Texas Repubs pass abortion bill

[xjx388]

Talk about kicking the can down the road on an abortion thread.

I'm sure there is a thread somewhere here about "evil banks".

It's an illustration of fungibility which is perfectly germane to subject of federal funding of abortion.

 

[Lowpro]

It's an illustration of fungibility which is perfectly germane to subject of federal funding of abortion.

You DO realize that the issue of fungibility is a moot point in abortion as it's limited by the application of the service. An example if I remember Planned Parenthood provides a myriad of reproductive services such as education, equipment purchases and maintenance, salaries, building costs, all sorts of stuff. They also pay for services renders such as pap smears and colposcopy procedures, pregnancy tests and support staff (and their required equipment/training costs) and also abortion procedure, equipment, and staff costs. Money is fungible, in a stack under the bed or in the bank. But once it is used IN TRANSACTION it is no longer fungible. All the fungibility in the world makes no difference when abortion services amount to about 3-10% of Planned Parenthood's procedures; it's dependent on the utilization.

Planned Parenthood is also audited out the ass, moreso than many of healthcare programs so the whole "they'll just make it a front, and we'll call it 'Fronty's Coathanger Warehouse'!" is a smokescreen. Fungibility is not going to amount to much of an argument with regards to Planned Parenthood since its costs are determined by the utilization of procedures.

But just so you know, the patients who utilize Planned Parenthood in aggregate have fewer abortions than those who do NOT use Planned Parenthood. There's a good reason for that and it's because believe it or else, Planned Parenthood promotes reproductive health and security for both the mother and child. They are not fetus-consuming death dealers who devalue life. They are true medical practitioners who take pride in their practice of MEDICINE and they do it in environments that desperately need it. Abortions are a minority of their expense and rendered services and as utilization increases abortion does not rise with it, again because Planned Parenthood does a GREAT job of primary and secondary prevention. Abortion procedures are a tertiary prevention. They are the most costly (relatively) and are the most at risk. And freakin DUMBASS politicians and uninformed pricks with an opinion for some reason do not actually care about that.

All I've heard so far from you in mantra, not true healthcare. Abortion is difficult, for the patient, for the practice, for underserved areas. And you know what, it shouldn't be. It's a legitimate health service. It's almost always rendered with tempered and informed measures of practice and ethics. When abortion clinics open they are often overwhelmed because the demand is so high, but again that's a symptom of a FAILURE of healthcare outreach. It's not just "give them the pill" it's about education and relieving socioeconomic disparities. It requires a multidiscipline intervention strategy to reduce. Texas decided to not only ignore that but in true sadism purposefully attempted to make it worse. For what? Mantra. And it's STUPID. Planned Parenthood REDUCES abortion utilization. Areas that effectively limit abortion ability do NOT decrease abortion and they do NOT promote life and welfare. Utilization INCREASES, puts increased strain on current available services, migration increases strain in OTHER areas, and you have a spiral out. Disparities increase, health decreases, life expectancy and quality of life decrease. Alabama and Mississippi have seen this for decades due to racial discrimination of healthcare services. Teenage pregnancy is at an all time high yet reproductive services, NOT JUST ABORTION are poorly accessible for them. And legislators only want to make it worse.

But facts are facts, limiting abortion does NOT achieve the goal of valuing life and children's health outcomes. Those children born to those disparate population do NOT receive the care they need and they wind up in exactly the same position their teenage mother did. Nothing improved.

