US Election 2024

Away End - General Chat
504

Unfortunately women, nor their partners for that matter, don’t get to pick between them. They are now both in place and the 6 week ban more or less eliminates elective abortions in the state. What this allows is a long way from what you describe as a reasonable set of restrictions so it seems what you call “reasonable enough” legislation is very different than what you claim to think is a reasonable set of limits.

Due to the way pregnancy timetables are calculated 6 weeks is very early, early enough that lots of pregnancies are not even identified at that point. These laws now collectively restrict the vast majority of elective abortions after that 6 week point. We also know that the challenges of meeting the medical exceptions that are technically afforded after the 6 week limit are, by intention, very difficult to demonstrate and effectively forces a lot a providers out of the market. The result is even women who identify their need for an abortion before 6 weeks can find it much harder in practice to find a provider.

There are differences of opinion and some people may agree with what this legislation does. They don’t get to do so and call it anything but an extreme position though.

505

Firstly my personal opinion is that not to resort to abortion, it is afterall a life. However, my personal opinion does not overrule what is legally allowed and what an individual decides. I am especially sympathetic when a woman gets pregnant because of a crime committed on her like rape or if a check up reveals a long term disease issue with the baby and in these cases, its really not up to outsiders to decide for them. I have previously spoken about 2 couples I know personally in Singapore and coincidentally both wives when they were pregnant, discovered respectively that their baby would be down syndrome. One decided to terminate while the other went on with the pregnancy. Both decisions should be respected and both are equally difficult. The kid with who was born today is in her teens and brings much joy to the parents and of course worries but according to the parents, they did not regret it a single moment when they see how happy she is living life.

But looking at it from another perspective from 2 large countries. There are almost 1mil abortions in USA and around 200K abortions in UK. My suspicion, maybe someone else have more accurate statistics, is that abortions due to crimes and diseases are of a relatively low percentage for reasons to abort. And while like I said, we should not interfere in an individual’s decision especially when it is legally allowed, my question then is how do we educate women and men to not even get to the stage of having a pregnancy if they do not want it in the first place. Having sex irresponsibly without thinking about the consequences should be frown upon because a baby conceived by your irresponsible act is not just a pound of flesh that can be shed away like garbage.

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506

I don’t know why men get to make decisions about abortion. I wouldn’t want a woman telling me whether I should have a vasectomy.

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507

Where did I say men gets to make the decision? A decision is always made by the individual. Doesn’t stop people from having opinions though

508

Male politicians make the laws.

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509

There have been attempts to produce statistics (I remember that this was stored in the NHS but I doubt there have ever been stats released because the data was intended for screening programmes).

This was one survey that was done in the US in 2004 (so 20 years old now):

The table of results is here. Multiple reasons can be given:

Only around 1% was due to rape and incest. Around 6% was parental pressure and 14% spousal pressure. 13% is due to fetal abnormality.

By far the biggest reasons are essentially financial and this is where you have to question society sticking it’s nose in. Based on the figures I would estimate that around 85% of the cases are failed contraception of some sort. The main reason why most of those do not want to continue with the pregnancy are down to the fact that society in general refuses to support them.

If you want to reduce abortion then provide women with appropriate medical care, and families with appropriate support. Unless that is going to transpire then some people, and we are essentially talking about wealthy white men, need to wind their necks in.

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510

By which I mean society in general, not @gasband.

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511

Abortion is a far more heated and bigger political topic in America than the UK. Growing up in the UK of course I was aware of abortion, and the law, but it wasn’t talked about nearly so much as here. It was acknowledged that it was a very difficult choice to make, and generally the support from the state to carry the pregnancy through to childbirth was a bit more robust than here in America, though still not great. Anyhow, I miss an old fashioned British sense of decorum and privacy, where things might be discussed between patient and doctor, or perhaps including parent and counselor or pastor or whatever, not common the last part, but it was all seen as a more private thing.

In America it almost feels as though politics often gets reduced to a one topic issue, abortion, and even then, there’s no capacity for nuance or debate.

Personally I would be pro-life, but the decision would not be a blanket political decision, it would be private, probably making some of the extremes around abortion illegal. And if I were a legislator, the first thing I would do would be to fund an adequate support system, so the would-be mother at least can see a pathway forward, should she choose to keep the baby.

But the whole thing would be much more private.

