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Texas banned abortion, then sepsis rates soared

I did two years of nurse graduation, and one of the discussions that we had in Public Health classes was that Abortion will be done whether you think it is ethical/moral or not. It's time to start treating this from a scientific perspective to avoid the life losses, this procedure done in a clandestine clinic is a high-risk life threat for the Mother.

It's clear, in the Health community, that pregnancy can be avoided with contraceptives and instructing the population (adults and teenagers) on how to deal with this issue.

Not only that, but it's tragic that we have such a good organization, WHO, which does instruct on how to deal with this, and yet we ignore because of beliefs of “pro-life” movements which in the end kill the infant's mother.

2 days agoXunjin

The thing is the people who are for abortion bans think if a person gets an abortion and becomes sick from it, they get what they deserve.

So from a scientific perspective, they don't care, all they care about is a fetus being born, not well cared for, not born to a family that wants it, not born healthily, just born. Science has no place in their philosophy.

2 days agojermaustin1

They can't grasp that miscarriages, which occur for many reasons even in healthy people, have exactly the same emergent medical care needs as abortions. Laws banning abortions usually also interfere with (if not outright block) access to necessary care.

It's a textbook example of how theocracy is wholly incapable of sound public governance.

2 days agoKelvin506

Until the mid-late 1800s, abortions were legal, and even allowed by the Catholic Church until "quickening" (when you were able to feel the fetus kicking/moving).

Abortion became illegal and started to get "theocratized" for business interests by the American Medical Association for regulatory capture of "physician services" and push out homeopaths and midwives where were the administers of abortion drugs. The AMA lobbied congress and Congress passed the Comstock Act of 1873, and finally made abortion illegal in 1880.

Prior to these, abortion was not only legal, but it was not even considered immoral. It was just a fact of life.

2 days agojermaustin1

The AMA really is the gift that keeps on giving. They're right up there with police unions.

a day agopotato3732842

> Until the mid-late 1800s, abortions were legal, and even allowed by the Catholic Church until "quickening" (when you were able to feel the fetus kicking/moving).

No, the Church has never allowed abortion. When gradual ensoulment of the fetus was the dominant scientific theory, the quickening marked the difference between homicide and murder.

a day agoboredhedgehog

Medieval intellectuals, including Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Hildegard von Bingen, believed that the fetus only received its soul around 40 days after conception.

No soul, no murder.

a day agodefrost

Do you have a reference? Not doubting you, just want to learn more about it.

19 hours agoXunjin

Forty plus years ago I took Philosophy mainly for twentieth century logic under Graham Priest and alongside a few peers that now do fancy Royal Institution physics, run their own philosophy departments, etc.

As part of that I was roped into also taking Morals and Ethics led by a talented Jesuit type whose name escapes me and who went at depth into many such questions; I had the actual original texts by the three I mentioned in front of me back in the day.

Right now, the best I can do on the fly is point at, say:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/#SoulCreaBein

and state that Augustine made a strong case for soul–body dualism and considered at least three paths for the soul to join the body, along with the belief that that a soul must also leave a body, and (IIRC) wrote about "the quickening" (motion of a fetus) being a sign of a soul either transfering in part from the mother or arriving "from outside" via God, etc.

He also remained uncommitted to "one true notion" for the bulk of his life (according to the Stanford and other articles I skimmed).

Augustine is, I believe, the best known for writing on soul-body dualism but I have not taken a deep interest in this area of Philosophy and am by no means an expert.

If you're interested in leaning more about the thoughts that humans have had on the matter that's likely a good starting point for reading material and references, going forward it'd be best to find a diverse group of other interested parties in that part of Philosophy, there will be no absolute answers, just a wealth of conjecture and reasoned arguments for sometimes opposing opinions.

8 hours agodefrost

I’m going to get hate for this, but here’s my perspective.

I used to be pro-choice because I thought the motivation for pro-life was religion, and I thought that had no place in determining what others can do.

Eventually I started to see abortion as something closer to murder. Obviously it’s much more complicated than that, but, to me, I view the fetus as a person, even if they aren’t born yet.

