Last year, Amanda Marcotte said that she doesn’t consider “Feminists For Life” and similar groups to be feminists. Cathy Young (who is pro-choice), disagreeing with Amanda, wrote:
But that doesn’t mean there should be no place at the feminist table for women who genuinely believe that abortion is the taking of a human life, no dialogue or search for compromise. Yes, even the biggest tent must have some boundaries: to expand “feminism” to include advocacy of male superiority or female submission would strip the concept of all meaning. But, last time I checked, women who held such views were in no rush to appropriate the term.
I have no problem accepting that women (or men) “who genuinely believe that abortion is the taking of a human life” can also be feminist. But at the same time, to be a feminist, one should consistently oppose policies that damage women’s well-being, autonomy, and equality.1 Otherwise, being “feminist” would be meaningless.
So, can a pro-lifer be feminist? I think so, if “pro-lifer” is defined as “one who believes that preserving fetal life is essential.”2 Let’s look at a Venn diagram:
The diagram shows two areas, labeled “Feminists believe that preserving women’s autonomy is essential” and “Pro-lifers believe that preserving fetal life is essential.” Where the two areas overlap is labeled “Feminist and pro-life.”
So a feminist pro-lifer is someone who considers both women’s autonomy and fetal life essential to preserve. So this person would be dedicated to lowering the abortion rate — but would want to do it through means that value women’s autonomy, by using non-coercive means of reducing the demand for abortion.
This doesn’t mean that they’d have to accept high abortion rates. In the real world, countries that practice such policies — Belgium and Switzerland, for instance — have incredibly low abortion rates. There is no conflict between wanting freedom for women, and preserving fetal life.
In contrast, a “feminist” pro-lifer who favors banning abortion — with all the enormous harms an abortion ban has on women’s autonomy, freedom, and equality, and despite the fact that bans don’t preserve fetal life any better than other policies do — is treating women’s autonomy as if it’s not essential at all. In my view, that person isn’t being a very good feminist.
(Similarly, someone who is entirely dedicated to preserving women’s equality, but is indifferent to preserving fetal life, isn’t being a very good pro-lifer. Not even if they say they’re pro-life.)
If people who throw women’s autonomy and equality out the window as soon as another priority comes up are feminists, that would, as Cathy says, strip the term of all meaning.
- This is not the definition of “feminist” I’d use generally, but it’s functional for the purposes of this post. [↩]
- I’m not sure I’d use that definition generally, but it’s the one I’ll use for purposes of this post. I’m very skeptical about the motivations of the major pro-life groups and leaders, but I’m sure some individual pro-lifers are genuinely motivated by a desire to preserve fetal life. [↩]
Also note that in France abortion is only generally available in the first 12 weeks. Yes that is twelve weeks. After that, two physicians must separately certify that the abortion will be done to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; a risk to the life of the pregnant woman; or that the child will suffer from a particularly severe illness recognized as incurable. A multi-disciplinary diagnostic center is required to certify if relying on the birth defect exemption.
Your googling classified France as having no significant restrictions? Ummmm, that is ridiculous. Their laws are much more restrictive than ANYTHING we have talked about as even remotely likely in the US.
I think the burden now shifts to you if we’re going to take it seriously.
Because I think lots of people won’t click through, and because I think lots of Americans really aren’t aware of how much more restrictive Europe is for abortions, I’m going to quote from YOUR link. Especially note the extremely large number of countries which only allow unrestricted abortion in the first 3 months and then have very strong restrictions after that.
Belgium:
Gestational limit: 12 weeks
Conditions: Woman must say she is in a “state of distress”. Abortions allowed at any stage later in pregnancy if two physicians agree there is a serious risk to the health of the mother or that the child has an “extremely serious and incurable disease”.
The woman must receive counselling at least six days prior to procedure, which must be performed by a physician under good medical conditions in a healthcare establishment with the proper information resources.
Six day waiting period? 2 separate physicians? Most abortions illegal after 3 months? NARAL would not be happy. You counted them as NO.
Czech Republic
Gestational limit: 12 weeks
Conditions: Requires consent of the woman and authorisation by her gynaecologist. After 12 weeks, pregnancy can be terminated only if the woman’s life or health is endangered or in the case of suspected foetal impairment. The procedure must be authorised by a medical commission and performed in a hospital. Therapeutic abortion is permitted up to 26 weeks.
Women who have had an abortion are not allowed another within six months unless they have had two deliveries, are at least 35 years of age or the pregnancy was the result of a rape.
You counted them as a NO.
Finland
Gestational limit: 24 weeks
Conditions: Abortions permitted up to 12 weeks to save the woman’s life, to preserve her mental health, for economic or social reasons or in the cases of rape or incest.
Available up to 20 weeks if there is a risk to the physical health of woman or if she is younger than 17. The procedure can be performed up to 24 weeks if the woman’s life is at risk or there is a risk of foetal malformation.
An abortion must be authorised by one or two doctors up to 12 weeks, or by the State Medical Board up to 20 weeks.
You amazingly counted them as a NO.
France I’ve already talked about. But even from your link:
Gestational limit: 12 weeks
Conditions: The woman must claim to be in a “state of distress” because of her pregnancy. After 12 weeks, abortions are allowed only if the pregnancy poses a grave danger to the woman’s health or there is a risk the child will suffer from a severe illness recognised as incurable. If this is the case, two doctors must confirm the risk to the health of the woman or foetus.
You counted France as a NO.
Germany
Gestational limit: 12 weeks
Conditions: The woman must receive proper counselling three days before the procedure. The state-regulated counselling is required to inform the woman that the unborn have a right to life and to try to convince her to continue her pregnancy.
I’ll admit this one at least doesn’t say what the doctors have to do so I won’t complain too much about you saying “NO” on Germany. But we should all note again the 12 week limit, the three day mandatory counselling and the mandatory mention of right to life (and that they are to try to convince her not to get it). I’d say that certainly supports my contention about Europe being a lot more pro-life than NARAL would be happy with.
Spain
Gestational limit: 22 weeks
Conditions: Abortions are allowed to avoid serious risk to physical or mental health of the woman within the first 12 weeks. If the pregnancy is a result of rape, the rape must first be reported to the police and the procedure carried out within 12 weeks of pregnancy.
In case of foetal impairment, two specialists, other than the doctor performing the abortion, must certify that the child would suffer from severe physical or mental defects. The procedure must be performed within the first 22 weeks.
All abortions must be reported to the national health authorities.
You shockingly called that a NO.
Sweden
Gestational limit: 18 weeks
Conditions: Between 12 and 18 weeks of gestation, the women must discuss the procedure with a social worker. After 18 weeks, permission must be obtained from the National Board of Health and Welfare.
At least you gave me a YES on that one. Note this is SWEDEN. Normally thought of as one of the more liberal places on earth.
I didn’t bother reproducing all of the text from the little countries. But I wasn’t at all impressed by your summary. It might even have been somewhat misleading.
But suffice to say nearly all of the major EU countries have MUCH more restrictive abortion laws than we have discussed here. And they have much more restrictive oversight than anyone here seems ok with. And even in those cases (like the netherlands) where you didn’t see a special call out for oversight, they are still being done under national health care, with all of the documentation entailed for that.
I wasn’t looking for “significant restrictions, ” Sebastian, since that isn’t what you were talking about. I was looking for support for your claim:
So the “NO” you see listed indicates that there is no support for the documentation that you claim is required in almost every European country, not that there are no significant restrictions.
From the link that your search terms led to:
Can you point me to where it says anything about, “… the doctor [must] document why a late term (which in Europe typically means 20-24 weeks or later) occurred complete with charts and all medically relevant tests which prove it?”
I think the burden remains on you to provide support for your various claims. So far you have provided no evidence in your favor. I’m not even disputing the facts here with you, I’m asking you to provide documentation of what you claim the facts are.
You have failed to satisfy my request for evidence ever since I asked at comment #28. Is it that none exists? Is it that you don’t know how to provide evidence? What? It isn’t my job to show that you’re wrong when my question was merely to ask for support to your assertions.
But this is par for the course, ime, when discussing abortion with pro-lifers. It’s all claims and emotional appeals with not one whit of evidence. It’s like facts aren’t important to you. It’s really disappointing because I think that there is room for a fact based discussion of the current and future state of abortion laws that could lead to at least some agreement. It’s just impossible to get there if one side actively avoids factual evidence.
You keep moving the goalposts, Sebastian. Once again, your claim – the claim for which I am asking you provide factual support was:
You are now pretending that I’m disputing that most European countries have restrictions as significant as those in the US. This is dishonest.
How about providing support for your claim that:
This is one that I think has a great likelihood of being at least tangentially true. Yet rather than provide any sort of evidence, you lied and said that you had shown this to be true.
You are arguing in bad faith. And you are arguing against somebody who did not dispute your initial claims, you are arguing against somebody who was interested in your claims but wanted some evidence as to the truthfulness of those claims.
You don’t provide evidence to support your claims, you lie about having provided evidence, you try to derail inquiry into your claims by moving to a different subject, you lie (or are confoundingly mistaken) about the evidence that I ask you for. These are all signs of somebody who is making stuff up.
Read back through my comments and see if you can provide the support for your claims that I asked you for. Those are comments numbers 28, 49, 72, 76, 79, 93 (which shows how you provided no evidence when you claim that you did), and 97 (that’s the one that you are trying to say I was asking for evidence that most European countries have more stringent restrictions on abortion than the US when, in fact, I asked you to support your claim about documentation required by most European countries – dishonest).
