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Abortion

Just to comment on the deep background knowleedge displayed here

While Republicans are split on the decision about embryos after a number of hospitals have ended their popular IVF programs out of fear of prosecution, others, like Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley agreed that “embryos, to me, are babies.”

This, apparently, is theocracy.

Hmm, might be something that folk aren’t going to put up with and all that. Could be something you agree with, something you don’t.

It’s also straight down the line, middle of the road, opinion of the world’s largest centrally organised religion – The Catholic Church.

As I say, agree with or not, it’s not actually an extreme position at all.

Don’t think it works this way

In a world that simply trusted women, abortion itself would be less common, I think, because more trust equals more empowerment and therefore fewer limitations: women would be free to obtain birth control at low cost and without a prescription, a key issue that has been somewhat overlooked amid the heated battles over abortion. Add some straightforward sex education that teaches women from an early age how fertility works — as opposed to the fearmongering version in which pregnancy can happen anytime, anywhere, just from being in the same room as a sperm — and you would get an informed, empowered population capable of avoiding unintended pregnancies.

Birth control is more widely available than it used to be. Vastly cheaper. Technically very much more effective too. Sex education is very much more widely available and so on.

The abortion rate has leapt over the past century that this has all happened too.

I very strongly suspect that there’s a Jevon’s Paradox here. The elasticity of demand for sex with respect to its price – the potential pregnancy thing – is such that reduce the odds of the pregnancy per unit of sex and you’ll increase the units of sex by so much more that total conception rates rise.

Well, maybe, anyway.

It’s certainly not obvious that more birth control and more sex education has correlated with fewer abortions now, is it?

You know my opinion on all this

Women in England and Wales accused of having illegal abortions have been held in custody after pregnancy loss, had their children taken into care and been saddled with debt, an expert has said.

Dr Jonathan Lord, a co-chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) abortion taskforce, said he was aware of up to 30 “deeply traumatic” cases where women had been investigated by the police, with some suffering “life-changing harm”.

He said: “We’ve had patients lose everything – lose their home, lose their children, lose their relationship with their partner – purely as a consequence of the investigation.”

This happens to all sorts of people accused of murder.

His warning comes after the RCOG issued new guidance on Monday saying doctors and other healthcare staff should not report suspected illegal abortions to the police as prosecutions were never in the public interest.

Gosh, that’s fun. So the abortionists are now determining the public interest are they? Isn;t that a bit of aggrandisement?

Now, it is possible to have different views on abortion, obviously. But the way the law works having an abortion outside the current law is an unlawful killing. Like that recent incident where the bird took the pills at what was it, 32 weeks? Which, you know, most of us would consider infanticide, not abortion.

But the folks who plug in the vacuum pumps for a living decide it’s not in the public interest to investigate?

Oh, right.

Umm, no, not really

Do doctors have an obligation under federal law to keep their patients alive, even if their patients happen to be pregnant women? Do doctors have an obligation to prevent maiming – or irreversible organ damage, or other kinds of serious bodily harm – and if so, does that obligation extend even to women? Do women have a right to access medically necessary care even if they are pregnant? No, according to the US fifth circuit court.

That’s the conclusion reached by a three-judge panel recently in Texas v Becerra, a case in which Texas sued the Biden administration over guidance that directed all hospitals receiving federal funds to perform “necessary stabilizing treatment” on patients – including abortions on pregnant patients undergoing medical emergencies.

The case was about whether Federal rule making outweighs State law. As medical care – let alone abortion – is not one of the enumerated powers then no.

Shrug.

Now, whether it’s right or wrong is another matter

Texas can ban emergency abortions despite federal guidance, court rules
The ruling by a unanimous panel of fifth US circuit court of appeals comes amid a wave of lawsuits focusing on abortion exceptions

The entire point of Dobbs was that abortion is not a Federal matter.

The Constitution says that some things are a Federal matter. International trade, say. It also says that those things which are not listed as being Federal belong to the States or the people. Roe said that abortion came under privacy, a Federal right. Dobbs said it didn’t. Therefore the States – and the voters – can do pretty much what they want about abortion because it’s simply not a Federal matter.

This is absolutely nothing about what hte restrictions should or should not be on abortion. It’s about whether the Feds have any rights here – No.

