Roe vs. Wade Almost Overturned in 1992

[Luke T.]

The appearance is just one attribute. There are many more changes between a zygote and a newborn than there are between a newborn and an adult. Surely you are aware of this.

I think the problem the pro-abortion crowd has is that medicine keeps pushing back the line where a fetus is able to be kept alive outside the womb. At least the belief that humanity begins at conception is consistent.

There are also pro-abortionists who believe a woman should have a "choice" right up to, and including, labor at full term. Wesley Clark expressed that opinion during his campaign. To me, that is total denial of the humanity of the child and reprehensible.

 

[Luke T.]

Did you ever think that the woman who views kids as just an 'inconvenience' probably wouldn't be the best person to be a mom anyways?

I would be surprised if there was a mother somewhere who didn't view her kids as an inconvenience to one degree or another.

 

[Luke T.]

I'd also add that many anti-choice supporters seem to care far more about the unborn child than they do the already living mother bearing it. Used to be we were worth more dead than alive. Now, we're worth more before we're even born than alive...

I don't think that is true. I think your impression comes from another excuse for abortion being that a pregnancy is a life-threat to the mother. That is so rare the case any more as to be almost non-existent.

 

[Ladyhawk]

I think the problem the pro-abortion crowd has is that medicine keeps pushing back the line where a fetus is able to be kept alive outside the womb. At least the belief that humanity begins at conception is consistent.

There are also pro-abortionists who believe a woman should have a "choice" right up to, and including, labor at full term. Wesley Clark expressed that opinion during his campaign. To me, that is total denial of the humanity of the child and reprehensible.

For the record, most are PRO CHOICE, not pro ABORTION. This phrase leads people to believe that pro-choice advocates walk up to pregnant women and try to talk them into having an abortion. Preposterous! Pro Choice means letting women have an option; not a religiously- inspired mandate.

Think about it. If abortion was illegal, does anyone here really believe it will just go away? Have we learned nothing from the past at all? Doctors will go into the 'black market' and make far more money. Worse, people without a medical degree will go into the black market and make a lot of money and, the mother will be more likely to die. I do not believe that 3rd trimester abortions are necessary unless the mother's life is endangered.

I'd prefer abortion be legal so that it can be performed under safe circumstances. Call me crazy.

 

[Ladyhawk]

I don't think that is true. I think your impression comes from another excuse for abortion being that a pregnancy is a life-threat to the mother. That is so rare the case any more as to be almost non-existent.

Not at all. My impression comes from the facts around me everyday. Those who are against abortion are more concerned about the welfare of an unborn fetus than that of the living, viable mother bearing it. Period. Look at the casual way you yourself regard the pain associated with pregnancy. Inconvenience Both women and men on the pro-life side should be ashamed of their hypocrisy. Many think the mother's life should not even be a consideration, so long as the child can be born. And, rare or not, you cannot dismiss the cases where it is. But, pro-lifers do all the time. "Oh, it's only a couple of instances"...and, so...what? It's ok for mom to die? Sure! Because, the child is all that matters. We haven't even gotten into rape. Those instances are rare, too. But, tell that to the woman who is going through it that, because she's an exception to the rule, she doesn't matter.

 

[Luke T.]

For the record, most are PRO CHOICE, not pro ABORTION. This phrase leads people to believe that pro-choice advocates walk up to pregnant women and try to talk them into having an abortion. Preposterous! Pro Choice means letting women have an option; not a religiously- inspired mandate.

Think about it. If abortion was illegal, does anyone here really believe it will just go away? Have we learned nothing from the past at all? Doctors will go into the 'black market' and make far more money. Worse, people without a medical degree will go into the black market and make a lot of money and, the mother will be more likely to die. I do not believe that 3rd trimester abortions are necessary unless the mother's life is endangered.

I'd prefer abortion be legal so that it can be performed under safe circumstances. Call me crazy.

If you ain't for us, you are agin us.

And this is just a hunch, but I bet more women die during "safe" legal abortions than during childbirth in the U.S.

 

[Ladyhawk]

If you ain't for us, you are agin us.

And this is just a hunch, but I bet more women die during "safe" legal abortions than during childbirth in the U.S.

Hmmm...interesting theory. I'll look into it but I don't think it will hold. And, if it does, how many more do you suppose will die as a result of illegal abortions as opposed to childbirth? And would that number be acceptable?

