The repeated assertions come from Leana Wen, the president of Planned Parenthood:
“We face a real situation where Roe could be overturned. And we know what will happen, which is that women will die. Thousands of women died every year pre-Roe.”
“Before Roe v. Wade, thousands of women died every year — and because of extreme attacks on safe, legal abortion care, this could happen again right here in America.”
“We’re not going to go back in time to a time before Roe when thousands of women died every year because they didn’t have access to essential health care.”
Responding to "a reader" who asked for a fact check,
Glenn Kessler writes:
Erica Sackin, a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, directed us to a 2014 policy statement issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG): “It is estimated that before 1973, 1.2 million U.S. women resorted to illegal abortion each year and that unsafe abortions caused as many as 5,000 annual deaths.”...
Wen is a doctor, and the ACOG is made up of doctors. They should know better than to peddle statistics based on data that predates the advent of antibiotics. Even given the fuzzy nature of the data and estimates, there is no evidence that in the years immediately preceding the Supreme Court’s decision, thousands of women died every year in the United States from illegal abortions....
Unsafe abortion is certainly a serious issue, especially in countries with inadequate medical facilities. But advocates hurt their cause when they use figures that do not withstand scrutiny. These numbers were debunked in 1969 — 50 years ago — by a statistician celebrated by Planned Parenthood. There’s no reason to use them today.
The commenters at WaPo rebel. The most-liked comment is:
This is a revolting misuse of a "fact check" function. How can Kessler do a fair "fact check" on a formerly illegal activity that admittedly has only "fuzzy numbers?" If thousands of women died in the 1930s from illegal abortion, that is a recent enough statistic in my mind. If 39 died, that's too much. Kessler deserves four Pinocchios for picking the wrong target
And there's a poll at the bottom of Kessler's column inviting readers to do their own rating of the statement in question. You're probably not surprised to hear that 42% of those who voted judged the statement to be
true. Only 35% agreed with the 4 Pinocchio rating Kessler chose. I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
Posts
94 comments:
Technically, if you include both parties involved in the abortion, they're correct.
WaPo Fact Check is Op-ed. Facts and checking are not mandatory.
Some might call it agitprop.
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
Yeah, there are a lot of people who are the same way about constitutional...
Slightly OT, but this touches on one of my ongoing irritations with the pro-choice side. There is so much "concern" for the health of women and yet Planned Parenthood has fought every state effort to require abortion clinics to meet the same standards as other outpatient surgery centers.
How does it make sense that an abortion clinic should legally have lower medical standards than the outpatient surgery center that handled my wife's toe surgery?
Wow. I do love the comments there.
@Dan "Technically, if you include both parties involved in the abortion, they're correct." Oh, no. Then it would be around a million deaths a year.
"because of extreme attacks on safe, legal abortion care …"
Is there a more misused word today than "extreme"? Not just "attacks", but "extreme attacks". The usage seems ubiquitous among the left. Does it have any impact left? Maybe to the true believers.
Wilbur said...
"because of extreme attacks on safe, legal abortion care …"
Is there a more misused word today than "extreme"?
Based on the above quote, I would suggest "care".
I didn't know we had that many back alleys--and cops who didn't enforce the law at all.
If you're on the left, you get to lie. That's how it works.
On this I'll always go back to the first step: This should be left to the states. The beauty of our system is that it's a system with 50 different labs to figure out what works. As we Federalize everything, we lose the ability to make our decisions on a more local level. Decisions that can be more quickly changed, added, removed, if shown to not work as advertised.
1) Leave it to the states.
2) Stop Federally funding Planned Parenthood which is a national chain of abortion clinics AND a Democrat Party funding machine. That every US citizen regardless of his or her views on the topic are compelled to give of their time of life (i.e. their earned money) to pay for this is nothing less than extortion at the point of a gun. You like Planned Parenthood and their work?Donate to them yourself, but don't take my money to pay for your cause. I can disagree with their actions, but somehow I'm compelled to pay for them?
Finally- I wonder if the most liked commenter who rightly stated that 39 deaths would have been too many, was as upset by the deaths manufactured by Kermit Gosnell?
