A new fault line has opened in the abortion debate. The fight is no longer between pro-lifers and pro-choicers. It’s between militants and pragmatists.
While some extremists have been raising hell and shooting doctors, pragmatists have been hashing out common-ground legislation. Their latest bill, introduced Thursday, is the Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion, and Supporting Parents Act. If that sounds like a jumble of ideas from both sides, it’s because lots of bargaining went into it. Among other things, pro-choicers got money for contraception and sex education. Pro-lifers got abstinence-friendly curriculum, a bigger adoption tax credit, and financial support for women who continue their pregnancies.
The two sides talked, listened, and compromised. Pro-lifers couldn’t stand postcoital birth-control pills, fearing they might kill early embryos. The fear was unwarranted, but pro-choicers agreed to leave the pills out. Pro-choicers couldn’t stand even the vaguest legislative description of what doctors should tell patients. That anxiety, too, was unnecessary, but pro-lifers agreed to drop the language. Pro-choicers hated abstinence-only education but agreed to fund “evidence-based programs that encourage teens to delay sexual activity.” Pro-lifers wanted women to see prenatal ultrasound images but settled for money to make the machines more widely available.
Each side faced the other’s truths. Joel Hunter, an evangelical minister and former president-elect of the Christian Coalition, endorsed the bill’s provision of “better access to contraception.” So did two other pro-life theologians. Frances Kissling, who served for 25 years as president of Catholics for Choice, embraced pregnancy-prevention efforts that “meet women’s own goal of avoiding abortion where possible.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-CT, the bill’s principal pro-choice sponsor, said at a Thursday press conference that “we all want to see fewer unintended pregnancies and abortions” and that “we must also foster an environment that encourages pregnancies to be carried to term.” Such statements are forbidden among pro-choice groups: You’re supposed to endorse reducing the “need” for abortion, not abortion itself, and you’re never supposed to concede that financial support for childbearing should influence abortion decisions. But DeLauro blurted it out. That’s what happens when you open your mind.
Agreed. Premature babies are not the norm and not easily delivered or cared for. Neither are term babies with complications. Your point? Again, from your quote of my link: “In general, outcomes for premature babies are very good.”
What you are not understanding, Ralph, is that like your take on life and abortion, your trespassing analogy is just an artificial human idea based on your culture, not any kind of biological process. (Other cultures would laugh at your idea of private property.) One could just as easily point to a different analogy: the spectrum from black to white and then ask where white stops and black begins.
What am I to make of your trespassing analogy anyway? If society agrees it’s ok for people to trespass, as in the case of lifesaving, then that must prove that yes/no breathing is not the only hard and fast criteria for life? Like trespassing, just accept that there are plenty of exceptions to render your definition incomplete or nullify it altogether.
Premature babies don’t survive on their own. Most are plugged into tubes containing fats, proteins, sugars, salts, micro-nutrients, medicines, and more. For a time they may be on ventilators that do all the breathing for them. They would not breath at all otherwise. In theory they could be on lung machines that add O2 to the blood. In short, technology takes the place of the dependence on the mother. What in the world is your fixation upon just one of many required life-needs of the fetus and newborn?
RBG
# 41, RBG,
What in the world is your fixation upon just one of many required life-needs of the fetus and newborn?
See your own comment in #26,
There’s no difference between a baby born at term and a child born 2 1/2 months premature …
There definitely is a distinction. Your own link explains it.
#29,
In Canada, for example, they still believe you are suddenly transformed into a human only after the Great Pumpkin spreads pixie dust or some other magical process that can only happen during a delivery. One moment, uh, boogly cells… the next moment -kazaam!- human.
An example of the idiocy you believe. I fly a lot into Pearson and Dorval. I’ve yet to meet anyone along those lines. to continue
The same to-term infant could have easily been born one, two or more months earlier.
Already disproved with your link.
#33,
Your inquiry is like stating black or white cannot exist because, dang, where exactly does one end and the other begin?
Black and white are attributes. Black being the absence of any light and white being the collection of visible spectrum where all colors are equal. As with any attribute, it either is, or it isn’t. So either there is no light or their is some light. Either all colors are equally represented, or all colors aren’t equally represented.
