Indiana's new abortion law won't save babies. It will only make my patients suffer.

[SmarterthanYou]

Nobody should be able to tell a woman what she can or can't do with her own body and in cases like the ones below it's especially important to MYOB. If you haven't dealt with tragedies like these, then you have no room to talk.

"Even after years of education, training and experience as an obstetrician/gynecologist, I am never prepared to deliver the news that a pregnancy is abnormal. There is no good way to tell a pregnant woman - a woman who may already be wearing maternity clothes, thinking about names and decorating the nursery - that we have identified a fetal anomaly that can lead to significant, lifelong disability or even her baby's death. In such situations, physicians have two responsibilities. First, we must always be supportive of the mother or family who has suddenly been confronted with the loss of an imagined ideal pregnancy and child. And second, we help them understand that they have options, one of which is the termination of the pregnancy.

Unfortunately, that's no longer the case in Indiana, where a new law signed by Gov. Mike Pence, R, punishes doctors if they perform abortions for women because of their fetus' race or sex, or after a diagnosis of disability. Indiana's state government is intruding on the doctor-patient relationship at one of its most vulnerable, sensitive times. Which means that not only does the new law encroach on women's rights to control their own reproduction, it is also bad medicine.

As a mother as well as a doctor, I am acutely aware of the intensity and fear of the unknown inherent in pregnancy and childbirth. Indiana now expects women who live here to experience them without trusting their doctors' knowledge and with strict limits on how doctors may treat patients - limits driven not by science or research, but by politics. Supporters of the new law, such as Pence, say the measure "affirms the value of all human life." And yes, some women do choose to carry abnormal pregnancies to term. I am honored to care for them and their babies. I have held and comforted babies as they died, because their mothers were too grief-stricken to bear it. I have cried with families as we watched their babies breathe their last breath.

Not every woman can handle such horror. In the United States, abortion is an ethical, safe, appropriate and - with the exception of North Dakota and Indiana - legal medical option in the case of severe anomalies, one that spares women the emotional pain of stillbirth or the loss of an infant. That loss is dismissed and diminished by this law and by those who support it; the law doesn't save babies, it just forces a horrific fate onto both mother and child. It includes an exception only for termination of babies who would die within three months of being born, as if three months is enough time to justify forcing all women to take on the risks of carrying a pregnancy to term and delivering a baby, only to watch it die.

And that exception would still require women to carry to term pregnancies with some severe and disastrous genetic abnormalities, all of which I've seen in women who chose to have abortions rather than deliver babies who suffer from them.

Trisomy 13, or Patau syndrome, can leave babies with one eye, no nose, kidney defects and a spinal cord without skin covering it. Most are stillborn, but of those that are born alive, more than 80 percent die before they turn 1, only surviving that long after cardiac, spinal and other surgeries...

Spinal muscular atrophy, one type of which is Werdnig-Hoffman disease, is characterized by rapid neurologic degeneration, causing an infant to die within a year because of respiratory failure...

Preventing women with these fetal diagnoses from choosing abortion forces them to watch their children die a slow, painful, premature death. My colleagues and I are already asking one another whether we should even offer prenatal screening now that there's no legal choice to end a pregnancy because of the results.

(Continued)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...on-law-doctor-perspective-20160402-story.html

would it then be safe to say that if genetic research can definitively conclude that a fetus will be born with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), that the woman in question should be allowed to have an abortion?

 

[Cancel 2020.1]

Its a bogus argument. If you have some case law where this has happened I'll entertain it. Right now the state has not EVER imposed its will upon a hapless woman impregnated without her knowledge.

Meanwhile, back at the abortion argument ranch where ALL abortions happen due to sex, I am against a woman getting to kill another child because it's inconvenient to her life.

To be honest, it's more telling that you can't answer it. Your logic depends on it.

 

[cancel2 2022]

When women who can't afford to support the children they CHOOSE to have, do you believe they have a right to expect others to pay for a personal decision they said was no one else's business when the choice was being made? If it's her body, it's her responsibility. If she can't pay for her choices, not my problem.

But you do have to pay though don't you? If a baby that would otherwise be aborted is born to a poor family then that's more welfare and foodstamps to be paid.

 

[The Dude]

Big government conservatives

 

[SmarterthanYou]

But you do have to pay though don't you? If a baby that would otherwise be aborted is born to a poor family then that's more welfare and foodstamps to be paid.

you don't advocate personal responsibility with a persons reproductive organs?

 

[CFM]

But you do have to pay though don't you? If a baby that would otherwise be aborted is born to a poor family then that's more welfare and foodstamps to be paid.

That's the problem. Once the CHOICE people say is a woman's to make has been made, and in many cases the CHOICE is to have the child, too many idiots think that woman should be able to demand financial support for a CHOICE she said was no one else's business when it was made. She made the choice, she gets the costs.

 

[CFM]

you don't advocate personal responsibility with a persons reproductive organs?

Too many don't advocate personal responsibility with CHOICES they make with reproductive organs. They defend their right to make that choice then demand others they told to butt out of whatever choice it was pay for it when they can't.