99 is where I call you on the fact that your google search terms lead to no links that support the assertion that:
And somehow you read that as me saying that, “European countries do not have restrictions as stringent as those in the US.”
Just answer my damn questions. I’m not trying to prove you wrong, I’m trying to see if your claims are factual. At this point, I strongly suspect that you’re making shit up, but I didn’t start out that way.
You lied about the content of your links.
You’re wrong about Europe.
I’m not going to google for you when you don’t even appear to give a damn about what the actual facts are. The facts are that Europe is MUCH more restrictive than we’ve discussed previously. Europe is also much more restrictive about why late term abortions are permitted and how they are permitted. If I was wrong about any of that, it was that I was UK-centric and said post 24 weeks when I should have noted that many of the large countries don’t even allow it post 12 weeks.
I’m not going to get sucked into a “please google for me” game when you don’t even seem to care about the actual content and want to lie about it when you summarize your links.
“It’s really disappointing because I think that there is room for a fact based discussion of the current and future state of abortion laws that could lead to at least some agreement. It’s just impossible to get there if one side actively avoids factual evidence.”
Holy shit. Accusing me of bad faith after the summary you gave of the link you provide is just ridiculous.
Sebastian and Jake,
Your exchange is tedious and pointless (I just wasted an hour trying to find any answer to the question of what documentation France or the UK requires from doctors performing (or assenting to) later-term abortions and found nothing of note. Non-late term abortions require that the doctors sign a form and (in France) keep records of the consultation, but I couldn’t find anything for late-term abortion rules).
I am intervening as a mod to redirect this discussion (Amp, of course, can overrule me if he pleases):
Sebastian,
From your exchange with Jake it is clear that you are not speaking from any particular expertise, but only from a vague impression, about what the actual policy in “Europe” (or even specifically the UK) is. Acknowledge that or don’t, but move on. The shouting match is tiresome.
However, Jake, let us accept Sebastian’s claim about “Europe” as a statement only of his desires for US policy.
Sebastian,
Please move on from arguing with Jake about European abortion documentation procedures and instead answer chingona’s questions about how the “European” policy you favor would work:
I think it is possible to be a “feminist” and “pro-life” if someone were to keep such a value to themselves and not impose it on other people. If I were to consider myself “feminist” and “pro-life,” should the event arise that I found my impregnated, I would, by theory, keep the child to term, whether I could properly care for the child or not. However, if I had say a friend who had become impregnated and decided she could not care for the child or was in a situation where being pregnant would be dangerous for her, I would not try to convince her otherwise if she decided to have an abortion, or admonish her if she has an abortion, or even praise her if she decides to keep the child.
It is not in my place to hold other people up to my standards or values, because people are different from me and different scenerios can not be properly applied to static values. I think “pro-life,” only when applied to the “self” (me in this example) allows me to maintain my bodily autonomy as a human and as a woman, but trying to apply it to the “outter self” (my friend in this example) denies her bodily autonomy, which I believe is antithesis to “feminism.”
It could work like Sweden or France, require late term abortions to get pre-authorization through review of the medical board or other outside specialist group. Except unlike Sweden or France, we’d probably define late term abortion around 20 or 24 weeks instead of the 12 or 18 weeks they use.
I’d be ok with something like the French definition: After that [the allowable gestational period for on demand abortions, which in France is 12 weeks], two physicians other than the abortion doctor must separately certify that the abortion will be done to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; a risk to the life of the pregnant woman; or that the child will suffer from a particularly severe illness recognized as incurable. A multi-disciplinary diagnostic center is required to certify if relying on the birth defect exemption.
I wouldn’t go as far as Germany, with the mandatory counseling about the right of the baby to live because that strikes me as over-moralizing.
Again I don’t understand the question about how it *would* work. That is how does work. There is no need to make it sound like I’m advocating a hypothetical.
I wouldn’t go as far as Germany, with the mandatory counseling about the right of the baby to live because that strikes me as over-moralizing.
Much as I’m glad I’ve never had to have an abortion, I’ve always wanted to quote this song to a counselor. A Catholic counselor. In Bayern.
Actually, I’d have no real problems with a limitation on late abortions if and only if the following criteria were met:
1. Exceptions were made for increased risk to the mother’s life or health or for fetal abnormalities incompatible with life.
2. The requirements for “proving” these exceptions weren’t excessively arduous (i.e. requiring 2 doctors to sign off on it in outer Wyoming or requiring 3 clinic visits, or anything else obviously extraneous to the question.)
3. Birth control were readily and inexpensive or free.
4. Early abortion were readily available and inexpensive or free. And I mean readily available to all: 15 year olds, people who live in deepest Montana, people in inner cities, etc.
5. It weren’t just the first step towards eliminating all abortion and, ultimately, all birth control.
6. “Late” were reasonably defined.
7. It was acknowledged that fetuses were being given a special privilege that is not given to living people and that this was being done for social squick reasons and is really rather irrational. This is important because when people start asking things like, “Is this really a reason to allow abortion? It’s just (mental illness, risk of blindness, a baby which will die by the age of 2) ” one can fall back on the knowledge that it’s better to err on the side of protecting the real person and forgetting our collective fantasy about the fetus.
To tell the truth, I suspect a society with the above laws would have a late abortion rate virtually identical to one with no restrictions whatsoever. Because really why would any woman have an abortion in the second or even third trimester if she could get one earlier unless something went wrong late in the game?
Ugo,
“It is not in my place to hold other people up to my standards or values, because people are different from me and different scenerios can not be properly applied to static values”
If you’re talking about the belief that a fetus is a human being, with equal rights to a born human, and suggesting that this belief be applied _only_ to oneself and one’s own fetus, then it follows logically that you believe any attempt to prevent an adult from doing something to their own child is inappropriate, so long as the adult is acting according to their own beliefs.
I doubt that you actually believe that; but your thinking appears to be that of a person who is working backwards from a desired conclusion.
If two people differ over whether a one-year-old deserves full protection under the law, it would be unreasonable to say, “let’s agree to disagree.” Agreeing to disagree only makes sense if the idea that an embryo or fetus is not a human being with rights equal to its mother is plausible to you.
Dianne,
Those all seem like very reasonable policies, except what is the special privilege that you believe fetuses would be getting, wrt born humans?
two physicians other than the abortion doctor must separately certify that the abortion will be done to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; a risk to the life of the pregnant woman; or that the child will suffer from a particularly severe illness recognized as incurable. A multi-disciplinary diagnostic center is required to certify if relying on the birth defect exemption.
So, if the woman dies while signatures and certification and approval are being obtained, you’re okay with that?
what is the special privilege that you believe fetuses would be getting, wrt born humans?
The privilege of living parasitically off an unwilling victim who is being legally forced to continue the parasitic relationship.
“So, if the woman dies while signatures and certification and approval are being obtained, you’re okay with that?”
So, do you think that is how it works in France and Sweden? Or do you perhaps suspect that in emergencies they allow emergency measures with the review afterward? I suspect that in true emergencies you do what you must. And I’d support that in law.
How frequent do you think cases are where the mother needs an abortion right that second, or she’ll die?
How frequent do you think cases are where the mother needs an abortion right that second, or she’ll die?
Pretty frequent, actually. Remember the case in Arizona not too long ago where the woman had an abortion in a Catholic hospital and the people involved were reprimanded? She wouldn’t have survived a transfer to another hospital. I could give you a half dozen other scenarios (some of which I’ve seen) if you’re interested.
Ok, maybe none of them are “that second” but they’re on a similar time frame as an emergency c-section or appendectomy. Things you do RIGHT NOW and don’t wait for the ethics committee to meet to decide whether to do them or not.
So would that be on the scale of 1 in 1,000, 1 in 10,000, 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1,000,000?
And do they happen less frequently in France?
It’s not just a question of whether they happen less frequently in France. (Though if women have better access to birth control and early abortions, they might.) The fact that a policy exists (at least according to you, since you haven’t actually provided links) doesn’t mean a) that it’s a good idea or b) it will work somewhere else.
Right now, in *this* country, we have a hospital whose ethics committee decided in favor of a life-saving abortion, only to have that decision roundly condemned and the people involved excommunicated. (France being generally a much more secular culture than the US, I’m guessing they have fewer religious hospitals.) We also have a state where making a couple watch their baby die slowly over 45 minutes was the law “working as intended.”
I think that this kind of system would be a bad idea *here* because doctors already know that even in a life or death situation, those in charge of review aren’t necessarily going to back them up when they do what’s necessary. Because that’s how it’s currently happening in states with severe limitations and in Catholic hospitals. In Nebraska, it only took a month or so from the passage of the “no abortions after 20 weeks” law for horrible consequences to show up.
In an emergency, I really don’t want the doctor to be contemplating whether a malpractice suit for letting someone die is better than a ten thousand dollar fine and a jail sentence.
I don’t know exactly what the frequency of life-threatening complications are. The straight up risk of death from pregnancy/childbirth in the United States is around 1 in 4,000, I think. (1 in 10,000 if you have a vaginal birth, 1 in 2,500 if you have a c-section). So the frequency of life-threatening complications has to be greater than that.
My concern isn’t that we more frequently have life-threatening complications here but that we have more people who would let women die or become disabled rather than allow the abortion.
