h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>Mycroft, I've been finding it very difficult to find statistics about later-term elective terminations. Even the one you quoted is a few years old and am I right in presuming these are for terminations which occur within the first trimestre?<<

The figure covers all elective abortions, not just the first trimester, for 1998 (not 2001 as I said earlier - that was the date of the paper I was looking at). It gives 7% for 13 to 15 weeks, 4% for 16 to 20 weeks and 1% for 21+ weeks. Part of the data I'm looking at can be found at http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html

>>I'm not resistant at all. Though I would appreciate open and honest questions, not ones that are slanted to make any sort of response almost impossible.

For example, have you stopped beating your wife? Yes or no?

Your question to me yesterday - 'how about simply spelling out why foetuses shouldn't count as people' - was of that sort.

I've not ever said foetuses don't count, but I cannot say when they become a person. Can you?<<

It wasn't a slanted question: if it's unacceptable to commit murder (ie kill a person) but it is acceptable to kill a foetus, then a foetus isn't a person. I can't say when a foetus becomes a person either, but I'm very resistant to the idea that it should be left to individual discretion to decide whether a foetus is or is not a person if there's a reasonable possibility of the former being the case given the potential stakes.

<>

Well, it isn't actually left to individual discretion, is it? It is left up to the law-makers in various countries to make this decision.

Mycroft, my little foetus *was* my baby. I fell so in love with her. I wanted her more than anything. I still grieve for her, ten years later. You cannot maybe imagine how hard it is for me to know I had to end her life because otherwise I might have died myself.

But you know what? The abortion laws in Spain at the time made it able for me to have a safe medical abortion. What if they had not been so? Well, I might possibly not be around now to write this posting.

And yeah, okay, other women are able to have elective terminations without going through the emotional trauma that I did. Perhaps it was either not a good time for them to have a child, it was maybe because they already had too many kids so they could not cope with having another one. I will never judge these women. I am only glad that they also have a safe and legal way to have what they personally feel the need to have done.

I would never put my personal opinion over others in this matter. Because it's just way too personal. For each individual woman.

az

<>

No, of course not!
I don't approve of elective abortion, I never have and never will, but if it is medically necessary, then that's very much a different matter.

I guess I take my feelings a few steps further, Della, and I realise that I have no right to disapprove of women who choose an elective termination for their own very personal reasons.

What is your opinion of the anti-abortionist doctor in Salamanca who lied to me about my condition and would rather have seen me die than have a safe medical termination to safe my life?

Based on his religious convictions he obviously thought I would be better off dead.


az

On the subject of what makes a "conservative", and stuff, some figures:

Which country am I describing?

57% of the public believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 59% believe abortion should be decided between a woman and her doctor. 53% believe the legalisation of abortion was a good thing.
56% want access to abortions left as it is or made easier.

Answer: the "conservative" USA. Source: "Dude, Where's my country?", by Michael Moore.



It still sickens me to my stomach to see women who have made their choice going out of their way to deny the same choice to other women.

Any chance of a delayed reaction to that comment?

H.

>>>A woman's right to choose. As things stand there exists a time-limited right to choose, a pro-life element of which is broadly accepted (i.e. virtually no-one says that a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy at 8 months), although where that point arrives is self-evidently a topic of controversy. If, however, as seems probable, a utopian contraceptive is made available at some point in the not too distant future, wouldn't that change the parameters of the discussion? In such a situation, elective abortion could be illegal but a woman's right to choose would still be maintained.<<

From Mycroft a few pages back.

Utopian contraceptive as seems probable? What are you referring to?

In the meantime I found this about contraceptive failure rates. I think it'd be worth seeing the original because I don't quite trust this website. Interesting all the same:

http://www.abortionconcern.org/contraceptives/perfect-use.php



Women will always get pregant when they don't want to - sex is messy and the only way to ensure that you don't get pregnant is to not have it with a man. Or to have your uterus or ovaries removed (women have become pregnant after tubal ligations, presumably failed ones). All chemical or surgical contraceptives have side effects.

H. those figures don't seem that high . Especially "53% believe the legalisation of abortion was a good thing."

You know, no-one has explained the rationale behind the foetal viability argument. Anyone care to?

Bearing in mind that the viability of the foetus in question is in the a situation of a premature natural delivery, or induced delivery, not if the woman is having an abortion. How do these 2 things relate?

Well this is how some people see it (I am not one of them).

The woman who is seeking a termination either needs in a physical way to have the unborn child removed to prevent her death in doing so the unborn's life is terminated. This is the most acceptable form of termination.

Less acceptable are terminations for reasons regarding, family planning or the emotional/mental well being of the woman carrying the unborn. Even this is toally unacceptable to anti-abortionists. Yet as early in pregnancy the unborn can be very disimilar to a human baby terminations here do mark the cut off point where they acceptable to society as one lumpen mass. However as the basic argument of pro-choice is that no woman should have to carry an unborn to term if she chooses not to it is still acceptable to terminate.