This is just what happens

The Supreme Court of Texas has overturned a ruling that would have allowed a woman to terminate her pregnancy under the medical exception to the state’s near-total abortion ban.

The unanimous ruling came hours after lawyers for Kate Cox, who was 20 weeks pregnant, revealed that she had left the state to obtain an abortion.

Ms Cox, 31, turned to the legal system after being told if she continued with her current pregnancy, her baby would likely be stillborn as it has a condition called Trisomy 18 and has no chance of survival.

No, not forced birth, rather this:

Nine Republican lawmakers ruled on Monday that a “good faith belief” by Damla Karsan, a doctor who sought to perform the abortion on the grounds it was medically necessary, was not enough to qualify for the state’s exception.

Instead, the court said, Dr Karsan would need to determine in her “reasonable medical judgment” that Ms Cox had a “life-threatening condition” and that an abortion was necessary to prevent her death or impairment of a major bodily function.

“A woman who meets the medical-necessity exception need not seek a court order to obtain an abortion,” the court wrote.

“The law leaves to physicians – not judges – both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient.’’

They’ve changed the law. As ususal, the law is slightly vague. Therefore greater clrification of what the law actually says is necessary – it being the US, through the court system.

Think it’s a bit odd to call the Supreme Court of TX 9 lawmakers but still. Such running of the first few cases up and down the legal system is normal when the law is changed. Any law in any direction. Just the way the system works.

Missing the point

Mothers, of course, have abortions. And it’s time to accept they are the experts in their own lives
Gina Rushton

If we trust people with the decision to have children, we can trust them with the decision not to

We’re all fine with the decision not to have children. It’s the getting rid of one that exists which is the concern.

Sure, OK, so the argument that the embyo is not a child – but the initial insistence is entirely ignoring even the concern that many to most actually have. And I do mean many to most too – because near all will in fact say that you can’t kill a child just because you don’t want it. Thus even proabortionists are making exactly that distinction, between what is a child which may not be killed and what is not which may.

This bird is just charging through as if the vital question, the releveant distinction, simply doesn’t exist.

Sheesh

Jessica Valenti
@JessicaValenti
As we close in on a year since was Roe was overturned, please remember: Every abortion denied is a tragedy.

Yes, yes, I know, I’m an extremist. I can’t even get behind the idea that an abortion is a necessary tragedy when it happens. But the idea that one that doesn’t happen is a tragedy? Every one denied is a tragedy?

Tough crowd…..

Bugger that

Scrap this unjust verdict, scrap this law: no woman should go to prison for having an abortion
Stella Creasy

Time and crime, Love, time and crime.

The average punishment for a violent crime is about 18 months in prison. Yesterday, a 44-year-old woman was sentenced, under a law dating back to 1861, to 28 months for procuring an abortion beyond 24 weeks.

Violence includes ABH and GBH. The average sentence for murder, upon conviction, is life in prison.

Abortion is a healthcare matter.

Jesus she’s a vile cow, isn’t she? She really is arguing for abortion up until term.

Yes

A mother jailed for procuring her own miscarriage. Is that what we want in 21st-century Britain?
Gaby Hinsliff

At 32 weeks?

Hell yes.

This is why we have this democracy thing, see? The peeps get to vote for the people who make the laws, those laws reflecting what the peeps want.

Given that I am feeling particularly evil this morning a siggestion – we send that woman a birthday card on the date that would have been for the next 70 years.

Have you seen the latest thing?

So, woman self aborts at 32 to 34 weeks. Gets jugged. So now there’s to be a march for the right to kill at 32 to 34 weeks.

Yes, yes, I know, I’m an extremist on this point. I’ve still not worked out what I think about the morning after pill. And I’m definitely against the idea that there should be a distinction made between handicapped and non-handicapped after whatever cut off date (me, extremist, conception, while realising that near the entirety of society disagrees) is agreed.

But even thorugh this fog of extremism I’m still astonished. That there are enough people in the country to form a march for the right to kill babbies at 32 weeks. Really?

Weird

Wrong professor:

“For the GOP, the dilemma is: Do you have exceptions so that you can message to voters that, ‘Hey, we’re not that bad and we’re not that far off from the mainstream’?” said Mary Ziegler, a University of California, Davis School of Law professor who studies the legal history of reproduction. “Or do you just do what the anti-abortion movement wants and hope that voters don’t punish you for it? Because at least that way the anti-abortion movement is happy.”