The case of the Catholic hospital in Arizona wasn’t even a late-term abortion. I think she was toward the end of the first trimester. The hospital staff did the right thing, but at least one of them was excommunicated for it. I’m not Catholic, but word is, that’s pretty damn serious. That we have people willing to make that sort of threat to stop abortions even in the most medically necessary cases (this woman would almost certainly have died, taking her non-viable fetus with her), makes me more nervous to give a lot of authority to third parties. I think we probably wouldn’t be as bad as Poland or some of the Latin American countries, but I think there are parts of this country – indeed, already are parts of this country – that would be much less humane than the Western European countries. (Reading the criteria you listed, it seems the Deavers of Nebraska, from Amp’s set of links, would have been able to get an abortion in France, but were not able to here. Just saying.)
You seem to be taking a sort of “reasonable person” standard – surely they wouldn’t let a woman actually die! – and I’m not confidant at all that I can rely on people to actually apply a reasonable standard. Believe me, I truly wish that I could be confidant of that. I’m really not trying to pull some get-out-of-jail-free, yay-for-late-term-abortions card.
Another problem in the United States, besides the distance that many people live from medical care and the cost of accessing it, is that abortion has been systematically segregated from general health care. If women got abortions from their regular ob/gyns or nurse-practioners and if later abortions were performed in the hospitals where they otherwise would deliver their babies, instead of in free-standing clinics, it would be both easier for women to get abortions when they needed/wanted them, it would be easier to implement things like second-doctor reviews or a medical review board, and it would be harder for someone like Gosnell to do what he did for so long.
All that said, provided allowances are made for how people receive health-care here, I don’t have a problem with something like a second opinion or a review board, provided it could be convened very quickly (and again, the fact that we’re talking out-of-hospital clinics and vast stretches of sparsely populated territory do complicate that). In fact, I think women and their families would be very well served by a second opinion for things like fetal anomolies or cases where a pregnant woman is diagnosed with cancer and needs to start treatment right away, but the fetus is on that cusp of viability. (Everyone I know or have every heard of in real life who developed a serious complication from about 28 weeks on was delivered emergent, and abortion wasn’t even brought up, so I suspect we’re mostly talking between 20 and 28 weeks here.)
In terms of fetal rights, though, I agree with Dianne that fetuses shouldn’t have special rights under the law. We’re already in that territory in that doctors have repeatedly obtained court orders to force women to have cesareans or other interventions, and in many of those cases, the intervention ended up being unnecessary. This woman had her baby taken away from her by the state because she refused to sign a pre-consent form for a c-section, even though the baby was born totally healthy in a normal vaginal delivery. In many, many jurisdictions, prosecutors have used child abuse laws to put pregnant women in jail because they were drug addicts (not court-ordered treatment programs, which would be one thing, but jail/prison).
Enshrining a fetus in law as the equivalent of a baby just facilitates that trend and makes it harder for women to push back against it. I do not believe that a woman stops having a right to bodily autonomy and to make medical decisions for herself just because she is pregnant. I think the right to refuse a c-section should be absolute. That means that every now and again, a baby is going to die during delivery that could have otherwise been saved. Forcing c-sections, though, would mean that women who would have otherwise lived will die. Because of the way that the fetus and the mother are intertwined, there is, as Amp said, no way to ensure that bad things will never happen.
“You seem to be taking a sort of “reasonable person” standard – surely they wouldn’t let a woman actually die! – and I’m not confidant at all that I can rely on people to actually apply a reasonable standard.”
Not really. I’m confident that we have a very strong abortion friendly lobby in the United States. So strong in fact that from their perspective, the rules in most of the European countries would be classified as unacceptably pro-life.
That PLUS a reasonable person standard means that the laws wouldn’t be letting women (and presumably their fetuses too) die.
And there seems to be a weird side step in the logic about doctors. We’re supposed to trust unaccountable individual doctors to make the right choices about aborting late term babies with no oversight and often no documentation other than “it was ok”. But we’re supposed to NOT trust accountable panels of doctors with being able to authorize those choices (or review them) with medical evidence presented. That isn’t a logically *impossible* situation I suppose, but it surely deserves a lot more examination than what we have above.
[The most likely explanations that occur to me is that you haven’t thought that dichotomy through very much, or you don’t believe the fetus counts for anything important, so lack of oversight isn’t a problem as nothing bad really happens if the doctor breaks the law. But that ultimately is just rejecting the pro-life position and then hiding/lying about the rejection by pretending to have laws about late term abortions but working to make them unenforceable.]
BTW, I moved from chingona’s discussion in the first half of the above comment to Dianne’s in the second without making it obvious I was transitioning. Sorry about that.
I call this style of pro-life argument: “Woman? What woman?”
It’s not “doctors” we’re saying should be making the choices. It’s women in consultation with their doctors.
It’s not possible for everyone to be the decision-maker. Nor is it always clear-cut what the right decision is. So when a decision has to be made, who do you want making it? You say you want a committee of doctors to decide if a woman has to take the chance of going through with a dangerous pregnancy; we say it should be the woman’s decision.
And yes, I hold a fetus — even a late-stage fetus — in less regard than a born, adult person. I’d rather err on the side of having an occasional woman make a decision to abort that I might disagree with, rather than erring on the side of having an occasional woman killed or maimed because she couldn’t find a third doctor to sign off on her decision. In contrast, your policy in effect says that we should accept some women getting needlessly maimed or killed, as long as we err on the side of having fewer abortions.
Another way of thinking of it is that occasional avoidable deaths will inevitably happen — in your preference, the ones dying will be occasional women, in my preference, the ones dying will be occasional viable, healthy later-term fetuses. But in your preference, women’s freedom and self-determination is thrown away like garbage, whereas in my preference, it’s treated as if it were important. Isn’t a system with rare avoidable deaths and more freedom, preferable to a system with rare avoidable deaths and more government fascism?
I don’t think people stop being people, with all applicable human rights, just because their brains stop functioning and their hearts stop beating.
So we should make it illegal for people like that to be buried, cremated, autopsied or used as a source for donor organs — as far as I’m concerned, all of that is murder.
Don’t say we’ll have to agree to disagree — agreeing to disagree only makes sense if you refuse to recognized the equal personhood and rights of those people without brainwaves or heartbeats. Clearly, the only reasonable solution to our disagreement is for the law to take my side, and thus err on the side of life.
Next: Why chicken eggs are people with a moral right to a full slate of human rights, and the government should therefore outlaw omelets.
You know, Sebastian, I thought we were getting past the offensive accusations of bad faith, but that last paragraph is really a doozy. You seem to think you are the only person here who understands what fetal life is or who cares about children or who isn’t some sort of amoral monster. I have put my life on the line twice to bring life into this world, which is something you have never done and never will. So just knock it the fuck off.
I’m going to address your point, but if you continue to be so openly condescending, I will not respond to any further comments.
First of all, if we really had such a strong “pro-abortion” lobby in this country, we wouldn’t have the majority of counties without a single provider, we wouldn’t have laws like they have in Nebraska, we wouldn’t have the Supreme Court uphold the partial birth abortion ban (not a ban on late abortions, but a ban on an abortion technique that is safer for women and that protects their future fertility better than other abortion techniques, as well as giving them an intact fetus to hold and bury if that is their wish).
And there seems to be a weird side step in the logic about doctors. We’re supposed to trust unaccountable individual doctors to make the right choices about aborting late term babies with no oversight and often no documentation other than “it was ok”. But we’re supposed to NOT trust accountable panels of doctors with being able to authorize those choices (or review them) with medical evidence presented. That isn’t a logically *impossible* situation I suppose, but it surely deserves a lot more examination than what we have above.
It does deserve a little more examination, but it’s not “logically impossible.” First, it’s not that I trust doctors with no oversight so much as I trust the vast majority of women who have made it to the third trimester to care more about the fate of their fetuses than a panel of doctors would. Yes, there are women who would seek a non-medically necessary abortion late in pregnancy, but I do genuinely believe they are a tiny minority. (In the Utah case, you seem to see a monster. I see someone who must have been incredibly desperate to try something so dangerous and stupid, but I think she probably needed someone to talk her down off the ledge more than she needed a legal abortion at that point.)
But okay, let’s stipulate that these women exist, and as a society, we want to prevent them from having abortions. What I said in my previous comment is my genuine and heartfelt position: I’m okay with a second opinion. I’m okay with a review panel. However, a panel – somewhat by design – is going to represent institutional and political interests more than it is going to represent the best interests of the patients. A panel can say, well, there’s only a 10 percent chance that she’ll end up blind and only a 2 percent chance that she’ll die, so that’s not really that bad, in a way that an individual doctor who has to face the patient and her family might have a harder time doing. There’s also examples of medical boards – most famously in the case of Angela Carder (see my link on court-ordered c-sections) – overruling doctors to force interventions that killed patients. Also, in this country, where abortion is politicized in a way that it largely isn’t in Europe, I would be concerned if, say, legislators got to appoint people to the panel. I still don’t know if you have read any of Amp’s links (a simple “yes, I’ve read them” would reassure me), but I find the examples of what has happened in states like Nebraska very non-reassuring in terms of having a humane oversight policy. We have real-life examples of how this has worked in countries where abortion is very politicized, and they scare me. So I think the individual doctor is less likely to approach the situation in a politicized way than a panel would, because of the abortion politics of this country.