There are absolutely cases where abortion can be justified, e.g. for the health of the mother, or if the mother didn’t make the choice to have sex (for example, rape). In this case I feel like it’s still murder; it’s just a terrible situation overall.

In other cases though, I don’t see why abortion should be assisted. Yes, people will try to terminate in other ways. That sucks, but there’s no reason why we should be helping people murder other people just because they might hurt themselves otherwise.

There are a lot of other arguments (like what if the child is born into a terrible situation) that are relevant but IMO at that point you’re essentially asking who deserves to live.

Definitely open to conversation on this/feel free to link any articles that you think might change my mind.

2 days agoshepherdjerred

> I view the fetus as a person, even if they aren’t born yet.

What changed my mind here was the realization that this position comes out of Catholic doctrine that defines "a person" at the moment of conception. Once you made that assumption, it's reasonable to say that abortion ends a person's life (aka murder).

This assumption doesn't match biology, however. In the first trimester, it simply isn't a person yet. It's not a proto-person, and it's not simply a cake that needs to finish baking in the oven. Becoming a person takes active work by the mother's body that isn't completed until well into the pregnancy. You could call that point "viability", but it's not a precise instant in time.

If there's no person yet, then it's the mother's body and it's up to that person what they choose to do with their body, just like in every other instance of bodily autonomy.

It's obviously OK if you believe in the same doctrine, but then it's also not a simple case of ethics anymore.

a day ago16bytes

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a day agosorryimgreen

Fetuses aren't people (it could be argued that they become people some time between the second and third trimester, but that's not really relevant because D&C is almost never done in the third trimester). Pregnant women are people. Does a pregnant woman somehow magically lose rights once she becomes pregnant? If the answer is yes, pregnant women do lose rights, then how much? What weight do you put on the rights of a hypothetical person-to-be compared to a fully alive not at all hypothetical pregnant woman?

>>>IMO at that point you’re essentially asking who deserves to live.

The answer is the pregnant woman. She is the one who deserves to live, every time, full stop.

2 days agohazmazlaz

My view is that fetuses are people.

> Does a pregnant woman somehow magically lose rights once she becomes pregnant? If the answer is yes, pregnant women do lose rights, then how much?

Nobody is losing rights. Nobody has the right to end the life of another barring cases like self-defense.

The mother made a choice (ignoring cases of rape) to have sex which could, even with contraceptives, lead to the outcome pregnancy.

> What weight do you put on the rights of a hypothetical person-to-be compared to a fully alive not at all hypothetical pregnant woman?

IMO, both parties deserve to live. If a fetus threatens the mother it should be terminated for her health. If the fetus doesn't, then the mother shouldn't (morally) have an abortion.

> The answer is the pregnant woman. She is the one who deserves to live, every time, full stop.

You're missing the point of my question about "who deserves to live". Should we encourage abortions for single mothers because their child might not have a happy life? Should we abort fetuses who have some disability? I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.

a day agoshepherdjerred

> I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.

Sure, but if you wait ~5 seconds when trying to conceive a child then that first potential person won't exist and a different one will instead (different genetics and subtly different environments). We always and continuously make choices about which (and whether) potential individuals will actually exist.

As a fetus ages its expectation of existing in the future increases over time but never to the extent that its' mother expects to exist, so expected utility of mothers exceeds fetuses in every scenario.

If we had magical technology we'd simply instantiate all the possible people from scratch and let them enjoy preferring to live. As it is we have to choose the best limited set of individuals who get to exist, and part of that means not allowing a slave class to exist whose sole or primary purpose is reproduction to the exclusion of their own happiness and agency.

a day agobenlivengood

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a day agosorryimgreen

> You're thinking of this in a very strongly technical way that comes across as so callous and is tough to even read from a human perspective.

