Common, in-clinic procedures performed by other specialists have far greater risks than abortions. The death rate associated with colonoscopies is 40 times greater than that associated with abortion, according to the American Public Health Association.
I’m really pretty sure that one person doesn’t die per colonoscopy.
Yes, yes, I know. Person and foetus etc. But still that’s an incorrect statement above.
I’m surprised how many buy in to the de-humanisation of foetuses. De-humanisation of the victim is a time-tested method of justifying action against the victim. A moment’s thought would make such a stigma where unborn humans are concerned totally untenable.
Question for LJH please – isn’t a colonoscopy an examination of the colon with a camera inserted into the patient’s fundament and northward from there?
I should have thought that the risk of this procedure is close to nil. Perhaps the word “associated” here conflates patients who have serious problems with their colon with those who have a Reaganesque polyp – I imagine that a colonoscopy is common to both categories of patient.
Is this a weaselly of saying something as banal as birth is associated with death.
I bet they’re including non-surgical abortions in the stats too – “There’s your pill love, might be a small blob of tissue in the toilet tomorrow” type things.
and….
apparently the third most common documented cause of mortality in the USA behind heart attacks and cancer is medical mistakes?
That said – terminating a 9 month old healthy, viable baby does seem quite harsh.
There’s also the demographics of abortion in the USA…. It seems strange that the Kermit Gosnell story has not been wheeled out in the too-ing and fro-ing on the matter over there.
TMB,
It is and I was surprised by that statistic and presume it is to do with the anaesthetics.
The first one I had I was awake but quite drugged up. I wasn’t allowed to drive or use machinery for 24 hours. There was no pain.
The second was quite painful because they had been told to reduce the amount of anaesthetics. I still couldn’t drive or use machinery for 24 hours.
For the third I elected for gas and air, an option I hadn’t been given previously. Wow, what a high and there’s no wonder women like it when giving birth. No pain and I walked out of the hospital and drove home.
While this particular ruling thankfully falls on the right side of history…
I’m pretty sure civilisations that kill their own babies and also fail to replace themselves aren’t on the right side of history.
Mebbe we should ask Aztecs or the Canaanites what it leads to.
De-humanisation of the victim is a time-tested method of justifying action against the victim.
Yarp. No happy couple ever announces “we’re having a foetus!”.
“I should have thought that the risk of this procedure is close to nil”: you are wrong.
I was advised I shouldn’t have another colonoscopy because my colon was now in good enough nick that the risk of a further colonoscopy was greater than the potential benefit.
Before you have a colonoscopy you are briefed on the non-negligible risk in an entirely serious way.
Tomo – terminating a 9 month old healthy, viable baby does seem quite harsh
Understatement of the year, no? There are arguments we can have about the personhood of an unborn baby at 6 weeks, but by 9 months there’s no debate – it’s a viable, fully formed human life. They can hear, feel, and dream like any infant. They respond to the sound of their mother’s voice.
I don’t know how they can bring themselves to do it. It’s real life horror, not dissimilar to experimenting on children in Nazi death camps or serial killers keeping women chained up in their basement.
Everyone involved with this needs to be rounded up. And maybe that’s why the pro-abortion movement is so aggressive – because on some level they must know that what they’re doing is so thoroughly evil that if their fellow human beings stop to think about it, the rope and millstones will come out.
Agreeing with Steve and then, an honest question.
Why has the American pro-abortion movement gone so extreme?
Personally, I’m not as anti as our host although I do consider it to be the least acceptable form of birth control (albeit, I don’t really class things like the morning after pill in the same category as abortion.)
Beware relative risk comparisons when the absolute risks are tiny.
maybe that’s why the pro-abortion movement is so aggressive – because on some level they must know that what they’re doing is so thoroughly evil that if their fellow human beings stop to think about it, the rope and millstones will come out.
Absolutely.
Although, and this chimes with your comments about being on the right side/writing yourself out of history, there is very little that distinguishes modern progressive leftism from a death cult.
TMB: people having colonoscopies are a mostly different age group. Sometimes it is performed as an emergency procedure for bleeding. So often elderly patients with other medical conditions eg hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular issues with symptoms suggestive of bowel cancer, polyps, diverticulitis . It is the investigation of choice as it is minimally invasive, biopsies can be made and bleeding polyps cauterised. Pre flexible fibreoptics diagnosis had more associated mortality and morbidity.
The population compared are young mostly healthy women. Most abortions are in the first trimester, a time when fetal loss is often spontaneous and without longterm sequelae (don’t announce a wanted pregnancy to friends and family until after the twelfth week is sound advice). Beyond the twelfth week bones begin to form, the uterus is larger as is the blood supply and miscarriages are uncommon unless there is a physical problem. Abortion of a growing baby has much higher associated risks for the mother and should be reserved for more serious indications.
@Steve
Gosnell The Movie
Grim and sad – understatement intentional.
Can’t say I was impressed at what I found when looking at Planned Parenthood and the ethos / mission of their founder the sainted Margaret Sanger…. remarkably fat salaries too for a “not for profit”.
They are about as much about parenthood as Southern Poverty Law Centre are about poverty.
As for the posturing Democrats OK-ing birth abortions – references to hell are popular at the moment – if anybody deserved a dose of it prior to shuffling off the mortal coil – it’s those swines.