And lastly – and this doesn’t speak to the trust issue, but it’s still important – the United States is a much larger country with much more isolated rural areas than anywhere in Europe and we have much more limited access to medical care.
My concerns aren’t an attempt to weasel out of genuine oversight. They are real concerns about how this might play out differently here than it has in Europe. Instead of addressing them, you accused me of bad faith.
Right, I have had far too many thoughts on this topic to fit into a comment, so I’ve written a longer response here:
http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2011/08/can-you-be-anti-choice-and-also.html
Please stop by and let me know what you think!
I like the way places like France and Sweden handle the situation. Not the specifics of those rules, but the spirit of them. I’m OK with the terms Dianne put forth in 111. If late-term abortions are limited to “medically necessary”, it doesn’t seem too unreasonable for a doctor to submit a generalized written report about why. And to the question of “to whom?” I would say “to data collection/research teams”. Just to know.
I agree that the political environment in the U.S. is a terrible problem for this issue, and I hate it. But does that mean my same opinion would be “feminist” if I lived in Sweden, but somehow not so because I happen to live in the U.S.? There’s a difference between the ideal policy I’d like to see and the pragmatic policy I’d vote for. (When I’m forced to take the pragmatic approach, I don’t think my voice is being heard at all, but such is life.)
Amp, in response to #124, if someone really thinks that a brain-dead person is alive, then of course they should advocate for legal protection. They shouldn’t just “agree to disagree”! Not that I think a brain-dead person is alive. And not saying that advocacy needs to be more than voting or writing to congress or just speaking your opinion.
Amp, it sounds like either you misunderstood my post, or you are agreeing with me in a snarky way.
In the example that you give, it is clear that we cannot agree to disagree. The only reasonable solution is for the law to take the other side. If one side believes that dead people deserve the same human rights as live people, there can be no compromise. You can’t take the stance of “You have your beliefs, and I have mine, and nobody is wrong.” The law has to either take the stance that the “dead people are people” belief is wrong, or proceed as if it were wrong.
That is my point. It is intellectually dishonest for pro-choicers to pretend that they’re fine with pro-lifers holding their beliefs, as long as they only apply them at a personal level. This ignores the nature of pro-life beliefs (at least as they are espoused). It isn’t logical to say, “I believe that terminating a pregnancy murders a human being, but as long as you only murder your own child, it would be wrong for me to advocate that the state intervene.”
Therefore, the comment that Ugo makes at 108 isn’t a reasonable characterization of what a pro-life feminist ought to be like, because it doesn’t take into consideration the reality (or the potential reality) of what pro-lifers claim to believe.
Contrast this, say, with the belief that drinking alcohol is a violation of one’s own bodily integrity. With a belief like that, it is perfectly reasonable to say, “You act according to your beliefs, and I’ll act according to mine, and we’ll all get along fine.”
And I think, Richard Jeffrey Newman, this kind of weird meta-analysis points to why a discussion like this might have value. Your insinuation was that I was engaging in some kind of pointless intellectual masturbation, but I was really discussing some of the same ground that the original post did. If there is a point to discussing whether a person can truly be a feminist and also pro-life, perhaps it has to do with understanding whether a person purporting to be a feminist can actually share enough common ground with me/you/whoever such that we can work together on certain issues. If feminism is incompatible with every possible pro-life belief, then it may be that a pro-life feminist is operating from core beliefs that are completely at odds with other feminists. But if the belief at the core of a pro-life political stance is, or can be, completely consistent and yet separate from the core belief of a feminist political stance, then it may be that different kinds of feminists can work together on certain issues and not on others.
Thus–perhaps ironically–if a person’s beliefs about fetuses and embryos are completely irreconcilable with yours, then it is possible that their beliefs about female autonomy are actually more similar to yours than it would seem at first glance.
That is my point. It is intellectually dishonest for pro-choicers to pretend that they’re fine with pro-lifers holding their beliefs, as long as they only apply them at a personal level. This ignores the nature of pro-life beliefs (at least as they are espoused). It isn’t logical to say, “I believe that terminating a pregnancy murders a human being, but as long as you only murder your own child, it would be wrong for me to advocate that the state intervene.”
I don’t think it’s at all intellectually dishonest to accept that other people have the right to believe things you disagree with, and yet not want them to force those beliefs on you.
The thing about the belief that a just-conceived fetus is a person is that there’s no possible way of proving it. Medically, there’s no brain, so no consciousness, no feelings, no thoughts. So, the only way personhood can exist is if you assume that the soul is present from conception. This makes it a religious belief.
I think that if you have a belief that is not provable, it’s totally reasonable not to expect other people to live by your beliefs. It’s not so much agreeing that murder is okay as long as you only murder your own kid as it is accepting that there’s no verifiable way to prove your definition of murder.
Like every other religious belief, you don’t have to think it isn’t real or doesn’t matter to believe that you don’t have the authority to force other people to adhere to it.
Chingona, yes I’ve read Amps links.
“My concerns aren’t an attempt to weasel out of genuine oversight. They are real concerns about how this might play out differently here than it has in Europe. Instead of addressing them, you accused me of bad faith..”
No I didn’t (see my 122). And I apologize again for stepping to Dianne’s argument as if it were yours without making clear that I had moved from your discussion to hers. I don’t think that you are trying to weasel out of oversight, and I do suspect that Dianne and people with her approach might be trying to weasel out of oversight.
“First of all, if we really had such a strong “pro-abortion” lobby in this country, we wouldn’t have the majority of counties without a single provider, we wouldn’t have laws like they have in Nebraska, we wouldn’t have the Supreme Court uphold the partial birth abortion ban (not a ban on late abortions, but a ban on an abortion technique that is safer for women and that protects their future fertility better than other abortion techniques, as well as giving them an intact fetus to hold and bury if that is their wish). ”
I don’t really buy this, at least as formed. With the advent of RU-486 I’m not at all sure that “number of counties with a dedicated abortion provider” means so much. And the existence of small states with what passes for extreme pro-life laws (but which don’t have laws as extreme as say Germany, Finland or Spain and which allow abortions into the second trimester unlike France or Sweden) doesn’t disprove the fact of a powerful pro-choice lobby. But what if we were to start by reforming California’s laws? Surely you’ll stipulate to the strength of the pro-choice lobby there? The fact that pro-choicers don’t win every single battle that they want, doesn’t mean that they aren’t strong and influential. They’ve already won a *MUCH* more permissive regime than most of Europe even in most of the ‘pro-life’ states, much less the pro-choice strongholds. California is 1/6 of the population of the United States. It also has a 40% higher abortion rate than the US average (CA 27.6, US 19.6).
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/sfaa/california.html
California has effectively no operating restriction on late term abortions. Unlike 40 of the other states, it doesn’t report to the CDC how many abortions are late term. It couldn’t, because it very intentionally doesn’t track them. It has a late term viability law, but literally no method of enforcing it because no records need be kept and no report of a late term abortion need be made. It is pretty much the model state as far as NARAL is concerned.
From a pro-life point of view, I don’t find that level of non-oversight reassuring. And it sounds to me as if that is the level of oversight that Dianne and Amp would prefer.
And that level of oversight makes perfect sense if you don’t believe that a late term fetus has the slightest shred of any rights. But most people in the US don’t believe that (and if the laws are any indication, most people in Europe don’t either).
The abortion lobby is strong enough in California, and most of the rest of the nation, that it has won far more than the majority of Americans (or Californians) think is appropriate. Which is precisely why abortion is such a flash-point political issue–the abortion lobby is so powerful that it has successfully engineered a situation where the laws are much more pro-choice than the public is comfortable with. Perversely, part of the reason why abortion is so politicized is because the pro-choice side has won so completely in the legal realm without making serious inroads in public opinion for more than thirty years.
I also want to touch on “we wouldn’t have laws like they have in Nebraska”.
From the way you use it in the argument, it sounds like you think of it as one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the US, which it is. But so far as I can tell it restricts abortions only after the 20th week, with exceptions in cases of medical emergency, the pregnant woman’s imminent death, or a serious risk of “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/us/14abortion.html
Compare that to France: only 12 weeks, with similar health exceptions and much more stringent oversight. Compare that to Germany: Germany requires mandatory counseling AGAINST abortion. Compare that to Finland: general abortions for 12 weeks, Sweden only 18 weeks and then you need permission from the National Board of Health and Welfare!
The law you use to illustrate the impotence of the pro-choice lobby, is actually less restrictive than many countries in Europe.
The state law you use to suggest that the pro-choice lobby isn’t powerful isn’t even as pro-life as France or Sweden and isn’t nearly as pro-life as Germany.
The pro-choice lobby is *so strong* in the US that in the political rhetoric here, laws much more pro-choice than in many places in Europe can get cast in the role of scary pro-life boogeymen.
And to be clear, I’m not at all accusing you of bad faith. I think you raised it fully in good faith. I’m trying to show the frame of reference. What really is to you a sign of scary pro-lifers having too much power would be in France far too dismissive of the rights of the late term fetus.
Both pro-choice and pro-life are powerful lobbies in the US, with the relative amount of power held by each varying from state to state and over time. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers win some battles and lose some battles. (Keep in mind, as well, that it’s incorrect to attribute all abortion rights to pro-choice lobbyists; for instance, the reason that there’s no partner permission required in the US is that it’s unconstitutional, not that the pro-choice lobby prevents it.)