Or at least, professor of wrong subject. Don’t you need one of not-reproduction?

Interesting language here

Pilot who offered flights to women for medical care fired from seminary job
Greg Williams offered transportation for women seeking out-of-state care after the supreme court’s Dobbs decision last year

It’s all “medical care“.

Williams’s day job was teaching Greek and Latin at a college for prospective Catholic priests near New Orleans.

So the seminary fired to guy for flying people to abortions. Seems a reasonable enough decision to be honest.

Savour the wording here

There’s a reason people fly to see Fleischman. She provides abortions through manual uterine aspiration – using a small, hand-held device to remove pregnancy tissue. The device is gentle enough that the tissue often comes out almost completely intact.

Completely intact pregnancy tissue”.

Yes Honey, yes, it does

Vice-president Kamala Harris said the ruling “threatens the rights of women nationwide to make decisions about their healthcare and the ability to access medication prescribed to them by their doctors”.

This being rather the point:

A federal judge in Texas on Friday suspended US approval of the abortion medication mifepristone, one of the two drugs commonly used for medication abortions, in a closely watched case brought by anti-abortion activists.

Now, whether that right and decision should be threatened or not is another matter. But that is exactly what the entire case is about, yes.

In which case we’ve found Kamala saying something both true and useful. Which is a surprise, no?

Weird

In 2016, the agency approved the drug for use in combination with another widely used drug, misoprostol, which has become the standard “Plan C” protocol. The drug regimen terminates pregnancies successfully 99.6% of the time, with a 0.4% risk of major complications, and an associated mortality rate of less than 0.001%.

Does it work or not? A mortality rate for abortions of 0.001% would suggest not.

Thousands, eh, fousands of ’em

Protesters mark 50 years since landmark decision that protected abortion rights nationwide

Poppy Noor in Washington
@PoppyNoor
Sun 22 Jan 2023 21.43 GMT
Thousands of protesters gathered across the United States to protest the end of the federal right to abortion – marching on the the 50th anniversary of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision that made abortion a constitutional right in 1973, but which was struck down last year.

At more than 200 Women’s March events in 46 states, demonstrators condemned the court’s decision, which leaves it up to individual states to decide whether to protect, ban or restrict abortion rights.

Each demo might be quite small then?

Well, yes

“We care deeply about freedom of speech,” the letter declares. “We also believe it is imperative that publishers uphold their dedication to freedom of speech with a duty of care.”

What is meant here is that they do indeed care deeply about freedom of speech. In the sense that no fucker should have it.

Yes, yes, this is about abortion – superficially – and all that, Amy Coney Barrett’s new book and whatever.

In an open letter that began circulating last week, more than 700 “members of the writing, publishing, and broader literary community” are urging Penguin Random House to cancel the publication of a forthcoming title by Amy Coney Barrett. Citing the conservative Supreme Court justice’s vote with the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and declared that the Constitution affords no right to an abortion, the signatories argue that publishing Barrett’s book would put the publisher at odds with globally recognized human rights.

No. Fuck off and die.

Now, me, I’m vehemently, possibly even vilely, against abortion. We get the one pass through this life (sorry Hindus) and to have that cut short just because the bird who enjoyed the shag would find having to get the tit out for a feed to be boring means it don’t happen, well, umm, no.

Umm, yes, vehement and quite possibly vile. But, you know, me.

But I’ve never called for the silencing of those who think that abortion is just a handy method of contraception. Because I’m actually a liberal – people can believe, write, say, whatever they want even when in error.

This? This – no, fuck off and die. Of course Penguin, or anyone else, can, may, publish whatever they want. But these cunts here are demanding that nothing they disagree with get published.

No.

Given that they’ve proved they are cunts this does mean that we can do a D&C on ’em but how do you insert even the vaguest moral sense that way?

Gosh

All four holders of the “Great Offices of State” have failed to support a woman’s right to access safe abortions in England over the past seven years, the Guardian can reveal.

You’d almost think that this is a political subject, where views can and do differ.

Wouldn’t that be weird?