Abortion Discussion

Brown Bomber

gaynorvader wrote: »

I just dislike people making stuff up to prove their point. It would certainly lower my opinion of British doctors if you provided evidence that they were doing something like that. It also would raise my opinion of your debating technique were you to post evidence instead of anecdotes and vitriol.

Abortion forms being 'pre-signed'

Spot checks found evidence of blank forms being signed in anticipation of patients seeking a termination

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/23/abortion-forms-pre-signed-spot-checks

gaynorvader

Brown Bomber wrote: »

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/mar/23/abortion-forms-pre-signed-spot-checks

Thank you. Pretty despicable on the part of the doctors at those clinics. 5% is a pretty low number, hopefully now lower as these doctors are punished and scrutiny is reinforced. Without the evidence though, you had made it sound like a common, widespread problem the government were turning a blind eye to (at least to me), which is not the case.

Cabaal

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Don't take this the wrong way but I am sure you are aware of the distinction between morality and legality.

Legality is in respect of laws passed in a country, it is set in stone until changed by the state. Nobody for one second should think they are above the law and if a organization receives tax payer money then they should provide services to the country's population.

Now of course we've learned that even if a hospital receives tax payer money, they believe they are above the law because of their catholic ethos and will refuse to offer cancer care and abortions to women due to this. Even if both are legal procedures.

Morality is in respect of morals that exist, morals are open to perception and differ person to person. They are also thought by society and people are not born with them. Oh and lets not forget they change very much so over time.

Your point?

Delirium

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Don't take this the wrong way but I am sure you are aware of the distinction between morality and legality.

Infanticide is illegal so it doesn't really matter if someone thinks infanticide is moral. They won't avoid prosecution and jail time if they tell the police that they personally don't think infanticide is immoral. The law is there to try and ensure that no one murders newborns, irrespective of their own personal morality.

lazygal

Just on infanticide, its a very specific crime and there's a very good reason its not the same as murder in many countries. It's now well recognised that women go through intense hormonal changes during and post pregnancy, up to and including post natal depression. I know women who've had to be hospitalised for post natal depression. Its not the 'baby blues', its a recognized specific psychiatric condition. I had a major crash about a week after having my baby. Luckily I didn't suffer massively and everything got back to normal very quickly, but things could easily have been different. Infanticide by a mother is treated differently because of this - it is not her fault sometimes that she is so ill she kills her baby. The sentence on indictment is not the same as that for murder, and for good reason.

Of course I don't expect those who think the solution to any crisis pregnancy is to simply force women to remain pregnant, regardless of the impact on her health and/or life to empathise when some women, through no fault of their own, kill their born children.

iwantmydinner

Brown Bomber wrote: »

Dunno

Is that your actual answer to lazygal's question?? Seriously??

doctoremma

Brown Bomber wrote: »

23 weeks is when it is still perfectly legal to have an abortion for elective reasons in the UK, which is where he was born.

Yep.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

23 weeks is also at the stage when a surgical abortion will have to be carried out. D&E abortion is recommended by the NHS after 15 weeks.

You can have late medical abortions.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

if Lucas' parents had decided that they didn't want him to live he could have had his life legally taken from him in this brutal fashion on the day that he was actually born .

Yep.

Brown Bomber wrote: »

So I'd like you to explain how killing Lucas in the first scenario is so drastically morally different to killing Lucas in the second scenario.

Birth. I don't know how many times you have to be told. Pre-birth, a fetus is not an independently-living and breathing being. The mother retains choice.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213386/Commentary1.pdf

The above is a link to abortion stats in the UK in 2011.

78 % performed at less than 10 weeks.
91 % performed at less than 13 weeks.

1 % performed after 20 weeks.
0.1 % performed after 24 weeks.

By far the biggest cited grounds for abortion is Ground C: the risk to mental health of the women (the "elective"). From 20 weeks gestation onwards, 1933 women used ground C to obtain an abortion. This is compared to the 171298 women who invoked it before 12 weeks, and the 12742 women who invoked it at 13-19 weeks.