In that context, to claim that there’s no need to worry about pro-life laws being abused and hurting or killing women, because the pro-choice lobby is too powerful for that to ever happen, is genuinely ludicrous. The pro-choice lobby is not omnipotent.
Sebastian, you’re refusing to honestly face what will happen if you get the policy you want. There are costs as well as benefits to your proposals, but it’s hard to discuss this with you when you adamantly refuse to admit that there will ever be any downsides to a late-term abortion ban.
By the way, in Canada there are no time restrictions at all on when women can get abortions. In the Netherlands, it’s viability. So when considering the worldwide context of how liberal US abortion laws are, you should admit that there are also countries where the laws are as or more liberal.
More importantly, the cutoff point (if any) for late-term abortion is not the only or best measure of how liberal or non-liberal abortion access is. Especially when you look at the question of the government paying for abortions, either for all patients or just for poor ones, the US is extremely conservative. Since the VAST majority of abortions are not late-term, this sort of thing arguably matters much more for accessibility than the stuff you’re talking about.
“There are costs as well as benefits to your proposals, but it’s hard to discuss this with you when you adamantly refuse to admit that there will ever be any downsides to a late-term abortion ban.”
No, I don’t refuse to admit that there can be downsides, I do however refuse to take your laissez faire approach to viable children. Even libertarians recognize the need for limits when the actions of one person will literally kill another person. It is difficult to take a lecture from you on not weighing costs and benefits when you won’t even countenance oversight regarding late term abortions of fully viable unborn children who will have a nearly 100% chance of dying, every single time one is put through an abortion.
Your approach does not balance the needs of women with the needs of the viable unborn child. It doesn’t even attempt to.
My approach attempts to balance the needs of the mother and the needs of the viable unborn child.
Your response is that might not balance them perfectly.
Yours doesn’t balance them *at all*.
Okay, I stand corrected. So what are the downsides to your policy, in your opinion?
As for “balance,” you haven’t defined what this word means, nor logically explained why your policy has it and mine doesn’t.
In my policy, we protect liberty and some rare cases of women being maimed or killed are prevented, but also, in some rare cases, viable late-term fetuses die. In your policy, in some rare cases viable late-term fetuses who would have been aborted are not, but women’s liberty is sacrificed and in some rare cases, women are maimed or die.
I honestly don’t see any way in which your policy is “balanced” and mine is not. I think that your policy is one that values fetuses above women and liberty, and mine is one that values women and liberty above fetuses. That doesn’t make your policy “balanced.”
Phil wrote:
I think Kelly pretty much devastated this when she wrote: “Like every other religious belief, you don’t have to think it isn’t real or doesn’t matter to believe that you don’t have the authority to force other people to adhere to it.”
It’s not a contradiction to think that abortion shouldn’t exist, but to also believe that the moral way to achieve this goal is through persuasion, rather than through government force.
Many Christians believe that people who aren’t saved by the Church will burn in hell forever — including children. (Not all Christians believe that, but it’s a common belief). Would that justify the state forcing non-Christian parents to take their kids to a Christian church? After all, burning in Hell forever is, logically, a far worse fate than being aborted. (Unless you believe that aborted fetuses go to Hell, in which case I guess it’s an equally bad fate).
I don’t think it does. We can’t have both a free country and a country in which government force, rather than persuasion, is used to advance religious beliefs.
Now, you might respond “so why should a parent murdering a five-year-old be illegal? Isn’t that a religious belief?” I’d argue that it’s not a religious belief, because virtually everyone agrees that murdering 5 year olds is wrong, regardless of religion. Furthermore, that’s a case where people have already been persuaded. Virtually 100% of Americans agree that it’s wrong to murder a five-year-old, so I don’t think you could argue that laws against murder are an attempt to circumvent the need for widespread moral persuasion.
“I think Kelly pretty much devastated this when she wrote: “Like every other religious belief, you don’t have to think it isn’t real or doesn’t matter to believe that you don’t have the authority to force other people to adhere to it.””
I think Kelly pretty much dodged the entire argument on this thread because she had to limit it with “just conceived fetus”.
The idea that a viable fetus is a person isn’t religious, doesn’t depend upon a soul, and doesn’t require that you believe anything special about god. It also isn’t rare. In fact the idea that it is something which requires at least some level of legal protection at the time of viability *or earlier* commands a big majority: “Do you believe that human life begins at conception, or once the baby may be able to survive outside the mother’s womb with medical assistance, or when the baby is actually born” never polls above 15% for the last option.
(See also CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Jan. 10-12, 2003) [which has some specific questions I wish were in lots of abortion polls rather than the abortion pro or con amorphous mess that we often get].
There we find that in response to “Do you think abortion should generally be legal or generally illegal during each of the following stages of pregnancy?”
In the first trimester 66% support. In the second trimester that support drops to 25%. In the third trimester it drops to 10%.
In order for it to get as low as 10% support you need a large majority of the people who consider themselves “pro-choice” to think that it should generally be illegal.
Also note that support drops to well below majority status *before* viability. A large majority of people want abortion to be generally illegal at the second trimester (the French standard).
Comparing this to a personal religious belief that doesn’t have wide support in the country, isn’t being honest about the level of support late term abortions have. Now I don’t think you’re being deliberately deceitful about it. I suspect that more than 10% of people you personally know think that late term abortions should be generally legal. But you’re letting your personal clique skew your perception about the general belief if you think you aren’t on dangerous territory invoking the support level of anti-murder laws.
You can get 10% support for almost anything, no matter how ridiculous. Hell 6% of people believe the moon landing was faked (and apparently 20% of people in the UK!). Somewhere a few months ago I read that more than 10% of Americans don’t think Islam is a religion.
The weight of widespread moral persuasion is that late term abortions should generally be illegal.
Amp, while it is entirely possible to hold a belief about some aspect of human worth or equality because God said so, or because of divine revelation, or some similar and blatantly religious reason, it is not possible to hold a belief about the relative value of human life based solely on objective criteria. Questions of human worth, value, and equality are not objective. One may believe otherwise, but that belief is, itself, religious.
So what are the downsides to your policy, in your opinion?
I would be interested to hear your response to this.
For discussion purposes, gestational age at which abortions are performed
So Guttmacher is a pro-choice organization, but I’ve always heard their numbers were accepted as fairly accurate by both sides. If you’d like to put up other numbers for discussion, that’s fine. Doing really rough, back-of-the-napkin type math, based on roughly 4 million births and 1 million abortions a year – so, 5 million pregnancies – abortions past 24 weeks (between 16 and 24 weeks would squick most people, including me, but I don’t think it would be reasonable to talk about viability at those gestational ages) represent about 2 in every 10,000 pregnancies. That’s perfectly consistent with rates of occurrence of serious health complications for fetus or mother.
I think Kelly pretty much dodged the entire argument on this thread because she had to limit it with “just conceived fetus”.
I didn’t *have to* limit it–the post I was responding to was talking about the pro-life position in general, on a thread where we’ve also gone down the “birth control is abortion” road. I was explaining how you could be pro-life personally but not politically. I wasn’t talking about your late term abortion side of the conversation.
But, since you asked, the argument that a fetus is a person before brain development sufficient for consciousness has occurred is a religious belief. Once that point has been reached, you might make a reasonable secular argument for personhood. *However* the personhood of the fetus doesn’t negate the personhood of the mother. (See all the previous discussion about how in no other circumstances do we require a person to yield the use of their body to another, and undergo the risk of injury or death to do so.)
Late-term abortion *already is* illegal without medical reasons. The restrictions that you’re proposing will require cruelties like making a woman continue to carry her dead baby while an oversight board approves her abortion–and hope that they make a decision before infection sets in.
It’s not that I think that a viable fetus is worthless and deserves no consideration. It’s that I think that 99% or more of late-term abortions happen not because the woman just doesn’t want to be pregnant but because of a medical issue. And I don’t trust people who value fetal life (even non-viable fetal life) above female life to make those decisions.
Comparing this to a personal religious belief that doesn’t have wide support in the country, isn’t being honest about the level of support late term abortions have.
Please note that I also never said anything about the amount of support a religious belief has. I’m talking about rights in a country where we supposedly have freedom of religion. Your statistics just prove that the majority does want to impose their religious beliefs on the minority (though a lot of them probably feel differently if it’s *their* abortion–there are women who protest at clinics, have an abortion, and are right back out protesting). They don’t prove that it’s not a religious belief; nor do they make it right to force those beliefs on others.
What religious belief are you talking about? Please be specific. Not once have I invoked a religious argument in this discussion.
“So what are the downsides to your policy, in your opinion?
I would be interested to hear your response to this.”
The most likely downside is that a woman will have to wait a few days for an abortion, which is likely to cause some inconvenience. Considering the magnitude of the downside for the fetus (being killed), this seems reasonable to me, just as it does to European lawmakers.
In theory, it could cause a women who actually needs an abortion to not get one. I suspect that the chances of that actually happening are quite low. I base that belief on the existing power of the pro-abortion lobby, and the unlikelyhood that the doctors in question will be willing to allow that to happen. Again, since the alternative presented is the complete disregard for the fetus which Amp’s planned neglect permits, I see that as balancing the needs of the fetus and mother much better. As far as I can tell, Amp doesn’t even want after the fact documentation. This is exactly the type of attitude that led to the Kermit Gosnell atrocities. To quote the news report: “The Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.”
