Many hospitals have held firm to a 23- to 24-week line, and, as a matter of policy, do not provide lifesaving care to babies under that gestational age, arguing it’s unethical to subject a baby, parents and medical providers to such procedures, only to have the child die. But a growing number are offering aggressive treatment to babies in that difficult 22- to 23-week “gray zone,” — or even younger...The field experienced a major breakthrough in 2017 when Emily Partridge, Marcus Davey and Alan Flake from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) announced a prototype of a “biobag” that they had used to gestate sheep......The comments over there are what I expected. Highest-rated: "It complicates nothing. The woman decides. 'Religious' folks need to mind their own beeswax." Also: "Not that complicated. A women gets pregnant and decides to abort. It's simple actually. Only religion zealots think it's complicated."
Bioethicists, philosophers and other experts said the development would challenge the whole notion of viability as a marker for when abortion can occur. Today, a person’s right to decide not to be pregnant results in the termination of the fetus. But if science evolves to the point that those two things could be separated, a person might retain the right to cease carrying a fetus — but not terminate the fetus....
Katie Watson, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who has served as an adviser on the Planned Parenthood medical board, calls that notion an “Orwellian scenario”: “If a woman does not want to create another person, suddenly the state takes it out of the womb so the state can raise it — or force her to?...
December 17, 2021
Oh, those thorny babies!
I'm reading "Medical advances saving premature babies pose thorny issues for abortion rights advocates/Babies are surviving earlier in pregnancy than ever before, complicating the debate over fetal viability at issue in the Mississippi abortion case before the high court" (WaPo).
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If she doesn't need to carry it, "the woman decides" is completely obsolete. The woman and the man decide is what you should be saying.
Once again the interests of the father are totally ignored.
Women have rights without responsibilities.
Men have responsibilities without rights.
I don't need to read the WaPo comments, other than to think "Wow, women are truly horrible people."
The argument has always been that the state has no right to invade or impose upon a woman’s bodily autonomy. I have been waiting for artificial wombs to make women “equal” to men on this subject. I can just hear the whining now- “But I don’t want to be a father/mother. I don’t want a large part of my income taken from me to pay for this child I don’t want”. Lol. As a woman I say “suck it ladies”.
It is telling how far we have fallen as a society when the only argument for their choice by those who support the murder of children is that “religious nuts” are against the murder of babies. They can’t admit there was something women enjoyed about the power to make men pay for their children but let women walk away scot free. Once again leftists are hypocrites and monsters.
Maybe they can save embryos that don't implant too.
This has always been the inescapable doom of abortion fetishizers' cause, assuming it doesn't die sooner.
Seems very liberating. Then the mother would have the same rights as the father - required child support.
When you make up a rationale (this procedure is perfectly fine because this bundle of cells is not a viable person!) instead of standing on the true basis of your position (I'm a selfish A-hole and this person is inconvenient to me!), eventually reality is likely to bite you in the uterus.
Not that complicated... ANY woman can choose to Terminate ANY Person or Thing
Especially If that person or thing is somehow related to her
Grandparents?....... Check!
Parents?............. Check!
Children?........... Check!
Grandchildren?...... Check!
Next Door Neighbors?.. Check!
It is a woman's CHOICE!!
It’s always interesting to me how closed minded people can be.
I would support a pro-life charity that financed "biobags" for mothers that wanted to terminate their pregnancy. There is no adoption demand shortage in this country. I've known multiple couples that have given up on adoption due to the waiting lists and financial stakes involved.
“Katie Watson, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who has served as an adviser on the Planned Parenthood medical board, ....”
Very cool! A bioethicist whose ethics are preordained by her/its/their political affiliation. And ignorant commenters unable to distinguish scientific/moral issues from religious ones.
Welcome to the American Left.
This is "thorny," all right. The core argument for Roe, as I've heard it defended, always was that women gestate, and have a right to evict the unwanted visitor from their uteruses. But what if the eviction notice is suddenly no longer also a death sentence? Is that not a good thing?
This isn't a controversy limited to severely premature infants, either. I remember a case from the early 90s where a botched abortion resulted in a live birth -- except that the baby was missing an arm. (D&C involves dismembering the fetus inside the uterus, but in this case the abortionist had only started the dismemberment before the child was delivered otherwise entire.) The mom was pissed. She'd paid for a dead fetus, hadn't she? Now she not only had a live baby instead, but a maimed one.