Now, for a UK woman to chose Ground C at 23 weeks, well, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that something has gone wrong somewhere. In the UK, there is no practical need to prevaricate. You can see any (OK, most) doctors and feel sure they will sanction the procedure. There are private clinics and hospital units everywhere. Most girls have such choices outlined for them at school, or by parents, or whatever. We can buy books on it, and, well, so the stats say, we probably all know someone who's been through it.

So, despite that, I can reel off several reasons for why a late elective might happen. Delayed or missed signs of pregnancy, onset of a mental health disorder, trouble dealing with the circumstances of the pregnancy, partner leaving you, existing family becoming ill, whatever. Do we punish women for these things? For being too stupid to understand what a missed period was? For suffering depression? For a sick mother requiring care? I wouldn't but that's open for debate.

However, those stats for Ground C show that the vast majority of women opting for an elective abortion in the UK do so in an immensely timely fashion. And they can certainly access it in a far more timely fashion that their Irish counterparts (who tend to arrive here at far later stages of pregnancy).

Any threshold will provide problems, because there will always be an issue that gets in the way, or provides an exception, or just misses out. For ME, for what I personally might choose, it's uncomfortably late (for a lifestyle elective, not for congenital abnormalities etc). That means that the solution seems glaringly obvious - educate women, give them resources, help them to understand their decisions and outcomes, and get as many of those 1933 women having post-20 week abortions as possible into the pre-12 week category.

Cabaal

http://www.thejournal.ie/late-term-abortion-film-stranger-than-fiction-ireland-1038861-Aug2013

Story of late-term abortion doctors in USA set for Irish film festival

gaynorvader

doctoremma wrote: »

Yep.

78 % performed at less than 10 weeks.
19 % performed at less than 13 weeks.

1 % performed after 20 weeks.
0.1 % performed after 24 weeks.

Is this correct?

Turtwig

gaynorvader wrote: »

Is this correct?

Think she means it's rolling a percentage.
1% of students complete an exam in the first half hour.
80% in two hours.
97% in two and half hours.

For abortions, 91% are completed by week 13.

gaynorvader

Jernal wrote: »

Think she means it's rolling a percentage.
1% of students complete an exam in the first half hour.
80% in two hours.
97% in two and half hours.

For abortions, 91% are completed by week 13.

That's exactly why I asked, I'm not sure. Though 19% makes more sense to me as 78+19+1+0.1% = 98.1% which still leaves me 1.9% short! A rolling percentage doesn't seem to fit with the last 2 results, but I'm open to being wrong here.

28064212

gaynorvader wrote: »

That's exactly why I asked, I'm not sure. Though 19% makes more sense to me as 78+19+1+0.1% = 98.1% which still leaves me 1.9% short! A rolling percentage doesn't seem to fit with the last 2 results, but I'm open to being wrong here.

The last two are after those times. 91% is correct

Pherekydes

gaynorvader wrote: »

That's exactly why I asked, I'm not sure. Though 19% makes more sense to me as 78+19+1+0.1% = 98.1% which still leaves me 1.9% short! A rolling percentage doesn't seem to fit with the last 2 results, but I'm open to being wrong here.

The numbers are missing from the 13-20 week period. I'd presume these account for the missing percentage.

gaynorvader

Pherekydes wrote: »

The numbers are missing from the 13-20 week period. I'd presume these account for the missing percentage.

Ah! I didn't catch that, thanks! I can be a bit of a ditz sometimes!

oldrnwisr

gaynorvader wrote: »

Ah! I didn't catch that, thanks! I can be a bit of a ditz sometimes!