Also note that he wasn’t just a rogue doctor, 9 other health employees were involved and have been charged with the post-viability abortions and infanticides. How did that happen for more than a decade? Because the pro-choice community resists oversight at every level and at every turn.
According to the grand jury report:
Baby boy A was estimated to be gestated to 32 weeks and nearly 6 pounds. (See Page 100). This abortion would never have been authorized by a medical board. How did he get away with it? Complete lack of oversight.
According to the testimony at Page 104, other employees killed at least 10 babies who were breathing after failed abortions.
Baby C had been moving and breathing for at least 20 minutes after its abortion, when its throat was slit.
Note that in all of the cases for which Gosnell is being charged, he was supposed to be giving an abortion. But in all those cases, the women sought a late term abortion and found a doctor who would do them. At least 12 cases in Penn. With just one doctor. 12 women in a small state found a doctor to give them post-viability abortions against the law. How? Because the abortion lobby has effectively avoided any oversight. And if there were 12 (that the grand jury could find evidence on) in a small state like Pennsylvannia, it is difficult for me to believe that those were the only ones.
Gosnell is being charged because he was stupid enough not to kill the babies in the womb. But I really don’t think that is good enough.
From the New York Daily News:
From ABC news:
Gosnell is a monster who performed illegal abortions, badly. The prosecutor claims that, “There were several oversight agencies that stumbled upon and should have shut down Kermit Gosnell long ago.” Claiming that the sole reason Gosnell got away with his crimes for decades was the pro-abortion lobby seems to be a bit of a stretch.
By what measure do you consider Pennsylvania a “small state?” Pennsylvania is the 6th largest state by population & 33rd largest by area.
You have to work “sole” reason pretty hard. The grand jury report found that multiple state employees resisted investigating the abortion clinic because they believed that doing so would be putting up barriers for women seeking abortions. The is straight out of the abortion lobby line.
And again note that he *repeatedly* performed abortions on fully viable unborn children. His case flies in the face of this conversation on at least two separate fronts: first we’ve been assured that seeking viable abortions without medical reasons is vanishingly rare–yet he did it at least 10 times and the grand jury wrote that they strongly suspect him of doing it hundreds of times. Second, he directly shows that walling off abortion from regular oversight is likely to lead to illegal late term abortions. Third, he directly shows that walling off abortion from regular oversight is likely to lead to injured women.
The biggest thing I get out of the Gosnell case, beside the fact that he is a very bad person, is that abortion shouldn’t be segregated from regular healthcare. There have been pro-choice groups that have argued for less oversight, mostly in direct reaction to attempts by pro-life groups and legislators to use regulations to harass abortion providers. This case provides a stark example of why that ultimately doesn’t serve women. But, and I’m going to keep saying this, because I think it’s really important, you cannot separate this issue from the broader abortion politics of this country.
And Jake is right about Pennsylvania not being a small state. Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the country, and that doesn’t include the larger metro area. There may be others like him out there, but his existence does not mean that there are lots of people like him, any more than the existence of serial killers who posed as nurses means there’s one in every hospital.
On a separate, but obviously related note. My googling has turned up that the Supreme Court has found that states cannot require more than one other physician to sign off on a late abortion. The reason has nothing to do with women’s rights. It would be an infringement on the doctor’s right to practice, and more than one other opinion does not serve any medical need of the patient. I think your beef is as much with the AMA as it is with NARAL.
If Pennsylvania had enforced laws it already had on the books,Gosnell could have been stopped a lot earlier:
This piece doesn’t really get into it, but I think it’s probably relevant to why some “women” seek late abortions that the doctor who referred multiple patients to Gosnell was at a Children’s Hospital.
You’re talking about Doe v. Bolton (the Roe companion case) on the sign off issue. It isn’t a problem with the AMA, this is exactly what the abortion lobby wanted and it isn’t found regarding a doctor’s rights: “We conclude that the interposition of the hospital abortion committee is unduly restrictive of the patient’s rights and needs that, at this point, have already been medically delineated and substantiated by her personal physician. To ask more serves neither the hospital nor the State.”
This intersects with the Gosnell case–apparently the needs of the patient don’t require oversight or review beyond the physician doing the abortion (note that “personal physician” is of course a fiction by Blackmun, the very case he was ruling on was talking about abortion clinics).
It isn’t at all clear that this survives Casey v. Planned Parenthood as the law of the land, especially in light of the fact that both Medicare and all the insurance companies now regularly interpose physician review when assessing the need for both surgical and non-surgical procedures (Blackmun made a big deal of the fact that he hadn’t seen evidence that such committees were required for other procedures).
Doe v. Bolton is an interesting bit of legal fraud anyway. Sandra Cano (the Doe) never wanted an abortion, and was trying to escape from her husband who was trying to force her to have one. She says that the affidavit the Court relied on is full of lies, and that she doesn’t believe she signed it, or that if she did she thought it was part of her divorce papers.
Hooray pro-choice movement!
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about the “if they had enforced their laws” comment. They didn’t because: “With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.””
This is the exact explanation that Dianne and Amp are using to try to avoid oversight.
“And Jake is right about Pennsylvania not being a small state. Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the country, and that doesn’t include the larger metro area. There may be others like him out there, but his existence does not mean that there are lots of people like him, any more than the existence of serial killers who posed as nurses means there’s one in every hospital.”
Pennsylvania has about 4% of the population of the US. The five states above it have together about 36% of the population of the US. My point about it being a small state should have been best expressed as “a state representing only a small portion of the US”. The grand jury found evidence of hundreds of illegal late term abortions (but could only charge on the last two years because of shockingly short statute of limitations, I wonder how that happened?). My point about the smallness of the state remains–in a state with less than 4% of the US population, we are talking about hundreds of viability age abortions with none of the testing to show that these abortions were medically necessary. I’ve been assured that non-medically necessary abortions are exceedingly rare *and that we don’t need to bother with oversight regarding that alleged fact* because A) women won’t seek them and B) doctors won’t give them.
Apparently, in a state representing just 4% of the population, there are more than a hundred such cases from the one doctor that we know about. That is kind of shocking in light of the assertions expressed by Amp and Dianne.
And this isn’t just Gosnell. He had a staff of nine people at the time, and various other people in the past. He had other people killing the babies too and thinking it was ok. That happened because of systemic problems regarding abortion oversight–systemic problems created by the abortion lobby to avoid “putting up barriers”.
Further, other doctors are implicated. The grand jury apparently believed that the Atlantic Women’s Medical Services in Delaware knew or should have known about Gosnell’s practices since he worked there, that they were uninterested the questionable practices he was using while working for them in Delaware, and showed shocking negligence regarding the patients they sent to him (only being able to come up with 3 patient files, despite having a decade of referals and 6 patients known to the grand jury).
Further evidence of a systemic problem:
Why was this?
“With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions.””
That is a systemic problem caused by abortion lobby concerns. That systemic problem cost at least two women their lives. So it appears that the hands off approach can also cost women’s lives.
In other words, you are absolutely, adamantly unwilling to honestly address the downsides of your preferred policy — just as I suggested earlier this thread.
“My policy would never have any significant downside” is not an intelligent position, or an honest position, or a position from which it’s possible to have any worthwhile discussion.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about the “if they had enforced their laws” comment.
Well, if any of the numerous violations found when the clinic was being inspected during Gov. Casey’s administration had been acted on, he would have been shut down then. Or, if any of the numerous complaints after regular inspections ended had been followed up on, he would have been found out much earlier.
Not sure what’s so hard to understand about that.
Amp, I’m suspecting that you didn’t read my very next paragraph, where I specifically address the concern about the potential downside that most concerns you. I identified the most likely downsides, and I think even you have to admit that those are indeed the most likely downsides. THEN I talked about much more unlikely downsides. Now you could contend that I’m wrong about it, if you read it.
“I don’t read what you’re talking about or pretend that you didn’t write anything on it” probably isn’t a fantastic way to have a worthwhile discussion.
I understand that you discount the life of the fetus to near zero. You can do that as an consistent internal system. But you aren’t engaging the beliefs of the enormous majority when you do so. You could do that by actively arguing “the fetus should count for nothing because it effectively nothing more than a parasite” (Dianne’s position). Or you could do it some other way. But internally discounting to near zero and then not being explicit about it is exactly the “my policy would never have any significant downside” argumentation that you are accusing me of. You, Amp, do not acknowledge that there is any significant risk that a viable fetus would be aborted without reason. In this thread and in past threads you have suggested that this wouldn’t happen very often because women wouldn’t seek such abortions. But the Gosnell case strongly suggests otherwise. The grand jury found evidence that it believes leads to more than a hundred infanticides but that it couldn’t charge them because of the ridiculously short statute of limitations. These infanticides took place at an abortion clinic. The women going to the abortion clinic were not seeking to have their fully viable unborn babies live. These infanticides would have been abortions if Gosnell had left the babies in the womb while killing them. They still would have been fully viable.
You are discounting the significant downside “fully viable unborn children will be killed unnecessarily”. You did so based on general assumptions. Those general assumptions are at the very least strongly challenged by the facts of the Gosnell case.
Your hands off abortion clinics approach is also strongly challenged by the hundreds of infanticides enabled by that kind of policy and by the at least two deaths of women which were enabled by that kind of policy.
