Michigan Anti-Abortion Bill, 'Most Extreme' In The Country

rwam said:

Humans would have an easier time agreeing upon when a fetus becomes a 'person' if there wasn't so much at stake politically on the pro-choice/pro-life front. It'd be refreshing if people would just try their best to get to the truth of the matter, regardless of what that truth would mean to either camp. And the fact that each camp assumes worst intentions in the other doesn't help matters much.

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I'd find it refreshing if people would mind their own business, to be blunt about it. I have never understood why this is a political or even social issue any more than any other major medical decision made by individuals or within families. If some people think no one should have an abortion, the First Amendment guarantees their right to try to persuade other people to agree with them, but I see absolutely zero validity in all their attempts to impose their personal beliefs on others (read: me) via the law. I especially fail to see any validity in their actions since they are primarily motivated by religion, and the US Constitution mandates that we have secular government. They should be making their cases in the churches and on street corners, not in the courts and legislatures.

If we take "truth of the matter" to refer to the ethics of abortion, that is entirely subjective and therefore a matter for individual contemplation, not public debate or majority rule. If, on another hand, we take it to refer to when fetuses become people, then no matter what anyone decides to believe, it is unprovable and has no measurable effect on society and therefore is not a matter for the law to address. So to me, the idea of everyone getting to the truth of the matter is both impossible and irrelevant.

muravyets said:

I'd find it refreshing if people would mind their own business, to be blunt about it. I have never understood why this is a political or even social issue any more than any other major medical decision made by individuals or within families. If some people think no one should have an abortion, the First Amendment guarantees their right to try to persuade other people to agree with them, but I see absolutely zero validity in all their attempts to impose their personal beliefs on others (read: me) via the law. I especially fail to see any validity in their actions since they are primarily motivated by religion, and the US Constitution mandates that we have secular government. They should be making their cases in the churches and on street corners, not in the courts and legislatures.

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I don't think everyone who is anti-abortion comes at it from a religious standpoint. Some people believe that life occurs at conception, that there is a spark of something and since we can't scientifically quantify what that something is, we should err on the side of the zygote/embryo/fetus. If they truly believe zygote-icide is murder, then it follows they must legislate against that.

vsrenard said:

I don't think everyone who is anti-abortion comes at it from a religious standpoint. Some people believe that life occurs at conception, that there is a spark of something and since we can't scientifically quantify what that something is, we should err on the side of the zygote/embryo/fetus. If they truly believe zygote-icide is murder, then it follows they must legislate against that.

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First off, I didn't say they all were. I said they primarily were, and I stand by that. I do not believe that non-religious reasons for opposing abortion represent the majority of anti-choice views.

Second, you're skipping a step there, I think, or more appropriately, anti-choice legislators and advocates skip a step. If they believe that aborting a pregnancy is murder of a zygote, then they must prove that a zygote is subject to murder before they can legitimize legislating against it. What I mean is, they must prove that a zygote is a person, because only persons can be murdered.

For instance, we kill chickens for food, but that's not murder. PETA might think it should be, but it isn't because murder is a crime that is defined by law and it is not applied to things or beings that are not persons. Note that the anti-choice argument is not that we should apply the standard of murder to the killing non-person beings or things. That would be a slippery slope indeed. No, their argument is that zygotes are people.

Well, okay, let them prove it. Personhood is a legal concept by which laws and rights are applied to individuals. The law recognizes certain standards that make a being a person. Let them show how zygotes meet those standards.

Or else, let them first create a legal fiction that arbitrarily defines a zygote as a legal person, just like corporations can be defined as legal person (which they will certainly have to do, since there is no way they can prove that a zygote is a natural person):

(Law) an individual or group that is allowed by law to take legal action, as plaintiff or defendent. It may include natural persons as well as fictitious persons (such as corporations).- Blackstone.
See also: Person
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co.

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http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Legal+person

And only after that passes muster (and court challenges), let them legislate that abortion is murder.

And if they pass that hurdle, that's when I will become a strong advocate for women to voluntarily get tubal ligations as soon as they've had the children they want, to protect their rights as citizens.

Considering that a zygote has even fewer of the markers for personhood than a corporation does (since a corporation is at least managed by actual persons), they'll have their work cut out for them to arbitrarily grant zygotes rights far in excess of what any natural person enjoys. If they go that route, they'd better hope Citizens United never gets over-turned or that the Congress never legislates against the personhood of corporations in order to invalidate Citizens because I don't think they want anything to tarnish the magical luster of fictitious personhood.

