South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds signed the legislation into law today that bans virtually all abortions except those that would save a mother’s life. It will be challenged by pro-abortion groups:
PIERRE, S.D. – Gov. Mike Rounds signed legislation Monday that would ban most abortions in South Dakota, a law he acknowledged would be tied up in court for years while the state challenges the 1973
U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.The bill would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless the procedure was necessary to save the woman’s life. It would make no exception for cases of rape or incest.
Planned Parenthood, which operates the state’s only abortion clinic, in Sioux Falls, immediately pledged to challenge the measure. The challenge could either be in court or by petition signatures to refer the measure to a statewide ballot in which voters would be asked to repeal the abortion ban.
“We fully intend to challenge this law,” said Kate Looby, state director of Planned Parenthood. “It’s just a question of how.”
The Legislature passed the bill last month after supporters argued that the recent appointment of conservative justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito have made the U.S. Supreme Court more likely to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Rounds said he believes it would be better to chip away at abortion one step at a time rather than directly confront Roe v. Wade. But he said many abortion opponents want the direct challenge.
“Personally I think this court will be more interested in looking at different aspects of Roe v. Wade rather than the direct frontal assault, but we’ll never know unless someone tries,” Rounds said.
I give the legislature and governor of South Dakota a lot of credit for taking this on. Mississippi is also considering a similar law.
They’re gonna start droppin’ like flys.
I’m guessin’ maybe 20 states in the next year.
If you tortured a woman for, say, 20 hours, you’d be locked up for the rest of your life; if however, you force a woman to endure the agony of childbirth for 20 hours, not to mention the preceding months of suffering during pregnancy, the damage to her body, and the risk of DEATH, that’s ok, huh?
When the 1st woman who wanted an abortion and is denied one DIES, I think everyone who voted for that bill should be tried for murder… and the same thing for every other woman who dies in childbirth because she couldn’t abort. Furthermore, the families of each of those women should be able to sue for her lost lifetime wages, for childcare for her surviving children, and for their pain and suffering.
I also think that every woman who’s denied an abortion and LIVES should have the right to bring every person who voted against allowing abortions to trial for, oh let’s call it indirect assault, AND to sue them for her pain and suffering, all her medical costs, and the lifetime costs of the care of her child, including her lost wages during maternity leave.
Now THAT would be justice.
I’m pro-life… pro the MOTHER’S life.
I’m don’t consider myself pro-life or pro-choice, but I do have a few feelings about this. The number one reason I think abortion should NOT be illegal is because people will have them regardless. If we make it illegal, young women will go to back alley offices and have abortions performed by “doctors” who are less than ethical.
I also have an issue with women being forced to have a child when the ‘father’ raped her. I just don’t think anyone should endure that.
I do disagree with some of Omni’s comments. Everyone who votes for a law that makes it illegal to have abortions should be tried for murder? I realize you apparently have very strong feelings about this issue, but I think it’s ridiculous for you to say things like that and expect most people to take you seriously. I mean nothing personal, I’m sure others will feel the same about my opinions…
A ban this far the other way will likely muster popular support against it. It also makes it more likely the Supreme Court will likely shoot it down.
Conservatives don’t really have as much of a presense in the Supreme Court as the Liberals like to complain about. But by believing we do, anti-abortion efforts are running full steam into a potential brick wall.
I’d say it would be better to move in smaller steps. Otherwise we could end up will a slew Supreme Court rulings actually enforcing abortion. The scarey part is that I believe the Democrats are more self-aware of their limits. I think they’re stepping aside and allowing these laws to be passed in an unwatered down form because they know they are much more likely to fail.
On the other hand, MisterX, there are probably also folks who are tired of seeing people toss out insults rather than making actual rebuttals to points of view they disagree with, and who think that people who do so aren’t filling out their inseams very well… I mean nothing personal by that, of course.
It was so much easier to murder them when they were unseen. Enhanced ultrasounds will change that, but too late for millions. Sad.
Now we get to hear the same old “keep government out of my uterus” argument all over again from the same people who want every other aspect of our lives controlled by the nanny state. Government wasn’t who they let in there that got them into that shape to begin with and they don’t mind a little governemnt visit if tax money is used to pay for the abortion so that argument falls flat really fast.
I have this quaint idea that the law should be consistent. If the unborn life is not a person as defined by the law, then no laws, state or federal, should say it’s murder or cause the death of such a life. If the determining factor is the location of the unborn life (in the mother’s womb), then abortion up to birth should be legal and it shouldn’t be a criminal matter if someone cause the death of these pre-persons. A civil suit is another matter.