One strange thing over here is the very narrow view of what it means to be pro life. For example, if I am in a conversation with someone and it comes up, I say things like fund immigration and process migrants much better, and it is because I am pro life that I say it, as it is clear they deserve to escape the hell they are coming from to build a life here.

Or stop the war in Israel, because I am pro life… etc.

Or fund healthcare for all, because I am pro life… etc.

Or fund education for all, because the outcomes change the generations, it’s a great pro life decision… etc.

If a person is truly, compassionately pro life, the societal ramifications go way beyond in utero care.

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512

That’s because they’re not really pro-life. They’re pro-birth at best. If they were pro-life, then as @RedWhippet suggests, they would do more to support families that can’t afford to have children but have an unplanned pregnancy anyway.

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513

I should definitely be a joint discussion and then a decision with the women getting a veto. The vasectomy comparison is weak as the pregnancy takes two to get to that stage.

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514

The stats I have seen with regard to abortion is that the vast majority fall inside the 15 week mark, with only 5% or so being later term. I believe it was a cnn article.

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515

Well that would largely match up with the figures in the survey that I found above. Later term abortions are typically only medical emergencies. The sad thing is that most of those mothers would have preferred to have a healthy child.

516

Well, there is, obviously, no direct equivalent, and that’s the point. We, as men, can’t possibly understand what the whole issue means for women. We can’t envisage what it feels like to even be capable of giving birth, let alone actually be faced with such a decision.
Yes, it’s hard for potential fathers too, as I know from experience, but nowhere near the trauma that a woman has.

517

I passed a kidney stone, on the pain scale they have nothing on me.

518

There’s clearly much more to it than just physical pain.

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519

Obviously joking. However I did keep the stone for a while until the dr forced me to relinquish it.

520

Yes, about 90-95% depending on the study, as shown in these CDC figures

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Collectively, 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions are comparatively rare (no more than a blip in the stats for 3rd trimester) and almost always (“almost” being a very conservative description) done out of medical necessity. The later after 15 weeks it is the harder it is to find a provider who would do it electively. Critically, many of these procedures done for medical necessity the average person might not even recognize as an abortion, and so does not understand that these medically necessitated situations are what is producing the stats in the second trimester and beyond

So what we see is that in practice the way abortion is actually approached is already largely in line with what most middle of the road people think should be allowed. What these various legal restrictions do is make it much harder to get the early stage elective abortions these middle of the road people think is a reasonable (if uncomfortable) compromise. As stated above but seemingly not acknowledged in the rejection of my description of them being extreme, this is now in effect after just 6 weeks in Florida, early enough that most pregnancies are not even recognized by that time. Just as importantly, while they still technically have medical exemptions after that point, what they do, by intention, is put a lot of obstacles between the patient and their medical provider in meeting the legal requirements to demonstrate medical necessity. The result is, again this is by intention, lots of providers leaving the space unwilling to risk prosecution to perform procedures they know are necessary but know the burden of demonstrating this is too high for them. This is all done in the interest of preventing a category of elective abortions that simply arent happening in any significant number.

Across Europe (often the comparison made by abortion restriction advocates arguing these bans are not extreme) what you will typically see are restrictions that look comparable on paper, but are not enforced with the same level of medical oversight from the authorities with the threat of prosecution hanging over them. The result is in practice the needs of the mother are being met far better even if on paper the restrictions looker stricter. Again, this is by design.

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521

I believe this revolves around shady ”medical” practitioners claiming that mental health or economic health, being a medical exemption. While the mental could be, it’s also unfortunately very easy to manipulate. It’s unfortunate that in all thing, there are always people that take advantage of obscurity/gray areas, which in future makes it harder for people with legitimate medical reasons.

On a side note, people that haphazardly, and continually decide to have abortions, just let them as I don’t really want these them to be parents. Talking about a small amount of people.

522

Except in the context of a Roe landscape, before these restrictive laws came on the books, people didn’t need medical justifications for getting abortions in the second trimester (largely, some states still found ways to get around the Roe and Casey decisions) and still the number of elective procedures after 15 weeks was very small. You are offering a justification for a legislative solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

Do you at least think your characterization of the Florida laws not being extreme is worth a rethink?

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523

I already said they are, sort of breezed through your op as I saw the 15 weeks and thought I already knew what the proposal was. I was unaware of the no restrictions you mentioned. I think 15 weeks with exceptions would be the sensible way to go. It will piss of the far left and the far right, so sounds like the perfect solution.