Fair enough but I don't think they have to prove a zygote is a person. Laws are what we choose them to be. If enough people believe a zygote is a person, the laws will eventually reflect that. Hence my utter dislike for fetal homicide laws.

vsrenard said:

Fair enough but I don't think they have to prove a zygote is a person. Laws are what we choose them to be. If enough people believe a zygote is a person, the laws will eventually reflect that. Hence my utter dislike for fetal homicide laws.

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Okay, fair enough as well. My take on fetal homicide laws is that, at viability, there are markers for natural personhood in the fetus, but as I said or tried to say earlier, the way the anti-choice factions try to grab that ball and run with it to cover everything up to 1-week-old embryos just to open the door to banning all abortions pretty much invalidates the entire concept. So, although I can see the sense of it with a pregnancy past 7 months, I say toss the whole thing because it has become corrupted by political conservatism. Let's just convict murderers for the murders we can prove, i.e. the murders of born people.

muravyets said:

First off, I didn't say they all were. I said they primarily were, and I stand by that. I do not believe that non-religious reasons for opposing abortion represent the majority of anti-choice views.

Second, you're skipping a step there, I think, or more appropriately, anti-choice legislators and advocates skip a step. If they believe that aborting a pregnancy is murder of a zygote, then they must prove that a zygote is subject to murder before they can legitimize legislating against it. What I mean is, they must prove that a zygote is a person, because only persons can be murdered.

For instance, we kill chickens for food, but that's not murder. PETA might think it should be, but it isn't because murder is a crime that is defined by law and it is not applied to things or beings that are not persons. Note that the anti-choice argument is not that we should apply the standard of murder to the killing non-person beings or things. That would be a slippery slope indeed. No, their argument is that zygotes are people.

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I haven't ever heard anyone argue that a zygote is a person.

Also, the OP is talking about fetus 20+ weeks.

The term "human being" is my argument. So, when does a human being have the right to live?

Well, okay, let them prove it. Personhood is a legal concept by which laws and rights are applied to individuals. The law recognizes certain standards that make a being a person. Let them show how zygotes meet those standards.

Or else, let them first create a legal fiction that arbitrarily defines a zygote as a legal person, just like corporations can be defined as legal person (which they will certainly have to do, since there is no way they can prove that a zygote is a natural person):

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Legal+person

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You want proof that a zygote (may I assume a fetus is included, since fetuses can legally be aborted) is a person according to the law. First of all, the law is not proof. Not for your argument, either. Laws are created by people and they can be dead wrong. (Take the law against gay marriage, for example.) Laws are only the consensus of the people. But ironically, if a group of people wants a fetus to have the right to life, you call that "legal fiction."

Here is my proof. This is a picture of 23-week old fetus : This baby was (per the story) going to be aborted, but there were some complications with the abortion and it ended up living. Look at it. I think we can all agree that this is human being. But, according to many abortion laws, it does not have the right to live. It can be aborted. The mother can terminate her pregnancy and end this life.



This is a picture of a newborn. As of this moment, this baby has a right to live. In fact, even though it is still utterly dependent for every single thing and could not survive on its own for more than a couple of... days? hours?... at any rate, it is endowed with all of the U.S. rights of a "person." If the mother were to terminate the life of this human being (or even withhold food or lock it in a closet) she could go to prison.



Obviously these photos are not the same scale, but you can see by the hands in each picture the different sizes. So what is the difference between these two? I see none. I see them both as human beings with the right to live.

Chrissy said:

Here is my proof. This is a picture of 23-week old fetus : This baby was (per the story) going to be aborted, but there were some complications with the abortion and it ended up living.
...

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Wait--I'm lost here.

This picture is of the 23-week live-delivered fetus of Sycloria Williams referenced in the story in the article you linked? It survived? Who took the picture?

(The story I am connecting the picture with says the infant was immediately put in a bag and discarded. The clinic director lost his medical license over that incident, and rightly so. But it doesn't sound like anyone was taking pictures, and it sounds like the whole point of the story was that there was no survival.)

If that isn't the same fetus, then what is the source for the picture? I find the article had to understand for sourcing. In this sort of discussion, I really want to know where images come from and what they are purported to be.

I also haven't had coffee yet and am under the weather, so it may rightly well just be me.

But Chrissy, that's a "shock story". From the site itself, "One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.
Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips."

Do I think that's wrong? Yes. But it's not common or normal procedure. At all.