If the determining factor is the age of the life, then it shouldn’t matter where that life resides, in or out of the mother’s womb. If the life is considered a person after 24 weeks, then insurance companies should not be compelled to pay for the care of a pre-person.
There are lots of emotions surrounding when a human life is a person under the law and when it’s not. I would like the supreme court to consider scientific evidence in determining the definition of a person. That definition must also work at the other end of life cycle. By defining what makes a human life a person under the law, the court would resolve many issues.
If the supreme court said a human life is a person when that life exhibits substantial brain activity, it could still allow abortion after that time by saying women have a constitutional right to kill their unborn. The court could also limit that right to kill for the purpose of self defense, the mother’s life or substantial harm. At lest there would be no ambiguity about what abortion is. It would also use current state and federal laws to punish those who kill a person, born or not.
I’m a Christian and I have my beliefs as to when a human life begins and deserves protection under the law. Yet I realize that this is my religious belief, and so I would accept a well reasoned scientific definition that works for the entire life cycle from conception to death. Now lets see how many radical pro-abortionists are willing to accept reason.
Omni,
Can I sue you for the mental torture caused by reading your rediculous “logic”?
They’re gonna start droppin’ like flys.
I’m guessin’ maybe 20 states in the next year.
Posted by: Rovin at March 7, 2006 01:25 AM
I think “guessing” is the key word there. Watch how the Supreme Court won’t touch this with a ten-foot pole. Why? Because every semi-intelligent republican in the country knows it will tip the balance to the Democrats. Thus, it shows what complete phonies repubs are on this subject.
rovin wrote (March 7, 2006 01:25 AM):
I’m guessin’ maybe 20 states in the next year.
I wouldn’t hazard a guess at a number, but I agree that several states will follow So. Dakota’s lead and pass similar legislation. If so, then it would seem to really corrode the liberal mantra – also used in the Roe decision – that most American support abortion rights.
MisterX wrote (March 7, 2006 04:11 AM):
The number one reason I think abortion should NOT be illegal is because people will have them regardless.
Should we therefore make murder legal? After all, it’s been illegal in our society for centuries but people still do it…
If we make it illegal, young women will go to back alley offices and have abortions performed by “doctors” who are less than ethical.
Or, hopefully, they will stop having unprotected sex. This isn’t the nineteenth century anymore: there are many different and generally effective methods of contraception, starting with abstinence.
I also have an issue with women being forced to have a child when the ‘father’ raped her. I just don’t think anyone should endure that.
This presents a difficult moral issue for me. On the one hand, I don’t think that it’s fair to the woman to make her bear the child of her rapist. On the other hand, I don’t think that it’s right to execute the child for the sins of the father.
jpm100 wrote (March 7, 2006 05:35 AM):
… I believe the Democrats are more self-aware of their limits. I think they’re stepping aside and allowing these laws to be passed in an unwatered down form because they know they are much more likely to fail.
I don’t agree. I think many Americans are outraged by such things as partial birth abortion and children getting abortions without parental notification or consent. The image Americans get of abortion these days is not some poor woman forced into a back alley abortion, but rather a harpy from NARAL or some empty-headed actress insisting that women should be able to sleep around all they want without having to go through the inconvenience of using contraception or bearing the child. Had the NARAL crew and their fellow travelers been willing to agree to some “common sense” restrictions on abortion such as parental notification and a ban on late-term abortions, I doubt that the So. Dakota bill would ever even have come up. Some democrats have recognized that the tide is turning and are running with it, while others are waging a futile battle to keep it back.
omni, when your entire rant is about the mother dying in childbirth/from the pregnancy, etc and you ignore this little inconvenient part of the article “The bill would make it a crime for doctors to perform an abortion unless the procedure was necessary to save the woman’s life.” you will indeed not be taken seriously.
When the political push for legal abortion began it was tied *firmly* with birth control. The two things were the same. The anti-abortion people also opposed birth control, the “pro-choice” side of the argument was just as much arguing for the availability of legal birth control as legal abortion.
Some anti-abortion people disapprove of birth control to this day, some Catholics… I had an interesting discussion with a woman who’s Baptist pastor said it was okay for her to go with a friend who was having an abortion so long as she’d never get one and then had a cow when she explained that it wasn’t an issue because she’d had her tubes tied. Those people are rare. They exist, but no one pays them much mind. (Most Catholic women I know ignore the teachings against birth control… it’s pretty well accepted in practice.)