Anti-abortionists counter that if the unborn is capable (with asistance) of life without the mother going to term then she should have the birht induced and not be allowed to terminate the unborns life. This allows the mother to avoid carrying to term and the unborn to live.

As medicine advances and we get more proficient at keeping prem births alive the "obvious logical" cut-off time for legal terminations should receed accordingly.

one love

" those figures don't seem that high . Especially "53% believe the legalisation of abortion was a good thing.""

You're right, and you're wrong. At first sight, they don't seem that high. But consider:

1. This is a country that we're supposed to believe is a cesspit of knuckle-dragging, bible-thumping, low-browed right-wing fundamentalist Christian morons. We're supposed to believe that because that's the way THEIR media portray them and that's the kind of person they've got running the place. To find out that more than half the population think legal abortion is a GOOD thing is, I think, an encouraging and slightly surprising thing, even if it is only *slightly* more than half.

2. Bear in mind also that I've given you a single statistic - the number of people who said it was a GOOD thing. You must, remember, set that against not only the number who said it was a bad thing, but also against the people who said they didn't know, didn't care, or didn't understand the question.

3. Finally, bear in mind that there's something else you can read between the lines: in a country "well known" for being conservative and anti-abortion, 53% of people were prepared to admit that they disagreed with what you might have thought was the prevailing mood. Human nature being what it is, it's more than likely that the number of people who REALLY believe legal abortion is a good thing are more than 53%, but that the rest are too chickens**t to stand up and say what they really believe. And in a country where one in four people owns a gun, EVEN THOUGH they know that that makes them LESS safe because it makes it MORE likely they'll get shot with it themselves - wouldn't you keep any potentially unpopular views to yourself? So full marks and a round of applause for the actual MAJORITY who were able to stand up be counted.

Of course, America is a democracy, so the opinion of the majority is irrelevant. Indeed, even the opinion of the largest minority is irrelevant. You only have to look at their election for that.

H.

Sho nuff

Thanks blicky. So the viability issue really is based on the idea that instead of an abortion the woman can be induced and the baby incubated and then given away?

Nyssa, given you were the last poster here in favour of the idea, can you clarify what the rationale is from your perspective?

H. I guess the 53% figure didn't seem that high because if you had a referendum it'd be close. Also by far the most Americans I know are prochoice, but then they would mostly be women and liberal.

I'm not in favor of it, so much as I think it's the least bogus argument because viability is testable. As yet there is no litmus test for personhood :P. If people are going to try and argue that there is a point at which we shouldn't be killing unborn babies, and that the date is somewhere between conception and 40 weeks, then I think viability is the most reasonable criterion, as there's some actual data.

" the 53% figure didn't seem that high because if you had a referendum it'd be close"

But that's exactly my point in (3) - it *wouldn't* be close. The only way you could make it close would be to make it compulsory and unavoidable to cast a vote, and only have the words "Yes" and "No" on the ballot paper.

ANY other setup would tend to favour one side or the other. Indeed, it's a truth widely acknowledged that in modern centrist politics (where the actual location of the "centre" is dependent on the country - the "centre" in the US is considerably to the right of the "centre" in the UK, which is to the right of, say, Sweden) parties no longer bother trying to convince the opposition voters to change their minds and vote for them instead. That battle has been lost, because they realise the vast majority of voters don't actually *think* when they vote. They vote for irrational reasons like who has the nicest haircut, who is the tallest, who their daddy always voted for, or who tells the most convincing lies about taxes. No, the only thing any political party bothers to try to do nowadays is preach to the choir - which is to say, get the people who support them *anyway*, the people who don't need convincing, to actually get off their fat McDonald's swollen backsides and actually bother to vote. Turnouts are falling all over the democratic West, and why? Probably because of what the bumper stickers have been saying for years - "if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal".

If there was a proper referendum on abortion, I don't think it would be close, for the following reasons:

1. In a secret ballot people can vote free of influence, so all the women who shout on the picket lines because their priest/husband/father expects it could, in the privacy of a polling booth, quietly tick "choice" and never let on, assuming the poor confused things haven't actually swallowed the Man's line completely and convinced themselves they really are too stupid and infantile to have adult responsibilities and control of their own fertility (step up, at least one person posting in this thread...).
2. On an emotive issue turnout would probably be high - people CARE about this, as is obvious from this thread. And on a high turnout, the backward, ignorant busybody bible-thumping bigots would be shown to be the irrational minority we all know they are. Which is why there'll never be a referendum. Because those guys (and it is, of course, GUYS who make this decision), cannot possibly leave important reproductive decisions in the hands of women who may not even have a husband. Oh no, they cannot allow that. Reproductive rights are properly the bailiwick of rich, white, university educated MEN. Right?

