't be simple-minded about this.
It's none of your business whether they need them or not... NOW give a reason why you think YOU should determine if women need an abortion or not. FOR ONCE answer the question : WHO TF do you think you are to determine if women need an abortion or not?
Okay, but surely you would agree not every case of health/abnormality issue falls into that type of borderline and controversial scenario.
WOW!!! Now, you think EVERYBODY is a doctor!!! The question isn't about the "majority" of cases. The question concerns individual cases, not some type of average or majority. Where the heck do you get off with your suggestion that I don't support doctors making medical decisions in conjunction with their patients? What I opposes is requiring doctors to ignore medical training and ignore their patients and instead follow the medical decisions dictated by legislatures and prosecutors - under penalty of prosecution.
Yes, it IS about need...in a way you'll never understand. Women throughout history have needed abortions.
I already addressed that type of argument. In other words, you are refusing to make the argument that she needs it.
That's a dodge....of course they are not the same in every instance ...he told you , ""Don't be simple-minded about this"....you should listen.
If she feels she needs it then she needs it... LOLOL JUST CAN'T ANSWER :FOR ONCE answer the question : WHO TF do you think you are to determine if women need an abortion or not?
But who are YOU to decide that? It's a decision between a woman and her doctors. You don't know the mental health of the pregnant woman. You don't know if she's so stressed out financially at the prospects of having an unplanned child might be giving her thoughts of suicide. You don't know if she might have fibroids that are making the possibility of major complications more prevalent. You don't know if she was raped, and the burden of carrying her rapist's child to term has become too much for her. You don't know crap, Jon Snow - so stop trying to FORCE every woman into your preconceived notion of women.
FoxHastings said: ↑ If she feels she needs it then she needs it... It is NOT an argument , it is a statement of FACT.
We've been over this before in other threads. You don't actually believe it's a decision that should involve her doctors. You believe the choice should be all up to her. So why even bring that up? You wouldn't be in favor of assigning one random doctor to the woman, and if she doesn't like his opinion, she gets one more second opinion from another randomly assigned doctor, and then if she doesn't like that decision, she's out of luck.
I see, so women are getting abortions late into the pregnancies for "mental health" reasons? Sounds like kind of a flaky excuse. Why do I have a feeling that if women were allowed a blanket "health exception", most of these exceptions would end up being for "mental health" reasons?
I'm actually pro-life, but regardless, by definition if the abortion (or any procedure) is elective then it isn't medical necessary. That's what "elective" means. If you're asking if it's "needed" in some other, non-medical sense then you need to define what "needed" means. Otherwise the question is pointless. I doubt it. My experience with average pro-choice advocates (a group which probably includes most of the people I know IRL) leads me to believe that they generally don't argue that most abortions are "needed" in any medical or absolute sense but rather that banning them infringes on women's essential rights to control their bodies and lives. And, as a general rule, most of the liberties we enjoy aren't "needed" in an absolute sense, but it would be tyranny for the government to go around stripping us of anything we can't prove we absolutely need. That isn't the basis of freedom. To be clear, I have my own disagreements with standard pro-choice arguments about bodies and freedoms, but I think it's important to engage people regarding the things they actually believe and that actually matter. Too much of the abortion debate is just people screaming past one another and refusing to seriously consider the other side's perspective.
So now YOU get to play doctor ... dude, give it up. Just admit that you can't view women as individual humans and that YOU want to back seat drive their lives.
Okay, let me rephrase the question. How late do women need to be able to have abortions to still be able to have their "choice"? I mean, if they could have aborted at 5 weeks and, for some reason that is of their own fault, didn't, if she is prevented from getting an abortion at 15 weeks, does that take away her essential choice? I mean when she could have made the choice to find out that she was pregnant and abort earlier, but she did not. Isn't it true, in some sense, that if abortion is prohibited after, say, 10 weeks (for ordinary pregnancies) that she still does -- or rather did -- have choice?