I have strong empathy for people in general, and sympathy for fetuses (I have no memories of that time to empathize with but I assume it would be mostly comfortable and familiar unless disturbed) who may have some conscious experience (still understudied to my satisfaction). Therefore the only way to adequately compare outcomes is technically to avoid bias caused by emotional bias e.g. toward babies that I think most mammals have. Babies are tiny, cute, vulnerable, and we have a natural tendency to protect them and extend that protection forward to children and backward to fetuses.

> From a purely technical perspective not really. A fetus age 8 months has probably a 95% chance of living to 75 more years. A mother age 35 probably only has a 95% chance to reach 30 more years so the baby is kinda more valuable here if you like using cold calculations to value human life.

But similarly to 35-year-olds vs. 75-year-olds we only in extremis compare their expected QALYs for decision-making, as in mass casualty triage or for organ transplants. There are, of course, many people who willingly make the calculation and offer their own life to save another's life, and probably numerically highest the women who freely decide to favor the survival of their unborn offspring over their own health. I favor choice because I trust individual women to be the most accurate in deciding the value of their own QALYs vs. the expected QALYs of another, which is also generally the accepted standard for all of society. The only exception I am aware of is military drafts where individuals are explicitly expected to lower their own expected QALYs to increase everyone else's expected QALYs.

> Nobody is saying this. If a woman gets pregnant and she didn't want it to happen, that sucks. It really does. But this is the biology they were born with and as human beings we know that sex can cause babies. If I love committing insurance fraud then surely I should accept the risk of doing so right? (given that my participation in said fraud was consensual)

I'd respectfully disagree and continue to claim that many people are still attempting the reproductive and child-rearing subjugation of women in the world today.

Biologically, fetuses are unavoidably at risk of death before birth. It probably sucks for fetuses that die before birth, but neither fetuses nor women consented to being embodied in a universe where these biological realities exist. Knowledge of our place in the world doesn't alter that; knowing that they are at risk of pregnancy does not make women any more personally responsible for fixing the situation than fetuses are responsible for keeping themselves alive until they're born. Biology dealt us all a suboptimal card in many ways; we can be sad about that and grieve the human cost of it. We shouldn't force responsibility onto each other, especially unfairly. I don't see any proposals for every man having to enter a lottery to receive one unwanted baby who they are legally the parent of at a probability equal to what women are naturally exposed to.

a day agobenlivengood

> who may have some conscious experience

Does it matter if they are conscious? Is it the ok to kill a person in a coma if you know he will probably wake up in 9 months? Is it okay to kill someone while they are sleeping? I don't see where consciousness comes into it.

> But similarly to 35-year-olds vs. 75-year-olds we only in extremis compare...

I think you missed what I was trying to convey here, but that was totally my fault. I wasn't clear and I'm too lazy to make a graph to try and explain what I meant. It doesn't really matter though because I in essence agree with you on this point.

> I'd respectfully disagree and continue to claim that many people are still attempting the reproductive and child-rearing subjugation of women in the world today.

I'm sorry I don't understand this sentence. Did you accidentally omit a word?

> neither fetuses nor women consented to being embodied in a universe where these biological realities exist

Yeah, sure! That's life though. I didn't consent to being mortal and having to also watch people I love die. I also didn't consent to being able to listen to beautiful music or experience the thrill of creating. I am placed firmly in a universe I have no control over and I can only be grateful even though it is not even nearly all good. Women are much, _much_ more selective for this exact reason - it is natural. A woman has a huge and heavy responsibility to choose a man who's problem it indeed will be to also look after the baby. She also reaps much greater rewards by experiencing a bond that a man can simply never experience.

The problem of abortion is linked to a society where relationships have been de-stabilized. The cure is not to kill the babies of mothers who are misled and left behind in the wreckage of broken and casual relationships, but instead to foster healthier ways of relating with each other. Society is unfortunately a bit sick at the moment and in recent decades, horrible symptoms like abortion, which were always taboo, are being brought to the surface.

a day agosorryimgreen

All my other comments flagged without counterargument, and this is the only one I can reply to. What is the point of this website if alternate viewpoints are essentially not allowed? This place is a sad echo-chamber.