The point is, you do not have, under any circumstances, the right to a dead fetus. You have -- provisionally -- the right to be not-pregnant. And these are, increasingly, different things. If the "artificial womb" thing becomes feasible, there might soon be no reason at all for a pregnant woman to remain pregnant against her will. But she will still be, willy-nilly, a mother. Considering that men are fathers of children entirely at the whim of the other parent, I don't see this as unjust.
What should rightly been seen as cause for celebration and hope is seen by the pro-aborts as cause for alarm.
Culture of death indeed.
Highest-rated: "It complicates nothing. The woman decides. 'Religious' folks need to mind their own beeswax." Also: "Not that complicated. A women gets pregnant and decides to abort. It's simple actually. Only religion zealots think it's complicated."
Pretty standard actually and quite predictable.
The average IQ of a wapo commenter is probably ~95, with typically 150 or so college credits, maybe one degree but sometimes more, high 5 figure student loan debt, and zero real world accomplishments.
But they think they are at least 130 IQ. Kinda like some people here.
They think they are smarter than everyone else while lacking that actual intelligence and that makes it easy for them to say really stupid shit.
It is also the reason why millions of people die whenever they seize power.
"Highest-rated: 'It complicates nothing. The woman decides. 'Religious' folks need to mind their own beeswax.' Also: 'Not that complicated. A women gets pregnant and decides to abort. It's simple actually. Only religion zealots think it's complicated.'"
This is just so stupid and so ignorant. Do these commenters realize that even Roe v. Wade acknowledged that the state has an interest in protecting the unborn, an interest that, during the third trimester, outweighs the woman's interest in deciding whether to carry the baby to term? Was the author of that decision, Blackmun, a religious zealot? These people not only are incapable of moral reasoning, they live in a comic-book world where anyone who disagrees with their preferred outcomes is mindlessly lampooned as a villain. It's sad that our higher education system has failed them so.
Like I said yesterday:
Note that the ONLY people dragging religion into the constitutional question of abortion are the pro-abortionists.
Saving extremely premature babies is a very expensive undertaking, and resources dedicated to this endeavor are not available for other efforts. It's a choice that may not come at a cost to the parent(s) but it certainly exacts a cost from the overall health system.
My wife worked for a while at a county hospital that served the indigent. She lamented the fact that families would refuse to "pull the plug" on relatives who were basically in a vegetative state and would never recover. Some would express a belief that God would deliver a miracle and Uncle Clem would arise. He never did. But the care system had to dedicate enormous resources to the futile mission. Neither money nor medical hospital resources are infinite, so some other facet of care in the community would have to be reduced. It is the age-old economist's dilemma of the seen vs. the unseen. Those who say "whatever it takes" are rarely the ones footing the bill.
Imagine deciding whether or not to undertake a potentially lifesaving procedure by including consideration of the effect it may have on the legal issue of viability, only to have the Supreme Court decide that viability is not the standard.
Why is pregnancy which is the result of conscious activity and is preventable, treated as an outcome of said activity where there is no responsibility. What is so difficult about knowing whether or not you are pregnant before 6 weeks, let alone 15? Also, why is the father, who has a responsibility if the baby is carried to term, not have abortion veto power? I don't believe abortion should ever be denied a woman who is a victim of rape, yet if the society and the courts would place some responsibility in the process, need for abortion would be rare, and the battle over it moot.
"It complicates nothing. The woman decides."
Right. Viability is BS. Autonomy means autonomy. If the woman decides to abort a perfectly healthy baby the day before she is due, why not?
It's all an exercise in moral reflection, Althouse would remind you. Without the right to kill, a woman cannot take responsibility for birthing. Therefore, morality requires an unencumbered right to abort.
Yeah, if a fetus can live outside the uterus, it does put the woman who wants an abortion in a moral pickle, doesn't it? Let's say she is not on the hook for the cost of gestating the fetus to natural viability. In that case, if it's being pregnant and becoming a mother that she doesn't want, she can just sign the release, have whatever procedure rids her of the fetus, and both human lives are spared. (The external womb thing also makes moot the question of whether the fetus is a human being in an early stage of development or just a clump of cells, too, doesn't it?)
