No, but since adoption is apparently illegal in your world, it is the best we can do without resorting to the obviously better answer of killing the child.
it's been a long time since i asked you this and i wondered if you were going to answer. but, since this person clearly is talking about punishing women for even original sin, i don't guess your answer is really relevant at this point.
I just think choosing to abort should not be a frivolous decision and that is how it seems to be now.
but who are you to say that the decisions these women made were under frivilous circumstances? is this "seeming" actually based on anything but the number of women having them?
You point out individual problems that you feel justify abortions and that most abortions occur early. But late term abortions are still legal and those special cases you bring up don't comprise the bulk of abortions.
but late term abortions don't make up the bulk of abortions either.
but let's talk about why late term abortions happen. as it is, late term abortions are more traumatic than early ones. do you think women wait till later just for fun? since you think these decisions are frivilous, show me some stats about why late term abortions happen.
Page Not Found | Guttmacher Institutehere's a discussion on the law of late term abortions. note there's a case that talks about how no pregnancy is the same legislator is qualified to make health decisions. do you think legislators are qualified medical professionals?
In Colautti v. Franklin (1979), a challenge to a Pennsylvania law, the Court reaffirmed the principles established in Roe and Danforth and elaborated on its views concerning viability: "Because this point [viability] may differ with each pregnancy, neither the legislature nor the courts may proclaim one of the elements entering into the ascertainment of viability”be it weeks of gestation or fetal weight or any other single factor”as the determinant of when the State has a compelling interest in the life or health of the fetus."
The Court thus upheld the lower court in saying that it is the professional responsibility of the physician to determine whether the fetus has the capacity for "meaningful life, not merely temporary survival."
The Court in Colautti voided a section of the statute requiring a doctor to abide by a prescribed standard of care if he determined the fetus was viable or if there was "sufficient reason to believe that the fetus may be viable" (emphasis added). It pointed out that "a physician determines whether or not a fetus is viable after considering a number of variables: the gestational age of the fetus, derived from the reported menstrual history of the woman; fetal weight, based on an inexact estimate of the size and condition of the uterus; the woman's general health and nutrition; the quality of the available medical facilities; and other factors."
The Court added, "Because of the number and the imprecision of these variables, the probability of any particular fetus' obtaining meaningful life outside the womb can be determined only with difficulty. Moreover, the record indicates that even if agreement may be reached on the probability of survival, different physicians equate viability with different probabilities of survival, and some physicians refuse to equate viability with any numerical probability at all. In the face of these uncertainties, it is not unlikely experts will disagree over whether a particular fetus in the second trimester has advanced to the stage of viability."
...
Thus, the Supreme Court made it clear that the determination of viability, which depends on a variety of individual factors, must be left to the professional judgment of the individual physician. Provisions that establish a specific age”usually 20 or 24 weeks”after which abortion is prohibited (and, presumably, the fetus is considered de facto viable) are unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Two years later, in Doe v. Bolton (1973), the Court struck down a provision of the Georgia abortion statute that required two independent physicians to confirm the attending doctor's determination that continuation of a pregnancy would endanger the woman's life or injure her health. "The attending physician's 'best clinical judgment that an abortion is necessary'...should be sufficient," the Court said.
"If a physician is licensed by the State," the decision stated, "he is recognized by the State as capable of exercising acceptable clinical judgment. If he fails in this, professional censure or deprivation of his license are available remedies. Required acquiescence by co-practitioners has no rational connection with a patient's needs and unduly infringes on the physician's right to practice."
Thirteen years later, in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (1986), the Supreme Court ruled that when performing a postviability abortion, a physician must have the authority to choose the method most likely to preserve his patient's health, even if it might jeopardize fetal survival. The Court struck down a provision of a Pennsylvania abortion law that required a physician to exercise the same degree of care in performing a postviability procedure as he would be required to exercise "to preserve the life and health of any unborn child intended to be born and not aborted."
In addition, the law had required the doctor to use the abortion technique that would give the fetus the best chance of being aborted alive, unless "in the physician's good-faith judgment, that technique 'would present a significantly greater medical risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman.'" But the Court upheld an appeals court's ruling that the law was unconstitutional because it required "a 'trade-off' between the woman's health and fetal survival and failed to require that maternal health be the physician's paramount consideration."
Page not found - Women's eNews
this article discusses actual people who have late-term abortions
If the ban were in place in 1995, Tammy Watts would likely be dead, she says.
In March of that year, Watts was in the eighth month of a much-wanted pregnancy and was eagerly anticipating the birth of her first child. During a routine ultrasound (the only way to detect abnormalities that require late-term abortion), she discovered her baby had Trisomy 13, a chromosomal abnormality that causes severe deformities and carries no hope of survival.
Because her baby was already dying and because this put her own life at stake, Watts had an intact dilation and extraction (D and X), the procedure that Bush condemns as "brutal."