I’m being AT LEAST as fair to you on that, as you are in attributing a lack of attention to the downside of my (not implemented) policies. If you don’t think it is fair, maybe we should talk about invoking women in Peru and Mexico (which are far more distant in general abortion policies than we are from France which is what I invoke). I’m now invoking policies *in the United States* which were implemented *exactly* for the reasons you oppose the policies that France and Sweden use.
This is probably pointless, but I just want to hit this point one more time. What Gosnell did was illegal. He falsified records. He lied to patients about how far along their pregnancies were. He had people on staff who he passed off as doctors and nurses who were neither. He was doing abortions late on Sunday nights when no one else was in the building. I don’t know where you live, but Pennsylvania is not a liberal state for abortion. It has strict abortion laws. I grew up there, an hour from Philadelphia, and everyone I knew in high school who had an abortion went to New York, even though it was further away, because it was HARD to get an abortion in Pennsylvania.
Look around the world, and it’s pretty clear that there is nothing so bad, so morally repugnant, that you won’t find people willing to do it. Just recently, the Justice Department busted a frighteningly large child pornography ring. That they were able to get away with it for some time before they were caught doesn’t mean we have a large pro-child pornography lobby and weak laws on child pornography. It means there are bad people willing to break the law for their own ends. A year or two ago, there was an organ-trafficking ring in New York and New Jersey that was broken up. Doctors were involved. They were able to convince lots of people to go along with them. It doesn’t mean we need to crack down on legal organ donation.
“Well, if any of the numerous violations found when the clinic was being inspected during Gov. Casey’s administration had been acted on, he would have been shut down then. Or, if any of the numerous complaints after regular inspections ended had been followed up on, he would have been found out much earlier.
Not sure what’s so hard to understand about that.”
You’re not engaging the problem that it poses. We know why it wasn’t investigated. Pennsylvania was intentionally much more hands off with abortion clinics than with any other medical practice. The state organizations made a political choice to be much more hands off because inspections would allegedly be putting a barrier up to women seeking abortions.
“I don’t know where you live, but Pennsylvania is not a liberal state for abortion. ”
Right. And yet even there, the power of the abortion lobby is strong enough that the Department of Health made a decades long political choice, even after reviewing it, to be hands-off in oversight of abortion clinics. And that is why, as above, I strongly suspect that there wouldn’t be a sudden rash of dying women because the review boards would let them die, if we implemented the French/Swedish system re late term abortions.
This speaks exactly to my point about oversight. The abortion lobby’s position on oversight doesn’t even protect the women. It doesn’t even protect the women who they care about, and they expect me to believe that the lack of oversight position will additionally protect the viable fetus that they don’t care about. I don’t think that position makes sense even theoretically, but the Gosnell case illustrates that it flies in the face of it in a susbstantial and factual way.
If Gosnell had been running an antispetic practice, with proper anesthesia, no woman would have died and the case would never have come to light. But he still would have killed more than a hundred fully viable children. That would never have come to light without the additional death of the two women. And that isn’t just simple serial killing. He did it with the consent of whatever the total is minus one woman (perhaps two).
Amp and Dianne have not even remotely attempted to deal with that challenge to their hands off system.
Of course I read it, Sebastian, but it was too stupid to respond to a second time. As I said before
Saying “I base that belief on the existing power of the pro-abortion lobby” is so completely brainless that I just don’t buy that you believe it. Is it your opinion that there is no pro-choice lobby in existence in Nebraska, for example?
As I’ve said multiple times in this thread, “in some rare cases, viable late-term fetuses die. ” “It’s inevitable that, were late-term abortions legally and practically available nationwide, someone somewhere would have a non-medically necessary abortion. ” “in my preference, the ones dying will be occasional viable, healthy later-term fetuses.”
In other words, I haven’t just said that there’s a “risk” that such abortions would occur; I said it’s “inevitable.” I consider it a FACT that such abortions would occur, and have said so forthrightly. You, in contrast, are maintaining the ridiculous position that pro-life laws would never, ever be abused, anywhere in a nation of millions of people.
It’s a good sign of your total lack of intellectual honesty that you pretend that your inane denial of reality and my statement that the downside is “inevitable” are exactly the same thing. They’re miles apart; I’m trying to argue based on the real world, you’re arguing based on right-wing fantasyland where negative consequences of conservative policy never, ever happen.
But I suspect that you were absolutely, demonstratively wrong about what you just said will in no way alter your opinion.
Yes you make it sound rare. But the Gosnell case suggests that your gut feeling that it might be rare, might be wrong. And if it is wrong, your 100% ‘balancing’ against the fetus sounds wrong.
Again, if he had been using anesthisia correctly, his case never would have come to light and there still would have been more than a hundred cases of infanticide. The only difference is that they wouldn’t have been documented. (And in fact were not documented until now).
We know that the babies were viable. We also know also know that if he had aborted them in the womb they would have been abortions of viable fetuses. We also know that they were effectively of such an age that they could be delivered through labor, because that is what he did during his abortions.
To at least a hundred babies. Not just one. Not maybe two. At least 100. And he is one practitioner, in a practice that you don’t want supervised, in an area that serves less than 4% of the nation.
Furthermore, we have demonstrated evidence that even in Pennsylvania, which is considered a fairly pro-life state, political decisions ended up being made using exactly the abortion lobby defense that you make to resist the French/Swedish policy. So when talking about the power of the abortion lobby *even in a pro-life state* we find that my interpretation of what would happen tends to be correct, and yours is wrong.
So don’t talk to me about how being demonstratively wrong about what you just said will in no way alter your opinion.
Your opinion appears to be remarkably fact resistant at the moment.
Sebastian, do you even understand that there is something called “truth,” and it’s different from a lie?
You claimed that I denied that there was any significant chance that a healthy, late-term fetus could be aborted for no good reason. In fact, I had said it was inevitable. This isn’t a matter of opinion; you didn’t claim that I was wrong to use the word “rare.” You were simply, flat out wrong.
Do you think that you’re gong to shrivel up and die if you said, “sorry, I was mistaken about that. My bad. Moving on….”? Why not just acknowledge that you made a mistake?
* * *
By the way, I spent most of yesterday traveling from NY to Oregon, after a week spent traveling. I’m now back at home, and have to prioritize the work that I’ve been putting off because of travel, over a blog argument.
My point is, I haven’t yet said anything at all about the Gosnell case — in fact, this is the first time I’ve typed “Gosnell” in this thread — because I know nothing at all about it, and haven’t yet had the time to research it. (I’ve never even heard of it before this thread.)
I will read about it, and if what I find out about it means that I have to significantly alter my views, then I’ll say so. But you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t address it right this second.
I’m really enjoying the consistent refrain of:
I’m rubber,
You’re glue.
Whatever you say bounces off me
And sticks to you.
It’s like being 5 all over again.
On the other hand, the comments from pro-choice people in this thread are pithy and intelligent, so they’re good for strengthening my reasoning and arguments.
The piece I don’t see Sebastian H addressing in terms of the negative consequence of his position is “and then what?”
Women would have to wait for an abortion… and then what?
Some women who wanted and perhaps needed an abortion might not get one… and then what?
The answer is not “and then, they would be bummed out.” The answer is “and then some of them would die, and others would suffer permanent medical damage to their reproductive systems or other bodily functions, while still others would suffer grave mental disability or trauma which in some cases would have permanent, long-term consequences.”
Until Sebastian H can say “yes, that’s true,” there seems little point in having a conversation with him.
As I said above, it is possible that a woman will actually be harmed in some manner. But it is not very likely. It is certain that the abortion of a viable fetus will kill it. That is 100% vs a small chance. I attempted to find any such cases in Germany, France or Sweden but they don’t appear to be reported if they exist.
The Gosnell case strongly suggests that there are more women willing to abort viable fetuses than you’re giving credit for. I will apologize for assuming you knew about the case. I should have realized that it wouldn’t have penetrated the pro-choice community nearly as much as it did the pro-life community. (Kink of like how many pro-lifers don’t talk about the Tiller case, while nearly all pro-choice people know it intimately).
I linked the grand jury report at 144.
This thread went widely afield and is a zillion comments long. So I don’t worry overmuch about derailing any conversation with this:
Would progressives accept a political deal in which we moved to a European-style medical system (which would mean state funding of abortion and more access to abortion services), if it came with a shift to European-style abortion rules (which would mean, in practice, significantly tighter rules on when and why abortions were performed)?
I think you’re trying to make the Gosnell case do two things: 1) demonstrate the need for more oversight and 2) demonstrate a substantial demand for post-viability abortion. I’ve already stated my position on the first point. On the second point, since you’ve read the grand jury indictment, you were being really disingenuous in talking about the “small” state of Pennsylvania. According to the grand jury indictment, women were coming to Gosnell from the entire mid-Atlantic region. Also according to the grand jury indictment, of the 45 fetal remains on the premises when his clinic was raided, two or three were probably viable at the time they were aborted/killed. I bring this up not to diminish the horror of what he did but specifically to address this question of demand. Assuming the weeks leading up to the raid were typical ones in his practice, even this horror show of a doctor, who should have lost his license years ago, who was willing to do any abortion at any time, even on unwilling patients, who did late abortions almost exclusively in the later years of his practice, viable fetuses only represented between 4 and 6 percent of the abortions that he did.
