Dear Senator Obama: please stick with "late term abortion" term

[question everything]

"Partial birth" is not medically accurate and is inflammatory which is why is being used, with relish, by the the ones who think it is their mission to control women's sexuality.

[BOSSHOG]

1. I never could understand

why some radical religious zealot constitution hating nut job in Seattle Washington would be so fucking concerned about the sex life and sex organs of a woman in New Hampshire. And when not wagging her finger at someone she hates in the name of Jesus Christ she's cheering on our troops headed to Iraq to die for bush's lies.

[tazvil04]

2. 2008 Dem PLatform

For the first time in history the Democratic Party has added an element to its reproductive rights platform to discourage the incidence of abortion.

Later term abortions with certain procedures should be banned unless the health of the mother is at issue. I support that.

But Obama is finally working to demonstrate as Howard Dean and others have suggested that Democrats need to fight back on abortion. No one is "for" abortion. We are for the rights of women to have control over their bodies -- balancing those rights against those of the child --- and providing rights to the child when it is evident that the child has become a human being. It is a difficult balance, but the GOP has been dishonest suggesting that the only way to reduce abortion is to end it altogether. That will never happen in the US. But the GOP do not want to do the hard work of reducing abortions because that will eliminate perhaps one of their major fundraising issues...

If they were interested in this -- don't you think over the last 30 years they would have made reducing the incidence of abortion a major part of their policy --- but they have not -- only eliminating abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade...

Seems shortsighted to me. Obama's plank seems much smarter since abortion will never be altogether illegal...since all states even if Roe v. Wade were overturned --- would not make it illegal. .

But we could significantly reduce the incidence through policies and actions and encouragement IMHO.

[iverglas]

4. Nope. Sorry.

We are for the rights of women to have control over their bodies -- balancing those rights against those of the child --- and providing rights to the child when it is evident that the child has become a human being.

Your Supreme Court has held, correctly, that a fetus DOES NOT HAVE rights. So there is NO "balancing" of anything to be done here.

Women have rights. Any legislature that wishes to interfere in the exercise of those rights must demonstrate the justification for the interference.

In Roe v. Wade, your Supreme Court essentially asserted that the state had an interest in something it called "the potentiality of human life" and a few other mumbling variations on that theme; that interest was never proved by anyone. The Court then asserted that the state was entitled to legislate to advance that interest, without any demonstration ever having been given of how the state's interest in <mumble mumble> overrode a woman's life and liberty (and privacy, if you like) interests.

There is absolutely no reason to adopt misogynist right-wing crap like "the rights of the fetus".

If someone wants to assert a justification for restricting women's access to abortion, s/he needs to do that. Not invent "rights" that do not exist.

Oh, and by the way, that thing that doesn't have rights? It's a FETUS, NOT A CHILD.

And "when it has become a human being" is when it has been born alive.

And the human being who does have rights? She's a WOMAN, NOT A MOTHER. Unless she happens to be a mother. Which wouldn't be remotely relevant.

There. Hope that's all clear now.

[tazvil04]

5. Yes and no...

Indeed, a fetus has no rights...but as that fetus becomes closer to becoming a human being it starts to have rights which is why late term abortions are often limited...

I never suggested that a "rights of the fetus" position be adopted...

[iverglas]

6. No. And no.

Your assertion: as that fetus becomes closer to becoming a human being it starts to have rights which is why late term abortions are often limited

Is factually WRONG. You need to stop saying it.

Have you ever done anything like, oh, read Roe v. Wade?

"as that fetus becomes closer to becoming a human being it starts to have rights" IS NOT why late-term abortions are limited, i.e. why such limits are permitted in the U.S.

From Roe v. Wade (my emphases):

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZO.html

To summarize and to repeat:

1. A state criminal abortion statute of the current Texas type, that excepts from criminality only a lifesaving procedure on behalf of the mother, without regard to pregnancy stage and without recognition of the other interests involved, is violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

(a) For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician.

(b) For the stage subsequent to approximately the end of the first trimester, the State, in promoting its interest in the health of the mother, may, if it chooses, regulate the abortion procedure in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health.

(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.

See anything there about fetuses having rights?

And there's this:

All this, together with our observation, supra, that, throughout the major portion of the 19th century, prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.

Persons have rights. A fetus is not a person. There ya go.

You need to stop saying this.

Fetuses do not "start to have rights" ever. Once a fetus has been born, and is no longer a fetus but is a human being, it has rights.

Women, on the other hand, have rights.

If the state wishes to interfere in the exercise of those rights, it must justify the interference.

Justification for interfering in the exercise of women's rights. Not "balancing" of women's rights against the rights of anyone or anything else.

[musette_sf]

8. WTF?

"as that fetus becomes closer to becoming a human being it starts to have rights"

um, you just DID suggest that the fetus should have rights.

[joshcryer]

9. delete

delete

[joshcryer]

10. The above poster believes that "health of the mother" can be extropolated to great extents.

Thus precluding any viable fetus from having rights.

(No respected doctor would agree with this non-sense.)

[iverglas]

11. the above poster thinks no such thing

"The above poster" being me, I'm gobsmacked that you would be saying something so false.

Not just because I would never be so disingenuous as to use the word "mother" to refer to a woman whose parental status was irrelevant.

You know perfectly well that I believe that all statutory restrictions on access to abortion at any time are unjustified (unless some catastrophe that threatenes the survival of the human species befalls us ... maybe).

The health of the pregnant woman is not any concern of mine when it comes to who should or should not be allowed to terminate a pregnancy. Pregnant women do not need to present any reason for terminating their pregnancies.

Should you have anything you wish to discuss with me, please use the "reply" link in one of my posts for that purpose.

Should you simply with to talk about me ... say bizarrely false things about me, no less ... maybe you can find a gossip forum somewhere on the net that would suit the purpose.

[musette_sf]

7. forced birther much?

"balancing those rights against those of the child --- and providing rights to the child when it is evident that the child has become a human being"

um. FETUS. no "rights". and last night's election results PROVE that the WOMAN has the rights.

[iverglas]

3. a better idea: Pres-elect Obama *and everybody else*

Please pay attention and stop this conflation.

The ban on so-called partial-birth abortion IS NOT a ban on late-term abortion.

"Partial-birth abortion" and/or ID&X IS A PROCEDURE, not a stage of pregnancy.

It is a procedure sometimes used in the SECOND trimester, PRE-hypothetical viability.*

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the state may NOT interfere in access to abortion at a stage pre-hypothetical viability except in the interests of the woman.


The misogynist right-wing has intentionally created this confusion, by conveying the impression that the "partial-birth abortion ban" relates only to "late-term", or pre-hypothetical viability, abortions.

That is not the case. Regardless of whether Obama and Biden think it is.


There is no justification for virtually any interference in access to abortion, but the fact is that a ban on the use of a procedure BEFORE hypothetical viability has been expressly prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court. And THAT IS what the "partial-birth abortion ban" is.



* Hypothetical viability -- because no one knows whether a fetus is viable unless and until it actually survives birth and functions as an independent organism. It is completely unfounded to refer to any fetus as "viable", since its viability can never be established without the test of actual birth.