Now gray, there is a variable.
#35,
The dying women I know are the ones dying to adopt babies but are faced with 2-4 years wait list.
Oh? http://in.gov/dcs/adoption/children1.htm is a partial list of just Indiana. Once the parents become qualified, the process is a matter of a few weeks. I went through the qualification process but decided we weren’t equipped to take on the obligation an adoption required.
#38,
“Will your dying-for-babies women only take newborns?”
That’s kind of the definition.
So if the baby is NOT a designer baby; blue eyes, blond hair, they are unacceptable and may spend their lives in foster care, moving from home to home every few months. That sounds like the typical right wing nut philosophy. Prevent a mother from aborting the baby but deny the baby exists if it is not up to your standards of purity.
#39,
What if a newborn could be placed on a lung machine for a year without ever breathing at all?
Then it would be a miracle. It is quite apparent you don’t understand the limitations of artificially sustaining a body. A year forcing O2 into a body would ruin the spleen and liver. The heart would not develop sufficiently to take over the chore later. The child would be mentally and emotionally retarded from the lack of human contact and the tether.
All those in long term care do breath on their own.
Ralph: You’ll have to be more specific re the need for breathing. All I see is “If the same was done to a foetus during and after birth, I guess this wouldn’t be a human being you say?” Emphasis on “you say.”
Next time you fly into Dorval airport, have a look at the federal law of the land and specifically when Canada officially believes you are a human worthy of any protection. Hint: it’s at one particular magical moment.
Your white/grey explanation only highlights the difference between people who are fixated on theoretical dogma and those who are interested in real world. I’ll present you with a thousand shades of black and let’s see if you can pick the one that does not emit a single photon. You can’t. For practical purposes they may all look the same. Like most babies just before and after birth.
I already used Scott’s link to prove my point about adoption in the US. For your benefit, I’ll repeat it:
“Waiting times for infant adoptions vary tremendously and can be as long as 2 years or more. Many agencies now involve birth parents in choosing adoptive parents and have discontinued traditional “waiting lists” (first come, first placed) because so few infants are available through agencies.”
http://tinyurl.com/35zwvd
Your link shows no newborns. Where, oh where, could they all have gone?
Men and women are getting their adopted babies from places like China and Africa because none are available in North America. They don’t care about your imaginative racism story.
A miracle like delivering and sustaining 28 1/2 week developed babies, no less. Your flawed definition of human life is based upon a moving target about what technology can and can’t do at any particular moment, even in the face of preemies on ventilators at the start, and the advent of heart/lung machines. What? they are human only if and when they start breathing on their own… you say?
Your definition of human life is hopelessly mired in political desperation.
RBG
RBG,
However, there are still many children to be adopted. Do you care nothing for them?
Besides, I think it’s obvious what route you are going down. You want to assume that any baby modern medicine can keep alive by heroic means is a human. This way, as modern medicine advances, you can use this argument to outlaw abortion completely.
But, you ignore the point that the fetus is still actually inside a prisoner of your morality.
MS: “However, there are still many children to be adopted. Do you care nothing for them?”
There are a great many problems on this Earth. Right now I’m attempting to fix an extermination problem.
The goal here is to make the fetus a “prisoner” of everyone’s morality.
RBG
Actually since abortion has been legalized in the US, there have been roughly 40 million abortions not 12 million. Yes I understand that sometimes it is medically necessary, but 40 million? That’s quite the mountain of dead babies.. er I mean embryos for the politically correct.
When one person stops another person’s heart from beating … that’s killing. Babies in the womb have beating hearts. They suck their thumbs. They open and close their eyes. They play with their toes. They FEEL PAIN. (when babies are operated on in the womb they are given pain killers – why is that?) And when someone gives me the argument that they aren’t ‘sentient’ yet and therefore they don’t count… I can take you to a Shopping Mall on any given day and point to quite a few interesting examples of individuals that don’t seem to be ‘sentient’ yet – and if you kill them you will probably go to jail because it is still murder, homicide, killing..
When people say ‘it’s my body and I can do with it as I please’ … they forget the fact that they are NOT killing their own bodies. They are killing someone else’s body – someone that has their own unique genetic destiny… that is being nurtured inside their mother.