 

[Luke T.]

Hmmm...interesting theory. I'll look into it but I don't think it will hold. And, if it does, how many more do you suppose will die as a result of illegal abortions as opposed to childbirth? And would that number be acceptable?

Well, I've looked it up.

Here is a link to a pro-life site, and their spin on back-alley abortions.

Note that after Penicillin became available to control infections, the number of deaths stabilized during the 1950s at about 250/year.

Note that by 1966, with abortion still illegal in all states, the number of deaths had dropped steadily to half that number. The reason was new and better antibiotics, better surgery and the establishment of intensive care units in hospitals. This was in the face of a rising population.

The chart on that page seems to be undisputed by the pro-choice ( ) web sites.

A pro-choice web site, and its spin on back-alley abortions.

Conversely, before 1973, when abortion became legal in the United States, many more women died from unsafe and unsanitary abortions. In the 1950s and '60s, at least 160 to 260 women died each year from illegal abortions.

A careful selection of dates.

Now for mortality today. But first, this from the second link:

The woman may experience some discomfort during and just after the abortion procedure, most commonly a cramping feeling. As in all surgery, some physical complications are possible. However, major complications such as hemorrhage, serious pelvic infection, or a tear in the uterus are very rare, occurring in less than one percent of abortions, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

That sounds damned inconvenient.

Here is what the first link says about childbirth mortality and abortion mortality rates for mothers:

Is abortion safer than childbirth?
Pro-abortion people often say that it is. "Maternal Mortality" is listed as deaths per 100,000 pregnancies. This figure is commonly listed as eleven, compared to deaths from induced abortion, which are listed as one or two. Therefore they say abortion is seven times safer.

Not so! Maternal mortality, in recent years, has dropped to seven, not eleven. Included in maternal mortality are all deaths from induced abortion along with all women who die while pregnant from almost any cause that can in any way be related to pregnancy. Deaths from cesarean sections are also included. Typically, maternal mortality also includes any related death within one year of delivery. (Different states may require longer or shorter lengths of postpartum time).

And the pro-choice site:

The mortality rate for abortion is very low - less than one death for every 100,000 abortions. This figure is even lower than the mortality rate for pregnancy in the United States- 7.5 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births.

Hmmm. Sounds like they are saying pregnancy mortality rates don't count induced abortion deaths. Somebody's lying.

If abortion was illegal today, though, I doubt the numbers of deaths from illegal abortions would rise, it at all. I have no doubt though, the number of abortions performed would drop drastically. So it would be a large net gain of lives saved.

 

[TillEulenspiegel]

Luke , all your arguments stem from a religious point of view. Something which you cannot prove, or even prove the major tenets.

The fact is that You seem to view a joining of a sperm and ova to be a mystical moment that imbues all the rights , privileges and status of a human being because , I guess , of some sort of divine intersession.

This is not the case. You (and your fellows ) cannot demonstrate this is the case.

That Your religiously based beliefs can dictate what happens in my wife's ( or any female's ) uterus is supremely ludicrous. Faith is belief of something that one cannot prove, nor does one have to . In argument however prove with evidence your position and supporting , reproducible, independent evidence.

And BTW if Your avatar is a depiction of the Shroud of Turin, You may want to change it as the Shroud has been proved to be a sham.

 

[epepke]

People who say or suggest such things to you and your wife are cold and insensitive people. But, please remember, Luke...at least you and your wife had a choice to keep the child or terminate the pregnancy. I am not pro-abortion. I am pro-Choice. Every person has to make their own decision about being a parent and the government should not have the right to mandate parenthood...or, more accurately, motherhood since our society typically lets dad skate if he wants to...

I'm actually kind of amazed that people are being so nice to Luke. Roe v. Wade is about the legality of abortion. Personal hatred of abortion really has no logical connection to the question of whether it should be legal, or at least none that I've ever seen cogently expressed in any discussion on the topic. Rather, there's an emotional connection, and it's the kind wherein emotion trumps reason.