Quite frankly, the stories one hears of the “bad old days”… it was really awful for women and they certainly had little or no choice about bearing children. Can anyone really make that argument any longer? No one is interested in forcing women to take the medical risk of a pregnancy or bear children they don’t want to bear. Banning abortion doesn’t *do* that when reliable birth control is so easily available.
Trying to present this as forcing something on women that they don’t want may have worked once… it just doesn’t really work any longer.
Sheik Yur Bouty, can I sue YOU for the mental torture caused by your inability to spell, not to mention your being a belligerent twit?
Falze, when you suggest that because abortions to save a mother’s life can be performed that no women will die in childbirth, people will not only not take YOU seriously, they’ll wonder what drugs you’ve been taking.
Omni,
“belligerent twit”
Dearest Kettle,
You are black.
Sincerely,
Pot
Really, Omni, you need to chill out before you burst a blood vessel. You sound like the pro-abort equivalent of abortion clinic bombers.
When the 1st woman who wanted an abortion and is denied one DIES, I think everyone who voted for that bill should be tried for murder…
What about all the women who’ve died during/after a legal abortion…?
Sheik, you attacked and I responded; there’s no confusion as to which of those actions is belligerent. And please, spare us the standard ploy of people with no actual argument to offer of trying to make the other person sound upset and therefore, somehow, obscurely in the wrong; either debate my actual assertions or crawl back under your rock.
Brainster, a woman is FAR more likely to die in childbirth than from an abortion. If we eliminate all medical procedures during which someone MIGHT die, our doctors wouldn’t be able to perform ANY of them.
As someone who believes in the rule of law, although I am pro-choice, I fervently hope that the judicial monstrosity known as Roe Vs. Wade be overturned. Let the fight to create an abortion right go back to state legislatures, where it should have stayed in the first place. That is how Women’s Suffrage, Prohibition, and the repeal of Prohibition came about, and that is the proper American way.
Honestly, I don’t know whether the Supreme Court will overturn Roe. I do know it WON’T MATTER if it does.
You see, for all the rights rhetoric (whether “right to choose”, or “right to life”), abortion is not an abstract concept. It’s a medical procedure requiring a doctor willing to perform it. In states where abortion is frowned upon – the states likely to ban abortion if Roe is overturned – abortion providers are already incredibly rare.
Most abortion providers, understandably, prefer to practice in states where people support them and where clients are more likely to be, i.e., states where abortion won’t and will never be banned.
This reality means that however much energy is spent on Supreme Court battles, a Roe reversal wouldn’t change the country’s total number of abortion providers much. In fact, after Roe is overturned, it would be the rare woman who would notice any difference in her life at all.
Few people have examined which states would ban abortion if Roe fell. Shortly before the 2004 election, one group who did, the Center for Reproductive Rights, announced that 21 states were “highly likely” to ban abortion and nine “somewhat likely”.
However, I looked at the Center For Reproductive Rights’ claims more closely. Not only are 20 West Coast, East Coast, and “Rust Belt” states solidly pro-choice-population giants like California, Illinois, Michigan and New York among them-but the other problem with the pro-choice calculations is that they include pre-Roe 1973 abortion bans still on the books. Roe superseded these laws in practice. In theory, some bans would immediately become law if Roe were overturned. But this theory implies that legislators and voters in these states wouldn’t be able to debate and pass laws saying otherwise.
Given the split in U.S. politics, many would do just that. Of the 21 states the Center for Reproductive Rights claims are “most likely” to ban abortion after Roe, seven have Democrat governors. These governors would not be able to preside over new post-Roe abortion bans without risking a party revolt.
Of the other 14 states, one (Rhode Island) votes consistently Democratic in presidential races, and elects rather mild Republicans who are often derided as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). Though not all Democrats support abortion, it’s unlikely that the 60% of Rhode Island voters who chose Sen. John Kerry last fall would be inspired to support a ban. Nor would the milder Republicans in Rhode Island-or anywhere else these mild Republicans exist-dare try one.
Another state, Ohio, is too much of a political tossup to count in the ban camp. Colorado might vote Republican, but the state’s recent election of a Democratic senator and new Democratic majorities in its statehouse implies that the politics are pretty split.