"Losing my baby at the end of my pregnancy was agonizing," says Watts. "But the way the right deals with this issue makes it even worse. When I heard Bush mention 'partial birth abortion' during the debates, I thought 'How dare you stand there and tell flat-out lies?' There is no such thing as this procedure! Why won't the politicians listen to us?"
When Congress first considered the ban in 1995, Watts testified on Capitol Hill. So did Viki Wilson of Fresno, Calif., who had a late-term abortion because the brain of the fetus she was carrying had developed outside the skull. So did Vikki Stella of Naperville, Ill., whose fetus had dwarfism, no brain tissue and seven other major abnormalities.
All three women told legislators they owed their health to late-term abortions and that a continuation of their doomed pregnancies posed grave health risks such as stroke, paralysis, infertility or even death.
As they campaign to save access to these procedures, Watts, Stella and Wilson point out that in virtually all cases, late-term abortions are the only way to respond to unanticipated complications: the death of the fetus inside the womb, problems that mean the fetus can't live outside the womb, or serious threats to the mother's health.
"No women has these procedures for frivolous reasons," says Stella. "They have them because it's their only choice."
Watts, Stella and Wilson note that late-term abortions are sanctioned by many medical professional groups. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Washington, D.C., calls intact D and X--a commonly used late-term procedure--"the most appropriate and safest" option in some cases. The American Nurses Association, Silver Spring, Md., and the American Medical Women's Association, Alexandria, Va., also approve the practice.
Pro-choice advocates also note that despite all the political hoopla, intact D and X procedures are very rare, accounting for only 2,200 of the 1 million U.S. abortions performed each year.
how about this one
My Late-term Abortion - Our Bodies Ourselves
As we sat there, she said that the ultrasound indicated that the fetus had an open neural tube defect, meaning that the spinal column had not closed properly. It was a term I remembered skipping right over in my pregnancy book, along with all the other fetal anomalies and birth defects that I thought referred to other people's babies, not mine. She couldn't tell us much more. We would have to go to the main hospital in Boston, which had a more high-tech machine and a more highly trained technician. She tried to be hopeful -- there was a wide range of severity with these defects, she said. And then she left us to cry.
...
Instead of cinnamon and spice, our child came with technical terms like hydrocephalus and spina bifida. The spine, she said, had not closed properly, and because of the location of the opening, it was as bad as it got. What they knew -- that the baby would certainly be paralyzed and incontinent, that the baby's brain was being tugged against the opening in the base of the skull and the cranium was full of fluid -- was awful. What they didn't know -- whether the baby would live at all, and if so, with what sort of mental and developmental defects -- was devastating. Countless surgeries would be required if the baby did live. None of them would repair the damage that was already done.
I collapsed into Dave. It sounds so utterly naive now, but nobody told me that pregnancy was a gamble, not a guarantee. Nobody told me that what was rooting around inside me was a hope, not a promise. I remember thinking what a cruel joke those last months had been.
We met with a genetic counselor, but given the known as well as the unknown, we both knew what we needed to do. Though the baby might live, it was not a life that we would choose for our child, a child that we already loved. We decided to terminate the pregnancy. It was our last parental decision.
do you think she made a frivilous decision?
why might someone get a late term abortion?
http://www.abortionisprolife.com/statistics.htm
What are rational reasons for why a woman would perform a late term abortion?
Abortion may be performed at later periods usually for the following reasons: (1) undiagnosed pregnancy until the late term, (2) medical complications (a pregnancy could worsen her health and/or threaten her life, the woman has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy), (3) an abnormal fetus (i.e. it is developing with an incomplete spinal cord and this problem was not diagnosed until late in the pregnancy), (4) teen age pregnancy (teen must face unnecessary delays which prevent the teen from having an early term abortion, or the teen is raped and keeps it a secret in "shame" until it is obvious she is pregnant -- she should have the rapist aborted!), (5) time to raise money to pay for the abortion, (6) physician shortage in many counties so that woman must travel to major cities to have an abortion (84% of all counties in the U.S. have no abortion provider, and 94% of rural counties have none), (7) state imposed waiting periods. [Source: "Susan Dudley, Ph.D. "Abortion After Twelve Weeks" National Abortion Federation 1996]
more why
Page Not Found | Guttmacher Institute
What Are the Reasons Women Have an Abortion?
In 1987 and 1995, AGI collected information nationally on the socioeconomic characteristics of approximately 10,000 women obtaining abortions. The results of the 1995 survey show that the women who are most likely to obtain an abortion have an annual inco me of less than $15,000, are enrolled in Medicaid, are aged 18-24, are nonwhite or Hispanic, are separated or never-married, live with a partner outside marriage and have no religious affiliation. Catholics are as likely as the general population of women to terminate a pregnancy, Protestants are less likely to do so, and Evangelical Christians are the least likely to do so.