I could see an argument like "Abortion is bad, and I think making it illegal would be a good way to stop it, because of this and that and the other reason." And then another person might say, "Well, making abortion illegal doesn't make it go away; it just drives it underground and builds up crime, in a way similar to how alcohol prohibition didn't make drinking go away; it just encouraged crime." Another person might say, "Those figures are made up; there really weren't many back-alley abortions when it was illegal, and here are the numbers." Someone else might say, "OK, but when you look like countries like The Netherlands, where abortion is readily available, the actual number of abortions are even lower than your revised figures." And then someone could say, "Yes, but the social climate is different here, so you can't compare apples and oranges." And someone might say "But on the other hand, the social climate is part and parcel of the same thing. Jerry Falwell has gone on record as saying that once abortion is illegal, they'll go after contraception as well." And so on and so forth.

Now, which of these arguments one agrees with, or if one agrees with any of them at all, is irrelevant. Point one is that they are actual arguments. Point two is that they are completely fictional, because this isn't what happens.

People are, in Nietzsche's words, all too human. They have this thin little neocortex that they think is da bomb, but it's easily overridden by emotion to the point of hardly working at all, which happens pretty much of the time.

To be fair, there's plenty of emotionalism and bad logic on the "pro-choice" side. Within the next twenty years, it will probably become possible to abort fetuses without killing them but instead bring them to term. Shortly afterward, it will become commonplace. This will take the wind out of the sails of the "pro-life" movement. But it's gonna cost. Even a casual glimpse of Statistical Abstracts of the United States shows that there ain't no way the adoption system can possibly absorb this. Then women are gonna learn some things about child-support laws that they have mostly seen no problem with, and they'll be singing a different tune.

 

[Brown]

I'm actually kind of amazed that people are being so nice to Luke. Roe v. Wade is about the legality of abortion. Personal hatred of abortion really has no logical connection to the question of whether it should be legal, or at least none that I've ever seen cogently expressed in any discussion on the topic. Rather, there's an emotional connection, and it's the kind wherein emotion trumps reason.

I was going to give up on this thread, but I've decided to add a little more to it. My friend epepke points out a very important distinction: the ethical questions are actually distinct from the legal questions.

Personally, I find the notion of using abortion as just another form of birth control to be morally troublesome. But does that mean that there should be a law against it?

My views are shaped, in part, by my experience. I was approached once by someone to whom I was very close. His wife was pregnant. They used birth control, but it had failed. At the time, they could not afford the doctor bills associated with the pregnancy, and they could not afford the cost of raising a child. As we discussed the issue they were facing, I was struck by how personal the issue was, how private it was, and how many factors had to be taken into consideration. It seemed to me that any law that compelled them to take one particular course of action, without knowing their circumstances, would have been wrong and an invasion of their privacy.

What I told them was that I would support whatever decision they chose. They chose to keep the baby. For a while, it was rough for them, but they got through the rough times. In a way, the baby was more special because they chose to keep her, not because they were forced to keep her.

Another good friend of mine and his wife have no kids, but it's not for lack of trying. His wife has miscarried at least four times. I have since learned that miscarriages are far more common than I had previously thought. And this got me to thinking: if all abortion was a crime, wouldn't miscarriages have to be investigated? After all, a woman was pregnant, then she wasn't, and that could be reasonable suspicion for a criminal investigation, couldn't it? Once again, I was struck by the potential for intrusion on privacy that such a law might have.

 

[Tony]

I was going to give up on this thread, but I've decided to add a little more to it. My friend epepke points out a very important distinction: the ethical questions are actually distinct from the legal questions.

Personally, I find the notion of using abortion as just another form of birth control to be morally troublesome. But does that mean that there should be a law against it?

My views are shaped, in part, by my experience. I was approached once by someone to whom I was very close. His wife was pregnant. They used birth control, but it had failed. At the time, they could not afford the doctor bills associated with the pregnancy, and they could not afford the cost of raising a child. As we discussed the issue they were facing, I was struck by how personal the issue was, how private it was, and how many factors had to be taken into consideration. It seemed to me that any law that compelled them to take one particular course of action, without knowing their circumstances, would have been wrong and an invasion of their privacy.

What I told them was that I would support whatever decision they chose. They chose to keep the baby. For a while, it was rough for them, but they got through the rough times. In a way, the baby was more special because they chose to keep her, not because they were forced to keep her.

Another good friend of mine and his wife have no kids, but it's not for lack of trying. His wife has miscarried at least four times. I have since learned that miscarriages are far more common than I had previously thought. And this got me to thinking: if all abortion was a crime, wouldn't miscarriages have to be investigated? After all, a woman was pregnant, then she wasn't, and that could be reasonable suspicion for a criminal investigation, couldn't it? Once again, I was struck by the potential for intrusion on privacy that such a law might have.