Let them make whatever choice they want. However, if they can't afford the choice, tough shit.

 

[J Craft]

To be honest, it's more telling that you can't answer it. Your logic depends on it.

The only telling aspect is your need for a non starter to exist for your position.

My position is easy. 98% of abortions occur by women who had sex, and decided they didn't want to be pregnant. Children were killed for convenience, not because they were mysteriously implanted into the womb.

 

[CFM]

The only telling aspect is your need for a non starter to exist for your position.

My my position is easy. 98% of abortions occur by women who had sex, and decided they didn't want to be pregnant. Children were killed for convenience, not because they were mysteriously implanted into the womb.

In other words, 98% of abortions are done because the women that made a CHOICE of what to do with their bodies didn't like the results of that CHOICE.

 

[Stelakh]

The only telling aspect is your need for a non starter to exist for your position.

My my position is easy. 98% of abortions occur by women who had sex, and decided they didn't want to be pregnant. Children were killed for convenience, not because they were mysteriously implanted into the womb.

And what of women who are impregnated through rape? Do you believe that woman should have to carry the baby to term?

 

[Stelakh]

Let's nitty-gritty this one right down to the root, shall we?

For everyone who is anti-choice, I have a simple question:

If a woman you have never met, that you will never meet, and that you have no chance of meeting, who lives either in your town or on the other side of the country, chooses to terminate a pregnancy, what iron have you got in the fire that you should be seeking to stop her?

 

[Cancel 2020.1]

That's the problem. Once the CHOICE people say is a woman's to make has been made, and in many cases the CHOICE is to have the child, too many idiots think that woman should be able to demand financial support for a CHOICE she said was no one else's business when it was made. She made the choice, she gets the costs.

You're not really talking about reality, though. The fact is, with most unwanted pregnancies, there will be a lot of costs to taxpayers ultimately. That's just the way it is.

 

[cancel2 2022]

you don't advocate personal responsibility with a persons reproductive organs?

I am just stating facts, that's what happens whether you like it or not. I hate the procedure but see it as the lesser evil to backstreet abortions or children born into homes where they are not wanted. Often time it is not the woman's choice anyway but more likely an abusive man that fucks around and refuses to wear condoms.

 

[Legion Troll]

Right now the state has not EVER imposed its will upon a hapless woman impregnated without her knowledge.

Are you sure?

Not only do forced rapes occur while girls and women are unconscious (beaten or drugged), in some states those same girls and women would be forced to bring the fetus to term. Not only that, but the rapist would enjoy parental rights, including visitation in some jurisdictions.

Ditto girls and women with developmental disabilities, who may not understand the implications of sexual intercourse.

Are you one of those Republican men that believe that "real" rape doesn't cause pregnancy?



Stay on topic, or this thread will be moved to the war zone, where you will find all threads that devolve to back and forth insults.

 

[The Dude]

Let's nitty-gritty this one right down to the root, shall we?

For everyone who is anti-choice, I have a simple question:

If a woman you have never met, that you will never meet, and that you have no chance of meeting, who lives either in your town or on the other side of the country, chooses to terminate a pregnancy, what iron have you got in the fire that you should be seeking to stop her?

Exactly it's dumb republican partisanship
These obvious racist are as Christian as the turd I just flushed
Thank god they are that dumb, the democrats are only a tiny bit smarter

 

[Legion Troll]

And what of women who are impregnated through rape? Do you believe that woman should have to carry the baby to term?

It's not factually a baby until/unless it's born, is it?


Stay on topic, or this thread will be moved to the war zone, where you will find all threads that devolve to back and forth insults.

 

[J Craft]

And what of women who are impregnated through rape? Do you believe that woman should have to carry the baby to term?

At least you provide a real scenario to the argument. Rape/incest is a much more plausible legal argument for obtaining an abortion. In the past, prior to Roe, most states had a rape clause that allowed women of assault to obtain an abortion.

Are you advocating that abortions in cases of rape/incest would be OK with you? I'd be OK with allowing abortion in these instances to be a state issue, as it once was.

 

[J Craft]

Let's nitty-gritty this one right down to the root, shall we?

For everyone who is anti-choice, I have a simple question:

If a woman you have never met, that you will never meet, and that you have no chance of meeting, who lives either in your town or on the other side of the country, chooses to terminate a pregnancy, what iron have you got in the fire that you should be seeking to stop her?

its called common moral decency rights.

What if a person you'll never know or meet secretly has a slave. What iron in the fire do you have to stop them?

 

[The Dude]

In other words, 98% of abortions are done because the women that made a CHOICE of what to do with their bodies didn't like the results of that CHOICE.

You having gay sex is your choice
Your wife banging someone else is hers

 

[CFM]

And what of women who are impregnated through rape? Do you believe that woman should have to carry the baby to term?

Do you believe women who have children they can't afford to support should be able to demand someone else support their kids despite saying that the choice to have those kids was no one else's business?