18 hours agosorryimgreen

You created this account to specifically argue about this topic. This is indeed not how HN is intended to be used.

40 minutes agoAlexeyBelov

> Nobody is losing rights. Nobody has the right to end the life of another barring cases like self-defense.

The common example of the violinist analogy disagrees here. You are under no obligation to provide continuing physical support to another person, even one everyone agrees is fully grown/sentient/alive/etc. Similarly, you are under no obligation to donate your liver/kidney/blood, even if you already promised to do so, even if not doing so will cause someone's death. In every case except abortion, we respect medical bodily autonomy to an extreme degree. And indeed in other cases we often find it immoral to force someone to assist a family member's survival on an ongoing basis (see "Savior Siblings").

> I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.

Not always, lots of people desire medically assisted suicide. Blanket assuming that everyone desires to live regardless of circumstance is factually incorrect.

a day agojoshuamorton

> And indeed in other cases we often find it immoral to force someone to assist a family member's survival on an ongoing basis.

This is incorrect. Parents have a duty to care of their children. Parents whose children die because of parental neglect end in prison.

a day agocredit_guy

No parent has been convicted of neglect for not donating organs or blood to their children. They haven’t even been charged because it’s literally not a crime. This comment makes zero sense.

a day agotstrimple

“ to assist a family member's survival on an ongoing basis” is literally what parents are expected to do.

a day agocredit_guy

My dead body has more rights than a pregnant woman. Even after death, I have final say in how my organs are used and I can decline to let anyone have them.

a day agotstrimple

"My view is that fetuses are people."

So you're fine with early term abortion, at least up until week 9.

a day agocess11

Life is filled with grey scales, if you only see things in black or white you are not looking hard enough. Abortion may be a tragedy. Having to give birth to an unwanted child may be a tragedy. Having to give up your child because you lack the capacity to care for it may be a tragedy. Growing up as an unwanted child may be a tragedy.

Abortions are a way to provide choice to people in tough situations. We have built a world where a lot of people are unable to care for their children in a decent way. In my opinion, that is the crime here.

Blaming these people and calling them murderers, or forcing them into parenthood is just cruel.

2 days agoorbisonitrum

Where does "providing a choice to people in tough situations" end? When is it wrong to terminate a life because you're in a tough situation?

2 days agomejthemage

That's the point of any ethical/moral discussions. Is self-defence a situation that does allow you to kill another person?

Does a mother who forgets to pull the hand break of the car and kills her son, should do jail time?

Does a police officer who shots and kills a person which is in a degraded mental state but threats his life, be accused of murdering?

Does a police officer who shoots a known murderer fugitive without following the standard procedure be prosecuted as a homicide?

See the point?

a day agoXunjin

Most would prefer tragedy and suffering over death

a day agoshepherdjerred

All I'm saying is that when you decide that there's only one morally superior way of looking at this, you're not looking hard enough. Adoptions are complicated, teenage parenthood is hard, what rights to bodily autonomy do we want, what are the rights for unborn babies?

If two rights clash, who gets to decide which right wins? There's always going to be exceptions, and a lot of the time I think it makes sense letting the people who will be directly affected make the hard choice. And calling them murderers is not helpful.

a day agoorbisonitrum

I'm pro-choice, and one way I think about it is that I want to reduce suffering of children. I have children and I feel reasonably confident that they are capable of extreme suffering. We have imperfect information and there is no bright line between fetus and child (it's just a continuous development), but I strongly suspect that a fetus at say, 5 weeks, is less capable of suffering than a child.

So imagine a situation where a mother and father have a falling out. By week 6 the mother feels there is no future in the relationship and feels she can't offer the coming child a good childhood on her own. I feel if a child is unwanted by the parents, they are more likely to suffer.

So in this sense, abortion can be a form of harm reduction. It does not reduce ALL harm, but reduces the net-harm across all parties.

2 days agojaredklewis

Here's a snippet from another reply I wrote:

Should we encourage abortions for single mothers because their child might not have a happy life? Should we abort fetuses who have some disability? I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.

a day agoshepherdjerred

> Should we encourage abortions for single mothers because their child might not have a happy life?