But if she decides instead to go through with the abortion, she can't escape the fact that she is deliberately ending a human life that could be spared.
I have a good deal of sympathy for girls and women facing this decision today, but I can see having a lot less if I live to see the development of this technology. The rape/incest mostly red herring aside, it will force women to make a truly informed choice and not to dither over it. And, I fondly hope, to use the most effective birth control available at all times until they are certain of when and with (or via) whom they want to have a baby.
I'm going to go looking for a stat on how many 20+-week abortions there are. Surely the external uterus thing could only prevent, or provide an alternative to, a small percentage of abortions. I've long wondered why unlimited abortion is the pro-abortion side's hill to die on, so to speak.
Yeah, if a fetus can live outside the uterus, it does put the woman who wants an abortion in a moral pickle, doesn't it? Let's say she is not on the hook for the cost of gestating the fetus to natural viability. In that case, if it's being pregnant and becoming a mother that she doesn't want, she can just sign the release, have whatever procedure rids her of the fetus, and both human lives are spared. (The external womb thing also makes moot the question of whether the fetus is a human being in an early stage of development or just a clump of cells, too, doesn't it?)
But if she decides instead to go through with the abortion, she can't escape the fact that she is deliberately ending a human life that could be spared.
I have a good deal of sympathy for girls and women facing this decision today, but I can see having a lot less if I live to see the development of this technology. The rape/incest mostly red herring aside, it will force women to make a truly informed choice and not to dither over it. And, I fondly hope, to use the most effective birth control available at all times until they are certain of when and with (or via) whom they want to have a baby.
I'm going to go looking for a stat on how many 20+-week abortions there are. Surely the external uterus thing could only prevent, or provide an alternative to, a small percentage of abortions. I've long wondered why unlimited abortion is the pro-abortion side's hill to die on, so to speak.
“If a woman does not want to create another person, suddenly the state takes it out of the womb so the state can raise it —"
Umm...yeah
And just by the way, my daughter is alive today because she was medivac'd to CHOP.
Only jerks and heartless creeps would want to kill a viable baby.
If you are 6 months pregnant and decide you want to abort - there is something wrong with you.
Kate Watson is lying. The standard has been 21 to 22 weeks for decades. I have been screamed at by Planned Parenthood lawyers for stating unambiguous legal facts and medical policies in the past, including those from pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute the mainstream Morbidity and Mortality publication of the CDC.
Out out damn spot indeed.
State "raising it"--or putting a child up for adoption, in a world where there is huge demand for healthy newborns (no Romanian orphanages) is one thing; "forcing her (the mother) to raise it"; an entirely different thing.
I would never pay for WaPo(D)
Mostly democrat loyalists pay to read it.
As such, the comments are going to reveal anti-Christian bigotry, and other predictable leftist echo chamber clap-trap.
Gosnellian creeps.
Those commenters are ghouls.
I suspect they are as callous about end of life questions as they are about it's beginning.
Not that complicated.
Noting is complicated on the left. "Science" says something and everyone just accepts it.
The comments over there accurately reflect the current thinking by pro-choice/pro-abortion advocates. Remember, such folks resist any born alive laws. The mother decided to terminate the pregnancy, so it must be terminated even if the baby insists on being alive. Abortion is a sacrament of the leftist religion.
“If a woman does not want to create another person, suddenly the state takes it out of the womb so the state can raise it — or force her to?...
No, the state wouldn't force her to raise it, but they could do the same as they do for men, force her to provide support payments.
The complication over this topic comes from people deciding their view and then trying to make moral and scientific frameworks fit it.
If a woman is pregnant and does nothing but sustain herself, a new life emerges the vast majority of time (outside of medical complication). It doesn't require medical intervention or special support for it to happen. For thousands of years the simple reality was you delivered a baby in sub-ideal conditions - and the population flourished.
Once pregnant, it is not choosing to have or not to have new life created anymore - in normal situations, the only "choice" is to cease the development of a new life.
You don't need a heartbeat monitor or viability to assess this. You don't need to be a bioethicist. You just need to decide for yourself when life begins. And that answer should be really clean cut for you.