But there is a sanguine and silver lining in all this. Actual health professionals who value women's and children's healthcare overcome these obstacles where they can. Programs continually receive funding where they can get it to provide reproductive services and education. But it's slow, people die or suffer preventable comorbidities. Infections cannot be controlled as easily. Understand this; abortion is NOT a procedure performed in a vacuum (although they sometimes use one...) But without it the ability to control the pregnancy outcome is limited. A child born with CA often occur because of infection, malnutrition, or teratogenesis that was uncontrolled because those SAME PROVIDERS could not provide the care to prevent these. Now you're thinking "But it's just banning the procedure! Why can't they still provide those services?!" and it's because those problems occur...AFTER 20 weeks. The moments where "viability" is continually being spouted off by ignorant people. The time when a pregnant woman may need an abortion most either due to health issues for herself or the child, due to her capacity to actually RECEIVE the care (costs more for her treatment, for the child's treatment and no amount of WIC/CHIP services can meet that demand...) just got a big dose of "screw you". Believe it or else, removing abortion providers only hurts healthcare and it doesn't actually reduce abortions (but it does increase healthcare costs. Ain't that hilarious?) Turns out abortions provisions...reduce abortions. Why? Because people DON'T really want them. But when they do they seek them out, and sometimes that causes more problems. But if you give them safe abortion options and provide healthcare surveillance alongside multidiscipline strategies to improve reproductive care you reduce abortions. But abortions, much like ER use, is an indicator of poor healthcare. By removing abortion provisions you effectively blind yourself to the problem.

Maybe that child will be born, maybe. Maybe it'll survive infancy. Maybe. And I cannot imagine the fear, frustration, anger, and despair those mothers have living with those situations. Just reading evaluations of patients who have had to live with that, how can I then say "No matter what, you had no choice; you HAD to carry out the pregnancy because that's the law" even if they didn't want to. That, my friend, is what Texas wants. That's what anti-abortion proponents want. They want to disenfranchise the mother and say it's all for the life of the child. They have no. idea. what they are talking about. The LAST person I want to consider in their opinion for the value of life comes from pro-lifers which is an irony that's too true to be funny. I'll continue to trust in the field of healthcare professionals on the true value of the complex dynamic that is pregnancy. They are the true pro-life practitioners. A simple value of life does NOT cut it. Rarely has it ever.

 

[A'isha]

No. If you understood it, you would see that funding an organization that provides abortions is the same as funding abortions.

Except it's not, as has been repeatedly pointed out to you. The "fungible money" thing is rhetorical nonsense, since it's a trivial accounting matter to keep those funds separate when receiving and spending them (see also the car fund bank account example I posted above).

The law exists because of the recognition that most Americans don't want to pay for other people's abortions. Maybe that has changed in the years since the Hyde Amendment was created, but that remains for lawmakers to change.

Yes. And that's why the "fungible money" thing is a red herring. The law exists because of the recognition that most Americans don't want to pay for other people's abortions, and because of that law they aren't paying for other people's abortions.

In any case, for me the goal is not to gut women's health services or punish women for their sexual activity or any such nonsense. I think the goal is to protect the unborn child. That's it.

That's nice, but since you're not the one making these laws and then lying about what their purpose is, it's also kind of irrelevant to the discussion at hand about the actions of the Texas Legislature.

But why is it illegal to fund Hezbollah? Because money is fungible.

No, because Hezbollah is a declared terrorist organization because it "engages in terrorist activity or retains the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism", and the US Government doesn't want anyone giving any kind of support to declared terrorist organizations, whether said support is for terrorist activities or non-terrorist activities. It has nothing to do with the fungibility of money, but with trying to dismantle these organizations as a whole.

And in any case, your comparison is doubly fallacious because Hezbollah, unlike Planned Parenthood, isn't careful to separate out the funding for its programs which it is legally mandated to do s a condition for receiving that funding.

That's your own projections upon them. I think most of them do care about the health of unborn children. You just disagree so they have to be monsters.

Dewhurst's tweet letting the fig-leaf slip says otherwise.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Then you should have no problem with American (or British) citizens funding Hezbollah's charitable works. Just make sure to tell Hezbollah to hire a good accountant and that the money is ONLY for their hospitals and schools, not to fund attacks against us.

Who audits Hezbollah?

 

[Lowpro]

Who audits Hezbollah?

I wonder if they allow Jewish accountants...

 

[ponderingturtle]

Money is fungible in that if they got less money they would have to choose which services to keep out of the money that isn't restricted to non abortion health care services.

