Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act

[thaiboxerken]

I don't know what thaiboxerken means: "If it is alive, it isn't aborted."

It means it isn't alive. A fetus born prematurely is a premature baby. An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, the termination of a fetus/zygote.

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

That doesn't fully follow. Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy in any way other than vaginal birth at full term. Miscarriages are the pregnancy aborting without human intervention. None of the terms indicate the viability or survivability of the unborn. The abortion might kill the fetus, it might be already dead, or the baby may survive for a short time before its deformities or possibly injuries kill it. Savita Halappenar's son survived for days after his amniotic sac burst, until bacteria ate him alive and then went straight to her bloodstream.

 

[thaiboxerken]

abortion : the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus. from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/abortion

This talk about killing infants is ridiculous and has nothing to do with abortion.

 

[ponderingturtle]

The bill says the infant has to be cared for. No penalty for natural death in the doctor's care.

Of course you can easily claim that they didn't provide enough futile efforts and hence were not caring for it.

 

[JoeMorgue]

If it is alive, it isn't aborted.

So if the plane crashes on the border where do we bury the survivors?

 

[TragicMonkey]

No. The proposed bill requires the IMMEDIATE transportation to and admittance to a hospital of the baby. Failure to do so could end up with the medical care giver being charged with a crime. This doesn't mean the doctor failed to treat. The problem arises when it is medically unsafe for the baby to be transported immediately. It has nothing to do with indifference to the baby's life; the failure not to IMMEDIATELY transport could be due to concern for its life.

Do people really imagine there are hospitals on every corner? The US is a big country. A lot of people live quite some distance from a hospital. This sounds to me like a two-pronged assault on abortion rights: the obvious surface one, and an unstated one that would essentially require abortion providers to be physically close to a hospital. To which the providers would have to have admitting privileges, which is already a backdoor method to making abortion impossible in several states.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Do people really imagine there are hospitals on every corner? The US is a big country. A lot of people live quite some distance from a hospital. This sounds to me like a two-pronged assault on abortion rights: the obvious surface one, and an unstated one that would essentially require abortion providers to be physically close to a hospital. To which the providers would have to have admitting privileges, which is already a backdoor method to making abortion impossible in several states.

CNN: Hospital Deserts: As Rural Hospitals Close, Millions Suffer

CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/health/hospital-deserts/index.html

Nearly 16% of Americans living in the mainland US are 30 miles or further from their nearest emergency room.

In the most extreme example if you have a heart attack in Tonopah, NV you've choosing to go 100 miles to Reno or 100 miles to Vegas.

 

[Arcade22]

So I'm trying to debate this bill on Facebook and the Conservative Underground forum.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/130/text

So duh! If a child is born alive even if it is an abortion, they are not allowed to be killed for any reason. For example in WA, RCW 9A.32.055 says;

In WA this is life in prison. S.130 would add 5 years to the sentence.

But it also shields the birth mother.


So what am I missing? Does this law do anything? I'm told that doctors are murdering babies that are born alive during an abortion procedure and are not being charged. I can't find anything on this though.

So am I really just debating people who want to shield mothers from prosecution for killing their babies after an abortion?

Ranb

I read about something similar here in Sweden a little while back. Apparently in some cases where abortion was unintentionally delayed for a long enough time the fetus was developed enough that it could mistaken for being viable but in reality it wasn't and cannot be saved even if it was showing signs of life.

Evidently a doctor had over the years fruitlessly attempted to resuscitate and save them in spite of the fact that they had no real chance for survival.

 

[dudalb]

I am generally pro choice, but I also admit I am quesy about really..last few weeks late term abortions.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I am generally pro choice, but I also admit I am quesy about really..last few weeks late term abortions.

Yea better to just let the sluts die like they deserve.

Or cases like this so called rape victim, I mean really it can't really have been rape if she didn't make enough noise to wake her mother right?

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/late-term-abortion-rape_us_5c630b8de4b0a8731aeabbd6

At least the slut was made to properly suffer and care for that doomed baby. The system works as intended.

 

[Polaris]

No.

That's because this bill didn't pass. And it was never intended to pass.

It was nothing more than show. It was a way to force democrats to go on the record opposing it so that the republicans could accuse them of supporting baby killing.

McConnell knew it was never going to get through cloture, but that's why they did it.

Don't they have actual work to do? You hear these bags of **** complain that they have to spend so much time on getting reelected, and they waste it on this stupidity? (I suppose a case could be made that this is part of the getting reelected aspect, but it doesn't decrease my wish to see them get hit by lightning.)

 

[Bob001]

I am generally pro choice, but I also admit I am quesy about really..last few weeks late term abortions.

By all accounts, such procedures are rare and occur with physician approval when the woman's life is threatened or the fetus is severely deformed. She doesn't just waltz in at 8+ months and say "I changed my mind."

Possibly relevant:

I am an obstetrician and gynecologist who has delivered newborns who could not live, either because they were extremely premature or had birth defects. I have provided abortion care for women after 24 weeks gestation faced with similar outcomes who chose a surgical abortion over a vaginal delivery.