"there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true." Boy do you have that right. And the corollary is: "If the facts don't support what I know to be true, we just haven't found the right facts." (The Barr summary of the Mueller report will have those facts. Oops. The Barr testimony about the Mueller report will have those facts. Oops. The unredacted Mueller report will have those facts. Oops. But nothing will persuade them that the facts are not there -- only that we haven't found them yet.) I still have enough faith in the US citizenry that I believe a lot of people will ultimately view this epistemological approach for what it is.
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
I dunno, maybe they just want fact checkers who are “better in touch with what [they] imagine [history] really means.”
But it is true. The fact that the specific cause of death (infection from an unsanitary abortion) was something that is preventable today only becomes a problem with the suggestion (not actually stated in the excerpt) that thousands of women will again die each year from illegal abortions. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But even that is just speculation, not a lie.
Hahaha. Activists can't live in a world where overturning Roe doesn't really change anything.
I would also add that most illegal abortions that occurred then wouldn't occur now because birth control is widely available. There is also no stigma to being a single mom.
"I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true."
Amen to that.
I will also add that the fools in Indiana and North Carolina (hi VP Pence) who allowed their states to be bullied by Hollywood and Big Businesses have made things more difficult in the pro life States that have passed laws limiting abortion to the first few weeks of pregnancy. Everyone expects these states to cave.
This seems to make the better argument that it is ridiculous to make illegal something that so many people do.
A lot of women may or may not have died from illegal abortions, but there's no doubt a lot more unborn babies have been killed since we made abortion legal. The difference is the women knew there was a risk when they visited the abortionist, but unborn babies have no say in what's going to happen to them.
@Tim "But it is true. The fact that the specific cause of death (infection from an unsanitary abortion) was something that is preventable today only becomes a problem with the suggestion..."
No, no - flat out lie. The claim wasn't that thousands of women died in the '30s. The claim was they died that way every year before Roe v. Wade. They didn't, and we can be pretty sure of that, and in any case it's unsourced.
Even before Roe, many states had already legalized abortion. California (sainted Governor Ronnie Reagan) had legalized it in 1967.
If Roe were overturned, abortion would remain legal in California.
The Left clings to Roe with religious fervor. Some might call them "bitter-clingers"
MayBee, so beating your wife or girlfriend should be legal?
This is a well-trodden path.
Remember, one out of five (or is that one out of four) female college students has been sexually assaulted, making American college campuses the most dangerous places in the world for women.
Bogus surveys and bad statistical practices combined with Tinkerbell rhetoric ("I do believe in fairies! I do believe in fairies! I DO believe in fairies!") lead progressives into strange worlds.
A major reason why abortions were illegal was that they were dangerous, even when done by a doctor.
Therefore, the common wisdom was that, in the case of an unwanted pregnancy, the woman should give birth to the unwanted baby and then give it up for adoption.
A major reason why more public opinion increasingly supported the legalization of abortions was that they had become much more safe, because of better techniques and antibiotics.
If you really want to get rid of Roe and Casey, 45 American states need to pass accommodative abortion laws with reasonable restrictions. The Alabama law is a step in the wrong direction and will be shot down.
Back alley abortion was a badly chosen name anyway.
"There is also no stigma to being a single mom."
Almost all abortions are had to avoid being a mom at all. It's simple convenience. They aren't avoiding shame.
"I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true."
Just as there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of the Constitution is what they want to be in it.
Eleanor said...
MayBee, so beating your wife or girlfriend should be legal?
Of course people will always break laws. But in general, we need to consider what it means to pass new laws that people simply will not follow.
MayBee said...
This seems to make the better argument that it is ridiculous to make illegal something that so many people do.
So, murder should be legal in Chicago? I mean, really, it's racist that the majority of people charged with murder in Chicago are black, right? And murder is an every day occurance there, right? So, just legalize it and the problem will go away, won't it?
The bureaucratic totalitarian left - you get to lie and cheat and steal. It all starts with election fraud.
And I'm not necessarily making either argument. But "millions of women each year will break this law and we need to figure out how to deal with that" is definitely a better argument than "thousands of women will die even though we have no evidence of that"
MikeR said...
@Tim "But it is true. The fact that the specific cause of death (infection from an unsanitary abortion) was something that is preventable today only becomes a problem with the suggestion..."
No, no - flat out lie. The claim wasn't that thousands of women died in the '30s. The claim was they died that way every year before Roe v. Wade. They didn't, and we can be pretty sure of that, and in any case it's unsourced.
It is sourced to ACOG. There is a link in the excerpt.