All of that being said, people should have the right to choose how to exterminate their future sons and daughters. Why? Because hell or high water – the quick fix concept of abortion will probably never go away… (and again, medical necessity is excluded). See, you can be a pro-choicer and a pro-lifer after all.
And yes the legislation in the article has some intelligent thought in it.
There was a time when dogmatic people believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Even in the face of Galileo’s horrifying and undeniable evidence to the contrary staring them in the face, these people could not be moved from their cherished requisite beliefs.
Today in the news, is the horrifying report that – yet again – a woman has been brutally killed and her fetus unexpectedly cut from her whereupon it suddenly turned into a baby.
The undeniable evidence here is that this little being was, is, and would have continued to be a valuable human entity even up to the original due date.
RBG
#43, RGB,
Next time you fly into Dorval airport, have a look at the federal law of the land and specifically when Canada officially believes you are a human worthy of any protection.
I believe it is when the fetus is capable of surviving outside the womb. Since you didn’t point out any links I’ll have to go with my memory and when I said the first breath. Since the Canadian Supreme Court struck down the Abortion laws (1988?), there is no limit on when an abortion may be performed. If the law has changed since then I am unaware.
#43, RBG,
Your link shows no newborns. Where, oh where, could they all have gone?
Men and women are getting their adopted babies from places like China and Africa because none are available in North America.
Say what? Every country has regulations requiring standards be met. No one is bringing “newborns” home from overseas to adopt. Every foreign child is at least one year old and most over two.
Yet even that ignores the fact of so many local children looking for adoptive parents. Why? Simply because they are not the perfect newborns you want so they are discounted garbage.
Your mothers dieing to adopt are dieing from their selfish interests and not for any baby. Demanding that some woman be forced to carry a baby to term just to satisfy their selfishness is just plain wrong, no matter how you spin it. Denying women the right to control their bodies so YOU can turn them into a baby factory is disgusting.
48 Mr. Fusion. In Canada, the fetus may be capable of surviving outside the womb 5 minutes before birth, but there still is no law that restricts an abortion for any reason – or non-reason – at any time before the law thinks you materialize (think Star Trek) as a person.
I’m not going to challenge your assertion about foreign adoptees needing to be 1 year old, etc. because it is immaterial. For the prospective parents, this is as close to a newborn that can be had. Parents want the ability to bond and shape their own child’s lives as early as possible and they often know who the baby is even before they are permitted to pick him or her up. As was the case for my nephew and their adopted African baby.
But please don’t talk of selfishness in view of the termination of unborn children all for the sake of convenience. Once you understand unborn children are actually not the mother, you will have a different perspective on things.
Ditto once you understand life is full of consequences to one’s actions and compromises to personal rights. Creating human life is but one scenario.
Now put your money where your mouth is and go adopt a half dozen teens.
RBG
RBG,
I just have to ask, once you prove that a fetus can live outside of the womb, are you planning to provide services to remove the unwanted fetus from the womb and care for it so that the woman need not do so?
From where will the money come for such intensive medical care for the unwanted fetuses?
How about the ones that are being aborted because they have severe defects?
Will you find homes for them all?
Is it ethical to force such fetuses to live, thus becoming conscious of their horrible fate?
Go check out your local Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to witness scores of fetuses living outside the womb.
How does it work when mothers don’t want their children any more?
To begin with, I see from your adoption link that the price of an adoption is up to $40K. There’s a small start. The Catholics would be good for a few bucks. The State seems to have no problem spending whatever it takes on an idealism called absolute justice.
Sheesh, the media is already wondering what generation is going to be paying for our old age security. Let’s similarly kill off all the over-developed humans and put the dough towards the under-developed ones.
But none of that would be needed if only fetuses/unborn children were treated with the respect afforded all human entities instead of pieces of castaway garbage. It would be like tossing your newborn baby. Why shouldn’t there be millions of abortions when the propaganda conveniently pretends a fetus is akin to a carbuncle and sex is merely for a good time?