Yes.

> Should we abort fetuses who have some disability?

If the parents are unwilling or unable to deal with it every day for the rest of their life, yes.

> I'm sure that any of those individuals, once born, would prefer to live regardless of circumstance.

That's too big an assumption. But, in any case, not being born, and not having a working brain capable of abstract thought and understanding of the situation, nor a way to express it, they don't get a vote.

a day agorichie_adler

[flagged]

a day agosorryimgreen

Some fetuses fail to develop correctly, and the baby is born with one-or-multiple conditions that will almost certainly be fatal within the first year if not first few weeks or days. Their short life will be filled with suffering. You can always find a perspective where any choice you make here is wrong. You're not asking whether they deserve to live; you're asking whether you are a worse person to deny them the chance or to condemn them to their reality. There simply is no good option, even if you take for granted that a fetus is a child and you are entirely focused on doing what's best for them.

There are probably people who are flippant about it, and maybe those people are essentially murderers, but the common case is probably a variety of complex moral dilemmas and special cases to consider, and it's probably a bad idea to jump to the murderer label by default lest you apply it to people who didn't want to have to ask such questions.

a day agondriscoll

I don't think I would classify all stages of fetal development as persons, though obviously that line is crossed at some point during pregnancy. However, I read Judith Thomsons "A Defense of Abortion" at some point and she succesfully convinced me fetal personhood doesn't actually matter that much to the morality of abortion.

It can be found on the internet[0], and is only 13 pages. Alternatively I think the wikipedia article outlines her three main arguments quite well[1], and is a quicker read. The most known part is her violinist thought experiment, which can be read to only allow abortion in cases of rape. However, the subsequent parts convinced me that, abortion is moral in general. So long as reasonable steps have been taken to avoid pregnancy.

[0] https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Thomson.pdf

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion

a day agoeaglefield

It comes down to how you interpret the sanctity of life, and your worldview usually governs that. A materialistic worldview, which denies any and all spirituality, is likely to take a purely scientific stance and assert a fetus is not human. Meanwhile, worldviews that see procreation as a gift from a higher power will naturally push back against that assertion.

The only common ground that seems to be available between these two camps is in extreme cases (i.e., the mother's life is at risk or rape). Otherwise, I think they are fundamentally incompatible.

a day agosepositus

I would urge you to watch this movie:

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032846/

It made me change my mind.

2 days agocouchdb_ouchdb

I'll take a look

a day agoshepherdjerred

That's why focusing on prevention is the way. And let me make a counter-argument for the sake of the discussion:

Imagine a mother who had to give birth to her child and had to care until its adult life, in an abusive way, mistreating the child, hating that one human being and treating like garbage. What is worse, the “murder” of the child or raising someone in those conditions?

The hypocrisy here is that most of the pro-life movement wants the child to be born but does not care at all when it's in the world.

This video[0] shows an example of a politician how empathy makes you realize your error. Every so often, you have your view of the world, but how is important is your view in the expanse of the others?

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcGQdHj7fk

2 days agoXunjin

> What is worse, the “murder” of the child or raising someone in those conditions?

Should we just begin murdering anyone who might not have a life that we define as good?

That's essentially the argument that I'm hearing, except you're limiting the scope to unborn children.

Though, I do completely understand your point. I just think that even in the worst of circumstances someone would generally prefer to live. I didn't have a particularly happy upbringing, and there were times I wanted to commit suicide, but I'm quite happy with where I'm at now.

a day agoshepherdjerred

But my point in the end was that if a society believes abortion should be banned, they need to give social support. For example in Brazil, few people know but a mother can abdicate their child to Child Support Services. They do try their best to care and prepare them to adoption programs.

a day agoXunjin

We can accept that you are a person, the fetus is a person and the mother is a person.

Which of those should be coerced to give up a piece of their liver to save your life? Morally speaking…

a day agobandushrew

No hate, just a nudge towards humility and empathy.