 

[Minoosh]

This is a really good thread. Very informative. Thanks everyone for the thinking, the data and the civility.

 

[thaiboxerken]

The thing is that abortion opponents want to stop them from all activities like std screening and general womens health issues. Prenatal care isn't something the poor deserve in their minds.

I understand that. It's part of their "those people don't deserve healthcare" mentality coupled with their silly anti-abortion beliefs. Let's not forget the disdain of women in general as well. Not all women, just the ones that refuse to stay home, barefoot and pregnant.

 

[Dorian Gray]

It's shocking to me that you guys don't understand a simple concept like the fungibility of money.

Government money is appropriated into different categories, and can only be spent in those categories unless Congress reprograms the money. Spending it in the wrong category is a violation of the Antideficiency Act. When you hear about the DOD "moving money around", this is what they are talking about.

You can label different piles of cash whatever you want to, but in the end, its still all one pile of cash under your control. It's not like Benjamin A can only be used to pay for Contraceptives and Benjamin B can only be used to pay for Abortions. Any budgeting labels you put on your money are illusions. It's all the same money.

Let's pretend a person makes $3000 per month. Let's assume that this is enough to meet all their bills and provide food and shelter, but no luxuries. Now, let's say this person's parents give them $200 to buy food. This person goes directly to the store and spends the 2 Benjamins on enough groceries for two weeks. Now the person doesn't have to spend the money in their bank on food. That money is freed up for other things. Because money is fungible, in reality all that person did was spend the $200 on those other things.

That's a person. Not a business or a government.

Banks don't escape it either. It's still all the bank's money. When you give the bank your money, it gets put in banks coffers and the bank promises to pay you what's in your account. But your account is an illusion because they don't have a bin in a vault with "ponderingturtle's" money in it and another with "xjx388's" in it. Our accounts are nothing more than a ledger entry and a "promise to pay." The bank takes "our" money and lends it out, invests it, etc. So if everyone ran to their bank to demand "their" money, it wouldn't be there and the bank would fail. The bank has enough in reserve to let daily transactions process but not enough to give everyone what's in their accounts if they all decided to pull it out at one time. That's why the FDIC exists.

This isn't the same thing. Furthermore, this reads like you've been waiting a long time to shoehorn this bit of information you have into any conversation that remotely applies.

If one donates to Hezbollah but tells them, "I only want you to use that money to fund the hospitals you run, not terrorism," I don't think that will hold up well when the FBI arrests them for supporting terrorism.

What a horrible example.

PP can avoid the whole issue easily by spinning the abortion services off into a separate company. Then the govt would have no claims about money fungibility.

HAHAHA - you just spent this whole post making the claim that separating accounts is meaningless, and then screwed it all up by making the claim that separating divisions would make it impossible to move money around.

 

[xjx388]

Government money is appropriated into different categories, and can only be spent in those categories unless Congress reprograms the money. Spending it in the wrong category is a violation of the Antideficiency Act. When you hear about the DOD "moving money around", this is what they are talking about.

That only applies to government spending. All government spending is done with tax money which is every bit as fungible. When the government gives money to private organizations, that money is fungible as well. You can't escape it.

That's a person. Not a business or a government.

It is equally applicable to people or organizations.

This isn't the same thing.

It's an illustration of how even money in banks is fungible. Which it most certainly is. Let's say you found out that your bank donated money to the KKK, which is perfectly legal for them to do. Would you bank with them? No, because you don't want a chunk of your money, in the form of their profit, going to the KKK. The reason you feel this way is because money is fungible. (I assume you aren't a KKK supporter)

Furthermore, this reads like you've been waiting a long time to shoehorn this bit of information you have into any conversation that remotely applies.

Thanks for your unnecessary commentary.

What a horrible example.

It fits perfectly.

1. Federal money cannot pay for abortions/My money cannot support terrorism.
2. If the federal gov gives funds to an agency who supports abortion, that is illegal/If I give my money to an organization that supports terrorism, that is illegal.