Just to clarify FYI,

2011 UK Figures

Total abortions - 189,931

3-9 weeks - 147,636 (77.7%)
10-12 weeks - 25,540 (13.4%)
13-19 weeks - 14,026 (7.4%)
20-21 weeks - 1,465 (0.8%)
22-23 weeks - 1,118 (0.6%)
24 weeks - 146 (0.07%)

NHS Summary Statistics


On a side note, BB, once again you are arguing from the fallacy of biased sample. You are picking a deliberately emotive, possibly offensive and entirely unrepresentative scenario as if somehow it counts as an argument against abortion. It doesn't. At all.

doctoremma

gaynorvader wrote: »

Ah! I didn't catch that, thanks! I can be a bit of a ditz sometimes!

Sorry, it wasn't clear on my part. It was a rolling percentage.

I was focussing on the early and the late, and just left out the middle. Apologies for leading you astray...

oldrnwisr

Brown Bomber wrote: »

23 weeks is when it is still perfectly legal to have an abortion for elective reasons in the UK, which is where he was born. 23 weeks is also at the stage when a surgical abortion will have to be carried out. D&E abortion is recommended by the NHS after 15 weeks. This procedure involves inserting a large forceps into the woman and blindly ripping and tearing flesh and bones of the 23 week old foetus. As the foetuses head/skull is then crushed into pieces to enable easier extraction.

Actually that's not quite true.

Firstly, out of the 2766 abortions performed past week 20 in the UK in 2010, 67% were surgical and 33% medical, so no, a surgical abortion does not have to be carried out.

Secondly, of the surgical abortions approximately two thirds or 44% of the total used D&E. The other third or 24% of the total used feticide with surgical evacuation.

Thirdly, while D&E is the dominant procedure from 15-19 weeks (accounting for 74% of all abortions), its use wanes with increasing gestation. In fact, the reason it decreases with increasing gestation is due to the increasing toughness of foetal tissue after 20 weeks, making a post 20 week D&E very difficult and risky.

Haskell, Martin. "Dilation and extraction for late second trimester abortion." National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar, Dallas, Texas. 1992. (Sorry, link broken)

Finally, the procedure is typically accompanied by an anaesthetic and/or lethal injection prior to the surgical extraction, which you didn't feel was necessary to mention. It's not as if the doctor just starts going in blindly pulling pieces of the foetus apart. It's a procedure carried out by trained professionals, its not a five year old with a bucket of KFC.

gaynorvader

doctoremma wrote: »

Sorry, it wasn't clear on my part. It was a rolling percentage.

I was focussing on the early and the late, and just left out the middle. Apologies for leading you astray...

Not a problem, I'm well used to it! I tend to over-think things and end up confused

Sarky

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Finally, the procedure is typically accompanied by an anaesthetic and/or lethal injection prior to the surgical extraction, which you didn't feel was necessary to mention.

I'm sure he just forgot. :pac:

TheChizler

oldrnwisr wrote: »

Haskell, Martin. "Dilation and extraction for late second trimester abortion." National Abortion Federation Risk Management Seminar, Dallas, Texas. 1992. (Sorry, link broken)

Tsk tsk... I only noticed that as I came across that broken link on Wikipedia last night. I thought you had an exhaustive Endnote database built in to your brain!

oldrnwisr

TheChizler wrote: »

Tsk tsk... I only noticed that as I came across that broken link on Wikipedia last night. I thought you had an exhaustive Endnote database built in to your brain!

Yes, apologies, I didn't have the time to go chasing after that link yesterday.

Here it is now though:

Dilation and Extraction for Late Second Trimester Abortion

However, most surgeons find dismemberment at twenty weeks and beyond to be difficult due to the toughness of fetal tissues at this stage of development. Consequently, most late second trimester abortions are performed by an induction method.

MrPudding

lazygal wrote: »

Just on infanticide, its a very specific crime and there's a very good reason its not the same as murder in many countries.

Sorry for being the legal nerd again, but you might actually find this interesting. In the UK, and possibly Ireland, infanticide, as you have used it here is not actually a crime, it is a defence. Killing a baby or child is, generally, in a legal sense, murder or manslaughter. However, the law recognises that in some cases, for the reasons you mention, there should be a defence available to woman who are suffering from post-natal depression. This defence is, somewhat confusingly, called infanticide.