That leaves us with 11 likely states. According to data from The Alan Guttmacher Institute, these states had 122 abortion providers in 2000. That’s less than 7% of the 1,819 abortion providers – a fluid number, to be sure – in the USA. More than half of those 122 providers (65) are in one state: Texas.
In the other 10-state area, abortion providers are already few and far between. In Mississippi, Kentucky and the Dakotas, 98% of counties have no abortion providers; in Missouri and Nebraska, 97% lack them. In these Roe-unfriendly states, women already have to travel hours by car or bus to obtain abortions; in a post-Roe world of crossing state lines, going a bit further up or down the Interstates, that story wouldn’t change.
(This is also why claims of “a return to back alley abortions” are utter bunk! A boost in Greyhound Bus ridership is what will happen, not fictional “back alley abortionists”.)
Of the nine “somewhat likely” states, only three have solidly Republican governors, legislatures and voting tendencies: Indiana, Idaho and Georgia. If they banned abortion, that would affect just 48 providers. In a realistic “worst-case scenario” (for pro-choice types) of 14 states that included a Texas ban, overturning Roe would affect a maximum of 170 providers, less than 10% of the U.S. total.
And how many Republicans in these 14 states, especially Texas (65 abortion providers is a lot for an ostensibly pro-life state, even one that big) really have the stomach for such a fight? For how many of them is abortion the real burning issue? Many Republicans are pro-life, but they see the fight for tax cuts, spending cuts, and the War On Terror as much bigger issues. These Republicans are not going to act like Captain Ahabs and go down with the anti-abortion ship. I honestly would be surprised if more than 10 states enacted or retained abortion bans once Roe is overturned.
In their zeal to fight over the Supreme Court, though, neither side of the abortion debate has absorbed these numbers. Few pro-life groups realize they’ve fought a 30-year battle to put just a handful of doctors out of business. Pro-choice forces haven’t grasped that the millions they spend lobbying to block Bush’s nominees could be better spent tipping a lot of state and local legislative races. Or, for that matter, to build abortion clinics in solidly pro-choice states that are near the borders of states likely to enact or keep abortion bans.
Instead, over the last few years, the two sides have fought the political equivalent of World War I trench warfare – bloody contests over yards of turf. Millions have been spent. Alito and Roberts suffered the same “Borking” fate as Judge Robert Bork, a very agile legal mind, did in the 1980s. Fortunately, having learned from Bork’s fate, they steeled themselves for the battle in advance and prevailed. The filibuster might melt with the “nuclear option.”
Yet in the end, a post-Roe world will look a lot like a Roe world – except we’ll like each other a lot less, thanks to the battles.
Nick Byram,
You gave us an interesting peak at the political mess that would result with the overturning of Roe. That’s one of my reasons for wanting the supreme court to consider scientific evidence in determining the definition of a person under the law. If the supreme court said a human life is a person when that life exhibits substantial brain activity, then prior to that event abortion would be legal in all states as it is now. After that event, abortion would be against the law in all states, as murder is now. However, existing law does allow the taking of someone else’s life in self-defense. This would allow a woman to abort a pregnancy at any time if it threatened her life or serious damage to her health. A well reasoned scientifically defendable definition of what makes a human life a person in the eyes of the law would produce consistency and order without all the political wrangling. See my prior post on this topic for more details.
If you tortured a woman for, say, 20 hours, you’d be locked up for the rest of your life; if however, you force a woman to endure the agony of childbirth for 20 hours, not to mention the preceding months of suffering during pregnancy, the damage to her body, and the risk of DEATH, that’s ok, huh?
Dear O,
Are you completely out of your mind? 20 hours of agony? First births do indeed frequently take 20 hours, but each and every moment in pain? How many children do you have? Suffering for months? Huh? Damage to her body??? Women being women are built for it. Unless you mean all those nasty stetch marks and weight gain.
Pregnancy is these days an ellective condition. Rape? Please. It is standard procedure to offer some kind of post-coital/morning after medications. Incest? Show me cousin Phil’s indictment, and we can talk about it. Mother’s life is something of a no-brainer, and I have never seen anyone advocate anything else. But mother’s health – wink wink, well being, self esteem etc. That’s carte blanche and everyone knows it.
I have never seen a study, and you’d have to question it, given all the potential biases, but I would guess that for every rape/incest/birth control failure there are five or ten pregnancies where it became unwanted when the male proved, as we have often enough from time immemorial, a shitheel. But the woman got pregnant knowing it was possible, or even on purpose.