“It is estimated that before 1973, 1.2 million U.S. women resorted to illegal abortion each year and that unsafe abortions caused as many as 5,000 annual deaths.”...
As Al Smith might say, Let's take a look at the record
US population before 1973 about 240 million
US FEMALE population before 1973 about 120 million
1.2/120 is about 1%
So, they're saying that before 1973; one percent of women had an illegal abortion: EACH YEAR?
Assuming no repeats (big assumption); that'd mean that in ten years, 10% of women had an abortion. In 33 years, One Third of women would have had an illegal abortion
Does this sound plausible? To anyone?
Oh! AND the stat says 1.2 Million ILLEGAL Abortions; so this doesn't count The Entire Population of California
oh, AND! they're saying that there were as many abortions (illegal abortions) in 1973 (pop 240million) as today (pop 340 million)
As Barbie said: Math is Hard!
It's difficult to take seriously an argument bemoaning death counts from the people who support taking innocent life based on whimsy alone, up to 40 weeks in utero.
"Safe, legal, and rare". Right. Obviously pure bullshit peddled by vicious amoral liars. But hey, mammograms!
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
And fostered because so many are willing to tolerate or acquiesce in that delusion simply to avoid the tantrum, recriminations and accusations that inevitably follow.
Exactly how the "cry-bully" was, ahem, conceived.
To JRoberts' point, from the ACOG link:
Medically Unnecessary Abortion Facility and Staff Requirements
Facility and staffing requirements enacted in some states, under the guise of promoting patient safety, single out abortion from other outpatient procedures and impose medically unnecessary requirements designed to reduce access to abortion. Also known as TRAP laws, these measures have included needless requirements such as mandating that facilities meet the physical plant standards of hospitals; that staffing, drug, equipment, and medical records be maintained at unnecessary levels; that physicians performing abortions in the clinic setting obtain hospital admitting privileges, with no mechanism to ensure that hospitals will grant such privileges; that the same physician perform in-person counseling, ultrasonography, and the abortion procedure, resulting in difficulties for physicians who travel long distances to provide abortion care in rural states and for multi-day procedures; and that clinic physicians be board certified obstetrician–gynecologists despite the fact that clinicians in many medical specialties can provide safe abortion services. The College opposes such requirements because they improperly regulate medical care and do not improve patient safety or quality of care.
These laws make abortion more difficult and expensive to obtain, imposing new costs on the women who can least afford them (11). Compliance with some of the most onerous regulatory requirements has proved to be so difficult that some practices have closed. In states with few abortion providers, TRAP laws can make abortion essentially inaccessible (12).
I do find it interesting that the people who scream "back alley abortions! women will die" do want to *reduce* restrictions on the way abortions are provided. In Pennsylvania, this desire made them turn away from shutting Gosnell down.
It is politically useful for Roe to be seen as under threat, and for the consequences of its overturn to be dire.
Of all political issues of the last 50 years, it seems that abortion has the most propaganda and disinformation attached to it.
Maybe gun control is close.
The best way to convince the other side... is not that way.
The link for the ACOG no longer has the information about number of abortions each year.
I did find it here: https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2003/01/public-health-impact-legal-abortion-30-years-later
Abortion is a challenging issue, and for me it's even more challenging because even though I am pro-choice, I think pro-choice activists make the worst arguments and say the dumbest things.
How does it make sense that an abortion clinic should legally have lower medical standards than the outpatient surgery center that handled my wife's toe surgery?
If your 14 year old daughter wants her lip pierced in iowa...
she has to go to a back alley piercing, because "she's not old enough"...
If she has your consent, And you accompany her: Still has to go back alley, 'cause she's not old enough
But! she wants an abortion; NO PROBLEMO! She can walk in the front door, and hope she doesn't die
MayBee, like you i used to be pro-choice (like you still are).
It wasn't Pro-Lifers that made me horrified at abortion, it was the pro-choicers that did it.
"I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true."
It is actually worse that that. A lot of people know the truth they just do not want others to know. They keep on telling big lie and changing language.
Did you see the spat on the word mother in SCOTUS? Ann you are the word person please do one on Mother. I agree with Justice Thomas - Just because a women does not want to believe she is a mother of the BABY inside her does not mean she is not a Mother. OH and what about the word Baby? Let any 10 year old that has not been brain see the ultras sounds of the womb and they will know it is a BABY.