Hint: If advancements in technological capability make the viability/abortion ethics dilemna thorny/thornier, that should be a hint that your ethics are inherently flexible.
It was actually the religious zealots that killed their own children rather than let the Roman state enslave them or worse. But I'm disgusted, literally feeling sick to my stomach, that anyone would see a life saving miracle as a threat to their right to a dead baby.
If the child is viable, I can understand why you wouldn't want the risk of surgery to remove it, but your desire to reduce risk is not great than your own life. 100% certain death of a child is worse than less than 1% chance of mother's death. Especially in an age where we're debating that for some cohorts, less than 1% chance of death of a virus (they may have already recovered from for crying out loud) is rational for forcing additional health complications on them with a vaccine.
What a "thorny" issue! Just toss that one in the trash and try for another because all it is is a clump of cells.
I can't believe so many people have that type of attitude towards a child. I've birthed two children myself and assisted two other women in child birth (one birth being my oldest grandchild). Those are not just clumps of tissue, they are living, feeling humans! I hope for a time in our future when we look back and think, how could we have been so barbaric?
Again, as Science! moves forward, we'll be seeing more and more ways to help the fetus make it to birth. This is so inconvenient. We've already seen so many changes in the last decade. More will soon follow.
Honestly, if there was a way to allow a woman to not have to carry the fetus/baby, yet allow the fetus to develop fully outside of the mother...that would have to be a consideration. But who controls the Nurturing Plants? Our Governmental agencies, filled with government employees? (Think: VA). Or maybe some private company looking for a few Federal grants (Think: nursing homes for fetuses and babies). Neither is a good choice.
But as we approach the Aldous Huxley era, it might be time for Society At Large to have this conversation.
And, regarding that second favored comment: "Not that complicated. A women gets pregnant and decides to abort. It's simple actually. Only religion zealots think it's complicated."
I'll throw in that the baby probably thinks its complicated as well. And before anyone feels the need to comment on this last comment of mine- save it. All living creatures have a natural desire to keep living. (Suicides go against our very nature to survive.)
Thorns, digits, fingers, toes, a nose, per chance a male and penis, just one.
Viability is a social construct.
A human life is viable from the first heart beat until the last heart beat, the emergence of a coherent nervous system until our entropic conclusion, from a successful implantation in her mother's womb until interment in our Mother's womb.
So, keep Roe, lose your Pro-Choice religion.
There is no mystery in sex and conception. A woman and man have four choices: abstention, prevention, adoption, and compassion, and a right of self-defense through reconciliation.
The tell-tale hearts beat sooner and ever louder. Demos-cracy is aborted at the Twilight Fringe.
Only religion zealots think it's complicated.
It is not complicated for either end of the spectrum.
For the Abortion uber alles crowd nothing has changed, and nothing will change for them. You could have the ability to remove the fetus by magic wand and the mother would never have one moment of responsibility for the child, forever, and they would still be demanding that abortion be unlimited.
For the religious zealot it is not complicated. It was always a life and this new change does not complicate thing one bit. Life uber alles. This just gives them a stronger argument against the mush middle
It is only complicated for the mushy middle who want to eat their cake and have it too. They don't want to be on the side baby killers but they don't want to be on the side of Handmaiden's tale either. So their line of defense has been fetal viability. However, science has just blasted through the Ardennes and bypassed their Maginot line, so things just got complicated for them.
Also: "Not that complicated. A women gets pregnant and decides to abort. It's simple actually. Only /religion/ zealots think it's complicated."
--------------
Only REALITY zealots
an “Orwellian scenario”: “If a woman does not want to create another person, suddenly the state takes it out of the womb so the state can raise it — or force her to?...
Why not - they do it to men all the time, at least financially.
This is not a big subject for me, but I have often thought that not carrying the baby was the major factor, but another factor is that the woman wants the baby to be gone permanently so her future self would never be in a position to meet or be contacted by it later. So having the baby saved and adopted may be a problem for them. This is an argument for very early abortion as that is optimal for both goals.
Massachusetts voters in their wisdom have decided that if a chicken doesn't have 1.5 square feet of space, its eggs cannot be sold in the state. Because less than that is mean to the chicken. On the other hand, to terminate a pre-birth human is no big deal. "Only religion zealots think it's complicated."