As someone who's lost a newborn and had to make life-impacting medical decisions leading up to it...

I can't imagine those getting abortions are doing so lightly and don't forever bear their own burdens. Let's support, advise, and trust each other to make our own decisions. I don't know what shoes anyone else walks in and wouldn't presume to make decisions for them.

a day agoThrowaway33f904

But why is that your choice? Do you also think IVF should be illegal? We are already seeing the end state of giving the government power over a woman’s body.

I had a friend whose wife got pregnant and neither one of them knew beforehand how dangerous it would be for her. They definitely wanted the child. But his first priority was his wife. So if it had come down to an abortion or letting his wife die, he was going to choose an abortion.

Even if the doctors thought it was the best course of action for the wife, the doctor would have still been afraid to do it because of criminal liability in todays environment in red states.

My friend and his wife decided to induce labor two months early instead and take their chances. The baby is now a healthy 12 year old.

After seeing what his wife went through, he decided to get a vasectomy and they adopted 5 years later.

a day agoscarface_74

The situation is more complicated than most "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are believing (like most stuff is; it is not only abortion that does). Like other things, it is worth making a discussion, from multiple points of view.

I think that some of the considerations being made such as whether or not the fetus is human is not really so relevant, and is missing the point. The child being born into a terrible situation is not really the point either (or at least, is not really the most important point), since there will be better ways to deal with that.

I am against abortion in general, but many of the bans of abortion are way too excessive (banning discussion and communication of information about such things, allowing to sue people without evidence, etc, are probably excessive regardless of what is being banned, though). If abortion seems necessary in this case, the government should not interfere with it (doing so will just make it more messy than it needs to be). However, it is generally better to avoid being pregnant at first, if you are able to do that; and I think that people should not try to have too many children anyways (during these days); such prevention before you are pregnant is better than afterward, isn't it?

But you should still have the right to your own body anyways, and if you are pregnant then before the child is born it is still your body. (There is mistreatment of your own body, but still you properly would have the right to it.)

A better way for the law to handle is that the policies can reduce the need for abortion, rather than trying to affect it directly.

And, sometimes is necessary, that you will value the actual life rather than the potential life, anyways; but, if the mother instead wishes to risk such a birth that might not work and will harm her, that will be her choice to accept or not accept such a risk, I think. I do believe that abortion is "immoral", but that actual situations are not always ideal situations so that such a thing might be necessary sometimes anyways.

Doctors should still provide necessary care anyways. (I think the Catholic church does allow necessary emergency medical procedures that will save the mother even if they have abortion as a side effect, anyways (and yet, many people still don't like that either). Even then, not everyone is or should be Catholic or whatever religion, but that does not make the Catholic church worthless either, even though they (like many large organizations) have done many bad things too.)

I think that many "pro-life" is not a real "pro-life"; they are "pro human birth" without the other consideration. However, this is not true of everyone, so you should not assume that everyone is the same, because it isn't. A real "pro-life" should pro any life including those who have already been born and also the non-human animal and plant life. (Deliberate abortion of humans birth is one thing, but some people like it is more important than everything else and than all other life and that does not make sense and it is wrong.)

2 days agozzo38computer

I agree that abortion is evil, but in my perception, once someone gets to a situation where they're willing to murder their own child, it won't be a law that'll stop them.

This problem should be considered moral, not legal.

a day agolieks

Not everyone who's pro-choice is able to make their peace with this fact or willing to say it aloud, but yeah, abortion often is basically murder (not in the common law sense) and that's OK.

a day agostaticautomatic

Why is that ok?

18 hours agosorryimgreen

> The thing is the people who are for abortion bans think if a person gets an abortion and becomes sick from it, they get what they deserve.

I hope you don't honestly hold that generalization to be true. I can think of several people who would immediately dismiss that as false, anyways.

a day agosepositus

"The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."

    Pastor David Barnhardt
15 hours agoYizahi
[deleted]
2 days ago

the cruelty is the point

2 days agocagenut

That is more or less the utilitarian position, there are numerous other reasons to allow it.