It was some abortion doctor, a Planned Parenthood activist, who came up with that number pre-Roe. Nathan Abramson, something like that, but I can't find him.
Anyway he said he pretty much pulled the 5,000 number out of his ass.
" If 39 died, that's too much. "
Three things: 1. If PP claims 5,000 died per year and it was really more like 39, then 39 may be "too many" but it is still a lie to claim it is 5,000. 2. In 1972, 24 died from legal abortions and 39 from illegal. One would have to know how many of each kind were performed, but if there were similar numbers, then they would not be dramatically different in terms of safety. 3. With abortion pills, which were not invented 'till after Roe v Wade, it is unclear why the legality would have any effect at all on mortality.
This also is from the report the ACOG used to support its data:
The legalization of abortion also led to changes in when women sought abortions: In 1970, nearly one in four abortions were performed at 13 weeks' gestation or later,12 compared with one in 10 a decade later (Table 1). In addition, more than half of women obtaining abortions after 1980 did so at eight weeks' gestation or earlier. Obtaining abortions earlier in the pregnancy makes the procedure safer, because earlier abortion is associated with a reduced risk of complications.13 As medically induced abortions become more common,14 abortions are likely to be performed at even earlier gestational ages.
So earlier abortions are safer. No wonder the link has been removed from the ACOG paper Planned Parenthood pointed WaPo too.
I don't see how to bridge the chasm between those who think it's a baby and those who think it isn't.
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
A few weeks ago, one of our long time colleagues here, Young Hegelian, gave us a brilliant discussion of the epistemology of what libruls know to be true. It starts with what they want to be true, and then it is repeated on a coordinated basis and yelled loudly enough along with table-pounding until it is generally accepted wisdom. AGW is another example of received truth from our leftie masters.
This is how they roll
- Krumhorn
MayBee said...
Abortion is a challenging issue, and for me it's even more challenging because even though I am pro-choice, I think pro-choice activists make the worst arguments and say the dumbest things.
There are few things in life more frustrating than watching a position you agree with argued poorly. I feel the same way you do, but on the other side.
For me, it comes down to either the fetus is human or it isn't. How you answer that question compels you to embrace one of two absolutely opposed positions. There is no middle ground, no opportunity for compromise if you are a person of integrity and not a monster.
The 2 primary reasons why I come down on the human side are these:
1) I was a fetus once and there was never a time in my life when it was ok for my parents to kill me.
2) At some point, the thing that is not a human undeniably turns into a human. Each of us, no matter our view on abortion, has to pick a moment. Having picked a moment, we must (except for the monsters) be able to explain why what was there just a moment ago was fundamentally different from what is there now such that human rights have attached to what a moment ago had no moral standing.
There are two places in a person's life where what is there now is fundamentally different from what was there a moment ago--the moment of conception and the moment of death. There is no other spot we can point to where that condition is satisfied.
Reject that condition and we embrace killing what is, even under our own definition, a human being. Trimesters, viability, all of that, is the realm of unserious people. Moral monsters.
"It Is Difficult to Get a Man to Understand Something When His Salary Depends Upon His Not Understanding It."
And so, too, with abortion: if you're employed by Planned Parenthood then you can hardly afford to understand (or even consider) the pro-life position.
And so, too, if you're pregnant and don't wish to be inconvenienced (or embarrassed) by a child. Especially if you have reason to believe you're likely to give birth to a child with special needs.
Surely, the power of convenient rationalization should never be underestimated.
This report also goes on to state that the methods of abortion itself have changed and are safer. Best practices have changed. It isn't that abortions would be *illegal* that would make them dangerous. Unless they think providers who practice illegal abortions would not use the methods proven to be safer.
Also, I find this a pretty awful argument : The main reason for the reductions in both morbidity and mortality is that legally induced abortion is markedly safer than illegally induced abortion. Moreover, legal abortion is safer than the third choice available to pregnant women—continuing a pregnancy to term.31 For example, in 2000, 23% of births were abdominal (cesarean) deliveries, whereas fewer than 1% of suction curettage procedures required intra-abdominal surgery.32 Therefore, a woman carrying a pregnancy to term has several hundred times the risk of requiring major surgery of a woman undergoing suction abortion. Furthermore, in the 1970s, the risk of death related to induced abortion at 16 weeks' gestation or earlier was one-seventh that related to pregnancy and childbirth, even after adjustment for study year, age and race.33 Today, legal abortion is less likely than an injection of penicillin to cause death.