Final comment. The problem with abortion is that it progressively corrodes our sense of the value of human life. If it is OK to waste an unborn infant, how long is it before we want to unburden ourselves of a born but defective child? The answer is now. And if now, how long before defective comes to mean “wrong sexed” as in a female infant. The answer is also now.
Nick Byram: Very informative post. Thanks for taking the time to give us the info.
Mac Lorry wrote (March 7, 2006 07:56 PM):
A well reasoned scientifically defendable definition of what makes a human life a person in the eyes of the law would produce consistency and order without all the political wrangling.
I’m not so sure, simply because many people regard this as a religious / moral issue rather than a scientific one. Further, any lines drawn would have to be arbitrary, and I think we’d be back to bickering over where those lines are to be drawn and who does the drawing.
To those who support laws such as this:
Out of curiousity, what should the punishment be for women who get an illegal abortion?
Rich, are YOU completely out of YOUR mind? If you truly think that there’s no suffering involved in pregnancy, that no permanent health problems ever result from it (and weight gain, if it can’t be budged, DOES count as a major health issue), that because there are pauses between contractions that somehow the agony doesn’t count, and that all pregnancies are “ellective,” [sic] when there’s no such thing as perfect birth control or perfect use thereof, then you must be posting from a padded cell, or from another planet where pregnancy doesn’t cause women suffering or harm.
Your ignorance is only matched by your lack of compassion; you are an utterly terrifying human being.
Rich
Omni has had no children and she is so hysterical with her claims as to make me wonder if there is phobia involved.
The vast majority of abortions are not done due to health but convenience. And the idea that pregnancy is this horrendous risk to females is a hoot. Have women died in childbirth? Certainly, in the past due to infection, currently only under rare circumstances.
Personally, I believe the legal right to seek an abortion (abortion, per se, is not a “right”) should remain outside the province of the government when dealing with an adult woman of sound mind within the first trimester. Outside those parameters there is reasonable state interest, up to and including banning forthwith the medically unnecessary and horrendous practice of “partial birth abortion” on viable, healthy fetuses.
There are many immoral behaviors that the law leaves to society to deal with — ie adultery, promiscuity — I’d leave early, convenience abortions in the same category. Legal but immoral.
Omni
Who the frig do you think you are trying to lecture on the “torture” of pregnancy?
I will say one thing. Thank GOD you haven’t reproduced.
omni ,your guilt and self loathing show intensely in your blogging. logic : if your not a person 10 seconds before your out of the birth canal , you dont immediately become one 10 seconds after your delivered.. if your killed in either case it,s MURDER..
Darleen, who the frig do you think YOU are, coming on someone else’s website and spewing abuse at a total stranger? The only “hysteria” is from the so-called pro-lifers here who have hurled abuse at me and not yet debated a single one of my actual POINTS… a sure sign that you CAN’T debate them, and that you’re not the nicest of people. Furthermore, if you think that women die from childbirth only from infections, you’re scarily ignorant; try looking up “eclampsia” and “hemorrhage.”
Virgo, if you see “guilt and self loathing” on my blog, you must be projecting like mad, because those things don’t exist ANYWHERE in any post I’ve ever made, on my blog or any other.
THIS is why the anti-mother’s-life people will eventually lose; they’re all too often an ugly-minded, aggressively nasty bunch, they don’t have any actual arguments to offer, they just try to abuse anyone who disagrees with them into ceasing to speak up.
Keep on attacking me, cockroaches; the more you take time out of your lives to abuse a stranger who has never directed a comment at you, rather than discussing the issues, the more you scare the undecideds away from your camp. Keep on showing what kind of person opposes abortion. Keep on spewing cr@p at me, PLEASE. 🙂
MANTIS to those who would support laws such as this : what should be the penalty for illegal abortions ? Answer ” You live with it “
Omni
JAYsus on a pony, if you quit being so hysterical you might actually comprehend what I wrote!
I didn’t say women today don’t die in childbirth…I said it was RARE and certainly VERY RARE when women have normal prenatal care. IN THE PAST most women who died did so because of INFECTION.
If you are so afraid of pregnancy…get your tubes tied. Stop shoveling your histrionics as if it had anything to do with reality.
The majority of abortions performed today are done in the FIRST trimester and they are not done because the female’s life is in danger. That’s fact, sweetcheeks. Deal with it.