Again, I'll site some statistics from http://www.womenscenter.com/abortion_stats.html


"Incidence of Abortion

Nearly half of all pregnancies among American women are unintended, and 4 in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. 22% of all pregnancies end in abortion.
40% of pregnancies among white women, 69% among blacks and 54% among Hispanics are unintended.
In 2005, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million in 2000. More than 45 million legal abortions were performed from 1973 through 2005.
Each year, about 2% of women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion.
At least half of all American women will face an unintended pregnancy by age 45 and, at current rates; about one-third will have had an abortion.
Over 88% of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Over half of all abortions in the U.S. occur within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. 6.7% occur between 13 and 15 weeks, 3.5% occur between 16 and 20 weeks, and 1.1% of abortions occur at 21 weeks or greater.
Today, the number of abortions has declined from a peak of 29.3 per 1000 women aged 15-44 in 1979 to 19.4 per thousand. It has only slowly dropped over the last several years because poor women have not had access to Family Planning Facilities for education and prevention of pregnancy through effective birth control measures."

What can we gleam from this? That most abortions (a whopping 88 percent) are performed during the early stages of pregnancy. Late term abortions are incredibly rare.

Two, abortion rates are declining.

Three, sex-ed and access to affective b.c. will further lower the need.

I haven't seen anyone on this thread mention they are upset generally with abortion being restricted after a certain time period. As far as I'm aware, they already are restricted after a certain time, except in special circumstances. The fear many of us have is that this law makes no exceptions after 4 months, even in the case of severe health issues of the mother. That 's why it's being called the most extreme.

And I think you, yourself, said that you believe there should be that exception. So I don't think we are disagreeing. Are we?

[Edited out. Some stories are not mine to tell.]

Chrissy said:

You want proof that a zygote (may I assume a fetus is included, since fetuses can legally be aborted) is a person according to the law.

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Fetus =/= zygote

rwam said:

Humans would have an easier time agreeing upon when a fetus becomes a 'person' if there wasn't so much at stake politically on the pro-choice/pro-life front. It'd be refreshing if people would just try their best to get to the truth of the matter, regardless of what that truth would mean to either camp. And the fact that each camp assumes worst intentions in the other doesn't help matters much.

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I agree. There must be some middle-ground. But the sides are so polarized, that neither is willing to take a step toward the middle for fear of a slippery slope.

gypsyscarlett said:

I haven't seen anyone on this thread mention they are upset generally with abortion being restricted after a certain time period. As far as I'm aware, they already are restricted after a certain time, except in special circumstances. The fear many of us have is that this law makes no exceptions after 4 months, even in the case of severe health issues of the mother. That 's why it's being called the most extreme.

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This, this, this, and more this. I don't think you'll find many people arguing that you should be able to terminate a viable fetus. What we can't stomach is the fact that a fetus would legally be granted more of a right to life (or quality of life) than the person who is carrying it.

Pyekett said:

Wait--I'm lost here.

This picture is of the 23-week live-delivered fetus of Sycloria Williams referenced in the story in the article you linked? It survived? Who took the picture?

(The story I am connecting the picture with says the infant was immediately put in a bag and discarded. The clinic director lost his medical license over that incident, and rightly so. But it doesn't sound like anyone was taking pictures, and it sounds like the whole point of the story was that there was no survival.)

If that isn't the same fetus, then what is the source for the picture? I find the article had to understand for sourcing. In this sort of discussion, I really want to know where images come from and what they are purported to be.

I also haven't had coffee yet and am under the weather, so it may rightly well just be me.

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My point of showing that picture was to show what is proof to me that a 23 week old fetus is a human being. I don't see any difference, from that standpoint of right-to-life between that fetus and a newborn. But the argument against me is that since that 23-week old fetus has to stay in the womb for a minimum of 8? 9? more weeks to survive, it does NOT have the right to life.

gypsyscarlett said:

But Chrissy, that's a "shock story". From the site itself, "One of the clinic's owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant's umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.
Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips."

Do I think that's wrong? Yes. But it's not common or normal procedure. At all.

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Right. But the thing is, if this abortion had gone as planned, this wouldn't even be news. That fetus would still have died. Is THAT wrong? That's my question.