"Trimesters, viability, all of that, is the realm of unserious people. Moral monsters."
"Viability" is another slippery slope that should be avoided. How "viable" was my 80 year old mother while she was on a ventilator due to Pneumonia? The concept of "viability" may help us to see the civil rights of a child in the womb, but it opens the door to discussions about euthanasia.
I don't see how to bridge the chasm between those who think it's a baby and those who think it isn't.
Solomon says, cut the woman in half.
tim maguire Reject that condition and we embrace killing what is, even under our own definition, a human being. Trimesters, viability, all of that, is the realm of unserious people. Moral monsters.
I disagree with this, and with the characterization (obviously).
I find death at the opposite ends of the spectrum of life to be very challenging. And by that I mean, abortion (although later abortion is no challenge to me at all) and people close to death and in agony (and therefore, assisted suicide for lack of a better term).
I helped care for my sister as she was dying, and in agony, and ready to go. My niece and I talked about how to handle it, and the options available to us. We chose not to do anything illegal, but I don't know what I could have done had it been legal for me to give her a purposeful overdose of something. Could I live with that? I don't know. How would I have felt at that moment? I don't know. I know how I felt watching her slip away, and watching her make the choice to stop trying to live. It's awful. It's all awful. But it isn't easy. I don't think people who choose differently are monsters.
OTOH, having an optional abortion just before full term, or killing a perfectly healthy person do seem morally monstrous. But for me, there are other really challenging life and death decisions that exit both pre-birth and after.
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
I think this is true about far more than abortion. As a litigator who gets to see the underlying evidence in addition to the clients' and opposing parties' stories, this proves itself on a regular basis.
MayBee said...I helped care for my sister as she was dying, and in agony, and ready to go.
To me there is a bright line difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia. Reasonable people can disagree about whether a person can determine their own life isn't worth living and choose to end it, but no one has the right to make that decision for someone else. The final irrevocable decision must be made by the person doing the dying.
In that regard, I oppose abortion for the same reason I oppose capital punishment--no one has the right to decide another person's life isn't worth living.
Not only did women not die from abortions pre-Roe, they didn't have them in back alleys either. Most early abortions after WWII and nearly all in the 1960s were dilation and curettage (D&C) procedures performed by sympathetic physicians, either in their office or a hospital. The reason listed for the D&C was abnormal bleeding. The abortion was safely performed and the woman was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics. Any suggestion that women would "go back to coat hangers and die by the thousands" has always been ridiculous.
"Picking the wrong target" sounds like it will be a very good reason for deporting conservatives to rehab camps in the future!
Finally- I wonder if the most liked commenter who rightly stated that 39 deaths would have been too many, was as upset by the deaths manufactured by Kermit Gosnell?
Additionally, where is the outrage at the actual doctors who performed these abortions that led to the death of the mother? They are, under pretty much any definition of the term, murderers (or at least committers of negligent homicide), even if you do not believe that the fetus is human.
To me there is a bright line difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia. Reasonable people can disagree about whether a person can determine their own life isn't worth living and choose to end it, but no one has the right to make that decision for someone else. The final irrevocable decision must be made by the person doing the dying.
Absolutely. But the one doing the dying isn’t always physically able to take the steps to end it. That’s where our struggle was anyway. Or one of our struggles. We all three had a moral struggle as well
Planned Parenthood has turned more people against abortion then any Pro life organization. The selling of fetal body parts and the celebration of late term abortion is vile. They did this so that they can get more money through donations and in that way it works, but it has turned away more middle of the road people that are sympathetic to the idea of abortion. They have won money but lost the general public.
If this is a war of rhetoric, I think pro-life has the better argument. How can you reason that killing the unborn and selling the body parts is a good thing for anyone.
@Tim "It is sourced to ACOG. There is a link in the excerpt." So they are the ones telling the flat-out lie? Or Leana Wen, since Planned Parenthood acknowledged the lie decades ago?
I think first term abortions should be legal, third term abortions should be prohibited, and that Catholics and feminists should fight about second term abortions....What annoys me most about the pro-choice people is their inability to imagine that there might be a downside to abortion. There's a huge gender imbalance in China and India. Thousands of women are not dying in illegal abortions, but rather millions of women are not existing because of legal abortions.....I prefer to live in a society that's not enthusiastically pro-abortion. I don't see how that can be accomplished without someone somewhere voicing their disapproval of abortion.
