America transitions into Gilead

[Skeptic Ginger]

I hope there is more to the story than the headline.

There was.

The woman applied for food stamps and that triggered an automatic case to force the father to pay child support. Visitation went with that but the father wasn't seeking visitation.

Bad thing was the court released the vic's address to the rapist. That did suck, plus the fact all this was triggered by automatic processes with no one using their head to consider the case realistically.

The state needs a new law and so do a lot of other states I imagine.

 

[Trebuchet]

I see your problem, you want these women sluts charged with murder.

Fixed that for him.

 

[AnonyMoose]

9 minutes ago on CNN:

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday signed into law a controversial abortion bill that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.

"Today, I signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that was approved by overwhelming majorities in both chambers of the Legislature," said Ivey, a Republican, in a statement. "To the bill's many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians' deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God."

...

Ivey noted in her statement that the new law may be unenforceable due to the Supreme Court's Roe V. Wade decision that legalized abortion in all 50 states. But, the new law was passed with the aim of challenging that decision, Ivey said.

 

[Meadmaker]

I'm pretty shocked that someone who has been participating so much in this thread still hasn't bothered to become certain about what is in these laws, proposed or passed.

I was going to look it up, but I thought about it, and realized I didn't need to. Trying to verify it is about as interesting as that thread in conspiracy theories that I was in for a while where I and others were trying to convince someone rockets worked in space.

I know that the issue in question (sorry folks, you'll have to follow the links backwards to see what it was) is ok, and abortion would be legal in that situation, even under Alabama's new law. If anyone cares to look it up, feel free. I don't need to.


And really, I don't need to look up much of anything on this. I checked out the Georgia law, and dug into it and all that.

The legal situation in the US right now is fairly clear. As of today, abortion is legal everywhere. With the passage of laws in Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, and pending legislation elsewhere, it will be up to Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to decide whether it stays that way. If they vote no, it will be up to voters what happens next. There will be lots of fights among state legislators about which states will keep it legal. If one of them votes yes, then the next presidential and senate races will be all about whether Trump gets one more Supreme Court Justice, so we can try again. (ETA: "We can try again" as in "It will all start again. I didn't want to include myself in the group of people trying to outlaw abortion. It's just that we will all be caught up in the fight.)

In the meantime, the situation with abortion will revert back to what it was in 1972, except that more states will have it legal, more places in the world will have it legal, and public opinion generally will have shifted to the left on the subject. (I don't know how many states it was legal in 1972, but I don't think it was many, and it was generally unpopular.)



Abortion has been an ever present, but back burner, issue for all of my adult lifetime. It's being moved to the front burner very soon. Therefore, it's very important to shape up your persuasion skills if you care about this issue. What do you think will work best? Let's try out one argument:


"The Republicans have been swamped by a Christian cabal that wants to execute sluts, and bring women back to property status! It's all in the bills they just passed in Georgia!"


Run that one past the focus group. See how it flies. See if it changes once they actually get to read the bill, or hear from someone willing to explain the contents.

 

[William Parcher]

Maybe Las Vegas will be the place to go to get an abortion. You can be an atheist there too. They have flights to Vegas around the clock.

 

[William Parcher]

The way to fight this is to double the number of abortions in other states. You fight it tooth and nail. When they duck, you go high. When they give birth, you abort. It's that simple.

 

[Puppycow]

I totally agree that there is some controversy over what the law entails. I'd say that Planned Parenthood is not biased in favor of the Georgia law, so I regard the statements of that group to be pretty reliable.

The quote you posted was misleadlingly excerpted. The whole sentence reads, "Georgia’s law does not unequivocally say that women are exempt, but legal experts point to other areas of Georgia’s penal code which have specific defenses for women, including those who miscarry."

You said that you saw no reason women who miscarry couldn't be prosecuted. Evidently, legal experts believe there's a very good reason, namely that there are specific defenses for women. I do not know the details of those defenses, so I won't say for certain that's an overwhelming reason, but it's a reason.

As to the highlighted bit, I think that Stern addressed that adequately in his response. Here's the link again:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...bortion-ban-criminal-brian-kemp-horrific.html

Further, an assertion that vague carries little weight. Who are these "legal experts" and which "areas" of the penal code are they referring to? In the Stern article it says:

This law, he points out, states that “nothing in this Code section shall be construed to permit the prosecution of … [a]ny woman with respect to her unborn child.” French seems to believe that this immunity extends to any woman who ends her own pregnancy. But note the limiting language: “Nothing in this Code section” can be used to punish women “with respect to” her fetus. The law does not grant pregnant women immunity from prosecution under all circumstances; it grants immunity exclusively with regard to the feticide statute. Other sections of the code can still be used to prosecute women—like the newly enacted provisions of HB 481.