That's a damn good post.

 

[Luke T.]

And BTW if Your avatar is a depiction of the Shroud of Turin, You may want to change it as the Shroud has been proved to be a sham.

You obviously have never seen the shroud of Turin.

My avatar is a band-aid. A demonstration of pareidolia. Looks like it worked on you.

You have the wrong ideas about me, my friend.

 

[Luke T.]

I'm actually kind of amazed that people are being so nice to Luke. Roe v. Wade is about the legality of abortion. Personal hatred of abortion really has no logical connection to the question of whether it should be legal, or at least none that I've ever seen cogently expressed in any discussion on the topic. Rather, there's an emotional connection, and it's the kind wherein emotion trumps reason.

No one in their right mind could possible believe that when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution that they intended it should be used to legalize abortion.

The justices of the Supreme Court stretched the meaning of two words, "due process", to the extreme to bring about the legalization of abortion.

And when you get right down to it, ALL law boils down to an emotional, moral impetus.

 

[Brown]

And when you get right down to it, ALL law boils down to an emotional, moral impetus.

That's debatable. I have a hard time seeing certain moral impetus or emotional impact in some of the odd laws of inheritance, or some of the tax rules, for example.

 

[Luke T.]

That's debatable. I have a hard time seeing certain moral impetus or emotional impact in some of the odd laws of inheritance, or some of the tax rules, for example.

The morality of primogeniture was a big part of our laws of inheritance. And the tax rules are based on a belief that the wealthy should pay more than their fair share of taxes to support the poor. Otherwise we would have a flat tax.

 

[Luke T.]

I'm actually kind of amazed that people are being so nice to Luke. Roe v. Wade is about the legality of abortion. Personal hatred of abortion really has no logical connection to the question of whether it should be legal, or at least none that I've ever seen cogently expressed in any discussion on the topic. Rather, there's an emotional connection, and it's the kind wherein emotion trumps reason.

Something else has occurred to me about this. I will have to remember this the next time someone who opposes the death penalty or who favors stricter gun control laws starts spouting off about the wrongness of things and tell them to shut up because the current situation is covered by law.

 

[Brown]

The morality of primogeniture was a big part of our laws of inheritance. And the tax rules are based on a belief that the wealthy should pay more than their fair share of taxes to support the poor. Otherwise we would have a flat tax.

And yet, not all states apply the same inheritance laws. Some jurisdictions use per capita intestate succession, some use per stirpes. Is one system morally superior to the other? Some jurisdictions allow certain estates and others disallow them, but the reasons seem to be based upon practicality, perpetuity, expediency, laziness... but not morality. There are hundreds of other examples of inheritance laws that seem to have no discernable moral basis.

You could say the same thing about many tax laws. Or corporate laws. Or zoning laws. Or administrative laws. Or insurance laws. My point is that the argument, "all laws are based on morals," is simplistic and just not true. Some laws are based on moral ideas, sure, but many (perhaps most?) are based upon other considerations.

 

[subgenius]

Every sperm is sacred.

 

[Luke T.]

And yet, not all states apply the same inheritance laws. Some jurisdictions use per capita intestate succession, some use per stirpes. Is one system morally superior to the other? Some jurisdictions allow certain estates and others disallow them, but the reasons seem to be based upon practicality, perpetuity, expediency, laziness... but not morality. There are hundreds of other examples of inheritance laws that seem to have no discernable moral basis.

You could say the same thing about many tax laws. Or corporate laws. Or zoning laws. Or administrative laws. Or insurance laws. My point is that the argument, "all laws are based on morals," is simplistic and just not true. Some laws are based on moral ideas, sure, but many (perhaps most?) are based upon other considerations.

This can become quite the philosophical discussion.

At the very least, the hot-button issues of our time are based on moral questions. Death penalty, abortion, gun control, gay marriage. The laws surrounding these issues are all being challenged or supported from moral points of view. The word "morality" hardly ever enters the discussion any more though. It is all about "rights."

One the one side of abortion, it is about the "rights" of a woman to choose what to do with her body. On the other side, it is about the "rights" of the fetus. These are moral issues. Laws are the end result, not the root.