According to estimates by his clinic staff, it adds up to hundreds over a period of many years, and they would probably know. I’ll admit that that seems higher to me than I would have expected, but given how large an area he was drawing from, how many millions of pregnancies and abortions occur in those states, it’s still not an epidemic of third-trimester abortions. (Again, I’m only speaking to demand side of this equation.) I would be interested to know more about the girls and women who sought those abortions. We don’t know that none of them had medical issues. Some of them may have had complications in their pregnancies and been referred to Gosnell by doctors who didn’t know that he was a butcher. From the grand jury indictment, we know that one was 14. We know that a doctor at a children’s hospital was referring patients there, but stopped after they all developed STDs from the unsanitary conditions. We know that another was 17 and accompanied by an aunt who paid for her abortion. We know that others changed their minds – or tried to – and he continued with the abortion.
But some of them were adults who waited a really long time to decide what to do or changed their minds about their pregnancies because of some other change in their lives, who knew they were really far along, who sought abortions anyway. So, yes, they’re out there. I don’t think anyone has said they don’t exist at all.
So what else do we know? We know that the attorney general of Kansas twice convened grand juries to try to indict Tiller for doing the same thing, and twice those grand juries found insufficient evidence. (And if you know anything about the American justice system, you know that if a grand jury finds insufficient evidence, there’s basically no evidence.) We know that the two other doctors who do late abortions and speak about it openly do turn women away after 24 weeks if there is no medical issue.
So we also know that the women in the class we are concerned about – women with no medical issues, with viable fetuses, who want abortions – aren’t necessarily able to find doctors willing to do them.
Most of the estimates I could find put the number of doctors in the country performing late abortions (anywhere after 20/21 weeks) at between six and eight. It’s possible that some of them take Gosnell’s approach. It’s possible that none of them do. We know that the inspector from the abortion providers association testified before the grand jury that she has never seen a facility like Gosnell’s in hundreds of visits to abortion clinics around the country. But she also didn’t know that he was performing third-trimester abortions.
As you pointed out, if Gosnell had bothered with basic hygiene and standard medical procedures, he might not be facing the death penalty today. But that would be true even if late abortions required the approval of a 10-person panel. That wouldn’t stop someone who does abortions late on Sunday nights and keeps the files in a closet at home.
Would progressives accept a political deal in which we moved to a European-style medical system (which would mean state funding of abortion and more access to abortion services), if it came with a shift to European-style abortion rules (which would mean, in practice, significantly tighter rules on when and why abortions were performed)?
If contraception was widely available and free or affordable, if abortion before 16-20 weeks was widely available and free or affordable, AND if I felt confidant that people who don’t actually value women’s lives for shit wouldn’t be able to hijack the whole thing (see Poland, most of Latin America, the assholes who excommunicated that nun in Arizona, presidential candidates who put women’s health in scare quotes, politicians in Nebraska who think it’s great to force parents to watch their baby struggle for breath for 15 minutes before dying an inevitable death, etc.), then I, personally, would be okay with some sort of deal.
That last one is a really important one, though. The woman diagnosed with virulent cancer at 20 weeks along – and the recommended treatments would cause serious health problems in the fetus/baby? The 10-year-old impregnated by her uncle who didn’t understand what was happening to her body and didn’t have anyone to tell until a teacher realized she was gaining weight in a rather particular way? What happens to them?
And how about conservatives, Robert? Would your people come to the table on a deal like that? Would the major pro-life organizations, who won’t even go on the record on whether contraception should be legal, go for a deal like that?
I’m not really sure what part of the grand jury report you’re using chingona, or maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying about it. I think you’re using page 79, in which we are seeing 2-4 probably viable fetuses from only part of a single week of his practice. The sentence right after the recital of the fetal parts found is: “The raid took place on a Thursday, so the clinic’s busiest day for late-term abortions – Saturday – was not included.” So that is 2-4 viable fetuses in one week, not counting Saturday which was his busiest day for late-term abortions. Even if it is only 2 per week, and even if his Saturdays didn’t exist, that sounds like more than 100 per year. Remember that the grand jury in its summary said it thought there were hundreds of cases of infanticide–fully viable post-delivery killings but that he couldn’t be charged with them because of the statute of limitations.
Also, it appears that he may have done the most obviously illegal ones away from his staff (which is shocking considering what they did see): “Lewis and Massof both testified that they believed Gosnell dealt with some of the patients with the longest-term pregnancies on Sundays, when his staff was not at the clinic. When Massof came in on Monday mornings he would find bloody instruments in the sink even though they had all been cleaned before the facility closed on Saturday”
“Most of the estimates I could find put the number of doctors in the country performing late abortions (anywhere after 20/21 weeks) at between six and eight.”
Now I’m not totally sure if we are talking about the same type of thing (abortion doctors clearly could practice at multiple clinics) but I easily found dozens of clinics which advertised abortions past 22 weeks (see for example here and here). There is surprisingly little crossover on the two lists which isn’t what I’d expect if there were about a handful of doctors doing it. And as far as I can tell, Gosnell didn’t appear on any of these types of lists. Yet many women desiring very late term abortions found him. So a survey of internet advertising providers probably isn’t comprehensive.
My pretty long comment from a few days ago seems to be caught in moderation, so I guess I’m done.
Sebastian — It wasn’t in the moderation queue; it had been caught in the spam filter for some reason. It’s been fixed now.
If a comment mysteriously doesn’t appear for much longer than the usual mod time, please mention it to me, so I’ll know to look for it — the spam filter does capture non-spam comments now and then, alas.
Can one be Feminist and Pro-Life at the same time?
In the end that really comes down to what one believes is meant by “Feminist” and what one believes is meant by “Pro-Life”. Some people speak in such absolutes the question could only be answered with a resounding no or a resounding yes with NO grey area. It opens up myriad avenues for discussion. What is “autonomy”, etc, etc, etc. I’ve been in discussions concerning autonomy, for example, where autonomy is SO absolute that the women in question had never actually, to the best I could tell, set foot on this planet and operated entirely in another dimension. I’ve been in others where the autonomy question took on the air of arguments of convenience, advantageous questions based in biology being touted as “autonomy”, disadvantageous questions of the same sort being dubbed “repressionist”. Others still where the term merely indicated a degree of choice and personal security.
It’s the political version of coffee snobs who can tell one how to REALLY drink said beverage because “you’re just doing it all WRONG”.
I consider myself generally Pro-Life, but this doesn’t mean I would ever want to repeal a woman’s RIGHT to seek abortion. I think sometimes it really is the best option and although I do NOT always agree with the arguments presented when it comes to couples and “her body/her choice”, I also cannot deny that ultimately it IS her body and ergo her choice. I have to support those points with which I disagree in order to sustain her rights as I see fit because there is seldom such neat separation.
For many, this disqualifies me from joining the ranks of Pro-Life. The fact that I believe in and support Sex Education and Birth Control does so for some as well.
On the other hand, despite that I am 100 percent behind all measures regarding equality and the push to have said measures supercede any gender- or sex-based social delineations, I don’t consider myself a Feminist, not in the least. I think of myself as a throwback, a Women’s Libber, but some would insist that the two are precisely the same, assuring me that I’m a Feminist and just don’t know it. Others would tell me I’m a Feminist but doing it wrong. Perhaps I’m not even qualified to answer the question.
Until everyone can agree on the terminology in question and the meaning inherent, it’s a question without an answer. This one is gender feminism, that one is equity feminism, both boil down to the question of what I want. This one is Pro-Life, that one isn’t pro-life ENOUGH, both boil down to telling someone else what they need to be doing to meet your standards.
Rather than questioning whether a Pro-Lifer can still be properly Feminist when faced with such decisions mayhap the woman in question needs to decide what’s right for her and every single sociopolitical faction needs to butt right out, eh?
If contraception was widely available and free or affordable, if abortion before 16-20 weeks was widely available and free or affordable, AND if I felt confidant that people who don’t actually value women’s lives for shit wouldn’t be able to hijack the whole thing (see Poland, most of Latin America, the assholes who excommunicated that nun in Arizona, presidential candidates who put women’s health in scare quotes, politicians in Nebraska who think it’s great to force parents to watch their baby struggle for breath for 15 minutes before dying an inevitable death, etc.), then I, personally, would be okay with some sort of deal.
That last one is a really important one, though. The woman diagnosed with virulent cancer at 20 weeks along – and the recommended treatments would cause serious health problems in the fetus/baby? The 10-year-old impregnated by her uncle who didn’t understand what was happening to her body and didn’t have anyone to tell until a teacher realized she was gaining weight in a rather particular way? What happens to them?
I agree with chingona’s points and would add that accurate, unbiased sex ed would have to be widely available as well as contraception and earlier abortions. The teenage girl who believes you can’t get pregnant your first time, or can’t get pregnant if you have a shower afterwards, and doesn’t blink at a missed period because her cycle hadn’t gotten regular yet anyway…
I would also add that we have “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situations that need to be dealt with. For example, let’s take a woman with depression or anxiety who becomes pregnant accidentally (say her birth control fails). Because the meds she’s on have been linked to birth defects, she goes off them. Not gradually as would usually be a good idea, but cold turkey. As expected, this sucks. She toughs it out for 20 weeks, but between pregnancy hormones and added stress, she seriously needs her meds. Is that reason enough for her to have an abortion? If it’s not, we’d better not even consider holding it against her if she goes back on the meds and her child does end up with birth defects. Because I can easily see an ethics committee denying that, and then her being prosecuted for child abuse for going back on her meds.
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