Liberals have this weird fetish of wanting to kill babies.
There are no ethics involved...it's a cult of death.
Many hospitals have held firm to a 23- to 24-week line, and, as a matter of policy, do not provide lifesaving care to babies under that gestational age,
30 years ago, when pregnant with twins, I almost lost them at week 20.5. Doctors explained that chances of survival were slim at that point. Fortunately, the little mites stayed with me and two weeks later I was released to go home on ultimate bed rest (you can go to the bathroom and that's it!). Before I was released, doctors insisted that I go up to the Level 1 neo-natal area to understand what might be ahead of me if babes decided to come early - I'll never forget seeing the sign that said Twin A and Twin B - but Twin A had perished.
Guess my point is that at THAT hospital (University of Washington), lifesaving care was never refused.
Many population-restrictionists are eager to bite the "already born healthy baby can be aborted on mom's say-so" bullet (and additional more extreme bullets I'm sure).
What if extramaternal viability commenced at 8 weeks? Would WaPo readers reject the Casey "viability" standard?
Maybe we should look to the wisdom of the ancients and legalize infanticide. If it's good enough for the Romans, it must be good enough for WaPo readers.
And why stop there? Given the serious emotional burdens, health issues, and adverse career consequences of motherhood, shouldn't a mother have a right to terminate a child's life up until the age of 5?
Let's toss in the towel and legalize homicide.
A dear friend is a NICU [neonatal ICU] nurse off such renown that she's ready on 2 hours' notice to jump on a plane to go anywhere in the country to direct in-place NICU nurses when they have a terribly challenging itty-bitty. She says that with the 21-22s the survival rate is now in the upper single digits, and for the 20-21s lower single digits, but definitely not zero. Even the occasional 19-20 makes it.
My late father-in-law was a pathologist for more than half a century and was very clear-thinking about late-term pregnancies. "After 20 weeks there is absolutely no medical justification for abortion. If the mother's life is truly in danger, [C-]section the baby and give it a chance. Under 25 weeks the odds are tough, but not zero, and the babies eventually turn out fine by about age 3. Threats to the mother's life are quite rare -- and the primary reason for late-term abortions it that the mother wants a dead baby ... usually because she split up with the man."
That about covers it.
"Oh, those thorny babies! I'm reading "Medical advances saving premature babies pose thorny issues for abortion rights advocates/Babies are surviving earlier in pregnancy than ever before, complicating the debate over fetal viability at issue in the Mississippi abortion case before the high court" (WaPo)."
Uh oh.
Babies being born before they can be carved up for body parts? This kind of news makes Howard positively livid.
Stand by for incoming.....
Why does the state forcing a woman to support a baby she doesn't want, differ from a woman forcing a man to support until age 18, or accept the abortion of, a baby he helped start?
That's rhetorical, of course, because in one instance women aren't in power, and in the other, they are, so no public argument is allowed about either issue. The default demanded is that only women ever have power, and so it has been in the abortion debate since my childhood pre-Roe. I wonder if trans folk have an opinion about this gender-bending of authority.
What Althouse ignores is that viability at earlier and earlier stages of fetal development can be accomplished, but often at a horrible cost. Premature infants in the low 20 week range often don't have lungs or skin developed enough to work. Brain damage is common in really early premies. God bless medical workers who improve the outcomes of early birth children, because success has required many suffering families to achieve.
There is occasionally a news story of a pregnant woman either killed in a car crash or by some other violent means. I remember hearing more than once when something like this happens, the newscaster, or police officials referring to the woman and her “unborn baby”. So, this is counted as two deaths. How does the press know how many months pregnant the woman was? And, when does a fetus become a baby according to the criminal code of justice and the liberal media when something like this occurs?
I’ll never understand why people assume you MUST be religious to be pro-life. No. A person can believe a baby is a unique human being with rights from the moment it is conceived, and should therefore be protected.
It’s like saying, “religious folks need to mind their own beeswax,“ about murder in general. Or, “only religious zealots“ think people shouldn’t have the right to murder. I mean, if you don’t like murder, then don’t murder someone. But don’t take away someone else’s right to kill. It’s not complicated…right?