And I also delivered a son who was born to die — my own son.

I am uniquely positioned to say this bill is medically unnecessary and nothing more than a way to warp the reality of perinatal mortality (stillbirth or death within the first week of life) to create confusion about abortion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

 

[ponderingturtle]

By all accounts, such procedures are rare and occur with physician approval when the woman's life is threatened or the fetus is severely deformed. She doesn't just waltz in at 8+ months and say "I changed my mind."

There was another of those that talked about the only remotely late term abortion of a healthy fetus was one that an underage woman was fighting her parents for an abortion after her brother raped her.

 

[Loss Leader]

I would argue that failing to take a baby to a hospital after it was aborted would be extreme indifference to human life.

Well, there are a whole lot of issues there. The main one is that of substituted consent. A parent substitutes her consent for that of a child - basically right up until the child's 18th birthday. That person makes medical decisions for the child based on the infant's best interests.

The next question is: can it be in the best interests of a person to be allowed to die. I think it can. When death is certain, when machines are prolonging life, when there is no hope of recovering a meaningful existence - the right to refuse care may be in a person's best interests. That may include the right to refuse nutrition and hydration. I'm sure everyone knows of a person who lingered too long and suffered too much compared to the dignified life he/she led.

A mother may make decisions for an infant and those decisions may include a merciful death without pain or delay.

The question is: Does that right suddenly evaporate when the parent first attempted to abort the child? Does the mother lose the right to substitute her consent for the best interests of the baby if, at some point, she wanted to terminate her pregnancy? And, if so, does the mother somehow regain those rights after the baby has lived for some time - weeks, months, 17 years? Is the mother of a 17 year-old incapable of substituting her consent for a third round of chemotherapy because she wanted to abort the child 17 and a half years earlier?

I would say that the mother still has the ability to make decisions in the best interests of a child. A newborn who survived a botched abortion may still have serious medical problems. She might be 19 weeks old and unable to live without a ventilator (and even then at great risk of imminent death). She might be born with microcephaly or unformed organs. In those cases, I believe the mother should be allowed to choose to let the child die peacefully in her arms.

This bill would fundamentally alter the very nature of the parent-child relationship. Also, it's stupid.

 

[ChrisBFRPKY]

Has any doctor in the USA who killed a living baby after an abortion procedure was completed, avoided a murder indictment?

Wouldn't that require a witness to actually report the crime?

Chris B.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

This bill would fundamentally alter the very nature of the parent-child relationship.

Yep, that was the intention.

Also, it's stupid.

Not stupid, sinister.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It means it isn't alive. A fetus born prematurely is a premature baby. An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy, the termination of a fetus/zygote.

Ah, I see.


Separate issue to keep in mind, not all miscarriages that look like fully formed fetuses (18-19 weeks) are going to be resuscitated*. So lack of knowledge about the issues is typical with these fear-mongering/outrage stirring bills. It would be cruel to try to keep a fetus alive when there was zero chance it can survive. But like I said above, they come out and take breaths. People writing these bills don't make any effort to gather the facts.


*Resuscitated in this use means doing what one can to save the baby, it doesn't mean CPR.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Some perspective is needed here.

The Atlantic: How Long Can a Woman Wait to Have an Abortion in America?

Approximately 9,090 women in the United States had abortions after their 21st week of pregnancy in 2012. That’s 1.3 percent of all abortions, and roughly 0.14 percent of all pregnancies, based on the 2010 U.S. pregnancy rate.

Yet states keep creating legislation on this issue, proposing abortion bans at 24 or 22 weeks. Many—like South Carolina, where one such bill was signed into law last week—provide exceptions for medical emergencies or fetal anomalies. In fact, many of the women who seek abortions at this stage in their pregnancies do so for health reasons, so these bans affect only a subset of those 9,090 women. Moreover, in states like South Carolina, it can be difficult or even impossible to find an abortion provider who will perform the procedure at that stage. The Planned Parenthood in Columbia, for example, will only provide abortions up until 13 weeks and 6 days into the pregnancy....

... a significant majority of states, from the most conservative to the most liberal, ban the procedure somewhere between 22 weeks and viability, which “most obstetrician-gynecologists understand ... as occurring near 24 weeks gestation,” according to American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. There are only seven states—Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont—that don’t limit abortion by gestational age at all. And only three let women wait until their third trimester begins, around 28 weeks. State by state, a nearly uniform consensus has emerged in America: After roughly two dozen weeks, women should not be able to get an abortion for non-medical reasons.

So bills like this are ********. The idea is to make legislators believe full term infants are being aborted. The pro-choice folks do a bad job countering the falsehoods.

 

[Ranb]

Wouldn't that require a witness to actually report the crime?

Chris B.

I suppose. Do doctors normally perform abortions in a manner in which no one else is aware of what is taking place? I think not.

 

[Loss Leader]

So bills like this are ********. The idea is to make legislators believe full term infants are being aborted. The pro-choice folks do a bad job countering the falsehoods.

Same thing with anti-flag burning statutes and voter ID laws. They're solutions in search of problems that hardly exist.