I want abortions done up to 12 weeks gestation to remain LEGAL. But that doesn’t mean I can’t call ’em what they are — when done for convenience they are IMMORAL.
Girlfriend, you got issues. Seek.help.
Omni I offered a plain as day Clear as a blue sky point to discuss.. How can a person be a person after birth , but not before ??
Darlene, there’s been no hint of hysteria, or any ANY degree of upset, in anything I’ve said, and that won’t change no matter how many times you claim otherwise. You came on someone’s else’s website and hurled personal attacks at a total stranger; if you don’t see what sort of person that makes you, what else can I say?
Virgo, you asked a question that had nothing to do with my post, so I see no reason to debate it with you. If you have anything to say about MY post, not about my blog or about your learned character analysis of me personally but about my post on this topic on this blog, I’ll be happy to read it.
Omni
YOU came on “someone else’s website” and started screeching unsubstantiated claims that pregnancy is “torture” fraught with grave consequences.
I challenged your claims and now you just stand and piddle on the floor like a puppy caught by surprise.
meshugga
Your right “” I guess sucking the brains out of an unborn ” fetus ” quote” unquote has nothing to do with a womans right to choose.,
Darlene, I stated the simple facts that women DO suffer from a wide variety of ills during pregnancy, and horrific pain during childbirth; countless mothers I’ve heard or read the descriptions of the pregnancies and childbirths of have made that clear. You challenged those facts in your eagerness attack me, and now YOU are “screeching” because I won’t play doormat for your abuse and repudiate those facts. COCKROACH.
Virgo, your newest post STILL has nothing to do with MY post on this topic.
AHHH!! I see.. so the topic is South Dakota bans abortions so women can enjoy the pains of childbirth.. we,ll that,s a horse of a different color than..
Alright How about just giving the child up for adoption and avoiding the whole lawsuit aspect ?
O MY, someone hand me the smelling salts… erstwhile female Omni calls me a “cockroach”
Ah think ah’am gonna faint.
Listen up, Omni. You said pregnancy was TORTURE. Now you are baring your teeth like an untrained Chihuahau about things you allegedly have read from [snort] “countless mothers.”
US maternal death are 7.5 per 100,000, and half those deaths can be prevented with prenatal care. Abortion is safer than childbirth ONLY WHEN IT IS DONE AT 8 WEEKS OR LESS. After that, maternal death due to childbirth or abortion is roughly equivalent (1 in 29,000)
Now for YOU it seems to be that putting on a couple of pounds is SUFFERING, but pregnancy for most women is a happy and HEALTHY experience.
And a full term pregnancy is very healthy for the child now, isn’t it?
But heck, keep trying to scare females into abortion as birth control. Actual women can see the true nature of the stuff you’re peddling.
Answer ” You live with it “
Well, we don’t need laws for that. People have to “live with” their actions no matter what they are. If there are no institutional penalties for breaking a law, why is it a law?
So seriously, what should be the punishment for women who get illegal abortions? Jailtime? A fine? What is appropriate? It is murder, isn’t it?
mantis
IMHO the SD law is not “serious”…it is a political stunt.
No, Darlene, I did NOT say that “pregnancy was TORTURE”; you just can’t get ANY facts right, can you?
I’m not willing to debate 20 different issues with you; if you have anything to say about my post on what a woman who’s denied an abortion has the right to sue about, and can say it in a mature manner without lacing it with grade school insults, feel free… if all you want to do is continue having diarrhea of the keyboard, do it on your own blog where no one will ever see it.
Omni on her first post
If you tortured a woman for, say, 20 hours, you’d be locked up for the rest of your life; if however, you force a woman to endure the agony of childbirth for 20 hours, not to mention the preceding months of suffering during pregnancy, the damage to her body, and the risk of DEATH, that’s ok, huh?
equating TORTURE with pregnancy.
To paraphrase SNL…. Omni, you ignorant slut. I know why you don’t allow comments on your website…. YOU CAN’T DEBATE.
feh
No, Darlene, that’s equating torture with CHILDBIRTH, since both are extremely painful; thank you for demonstrating just how utterly incapable of accurate analysis you are.
Now why doesn’t it surprise me that you went charging over to my blog and looked for a way to spew venom on it? THAT’S why I don’t have commenting.
you added “…not to mention the proceeding months of suffering“
I didn’t ‘charge over’, but I’m always interested in taking measure of people who come onto a blog that allows comments and then refuse to engage in debate.