HAHAHA - you just spent this whole post making the claim that separating accounts is meaningless, and then screwed it all up by making the claim that separating divisions would make it impossible to move money around.

A company separate from PP is not connected to PP. PP can do all the acceptable things you can do with fed money and the new company (Parenthood, Shmarenthood?) can do all the abortion things. Since they are separate entities, there is no fungibility to worry about.

 

[A'isha]

It's an illustration of how even money in banks is fungible. Which it most certainly is. Let's say you found out that your bank donated money to the KKK, which is perfectly legal for them to do. Would you bank with them? No, because you don't want a chunk of your money, in the form of their profit, going to the KKK. The reason you feel this way is because money is fungible. (I assume you aren't a KKK supporter)

Their profit is not "my money", and would have nothing to do with my refusal to bank with a financial institution that donated to the KKK. Because it's the "donating to the KKK" part that is offensive, no matter whose money they use. I'd take my business elsewhere even if they gave no monetary support whatsoever and only gave verbal support to the KKK.

So, once again, this has nothing to do with the fungilbility of money.

2. If the federal gov gives funds to an agency who supports abortion, that is illegal/If I give my money to an organization that supports terrorism, that is illegal.

Except it's not illegal for the Federal Government to give funds to an agency that supports abortion, because that's what they're doing right now. What's illegal is for Planned Parenthood to take those Federal funds and use them for abortions.

Which is why they don't do that.

 

[A'isha]

*hit reply instead of edit*

 

[SezMe]

In any case, for me the goal is not to gut women's health services or punish women for their sexual activity or any such nonsense. I think the goal is to protect the unborn child. That's it.

Great. Wonderful. And off topic. This thread is about how Texas politicians have enacted abortion legislation and their justification for doing so. It is evident that their justification and your own personal views have very little, if any, overlap. Would you like to comment on what they say, not on what you think.

 

[SezMe]

That only applies to government spending. All government spending is done with tax money which is every bit as fungible.

Yeah, when the EPA doesn't have enough money to enforce regulations, they just dip into DoD money to their heart's content.

 

[xjx388]

Great. Wonderful. And off topic. This thread is about how Texas politicians have enacted abortion legislation and their justification for doing so. It is evident that their justification and your own personal views have very little, if any, overlap. Would you like to comment on what they say, not on what you think.

I guess I'm just supposed to sit here and bash on them...

. The justifications of the legislators are varied. Not all of them have been smart about it. But, as a Texas resident, they represent me so my justifications are just as relevant.

Does the Texas law accomplish what I think it should? Yes. I don't think the surgical center requirements are the greatest idea in the world, especially if that means that RU486 won't be available from your doctor. I would hope that Texas liberals will fight on that front. I'm in a position where I get to talk to my legislators on a semi- regular basis and I will certainly let them know how I feel about that.

But overall, it isn't a horrible thing and I think it protects unborn children just fine while still giving women plenty of time and opportunity to exercise the option to abort if they want to.

 

[uke2se]

I guess I'm just supposed to sit here and bash on them...

. The justifications of the legislators are varied. Not all of them have been smart about it. But, as a Texas resident, they represent me so my justifications are just as relevant.

Does the Texas law accomplish what I think it should? Yes. I don't think the surgical center requirements are the greatest idea in the world, especially if that means that RU486 won't be available from your doctor. I would hope that Texas liberals will fight on that front. I'm in a position where I get to talk to my legislators on a semi- regular basis and I will certainly let them know how I feel about that.

But overall,

it isn't a horrible thing

and I think it protects unborn children just fine while still giving women plenty of time and opportunity to exercise the option to abort if they want to.

It isn't a horrible thing for you. That's what you mean, isn't it? I mean, you're male, aren't you?

 

[xjx388]

It isn't a horrible thing for you. That's what you mean, isn't it? I mean, you're male, aren't you?

It's not a horrible thing for Texas.