Then again, American law now apparently states that selection of the appropriate medical procedure for use in cases of extreme, life-threatening foetal abnormality which could kill the mother and which the foetus has no hope of surviving - that clinical decision has been taken out of the hands of the experts - doctors - and placed in the hands of people like George Bush - legislators. D&X is now banned, not because it doesn't work, not because of some unforeseen recently discovered risk factor, but because it makes people go "eeeuuwww!". Well here's the news: pretty much everything that goes on in an operating theatre would make most people go "eeuuww!". Never forget that Pamela Anderson and Jordan would not look like they do without procedures that would put most normal people off their lunch. Since when do we use grossness as a criterion for selecting medical procedures as suitable???

Why do people trust George W. to make clinical decisions more than they trust a doctor?

H.

Thanks Nyss - I'm understanding a bit better (although not totally).

>>...If people are going to try and argue that there is a point at which we shouldn't be killing unborn babies, and that the date is somewhere between conception and 40 weeks, then I think viability is the most reasonable criterion, as there's some actual data.<<

Personally I'm not arguing that there is a point where we shouldn't kill unborn babies. I think the issue is to do with the reasons for abortion, not the date at which a foetus becomes a 'person' (whatever that means).

I probably don't fully understand it because I don't believe that there is some magical date of 'personhood' yet to be discovered. I think that the people who should determine when a foetus dies or not are the woman carrying the child, and the doctors and nurses who will perform the abortion. To my mind there are very few women at say 30 weeks who are going to want to abort a child for the reasons that one might at say 6 weeks.

Likewise I think that it unlikely that many doctors would perform late stage abortions without very compelling medical reasons.

I actually trust the people concerned to make the best decision, and I think it's the society's responsibility to support those people to do that (mainly by providing education). I think it's fine to have an arbitary limit on certain kinds of procedures (eg 12 weeks), but I think that is more to do with medical procedure than viability.


So the viability argument doesn't come in to it for me - it seems entirely arbitary, and even if medical science comes up with a date it's stilll only one view of what constitutes meaningful life.

As I've said before I think the viability argument is dangerous legally and will probably be used in the future to restrict access to abortion.


The other issues to do with viability are that it seems that people think that just because science can keep a premature baby alive it should. As if this is black and white. There is little discussion about the health problems that face premature babies longterm, or who makes the decisions about whether a 'marginal' baby should be artificially alive.

So if I was 4 weeks pregnant and the viability date was 12 weeks, I would be expected to carry a pregnancy another 2 months, then either have an induced labour, or surgery, so that a baby could be saved that is possibly/probably going to have health problems over it's life time if it survives at all? And this baby would spend the first say 5 months of it's life in an incubator without the advantages of maternal bonding, touch, breast feeding etc?

I guess I probably am at odds with most here then because while in an individual situation one migh choose such a route, as a society I place a much higher value on the quality of life than the individual's right to live. I think as a species we make those choices all the time about who lives and who dies, and who gets to suffer and how much.

H. I think we are probably agreeing here. I doubt that in a referendum that the US would criminalise abortion. That is why I thought the figure was low. Also I didn't see the context that Moore put the figure in - I thought maybe he was saying see lots of liberal people here.

~~

I think that the D&X legislation has been amended to allow abortions to save the mother's life.

<<<>>>


Just as there is no real definition of personhood, neither is there one for 'quality life.' I would be truly sickened if there were otherwise reasonable people who were so Aristotelian in their regard for and judgements against people that a life could be determined to be unworthy for current or even just probable 'compromises' to perfect health. No one is in a position to decide for another human if their life is worth living and it would be extremely dangerous for us as a society to indulge in this sort of thinking.

The concern expressed in that last sentence just rubs me the wrong way, but then my little girl was induced early, incubated, fed through her nose, etc. etc. and shows no signs of being emotionally or physically deprived at age 4. Excellent medical care and a responsive nursing staff can more than make up for any emotional disadvantages of a preterm birth. There are certain physical problems common in premies, but I assume that medical advances will be made and that this will become less prevalent.

In any case, my point stands - we have a fair idea of what the age of viability is. As forcing women to undergo live birth of premie babies would be an ethical nightmare, I think the most reasonable course of action would be to restrict access to elective abortions to somewhere safely below the age of viability. I don't know how anyone else regards the 'viability' argument, but that's mine.

I don't know what Aristotle thought about all this but I guess it's important then that I be more specific. As someone with a longterm health related disability I certainly don't think that society should value me less because of that (although it generally does). I also get a bit sick of the reductionist argument that renders the quality of life issue as intrinsically opposed to individual value. Not so.