Again, I'll site some statistics from http://www.womenscenter.com/abortion_stats.html


"Incidence of Abortion

Nearly half of all pregnancies among American women are unintended, and 4 in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. 22% of all pregnancies end in abortion.
40% of pregnancies among white women, 69% among blacks and 54% among Hispanics are unintended.
In 2005, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million in 2000. More than 45 million legal abortions were performed from 1973 through 2005.
Each year, about 2% of women aged 15-44 have an abortion; 47% of them have had at least one previous abortion.
At least half of all American women will face an unintended pregnancy by age 45 and, at current rates; about one-third will have had an abortion.
Over 88% of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Over half of all abortions in the U.S. occur within the first 8 weeks of pregnancy. 6.7% occur between 13 and 15 weeks, 3.5% occur between 16 and 20 weeks, and 1.1% of abortions occur at 21 weeks or greater.
Today, the number of abortions has declined from a peak of 29.3 per 1000 women aged 15-44 in 1979 to 19.4 per thousand. It has only slowly dropped over the last several years because poor women have not had access to Family Planning Facilities for education and prevention of pregnancy through effective birth control measures."

What can we gleam from this? That most abortions (a whopping 88 percent) are performed during the early stages of pregnancy. Late term abortions are incredibly rare.

Two, abortion rates are declining.

Three, sex-ed and access to affective b.c. will further lower the need.

I haven't seen anyone on this thread mention they are upset generally with abortion being restricted after a certain time period. As far as I'm aware, they already are restricted after a certain time, except in special circumstances. The fear many of us have is that this law makes no exceptions after 4 months, even in the case of severe health issues of the mother. That 's why it's being called the most extreme.

And I think you, yourself, said that you believe there should be that exception. So I don't think we are disagreeing. Are we?

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Right, in cases of the health of the mother. But what happens is, we have all of these exceptions, and what the meaning of "health" is. I'm talking about life or death stuff. But we have emotionally traumatized rape victims who somehow don't get around to deciding to abort until we've got a 23-week old fetus. We've got women who've been in abusive relationships. We've got women who have lost their jobs or lost their boyfriends and can't handle having a baby anymore. These are all the arguments that were cited to me, early in the thread, and the general idea is that "I can't know and I can't understand its their bodies and therefore none of my business..." sort of thing.

Well, I do understand, and I can empathize, and I've actually been there personally. And what I'm saying is these arguments are not enough for me. Only life-threatening incidences are acceptable reasons for abortion at this point, IMO.

And I understand that the post-20 week abortions are rare, rarer than others, but that doesn't make it okay. There are about 1 million abortions a year, so that's 11,000 post-20 week abortions per year, using your stats. 57,000 abortions a year post-15 weeks.

Chrissy said:

Right, in cases of the health of the mother. But what happens is, we have all of these exceptions, and what the meaning of "health" is. I'm talking about life or death stuff. But we have emotionally traumatized rape victims who somehow don't get around to deciding to abort until we've got a 23-week old fetus. We've got women who've been in abusive relationships. We've got women who have lost their jobs or lost their boyfriends and can't handle having a baby anymore. These are all the arguments that were cited to me, early in the thread, and the general idea is that "I can't know and I can't understand its their bodies and therefore none of my business..." sort of thing.

Well, I do understand, and I can empathize, and I've actually been there personally. And what I'm saying is these arguments are not enough for me. Only life-threatening incidences are acceptable reasons for abortion at this point, IMO.

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If you really understood/could empathize, perhaps you might realize that the events you're trivializing can easily become life-threatening.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for teens 15-24.

As you strip away options from people who are already at the end of their rope, you're going to increasingly find those people dangling from one.

Alessandra Kelley said:

I protest. Imagery is not proof.
Images are far too easy to manipulate to constitute proof, and our sensory input is too easily fooled to rely on. That one thing appears similar to another thing in our eyes does not make it similar (planets are not the same as stars, water is not the same as gasoline).

Every visual artist knows this. So does every stage magician.

True similarity must be determined through other, deeper, more reliable means than the merely visual.

Furthermore, you are pulling up a gruesome and emotion-grabbing story, but a completely different image of a different premature baby whose circumstances are completely unknown. I do not see that it has anything to do with the determination of the status of a fetus, particularly since both of the babies you show are already born.

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Are you trying to tell me that the picture is fake? I'm trying to get across the idea of what a 23-week old fetus looks like. Google in-vitro pics, they've got awesome technology now, that shows the fetus, and it is amazing.

The only reason I used that pic instead of in-vitro was because it was outside and you can get the scale from the hands. I didn't pick it to be gruesome. I didn't even think it was gruesome. I didn't even know it was dead, until I read the article. And this wasn't about the article. (I shouldn't even have linked the article, but I wanted to "prove" that it was a real picture). Can't win for losing here.

Your comment about the right to live does not apply because the babies are already born. It is a straw man argument because you are trying to say pro-choice people deny that born babies are human, which is an utter lie.