And my gender is irrelevant. Try and stick with the arguments, not who the arguer is.

 

[uke2se]

It's not a horrible thing for Texas.

It is for many of Texas' women.

And my gender is irrelevant. Try and stick with the arguments, not who the arguer is.

Your gender is very relevant. You see, you don't see effectively closing all but five of Texas' abortion clinics as an issue, because you've never had to use an abortion clinic. For women who do need to use abortion clinics, it's a bad thing that all but five close down. You see how that works?

 

[xjx388]

It is for many of Texas' women.

But their needs should be balanced against those of their unborn children. If getting pregnant is such a horrible outcome (which is implied because you think reduced access to abortion is horrible), then perhaps they should avail themselves of the many ways to prevent pregnancy.

Your gender is very relevant. You see, you don't see effectively closing all but five of Texas' abortion clinics as an issue, because you've never had to use an abortion clinic. For women who do need to use abortion clinics, it's a bad thing that all but five close down. You see how that works?

Nobody "needs" to use an abortion clinic. Many choose to. And women who choose abortions will not have their access restricted anymore than it is now.

You have no evidence that "all but five" will close down. If you look at States that have passed similar laws, there have been no mass closings. See this article:

Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights but does research cited by both sides, said the new law will have an impact in Texas but maybe less than the worst fears.
"Clinics will close," she said. "But I can't say we are going to go down to six."

And, again, if people in Texas want greater abortion access, there's no reason that current abortion clinics can't get funding from all those liberal supporters who want abortion to be more accessible in order meet the new demands. Unless liberals don't actually put their money where there mouths are . . .

They can lobby hospitals and other surgical centers to provide abortions. There are a myriad of solutions other than, "The government has to pay for it!"

 

[Minoosh]

I guess I'm just supposed to sit here and bash on them...

I'm glad you're taking your lumps and not bashing on fellow posters. The practical problems, if any, of the Texas law will become evident, or not. But the lunacy behind the legislators' thinking is way scary. These are not reality-based people. The "rape kit" cleans women out? With a D&C? Could this woman really believe that? Does she care? No, she doesn't care what the facts are.

I understand your basic point perfectly. On its face it makes sense to me that at some point the fetus becomes a human being. On the other hand ArmillarySphere has made some arguments that are beginning to click for me. Owning her body means she has no obligation to incubate a parasite. (I apologize if I'm getting this argument wrong). I think that poster is saying that if the state has a compelling interest, it can take this theoretically viable fetus and incubate it artificially.

In another abortion-related thread I got criticized by people who (IMO) were missing my point, and I think it's unfair for anyone to assume that your position boils down to your gender (To wit: It isn't a horrible thing for you. That's what you mean, isn't it? I mean, you're male, aren't you?). I'm following your argument fine, and I'm female. My reasoning is a lot like yours. Going to Planned Parenthood for "Plan B" didn't seem that onerous to me, and IIRC a pharmacist told me in confidence that she'd provide it again without a prescription. Since then it has been made OTC.

The fungibility argument - governments have their own language for this stuff. I can see both sides. In practice there seem to be agreed-upon parameters about keeping federal funds separate.

What I hate about this legislation (besides the appalling ignorance and/or dishonesty of the "rape kit" lady) is that it is taking an ordinary right - the straightforward availability of, say, first-trimester abortions - and putting up as many hurdles as it can, chiefly to the detriment of low-income women who may also not be very well-informed. Plan B wasn't hard for me but I had a car, research skills, Internet access, etc. Everyone should know about it, but I'm not sure they do. RU-486 is more complicated, and should IMO be administered in a clinic by doctors or nurse practitioners. But it's not surgery, and to impose surgery-like oversight on it is pure harassment.

I believe you are defending this law honestly, for reasons that make sense to you. In good faith. But honesty, reason and good faith were excluded from the process of passing it. It's tainted, IMO. People who really want to reduce both abortions and unwanted children - people like you, who support access to birth control - are going to be important if this becomes a campaign issue.