But you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater because you can’t figure out what to do with the exceptions or those with defects. “Geez, some babies have defects, so let’s throw them all out to solve that problem.” Sounds a bit like: “Let’s keep the undesirable races out of our country so we don’t have a racism problem.”
I fight one small battle at a time. The first is that Canadians recognize that viable unborn children are unborn children.
I might even accept recognition of that fact followed by an honest “but we kill them because it’s so damn convenient and they don’t complain much.”
RBG
I’m not straying too much from the above blog item’s intent now, am I?
RBG
#52 – RBG,
You’re still not addressing the question. If the fetus can live outside the womb, why not remove the unwanted fetus from the womb and then you can adopt it?
I bet you won’t actually advocate that. You think that since medical technology can be made to be a poor substitute for being in the womb, that this gives fetuses rights.
You’re wrong.
Fetuses of the world, if you want your rights, get out of the womb and claim them. I wanted my rights early, so I left 6 weeks early. C’mon all of you fetuses who want rights, c’mon out of there and win your rights. Breathe the fresh air of the born if you want the rights of the born.
RBG, I’m just guessing, but you are a man, right?
I just want to clear up whether you actually have any experience with carrying a fetus to term or maybe being a pregnant teen who once had hopes of a real life or maybe being a rape victim who doesn’t want to give the great Darwinian reward to the criminal shithead who raped her.
One technically could remove the fetus for adoption but it turns out it’s safer, less costly and more responsible to have the mother go to term. We have laws forcing people to wear seat belts for the same reason.
You’re confused. Being human is what gives a fetus rights, not technology. Luckily there are advocates for the unborn as there are on behalf of other powerless, shit-upon segments of humanity.
For the record I also don’t have any experience with suicide and a thousand other human problems that need correcting.
Fine. Rape victims get abortions. Well, I guess the rest of the 99.9999% of the terminated unborn get to live now.
But you don’t kill people so that someone else can have a “real” life. Especially if we are talking mere months of justifiable inconvenience, and a society that encourages the teen sexual behavior to begin with.
For that matter, what the hell happened to my carefree life after a wife & kids? Somebody owes me.
RBG
#55 – RBG,
I think you’re the one who’s confused. Safer for whom? I already pointed out that carrying to term is 20 times more likely to be lethal for the mother than abortion. But, you don’t care about the born. I think we’ve established that beyond all doubt now.
As for your own kids, you made a choice. No one forced you to have them. No one owes you so much as reading your drivel, let alone carrying a fetus to term.
“you made a choice”
Exactly. Ditto people who play with fire.
20 times is irrelevant if we are talking about a low % to begin with. No one hears any talk of “Oh, I shouldn’t have a child because it is 20 times more lethal than an abortion.”
Anything else?
RBG
RBG,
Risk of death in childbirth is indeed something most healthy potential mothers do not consider. Women with certain chronic illnesses like diabetes do indeed take this into account.
However, as you speak of forcing people to take your desired action for your personal values, which you seem to think includes sanctity of life, you should take the lives you are risking into account.
A number of these women you force into childbirth for your own reasons that are not universal will die … and you will have killed them.
The fact that you may only kill 97-120 women for every 100,000 abortions you prevent still does in fact make you a serial killer.
You sir, are an evil and despicable person for feeling that you alone know what is right for everyone.
Yeah, yeah. Tell it to the Marines.
Maybe we should have no childbirths to avert this great tragedy. Or better still, just eliminate society’s irresponsible free-love attitudes. I hope you are not one of those supporting such serial killing. I mean, of course for the sake of the lives of women who will feel the obligation to take the resulting unborn children to term.
And then there are these women you kill:
“They found that women who had their last children after the age of 35 had a 58 percent lower risk of ovarian cancer compared with women who had never had a child.
Women who had children earlier in life also had a lower risk, but it was less dramatic — 16 percent for women whose children were born before age 25, for example, and 45 percent for women whose children were born before age 30.
Women who had four or more children had a 64 percent lower risk than women who had never given birth, Malcolm Pike of the University of Southern California and colleagues reported in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Fertility & Sterility.”
http://tinyurl.com/my35xe
Misanthropic Scott. Please do not kill these women. Let them experience the natural cancer protection that early childbirth affords.
Sheesh.
RBG