The immunity is not a blanket immunity but only applies to a specific section of the law. It explicitly does not apply to other code sections, including the new law.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

If she deliberately takes it for the purpose of inducing a miscarriage, after the point of fetal heartbeat, yes. If it's a side effect of a drug that is prescribed for some other condition, no.

How do you know that? You are adding your bias when the people writing this law clearly want to threaten pregnant women under any circumstance.


First off, let's just drop this heartbeat charade. Scientists have successfully grown human heart tissue in a lab dish.

The tiny tissues are actual beating heart muscles created from stem cells.

IOW, a single cardiac cell beats.
Georgia law: "once a heartbeat is detected in the womb, which happens around six weeks."

If the wording is, "once a heartbeat is detected", then all it will take is new technology to detect that heartbeat earlier.

Gestational Age Week 6 (Fetal Age: 4 Weeks) Gestation starts at the end of the last menses. The fetal age starts with implantation. At this point the woman has not missed a period. So unless one is talking about the morning after pill, there is no opportunity for abortion because once the fetus is detected, it's too late for all practical purposes.

Between 5 ½ to 6 ½ weeks, a fetal pole or even a fetal heartbeat may be detected by vaginal ultrasound. The fetal pole is the first visible sign of a developing embryo. ...

... The fetal pole may be seen at a crown-rump length (CRL) of 2-4mm, and the heartbeat may be seen as a regular flutter when the CRL has reached 5mm.

Four mm is about half your thumb nail. A "flutter" is not a functioning heart. But that's a detectable heart.

Gestational Age Week 8 & 9 (Fetal Age: 6-7 Weeks)
By this point in the pregnancy, everything that is present in an adult human is present in the developing embryo. The embryo has reached the end of the embryonic stage and now enters the fetal stage. A strong fetal heartbeat should be detectable by ultrasound, with a heartbeat of 140-170 bpm by the 9th week.

The point of using "heartbeat" is simply to frame the clump of cells as a living human. It's not quite as effective to say the implanted zygote is a 'person'.

There's a bit of a grey area there, as there often is in new laws. If a doctor prescribed a drug that was guaranteed or extremely likely to induce miscarriage, knowing that a woman was pregnant, but there was a legitimate reason for the drug, could he be prosecuted? I think possibly, unless the condition for the prescription was life threatening. As others have pointed out, there is some doubt about whether any pregnant woman could be prosecuted under this law, or only the provider. To me, it looks like the law would allow prosecution of the woman, but existing court precedent says no. Would a future court decide that the precedent held for the new law? Answering questions like those is what lawyers are for.

Precedent? You mean like Roe v Wade? Just what precedent are you referring to?

There's a lot of speculation in this thread, defining the law and consequences in ways that fit people's beliefs about the humane courts balancing the women's needs, not at all oppressive of this slut that allowed herself to get pregnant.

The point is that this law is very deliberately aimed at making abortion criminal. We all know what abortion means. It means deliberately ending pregnancy, i.e. terminating the existence of a fetus. We don't have to invent other stuff.

Yes, exactly. So why did you invent stuff in your post about how the law wouldn't be used to punish those sluts?


Anti-abortionist want this law to make sense, just protecting life, whatever. So let's just describe it that way all white-washed and pretty.

Let's not describe it as denying women the right to make their own medical decisions. Let's not describe it as forcing the woman to risk her life for the fetus while the man is not required to do any such thing. Let's make sure the woman bears the sole responsibility for the pregnancy even when incest and rape are involved. Are we back to the, "she shouldn't have worn that short skirt" mentality?
BTW, guess which state has the highest maternal mortality?

Maternal Mortality
U.S. Value: : 20.7

Healthiest State: California: 4.5

Least-healthy State: Georgia: 46.2

Alabama isn't that bad. (11.9)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Well formed yoke sack really. But that medical specificity doesn't translate well into emotionally manipulating voters, like the political term "partial birth abortion"

Exactly.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

When my grandmother was diagnosed with a spine injury that needed immediate surgery back in the early 1930's, she was also discovered to be pregnant. The doctors told her that if she carried the baby to term she would almost certainly spend the rest of her life paralyzed and in a wheelchair. She was allowed to have a legal abortion, a rare occurrence in those days. As her life itself was not in danger, I wonder if she would be allowed under AL's new law to have that abortion.