It is a topic where many difficult judgments have to be made – but there are some in it that would impose things that they themselves would never, ever countenance in their own lives
‘according to the American Public Health Association’
Guardian sourcing. APHA is hard Left. They would say anything to protect abortion.
@Steve
The flip side of that is, given that a newborn is morally indistinguishable from a developed foetus, and even a healthy three year old lacks many of the capacities and attributes classically attributed to “personhood”, what’s the moral obligation to protect their lives either? Especially if their existence imposes costs to society and their continued life has negative impacts on the health, wellbeing, financial resources or personal desires of adult persons.
This is a cultural choice and infanticide has been regarded as a rational and ethical option, in some cases even a morally obligatory one – whether among the great civilizations of Greece and Rome and their abhorrence of birth defects, African tribes with an abhorrence of twins (Things Fall Apart etc but it happened, even happens, in East Africa too) or the priority of hungry mouths in neolithic and paleolithic groups (where 10-50% of infants are estimated to have been killed) and feudal to nineteenth century Japan (the practice of mabiki meaning “to thin out plants from an overcrowded garden” being applied to children too, especially multiple births).
Who is to say that these cultures have got it wrong whereas we are right? Particularly leading medical ethicists? I’m not a fan of the slippery slope argument but I do wonder where exactly we’ll end up if we as a society keep chipping away at our values via critical examination and moral relativism. Just how far could we go? What’s compatible or possible with the most fundamental human values? Does venturing down that rabbit hole open up what turns out to be a bottomless pit? We are just animals after all, even if big brained ones. Paleolithic peoples were quite happy to engage in cannibalism – as a cultural practice that’s persisted in several corners of the world until surprisingly recently – and you will never prove scientifically that it is morally wrong. Perhaps it is due a comeback. Though icky and rather unhealthy so probably the kind of thing Public Health Futureworldstate would be nagging our great-great-grandchildren not to do. Modern, technically advanced and “highly cultured” societies have engaged in industrial-scale genocide as a national mission, so there’s no convincing reason to think that “Progress” will make us more morally advanced than the cavemen. So if one is sceptical of claims about the innate morality or compassion of humanity, but was quite enjoying so-called western civilization while it lasted, then the following research is deeply discomforting. I’d classify it as “moral rabbit-holing” and I don’t think I want to know how deep the hole in the human heart burrows…
https://jme.bmj.com/content/39/5/261
Giubilini A, Minerva F After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? Journal of Medical Ethics 2013;39:261-263.
Abstract
Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.
MyBurningEars
yup
If the debate stateside doesn’t peter out (seems unlikely) – it seems clear that political cannibalism might make an appearance among Democrats.
Steve: “I don’t know how they can bring themselves to do it. “
They’re doctors. I suspect most have at least a touch of the psychopath.
Colonoscopy is mostly done to remove polyps.
A polyp is a growing splodge of tissue measuring up to a centimetre or more long, containing nervous tissue and a blood supply and attached to its host, nourished, via the tissue membrane. It is removed/killed by cutting and cauterisation.
Is it a person?
Most abortions are carried out before the fœtal stage, that is prior to 8 weeks, either a zygote or embryo, not unlike a polyp in its characteristics.
Question: is a sperm half a person?
Exactly right, MBE.
As VA and NY move to legalize infanticide of newborns, I expect a race between other Regressive states to one up them. California will raise it to one year. Oregon will go 3. Hawaii will legalize killing 7 year olds if the parents decide it isn’t working out.
You can abort but not deport.
One of our leading moral philosophers, Prof Peter Singer, discusses abortion and infanticide in his Practical Ethics (pp169-174, a very accessible read). He argues that there is an ethical case for abortion, but accepts that exactly the same argument may be used to justify infanticide – certainly up to the age of one month and probably up to 18 months.
@JohnB: a polyp will never be anything other than a polyp.
No. It can become cancer. That’s why it is removed.
’40 times greater’
Trickery. What are the actual numbers for comparison? E.g., .0004 is 40 times greater than .00001, but hardly significant.
@CM
Yes there was quite a lot of fuss over the BMJ JME paper I linked above, but it didn’t go especially far beyond what eg Singer had said long before. Perhaps a bit more explicit and inclusive about the kind of infant- who might be -icided.
Listening to the pro-abortionists you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s only used for rape victims, child abuse victims and women who would otherwise die. Meaning of course that if you murmur disquiet, you support rape, child abuse and women dying.
But 8,500,000 UK abortions since 1968. Seems a lot.
Assume they are only including physical risk, what about any subsequent mental health or emotional issues
Or to go further what about risk of abuse/violence if an partner finds out after the fact
Small numbers I’m sure but then when did that matter to the Left when pushing an issue
Steve,
“There are arguments we can have about the personhood of an unborn baby at 6 weeks, but by 9 months there’s no debate – it’s a viable, fully formed human life. They can hear, feel, and dream like any infant. They respond to the sound of their mother’s voice.”
This is a massive own goal. It might lead to a huge rise in support for pro-life movements in the USA.
Me, I support 12 weeks. That’s what most of Europe is like and there aren’t backstreet abortionists in Paris and Rome.
the next world war will clarify things. One way or the other.
“Why has the American pro-abortion movement gone so extreme?”
My guess is a large part of that can be summed up in three words.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg
A word of advice- if you’re offered a ‘virtual ‘ colonoscopy, just say NO!