The only comprehensive source of information on the reasons women give for their abortion decision is from a 1987 AGI survey of 1,900 abortion patients nationwide. The survey deliberately oversampled women having abortions beyond 15 weeks of gestation, although the number was still relatively small (420).
The vast majority of respondents cited a variety of socioeconomic and family considerations as their main reasons for seeking an abortion. Most of the women reported that more than one factor contributed to their decision, with the average number of reaso ns being four. However, 3% of respondents said that the "most important reason" for their decision was concern for their own health, and another 3% cited concern that the fetus had a health problem.
The women having abortions after 15 weeks attributed their lateness in obtaining the procedure to not having realized earlier that they were pregnant (or how long they had been pregnant), having had difficulty in arranging the abortion and (in the case of teenagers) having been afraid to tell their parents they were pregnant.
how.
At What Gestational Ages Are Abortions Performed?
As noted above, the only national data on the incidence of abortion by weeks of gestation come from the CDC reports, which are dependent on state-generated information that is often incomplete. States also vary in their methods of recording gestational age: Some use the number of weeks that have elapsed since the woman's last menstrual period (which overstates the length of gestation), and others record the physician's estimate of gestational age. In addition, individual states, over time, have changed their reporting format, making it difficult to observe trends and make comparisons.
The CDC reports group all abortions after 20 weeks of gestation into one category. After the CDC figures are adjusted for underreporting, approximately 16,450 procedures, or roughly 1% of all abortions in 1992, were estimated to have been performed beyond 20 weeks since the woman's last menstrual period (see Table 1).
Table 1. Induced Abortions, 1992
Gestational age Number
Total 1,528,930
20 weeks 16,450
21-22 weeks 10,340
23-24 weeks 4,940
25-26 weeks 850
>26 weeks 320
Note: Numbers are estimates by AGI based on AGI survey data, the CDC abortion surveillance reports and data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Extrapolating from unpublished data for 14 states compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), it is possible to estimate that two-thirds of these abortions were performed at 21-22 weeks. After 26 weeks, the number of abortion s nationwide is estimated at 320; given the uncertainty of the data, however, the number could be as high as 600.
Either way, these estimates must be viewed as tentative. One uncertainty stems from the limited number of states on which the estimates are based, since these states may not be representative of the nation as a whole and their reported data may be incompl ete. In addition, because the number of providers who perform late abortions is very small, they may have relatively large caseloads; this factor may bias the reporting, depending on whether states in which these providers are located are part of the NCHS sample. There may be errors by clinicians in their evaluation or recording of the gestational age. Finally, although all states report to the NCHS the number of natural fetal deaths beyond 20 weeks of gestation (see Table 2), some of these deaths may erroneously be classified as abortions if the removal of the fetus is accomplished by the same procedure as an induced abortion
Table 2. Fetal Deaths, 1992
Gestational age Number
20-23 weeks 8,152
24-27 weeks 4,567
28-31 weeks 3,635
32-35 weeks 4,107
Source: National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics of the United States, 1992: Vol. II”Mortality, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1997 (in press).
Regarding methods of pregnancy termination, 86% of all late abortions appear to be performed by dilatation and evacuation (D&E), and most of the remainder by inducing labor. There is no information on the number performed by D&X, which is a type o f D&E.
the reason late term abortions are legal is because women are prevented from having earlier ones, or they are neccessary for health reasons. that call can only be made by a medical professional, not you, and not a legislator.
You say the the woman should not have to "pay" for her decision to have sex but have no problem with the father "paying" if she decides to keep the baby.
i haven't actually discussed this. as it is, both parents of a child are expected to contribute to its wellbeing. i see no issue with this. i do think that the system probably needs to be improved, but i haven't read much into it and i'm not discussing it.
why do you think a woman should have to "pay" for her decision to have sex? why is sex so iniquitous?
Seems inconsistent and contradictory to me, unless I am missing something.
are you telling me that a man should be able to demand that the woman he had sex with get an abortion so he doesn't have to pay child support?
You don't want any men telling you what to do with your body or the rest of your life but think it is perfectly alright to tell men what to do with theirs.
again, i haven't discussed child support. but that's hardly telling them what to do with their bodies... just their wallets. as it is, i'm much more in favor of a comprehensive welfare system to help care for children missing a parent, but that's just not very popular.
but. the reson a woman has more choice about abortion than a man is because she has more physical responsibility than he does. she has to sacrifice her body and her organs and her metabolism for up to three years in physically caring for the needs of this child. he does not.
it's not very nice that he doesn't get an out, but it can't really be helped. the child has to be supported and fed and clothed and kept in a safe home, and as long as people in this country advocate a self-help system, that means the parents are responsible for that child's care. now. perhaps he should be able to adopt out his half of the responsibility. that would be an interesting legal situation...
don't ascribe positions to me i don't hold. it doesn't go very well.
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