Why Are We Still Asking if a Dying Woman Should Be Able to Get an Abortion to Save Her Life?

[niyad]

Why Are We Still Asking if a Dying Woman Should Be Able to Get an Abortion to Save Her Life?

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Women have abortions for complex reasons — to better take care of the children they already have, to pursue an education or career and improve their life circumstances, or simply because they know they are not in a position to be the best parent they can be. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

A recent analysis of abortion attitudes by The New York Times came to the right conclusion: The divide on how Americans feel about abortion is much smaller than partisan politics would have us believe.

But there's a bigger idea that the piece in the Times — and the poll it relies on — missed: All too often, we're still asking the wrong questions when it comes to gauging public opinion on abortion. We're too focused on questions at the margins — death versus abortion, rape, and incest or abortion under all circumstances or no circumstances. These questions do little to illuminate the reality of most women's lives and the range of feelings people have about abortions that happen in the real world.

Much of the piece centers on how Americans feel about two questions. The first is whether a woman who needs an abortion to save her life should be able to get one. Why are we still asking this? Is whether a woman should be forced to die rather than have an abortion really still up for debate when it comes to public opinion? I don't think so.

The other question examined at length concerns a woman who wants an abortion because of the sex of the baby. To set the record straight, that's a largely imagined scenario, designed in part by abortion opponents to communicate the stigmatizing idea that a woman who has decided to have an abortion is doing so for a frivolous reason. Not to mention that it's racist, relying on ugly stereotypes about women of color. Asking this question doesn't get at any kind of truth on abortion attitudes.
I'm thrilled that the analysis in the Times' got the real answer. But it's still not asking the right questions.

. . . .

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/09/why-are-we-still-asking-if-dying-woman-should-be-able-get-abortion-save-her-life

[AuntPatsy]

1. Exactly!

Bookmarking

[niyad]

2. thank you.

the comments after that article are getting interesting.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. Off to the greatest

This shouldn't even be a questions. Pukes crow about how women are treated in Muslim countries while trying to drag us to the same point.

[malthaussen]

4. Because, my dear Niyad, we're morans.

I'm not Catholic, but I've been told that the once-standard doctine in the Church if a woman's life were at risk from childbirth was "Save the child and let the mother die." Which is really a rather stupid doctrine for so many reasons. I understand they've backed off in recent years, but isn't it nice to know their hearts were in the right place?

-- Mal

[niyad]

5. that was, in fact, the doctrine. there is even a scene in "the cardinal" about that.

and, you are correct, it really was/is (looking at the catholic "medical care" as has been referenced in a number of threads on this board) a very stupid, woman-hating doctrine.

[niyad]

6. . . . .

[CTyankee]

7. I believe we have to come down on the side of "always legal" for the simple reason that

it is a question of moral choice. We are humans because of that distinct difference between us and other primates. And women are moral agents. To deny her that moral agency over her very being is to deny her humanity. Particularly when we face up to the fact that we all do NOT agree when life begins. We do know when pregnancies are viable but there are stages in viability. This straw man argument over late term abortions misleads us. Very few abortions are late term and that is because such pregnancies are ones where something has gone tragically wrong and continuing the pregnancies constitutes a clear and present danger to the woman's health.

[niyad]

8. you are absolutely correct.

[CTyankee]

9. Late in my daughter's pregnancy she developed HELLP syndrome but luckily she was

close enough to term that my grandson could be successfully delivered by C section. The syndrome would have killed her otherwise. Thank god she and my grandson are OK, but no more kids for her...

[niyad]

10. that must have been so frightening. glad that she and your grandson are ok.

and damn the gynoticians who think they have a right to make our decisions for us.

[CTyankee]

11. It was a fraught year. My brother had died a month earlier quite suddenly. My mother was

in assisted living and I had to fly down to TX to take care of the arrangements and to tell my mother what had happened. It was a very difficult thing to do. She deteriorated steadily from then on and I told my employer I was retiring due to family issues. I made several more trips to TX and she just stopped eating and died right after her 94th birthday in April. But I did get a trip in to CA to see my grandson and that was lovely...

[niyad]

12. a fraught year, indeed. so glad you got to see your grandson.

[Jefferson23]

13. No woman should need to articulate any reason why she decides on an abortion. That is what choice

is about, her choice. It does not matter if her reason appears frivolous or convenient or shallow,
selfish, or any of the other bullshit that is applied to make her guilty. Her privacy is tantamount and I do wish
people would ask themselves, why would any society want to force any woman to bring a pregnancy
to term? The baby benefits? The mother benefits? Society benefits? I don't see any logic nor morality
to that point of view.

[niyad]

14. it is all about male control of the female.

[Jefferson23]

15. Dominate, yes and the idea she needs to have a good reason,whatever the hell that is, is disgusting.

[niyad]

16. as a friend once observed, the only reason a woman needs for an abortion is: she wants it.

[Jefferson23]

17. That is it, exactly. The idea any woman needs to pass a test for what is considered the correct

reason makes me ill. It flies in the face of privacy and autonomy and what would it matter
her reasons? That makes no sense to me, even if a woman aborted for reasons the collective
opinion found repugnant..she wants a male, not a female child, again I ask, how would the
child benefit from this environment..which would be the status of unwanted by the mother
who is that child's whole world. Why do that to either of them? Control freaks who will have
nothing to do with that child once born want the mother to behave a certain way..that is a
punishment in my opinion and archaic in nature.

[niyad]

18. an old bumper sticker read "if you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?"

[Jefferson23]

19. I never saw that before, and it should be talked about more, since women too often

are continually faced with needing to prove themselves to be worthy to make their own choices
while expected to live up to some bizarre narrative of motherhood from tv land.

[niyad]

20. sadly, we have to resurrect many of these things from what we had hoped would be the

dustbin of history.

I am reading a series of books set in victorian england. one of the subtexts is the bizarre, rigid social structure, set up by men, that punishes women for breaking the stringent, nonsensical rules of their patriarchal society.

[Jefferson23]

21. I'm going to guess they sound a lot like Brownback.

Jun 19, 2007 at 07:26 AM PDT
Brownback Aide - Rape Victim's "Sacred Duty" to Have The Baby

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/06/19/348179/-Brownback-Aide-Rape-Victim-s-Sacred-Duty-to-Have-The-Baby#

He is only one of course, but because he has political power he is dangerous and
has convinced me he hates women and children.