But yes, abortions will happen, the mother is the best person to decide here and access to clinics has to be self-evident.

I think the current more severe restrictions aren't even due to people essentially and strictly being against abortion, it is some quite loud abortion proponents arguing that badly, that people reflected on their stances and many folded while lawmakers took the political opportunity to restrict rights again.

19 hours agoraxxorraxor

> It's clear, in the Health community, that pregnancy can be avoided with contraceptives and instructing the population (adults and teenagers) on how to deal with this issue.

It's not clear to me that the Health community is winning that battle based on abortion rates.

For 2023 Guttmacher estimates 1,037,000 abortions were provided by clinicians in states without total bans [1].

Compare the 2022 CDC leading causes of death [2] which starts Heart disease: 702,880; Cancer: 608,371; ...

That is, if one thinks of abortion as an avoidable disease it's one hell of a disease. And the rates suggest the Health community hasn't solved the root causes by a long shot.

[1] https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-unite...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

a day agoRhysU

> That is, if one thinks of abortion as an avoidable disease it's one hell of a disease. And the rates suggest the Health community hasn't solved the root causes by a long shot.

It basically halved from 1990 to 2015, and has increased in correlation with prof-life policies like reduced access to education and contraception.

a day agojoshuamorton
[deleted]
20 hours ago
[deleted]
a day ago

Until being pregnant carries absolutely no financial or social penalties (during or after), people who don't want to be pregnant will try to find ways to end it. Society can either provide safe, legal means, or women will die trying.

a day agoMandieD

This is a state with no exception for rape or incest, and castle doctrine and stand your ground rights to self defense.

Forcing a raped woman to carry to term and parent for life exceeds the sentencing guidelines. When the state abuses the citizen beyond the sentencing guidelines, the citizen has the right to self defense using at least equal force.

That is, don't persons denied abortions by the state have the right to trap their abusers into parenting a reminder of their trauma for life, in self defense?

"Just put your kid up for adoption, to please God."

In 2024, there were 391,098 kids in foster care hoping to be adopted or age out of the system. There are demographic breakdown by race(s) and preference(s).

**

It would not please a benevolent God to trap rape victims with a reminder of their trauma for life!

It would not please a benevolent God to force children into a life of resentment and neglect!

Is there a benevolent God? Not in law, no.

Should the court admit that:

God designed that humans would be the genetically disadvantaged incestuous products of Adam and his daughter Eve and their children?

Genesis (Bible Chapter 1): Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel, and then they violently fought and Cain slew Abel, but the third child was fine (*).

Why must the church track genetic relations, in God's design? Isn't it criminally abusive to teach kids in public school that we're all the products of incest, which survived after God's drowning genocidal wrath toward God's own creations?

Is it morally acceptable for God to drown everyone on Earth to fix God's design and keep testing free will?

If God was qualified to be teaching about medical PPD, God should have instructed humans to wash their hands before delivering babies* instead of instructing them to spread Kaneh Bosm (Holy Anointing Oil) all over the tabernacle or manger.)

In 1865-1867 AD/CE, Joseph Lister discovered that sanitizing surgical instruments with carbolic acid - an antiseptic to prevent sepsis - reduced the number of post-surgical infections, amputations, and deaths.

What has law, for childbirth and God?

2 days agonoteabthiring

Ironically, the Old Testament (which Christians consider the word of their God) only mentions abortion once, and it's a description of how to perform one with a weird magic spell if a woman is unfaithful to her husband (Numbers 5:11-31).

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that abortion is a sin, or even of any concern to God at all. Although if one takes the Bible seriously, one has to accept that God is pro slavery and made women inferior to men.

Which is why the Bible shouldn't be taken seriously. It has a few good moral precepts which can be found anywhere and a lot of bullshit that the Western world has been dragged down by for millennia.

2 days agokrapp

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a day agomarcantonio

By "seriously" I meant in the way that Christians do, meaning the literal and inerrant word of God.