>>No one is in a position to decide for another human if their life is worth living and it would be extremely dangerous for us as a society to indulge in this sort of thinking.<<

But we in fact do do this all the time as a society. And individuals do this too. Women having terminations. You keeping your child alive with medical science. The Minister of Health when she sets the budget for cancer treatments. We _can't _ keep everyone alive and well. We have to make choices about this.

I probably didn't make this clear - I often think about issues like this at two levels - the personal and the collective. On a personal level I think that in each _individual_ situation the people involved should make the decision as to who lives and who dies. In the same way that I support your right to have access to the technology to keep your child alive, I also support the right of a woman wanting an abortion to have the access to the technology to do this safely. Both are medical interventions that don't exist in nature and both have consequences positive and negative.

On a collective level I think that we make different decisions as a society. People die every day on the basis of how we make our laws and distribute our resources. I don't believe that it is possible to save every conceived baby and give it a decent life. And I don't believe that science is going to save us from this dilemma. Birth and death are messy things too, and medicine is not an exact science by any means.

My point is that, in the context of this discussion about legal access to abortion, we have to come to a _collective_ decision not a whole lot of individual ones, when it come to writing our laws.

>>The concern expressed in that last sentence just rubs me the wrong way,<<

I thought about that too before I posted. I think the hospital staff would make a great deal of difference potentially. I think even more of a difference would be made by the presence of the birth mother. In the situation I was referring to the birth mother wouldn't be present. And in reality many neonatal units are stretched in terms of time and energy in attending to a child's emotional and psychospiritual needs.

I'm not saying that premature babies can't be given good care and go on to have a decent life. And I'm certainly not saying that they shouldn't be kept alive.

I'm saying that it's not all chocolates and roses which is why the viability date still doesn't make that much sense to me.

>>In any case, my point stands - we have a fair idea of what the age of viability is. As forcing women to undergo live birth of premie babies would be an ethical nightmare, I think the most reasonable course of action would be to restrict access to elective abortions to somewhere safely below the age of viability.<<

So essentially once the viability age drops to say 4 weeks, abortion should become illegal after that date? What do you do with the women that don't find out until 6 weeks, or who were raped, or who's mental health is at risk?

>>As forcing women to undergo live birth of premie babies would be an ethical nightmare<< But forcing them to carry to term isn't?

And if you are wiling to lower the date for access as the viability age drops then why not just lower it now? Why have abortions at all, given that if you don't kill the baby it will most likely live to be viable?

~~~


Thanks for sharing some of your personal story - that helps me understand your position on this better too. It makes me think that you have an intuitive understanding of the issues (I think that is a useful thing btw) as well as your philosophical one.

<> (kea)

Yes, this was my first concern about the viability argument. How far will it be taken? And also how this could be used by anti-abortionists to limit elective terminations, much the same as the new law proposed in the US whereby a pregnant woman who is murdered is to be considered a double homicide.


az

On a collective level I think that we make different decisions as a society. People die every day on the basis of how we make our laws and distribute our resources. I don't believe that it is possible to save every conceived baby and give it a decent life. And I don't believe that science is going to save us from this dilemma. Birth and death are messy things too, and medicine is not an exact science by any means.>>

Fair enough. But I don't think it would serve society's interests to start out legislative proceedings with a fatalistic attitude. What is needed is a pragmatic approach that will meet our needs. Most of us want access to abortion. Fine. Most of us don't want us to kill 35-week fetuses. Fine. Since we have this problematic tension between a woman's rights and a fetus' rights, we have to find a compromise. And while the viability argument is full of holes and doesn't really make anyone happy, I still think it's the best we've come up with.

I don't think I was particularly clear either - I have no idea what to make of the issue. I claim to have no morals in particular. That being the case, for me, the reasonable course of action is to choose live over death, being that the latter isn't so reversible. So, even though I wouldn't commit to saying abortion is wrong, I think I'd err on the side of continuing my pregnancy. But I understand that most people don't work the way I do. Whether we admit it openly or not, in many situations in society we are more or less ok with killing humans. That being the case, we need to come up with limitations, even if arbitrary, because people are uncomfortable without boundaries. The only boundary, aside from conception, that has any ability to be verified is viability.

What happens if viability drops to 4 weeks? I have no idea. In an earlier post I said that that would change everything, and I truly believe it would. Pregnancy will not be the same phenomenon if babies in essence don't require a natural womb. So I really can't begin to imagine how we would legislate with that revolutionary new reality. Why not lower the date now? Because different circumstances require different laws.

I don't know that I have a position so much as I'm saying, 'Viability has some dates. But I'd be happy to hear that someone has found something better.' And I try not to let my intuition out to play in this case--that facet of me is too mired in my various desires and experiences to be impartial. I'd rather be a thrower-outer of ideas than an subscriber to any of them .