MrP

Brian Shanahan

JimiTime wrote: »

I'm not religious I hate religiosity.

A catholic apologist and proselytiser who hates religiosity?

In the same vein, I had two bowls of ice-cream yesterday, they were delicious. I hate ice-cream.

lazygal

MrPudding wrote: »

Sorry for being the legal nerd again, but you might actually find this interesting. In the UK, and possibly Ireland, infanticide, as you have used it here is not actually a crime, it is a defence. Killing a baby or child is, generally, in a legal sense, murder or manslaughter. However, the law recognises that in some cases, for the reasons you mention, there should be a defence available to woman who are suffering from post-natal depression. This defence is, somewhat confusingly, called infanticide.

MrP

Thanks for that, my criminal law is a bit rusty!

Brian Shanahan

JimiTime wrote: »

3. I agree with the death penalty in principal for certain things, and as much as I hate the idea of war, I understand the need in this world to have a military to protect a nation from aggression.

So you've no problem with killing living people, but do when it is a case of "killing" something which is not yet alive. If this is christian "morality" then no wonder I grew up out of religion.

Mardy Bum

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

So you've no problem with killing living people, but do when it is a case of "killing" something which is not yet alive. If this is christian "morality" then no wonder I grew up out of religion.

He is anti abortion rather than pro life. I think he would admit that. Even a bishop has said it about "pro life" groups.

Brian Shanahan

Cabaal wrote: »

Since "some" people have sighted abortion survivors as why abortion is wrong I thought I'd throw this out there just to give another spin on things.

When my parents married it was very much catholic Ireland, there were no condoms freely available...hell that didn't happen for a long long time after..90's anyway.

Anyway, prior to my mother getting pregnant with me she was sick, when she was pregnant she got even sicker and things were extremely touch and go for some time. When I was born it came very very close to the line for both me and more importantly her.

Even after I was born there were very good odds that I'd die,

Now she already had 5 children, so had she died it would have left 5 kids without a mother. Now I'm a realist so the way I see it had she decided to have an abortion back then rather then put her life and the well being of her existing 5 kids at risk then this would have been perfectly understandable.

Had she had an abortion then clearly I would not now exist but the risks were great that she'd have left kids without a mother.

In more recent times I've seen the other side of the coin, I've seen a person proceed with a pregnancy knowing that the pregnancy could potentially kill them, I've seen the pregnancy kill them and their fetus and leave their three kids without a mother and their husband without a wife. I can tell you its not a pretty situation.

I've seen the hardship that it can cause and even 2-3 years on how much pain they all feel about the loss of their mother knowing that the death could have been avoided.

A very similar situation occured during my birth, where my mother flatlined for a full minute during it, and doctors had to perform an emergency C-section (and knock out all the teeth in her upper jaw to force a breathing tube in her mouth). If she had gotten advice at any stage that she should have aborted me I know who I'd rather have living today.

Nodin

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

A very similar situation occured during my birth, where my mother flatlined for a full minute during it, and doctors had to perform an emergency C-section (and knock out all the teeth in her upper jaw to force a breathing tube in her mouth). .....

...good jaysus....

Brown Bomber

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

So you've no problem with killing living people, but do when it is a case of "killing" something which is not yet alive. If this is christian "morality" then no wonder I grew up out of religion.

a) Could you explain how a foetus isn't "alive".
b) Surely you understand that a foetus is innocent and the people receiving any death penalty would have considered to have been proven guilty of a heinous crime.

old hippy

Brown Bomber wrote: »

a) Could you explain how a foetus isn't "alive".
b) Surely you understand that a foetus is innocent and the people receiving any death penalty would have considered to have been proven guilty of a heinous crime.

I do believe the good doctor emma already answered a)

Pre-birth, a fetus is not an independently-living and breathing being.