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What the.... ?

The straw man is that we can't discuss the picture, as concerns what a 23-week old fetus looks like, because it's outside of the womb, and now "it doesn't count" ????

You are trying to equate abortion with infanticide, the killing of an already-born infant.

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No, I'm not. I'm having a debate about the rights of a fetus as compared to a newborn.

If you can't distinguish between the argument and the photos, you're the one that's being emotional.

raburrell said:

If you really understood/could empathize, perhaps you might realize that the events you're trivializing can easily become life-threatening.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for teens 15-24.

As you strip away options from people who are already at the end of their rope, you're going to increasingly find those people dangling from one.

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Kudos for the poetry, but I don't see the relevance. You're assuming either that pregnancy would make a suicidal woman more suicidal or that being pregnant causes suicidal tendencies.

ETA: And I'm not trivializing anything.

Roger J Carlson said:

I agree. There must be some middle-ground. But the sides are so polarized, that neither is willing to take a step toward the middle for fear of a slippery slope.

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This can be said for just about anything in politics these days.

Chrissy said:

Kudos for the poetry, but I don't see the relevance. You're assuming either that pregnancy would make a suicidal woman more suicidal or that being pregnant causes suicidal tendencies.

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Actually, yes - I think both of those things are demonstrably true for unwanted pregnancies. (though perhaps more easily in terms of PPD than pregnancy) And it's not just suicide, it's partner violence, family retribution, etc. I'm at work though and should really get back to it - if you'd like links later on, let me know.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Dear god, are you telling me you posted a picture of a dead child above?

I meant that the article was gruesome. I assumed given the apparent medical attention given to the baby in the photograph that it was alive and undecomposed. The article said the discovered baby was long dead when found.

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It doesn't look dead. You didn't know either, you just said so. Why is it so horrifying? (You can google horrifying, btw)

ETA: I find it fascinating that you called it a child.

Like I said, if this abortion had gone as planned, the same baby/fetus whatever would have been dead. I don't get the disconnect.

What I mean is that nobody is arguing against killing born babies. That is what you are claiming by equating born, independent babies with fetuses within the women's bodies.

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ARGH! The fetus in that pic was scheduled for an abortion. If the doctor had been there, delivered it, and done his doctor thing, it would be okay?

The issue here is why the woman's interests should be utterly subsumed to those of the fetus, no matter the circumstances. A born child is a whole different legal entity.

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*sigh* That fetus would not have lived. 23 weeks--there's virtually no way. So you're saying that since it was accidentally born instead of aborted, it had the right to live.

MOD Note:

Break time.
Let's take a bit to breathe, re-consider the meanings of posts and the point of the OP, please.

ETA:
OK, reopening. Folks, let's try to be a bit more precise and expansive in our posts and elaborate on our meanings, maybe? This is always a hot, conflicted conversation.

Mutual respect and honest intent, please and thank you.

I’m so glad this thread reopened because I want to apologize for that picture, for any upset it has caused. That’s not my M.O.

I didn’t even know (because I didn't read carefully enough) the actual circumstances of the pic, and then when I figured it out (via other posters) I didn’t think the circumstances were evident in the pic, so I kept on with my argument and still wasn't picking up on the fact that it could be upsetting.

I am very sorry for that. It was not my intent. I will be more careful.

Chrissy

PS Willibee did not make me type this. It's for reals, from my heart.

For what it's worth, I didn't find the picture upsetting at all. I did find the picture confusing. It doesn't seem to go with the text of the article, so I suspect the author pulled it from some unsourced other site.

I don't know how to assess the picture because I don't have a good sense of how accurate and precise the author is. I can't say whether that actually is a 23-week micropreemie, but it could be. [Most likely the micropreemie in the picture wasn't scheduled to be aborted though, just going by the odds, and since we don't know anything about him or her specifically.]

Regardless, you haven't anything to apologize to me about regarding the picture itself. No worries there, but thanks for the consideration.

Added: Was there someone upset by the actual picture? I am missing it.

I am also very, very tired. Will keep an eye out for anyone ringing me up directly, but I'm likely going to mozey off to the corner for a snooze.

Agreed, Pyekett. Now that I've really looked at it, read it, processed it, I feel like it might be some kind of con. Especially with the tubes, the diaper... that doesn't mesh with the story. So, ugh! and sheesh!

Anyway, my whole idea was to try to show a post-20 week fetus. If anyone can get the jist of my argument based on that intent, and debate it, I'd be obliged; would love to hear opinions. Otherwise, carry on, ignore me, etc.