You want to spew your hysteria, unsubstantiated, and refuse to answer any challenge.
No surprise that your own site is the same.
Pregnancy is not a high risk endeavor for women and labor is not suffering equivalent to torture.
But then, you are childless and have to depend on what you READ from “countless suffering women” [yea..right…countless…that’s the ticket]
Again. Thank you for not reproducing.
I’m not one of the lucky ones who have easy and fast deliveries.
But I gotta say… I’ve definately had things that hurt worse… waaaay worse. The hysterics about how terrible labor and delivery are are just that… hysterics.
Any of you guys who have had kidney stones… don’t let women tell you they’ve got you on pain because they *don’t*.
And us grown up girls can decide before we get pregnant if we want to have babies or not and we can make grown up choices. How insulting is it to pretend that women are so helpless and stupid that they can’t figure cause and effect? Or use contraception properly?
Even if abortion should be legal, it should never be birth control.
Darlene, I’m not interested in debating… and neither are you, although you THINK that spewing insults and nonsense IS debating.
If I get a torrent of abuse in response to an idea I put forth, but no actual rebuttals of my points, I know I’ve come up with a good idea; thank you for your part in this process.
Mantis wrote (March 7, 2006 10:04 PM):
Out of curiousity, what should the punishment be for women who get an illegal abortion?
Tough call. As I believe that the child is a human being from the moment of conception, then the deliberate taking of his life absent a threat to the life of the mother constitutes premeditated murder and logically should be punished as such.
That being said, I admit that I have some serious qualms about the idea of putting a seventeen year old girl who “had an accident” in the dock. I suppose that this is due to the novelty of the idea and the fact that I’ve been mentally conditioned to believe that a girl who gets pregnant is not responsible for it.
But, then again, is a seventeen year old boy who kills a convenience store clerk during a robbery “responsible”…
In both cases, let the courts decide.
docjim505
I have my religious views as many do, however, I also understand that basing this and related issues on absolute religious views is unworkable in our diverse society. That’s why I propose the supreme court make a well reasoned scientifically defendable definition of what makes a human life a person in the eyes of the law.
We already use the substantial brain activity standard for individuals who are born and this is not an arbitrary standard, but one that defines what a human is, at least in a scientific sense. Using the same standard for the unborn would go a long way in removing the inconsistencies in the law without requiring any fundamental changes to existing laws. The fact that some will bicker over such a standard is irrelevant, as there will be bickering over any standard that can be devised.
Do what you want with a pre-person, but once the standard is met and a life is a person in the eyes of the law, then taking that life is a homicide. As I stated before, the right of self-defense would allow a woman to abort her pregnancy at any time if it posed a serious threat to her health or her life. Some procedure would have to be devised to prevent this loophole from being abused, but that’s doable.
One of the arguments against any restrictions to abortion is embodied in the question “are you going to prosecute women for ending an unwanted pregnancy?” Well, we prosecute women who hide their pregnancy, give birth in a restroom and then kill their baby. Don’t such women deserver the same compassion as women who have an abortionist kill their baby during the birth process? Defining one baby as a person and the other as tissue based on the dark ages standard of first breath is what’s indefensible in the 21st century. We might as well define a person on the standard of first bowel movement, which would give the other parent an opportunity to abort an unwanted child. We now have the technology and understanding to devise a scientifically defendable definition of what makes a human life a person in the eyes of the law. It seems a crime not to do so.
Mac Lorry wrote (March 8, 2006 08:06 AM):
That’s why I propose the supreme court make a well reasoned scientifically defendable definition of what makes a human life a person in the eyes of the law.
But that’s the whole rub: science and religion don’t necessarily mesh. Those who support partial birth abortion would argue that the child isn’t human until he’s completely outside the woman’s body. Those who oppose abortion in virtually all cases would argue that the child is a human being at the moment of conception. There is “scientific” evidence to support both cases. It’s a real conundrum.
I also feel some unease about defining a human being based on level of brain activity; shall we euthanize people who don’t meet it? I believe that this sort of thing is legal in Holland.
Omni babbles:
Darlene, I’m not interested in debating
Well, DOAH. I offered several on-point facts which she not only failed to address but outright ignores.
Synova is correct. Pregnancy and even childbirth is far exceeded by several things. Anecdotally, I suffered a herniated disc in my lower back. I would rather go through ten pregnancies and childbirths before ever experiencing that pain again.
And I already have done the childbirth thing four times, sans any meds.