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
Welcome to the post-modern world, professor!
According the NCAA’s Transgender Handbook, “According to medical experts on this issue, the assumption that a transgender woman competing on a women’s team would have a competitive advantage outside the range of performance and competitive advantage or disadvantage that already exists among female athletes is not supported by evidence.”
if you're employed by Planned Parenthood then you can hardly afford to understand (or even consider) the pro-life position.
The young woman featured in "Unplanned" has an organization that supports former PP employees who have left.
Most early abortions after WWII and nearly all in the 1960s were dilation and curettage (D&C) procedures performed by sympathetic physicians, either in their office or a hospital. The reason listed for the D&C was abnormal bleeding.
Some were but the ones I saw were almost always self attempts. No doctor involved. No doubt those done by "sympathetic doctors" did not end up on the County hospital GYN admission wards.
I did know a couple of girls in college who had abortions done by MDs
Remember, the Birth Control Pill only appeared about 1961 and was probably only in common use about 1965. In 1968, there was a movie about the pill evidence that it was uncommon enough to be a plot point in a movie.
I am still OK with first term abortion because stupidity is incurable.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL:
Knowing that if a true poll were taken, we would be soundly defeated, we simply fabricated the results of fictional polls. We announced to the media that we had taken polls and that 60% of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion. This is the tactic of the self-fulfilling lie. Few people care to be in the minority.
We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The actual figure was approaching 100,000 but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1,000,000. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200 – 250 annually. The figure constantly fed to the media was 10,000.
These false figures took root in the consciousness of Americans convincing many that we needed to crack the abortion law. Another myth we fed to the public through the media was that legalizing abortion would only mean that the abortions taking place illegally would then be done legally. In fact, of course, abortion is now being used as a primary method of birth control in the U.S. and the annual number of abortions has increased by 1500% since legalization.
From:
The Hand of God: A Journey from Death to Life by The Abortion Doctor Who Changed His Mind
by Bernard Nathanson
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
Which is why their attacks on Trump don't have the impact they wish. Every criticism of Trump reminds us the left has been lying for decades only far more nefariously since they base policy and law on their lies.
"Kessler deserves four pinnochios for picking the wrong target."
Not a bad target, the wrong target.
This confirms the problem conservatives have when liberal journalists write "fact check" columns. They target conservatives. They cherry pick statements and context. They assume that they know the state of mind of the writer being fact checked. Fact check columns are opinion journalism, and the opinion writers are always liberals.
tim maquire @ 9:28am,
Capital punishment is NOT deciding someone's life is not WORTH living, it's deciding that someone who took another's life without justification doesn't DESERVE to go on living when their victim didn't. A completly different thing.
JRoberts @ 9:04am,
Yes to the nonsense of "viability". No human newborn is viable! Take a newborn, wrap them lovingly in swaddling cloths, lay them in a nice, soft cradle... and come back a month later. I will guarantee you 100.000000% death rate.
cubanbob,
"I don't see how to bridge the chasm between those who think it's a baby and those who think it isn't."
Easy. With killing. Lots and lots of it. American Civil War II.
No I don't want this, but it's absolutely where we are headed. Hello, Sarejevo!!!
MayBee @ 8:27am,
MayBee you need to change sides.
MayBee said...But the one doing the dying isn’t always physically able to take the steps to end it. That’s where our struggle was anyway. Or one of our struggles. We all three had a moral struggle as well
I should have said right out of the gate that I'm sorry to hear about your sister's struggles. I hope it came to a peaceful conclusion that you can feel good about.
Kirk Parker said...
tim maquire @ 9:28am,
Capital punishment is NOT deciding someone's life is not WORTH living, it's deciding that someone who took another's life without justification doesn't DESERVE to go on living when their victim didn't. A completly different thing.
No, it's about us deciding the circumstances under which another person will live or die. Not unlike the behavior of the person we are so outraged by. The fact that you are comfortable with the circumstances set does not in any way change the fact that you have given yourself the authority to decide those circumstances.
Capital punishment is NOT deciding someone's life is not WORTH living, it's deciding that someone who took another's life without justification doesn't DESERVE to go on living when their victim didn't. A completly different thing.
No, it's about us deciding the circumstances under which another person will live or die.