It would not be allowed in a Catholic hospital no matter the state. We're having problems like that here in WA State because the Catholic hospitals are merging with all the other hospitals and they insist on their Catholic rules.

 

[The Nimble Pianist]

So glad to see that America's Dred-Scott 2.0 might actually go the way of justice!

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

9 minutes ago on CNN:

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday signed into law a controversial abortion bill that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.

Which brings up an important point, how many doctors are going to think twice about performing an abortion to save the life of the mother if said doctor fears potential prosecution?

In fact, it wouldn't be a surprise if some OBGYNs choose not to do surgery at all on some women. They might be a a position to risk a lawsuit if the woman dies and go to jail if some jury or judge decides the abortion was not necessary to save said woman.

 

[deadrose]

Here is a link to an actual (much larger than life-sized) photo of your 4-week embryo. It doesn't so much have a heart as it has cardiac cells that have begun to twitch. The brain has barely begun to develop from the neural tube. And as Ginger pointed out, it's about half the size of your thumbnail.

Yet we're saying that this has more rights than the woman it's currently inhabiting?

 

[phiwum]

I'm pretty shocked that someone who has been participating so much in this thread still hasn't bothered to become certain about what is in these laws, proposed or passed.

Meadmaker has primarily been discussing the Georgia law. His recent post is an exception, but he clearly and appropriately mentioned his ignorance of the law.

I am even more ignorant, relying on information from the Washington Post and not taking the time to read any of the laws.

 

[phiwum]

So... which is it ?

Meadmaker was speaking in broad terms, not about threats from just the law. He seems to view sex as rather more dangerous than I do. One of us (or both[1]) may be doing it wrong.

[1] Separately, not jointly.

 

[phiwum]

Delete

 

[The Nimble Pianist]

Yet we're saying that this has more rights than the woman it's currently inhabiting?

No. We're saying this human being has as much a right to life as the woman impregnated with her, and unless the mere existence of this human being poses a threat to the life of the woman nourishing her, then you have no plausible right to terminate that person's life.

 

[phiwum]

As to the highlighted bit, I think that Stern addressed that adequately in his response. Here's the link again:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics...bortion-ban-criminal-brian-kemp-horrific.html

Further, an assertion that vague carries little weight. Who are these "legal experts" and which "areas" of the penal code are they referring to? In the Stern article it says:



The immunity is not a blanket immunity but only applies to a specific section of the law. It explicitly does not apply to other code sections, including the new law.

Okay, I'll be satisfied with the conclusion that some experts disagree on whether women can be prosecuted under this law. I tend to weight the opinion of the Planned Parenthood spokesperson fairly high, but I don't know her position offhand.

I think that when there are controversies over the consequences of the law and the primary literal intention is bad enough, we should focus on how the primary literal intention is bad rather than on how much worse it might be if some people are right.

 

[phiwum]

No. We're saying this human being has as much a right to life as the woman impregnated with her, and unless the mere existence of this human being poses a threat to the life of the woman nourishing her, then you have no plausible right to terminate that person's life.

Right.

The traditional argument is that a right to life outweighs a woman's right to choose what happens in her body, because life is more fundamental and valuable. It's not that the fetus has more rights, but that the right of the fetus under consideration is more significant than the right of the woman under consideration.

Mind you, I'm not arguing that the fetus has a right to life. Just presenting the standard argument as it's usually understood.

 

[The Nimble Pianist]

It's not that the fetus has more rights, but that the right of the fetus under consideration is more significant than the right of the woman under consideration.

I don't want to speak for all pro-life people, but since this discussion frequently gets dominated by religious people against atheists I feel compelled to. I'm a gay, atheist, pro-life, man (judge me as you will).

It's not even that the "right(s) of the fetus under consideration is more significant than the right of the woman", rather that I'm judging the quality of one right to another. The right to life of one individual will always outweigh the right to convenience of another. The vast majority of abortions in the developed world are those of convenience. Those that aren't can be easily classified into those that involve biological necessity (i.e. woman's compromised health, deformity of birth, etc.), and those that involve psychological necessity ("I was raped!", "Dad is no longer in the picture!", "What will my family think!?", etc.) While I sympathize with those of the latter category, I cannot in good faith support their desire to murder their offspring.