These increasingly viable babies are gumming up the abortion works!
In 1969, long before the modern neonatal ICUs, I operated on a 1 pound 10 ounce girl who had duodenal obstruction. We did the surgery under local anesthesia, common in those days with tiny preemies. She was fed by a tiny gastrostomy because she was too small to suck. She thrived and went home at 4 pounds. At the time she was the smallest baby to survive surgery. I wonder where she is now ?
Happens at both ends of the life spectrum.
I'll never forget the looks of scorn from Madison ICU nurses as I approved docs question whether to intubate my father.
He survived.
The nerve of him.
They don’t deny it’s a living human being.
Are “religious nuts” the only ones brave enough to voice that aloud?
what's Fun,
is listening to a pro choice vegan put down her pot pipe (there's Always a pot pipe); and say:
It's Immoral to enslave a cow, but it's Perfectly moral to abort a fetus
Then, if you get the bonus round; they'll say:
It's Immoral to kill even a fly! but it's Perfectly moral to abort a fetus
I kinda miss college.... SO MANY Smart women!
I suspect for many this isn't a new moral quandary but rather an emotional one. Over the last couple decades, the social dialogue among Pro-Choice has shifted from keeping abortion safe, legal, and rare, to one where it is a choice where no woman (fetus-bearing person for people in need of a translation) should feel at all badly about choosing to have an abortion. As medicine advances the viability range increases, and the window where a abortion can be performed free of emotional consequence shrinks. As an aside, regarding the shifting of the Pro-choice dialogue regarding abortion, in the show the West Wing which ran from the late 90s to the mid to late 2000's when the Bartlett first couple were being introduced early on their aides described them as people who tirelessly fought to protect abortion rights, but then campaigned, urging women not to have an abortion, as the Bartletts believed that abortion was morally wrong. Characters like this could never be accepted by most Pro-Choice viewers now. This kind of nuance would get only scowls, scoffs, and eye rolls from much of that group today.
All the progressives who want us to be like Europe - ignore that most of Europe doesn’t allow abortion beyond 12 weeks. The fact that the US condones infant murder up to 40 weeks is beyond comprehension and a sign of a sick sick and I fear an irreparable society
"No, the state wouldn't force her to raise it, but they could do the same as they do for men, force her to provide support payments."
Force a woman to pay support? Bless your heart. Don't you know? Men have responsibilities, women have choices.
Katie Watson, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who has served as an adviser on the Planned Parenthood medical board, calls that notion an “Orwellian scenario”: “If a woman does not want to create another person, suddenly the state takes it out of the womb so the state can raise it — or force her to?...
If a man does not want to "create another person", does "Katie" think it's "Orwellian" to force him to pay child support for 18 years?
Isn't it amazing how fast the Left goes from "my body, my choice" to "I don't want you to live, so I get to kill you"?
The comments over there are what I expected. Highest-rated: "It complicates nothing. The woman decides.
What a sexist pig
The lie that a baby is not a life until "viability"
The next step, A handicapped person isn't fully "viable".
The pro abort crowd always justifies the abortion because being born 'poor' is so bad, death is better.
Once you allow people to kill because, reasons, there is no end to. Reasons
More choices is bad for choice. That makes all the sense in the world.
They talk about religion like it is a bad thing, yet their religion is ABORTION, and killing babies is their sacrifice. It IS a death cult, and they are RABID in their desire to kill as many babies as they can.
EH said...
"I would support a pro-life charity that financed "biobags" for mothers that wanted to terminate their pregnancy. There is no adoption demand shortage in this country. I've known multiple couples that have given up on adoption due to the waiting lists and financial stakes involved."
The legal and financial hurdles to adoption are a feature, not a bug. Preserving potentially abortable fetuses runs counter to the real rationale for abortion - population control.
Hey I'm Not Sure, actually you just don't know the law. Fathers and mothers are both subject to provide child support. Fathers who can be found (many move on to the next baby daddy situation) are offered DNA tests if they doubt their paternity. And fathers with custody can file for all the same benefits single moms can, including suing the mother for child support.
It's mostly our money they are both taking. And nearly all the households I visited had the father or a boyfriend living for free, on our dime. You don't understand this situation at all.
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