I agree with you here. The death penalty and abortion both kill people.
The fact that you are comfortable with the circumstances set does not in any way change the fact that you have given yourself the authority to decide those circumstances.
This is where you are wrong and your comparison breaks down. Nobody has been given the authority to decide if someone should be executed. There is a legal process that includes a jury of 12 people who do not have an interest in the outcome. There are mandatory lengthy appeals. If it ever actually gets to an actual execution, the rules and regulations involved are extremely burdensome.
In contrast we are told that the mother must have sole authority to decide the baby's fate. She is free, indeed expected, to act in her own self interest. Any procedural delays or attempts to regulate the process are attacked and usually overthrown by the courts.
To summarize:
If it was as hard to get an abortion as it is to execute a murderer, most of us on the pro-life side would be content.
A fertilzed human egg is not a person with rights equal to a pregnant woman.
A fertilzed human egg is not a person with rights equal to a pregnant woman.
Well, at least since Roe it hasn't been.
Gahrie said...This is where you are wrong and your comparison breaks down.
I'm talking about Parker's support for the death penalty based on his approval of how it is administered. The process you describe as a difference that negates my point is just detail. It changes nothing.
A fertilzed human egg is not a person with rights equal to a pregnant woman.
She's a human life, albeit early in our evolution. She has a presumptive consciousness from around the fifth week. There are edge cases (e.g. involuntary exploitation, perhaps superior exploitation), but generally it's a matter of rights and responsibilities of the mother and father.
No, it's about us deciding the circumstances under which another person will live or die.
Self-defense, too. Capital punishment is based on two factors: resolution and prevention. Elective abortion, less edge cases, is based on wealth, pleasure, leisure, and social progress.
I think there are a LOT of people out there whose idea of truth is what they want to be true.
That seems to related to "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."
A fertilzed human egg is not a person with rights equal to a pregnant woman.
When does it become a person?
You must be 100% certain, without a reasonable doubt. When?
We should legalize heroin and meth, because too many people die in their efforts to illegally obtain it.
We should legalize rape, because too many women are being murdered so their rapist can't be identified.
That's the essence of the pro-choice Coat Hanger Argument.
A straw clown posing as a straw man that persists as a political myth.
A lot more women died in the years after Roe v. Wade, because the opinion was so sloppy and stupid that it declared there could be no regulations of abortion in the first trimester, even to protect the health of women. Blackmun and company actually legalized all the abortion mills. Roe specifically states that states cannot start regulating the licenses of abortionists until the second trimester. This created such a fuck up in the law that the first abortion case after Roe had to decide the issue of whether states could require that an abortionist at least was a doctor. That case is Connecticut v. Menillio. that's almost three years of non-doctors performing abortions, legally and out in the open. Unbelievable. And yet it happened.
Whether 39 or 250 women died per year of illegal abortion, ACOG and DVD now use 5 year periods and come up with single digits. Legal is sa fer.
CDC
Whether 39 or 250 women died per year of illegal abortion, ACOG and DVD now use 5 year periods and come up with single digits. Legal is safer.
They undercount abortion deaths.
1) Abortion is only counted as a cause of death if it's listed on the death certificate as a cause of death. If it's unlisted, if the physician writes "embolism" or "hemorrhage" or anything other than "abortion" as the cause of death, then an abortion fatality is missed.
2) Abortion is only listed as a cause of death if the patient dies right then. But what if abortion is a ticking time bomb? What if it increases your risk for breast cancer? Or it weakens your cervix and you die from blood loss in your next pregnancy Then an abortion fatality is missed.
3) Woman are very secretive about their abortions. Thus the best study of abortion-related fatalities would be in a socialist country where abortions are provided under government health care, and a record of the surgery is kept. In a study done in Finland, they discovered that women who had abortions were four times likelier to be dead in a year then women who had given birth. Indeed, a woman who was not pregnant was twice as likely to be dead in a year as a woman who gave birth. Giving birth to a baby has a protective effect.
They undercount abortion deaths.
This is a credible basis for a class action lawsuit against Planned Parenthood Federation and other abortion chamber operators. For decades...
tim @ 1:24pm,
WTH??? You need read more carefully; my statement was a description of the conceptual difference between "worth living" and "deserving of life"; there isn't a single word there that hints at whether or not I support the death penalty or approve how how we administer it.
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