Obviously the Bible has been influential in forming Western civilization. So have the works of the Greeks and Shakespeare.

But no one is trying to enshrine the precepts of the Pythagorean cult into law.

a day agokrapp

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a day agowetpaws

Here's my post from April 2023 flagged as "misinformation" where I state exactly the premise shown to be true by this study, followed by repeated badgering and threats that I was "spreading misinformation" breaking site rules:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35461613

2 days agozzzeek

Just saw a TikTok post from a woman with an ectopic pregnancy being refused care by the Conway Medical Center (Conway, SC, near Myrtle Beach). Next day the post had been removed, with comments on other posts seeming to confirm that she had taken it down under legal threat from the hospital.

2 days agoNoGravitas

The biggest lie "conservatives" have spread is that the media is liberal.

a day agoguelo

Conservatives own the media.

a day agoHenchman21

That 10000% tracks. Welcome to HN.

a day agopotato3732842

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a day agowatwut

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2 days agojosefritzishere

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2 days agojisnsm

"Life of the mother" restrictions don't work. Doctors operating under threat of severe legal liability will second-guess the woman to death. Many such cases, in Texas and elsewhere.

2 days agodralley

> Surely there must be a middle ground between allowing free abortion and having women die of sepsis.

You're absolutely right, and we know so, because that middle ground actually existested before Roe v. Wade was overturned. Abortion was available but regulated.

2 days agoGrantMoyer

Sounds to me like the middle ground is allowing abortion. You don't have to have an abortion. If you want one you can, in the n first weeks of pregnancy.

That's the middle ground.

Maybe the far-left should wake up and ask for mandatory abortions up to carrying term for every woman so that the far-right finally understand that "allowing abortion" is already a middle ground.

It's funny how when one side is reasonable and the other is not, the middle ground must lean towards the unreasonable one.

2 days agothiht

Lower unwanted pregnancy and abortions by mandating vasectomies for men unmarried by age 21.

a day agoalphan0n

By banning "abortion" they've prevented doctors from providing adequate care for miscarriages. Politicians on the so-called "pro-life" side of this debate are stridently opposed to looking for a middle ground. Those excess deaths are entirely avoidable and utterly tragic. To the "pro-life" crowd, these deaths are collateral damage in a culture war. Death isn't the only extremely predictable (as in, we literally told you so) outcome, women who want to have children are being rendered infertile as a consequence of delaying treatment of miscarriages until death is an imminent risk.

2 days agoboothby

> they've prevented doctors from providing adequate care for miscarriages

When this started happening, I expected to see a bunch of malpractice lawsuits but that doesn't seem to have happened.

2 days agocriddell

The entire problem is that "Will this woman die if we don't abort?" is a judgement call, and expecting doctors to make perfect judgement calls 100% of the time or go to prison is just stupid. Meanwhile many of the rest of the states in the nation don't require you to do the impossible: Rather, just help people with your medical knowledge, and get paid handsomely to do so.

It's like making it a crime to cut someone open for surgery if you can't absolutely PROVE that they needed the surgery to save their lives, and then being surprised that doctors don't do surgery anymore. Any case even close to the grey line isn't worth your freedom over.

a day agomrguyorama

> expecting doctors to make perfect judgement calls 100% of the time

I expect doctors to provide the same care to my wife, mother, and daughters that they would want the women in their lives to receive.

19 hours agocriddell

You do understand the people pursuing this idiocy feel absolutely no guilt or shame, right? It's hand-waved away with "it's all part of God's plan". When you can blame some "higher power", you never have to take responsibility for anything, so there's no moral quandry to find yourself in.

It's absolute insanity, but it's reality.

2 days agotw04

That is a 30% increase.

But that is only till 2023. It is probably higher in 2024.

However, while most conservatives are too politically correct to admit it, a spike in dead women is an acceptable price for the salvation that comes from removing abortion access.

People love sacrifices to their gods when other people are making them.

2 days agomuddi900

And the number is "patients who lost a pregnancy in the second trimester [which] were diagnosed with sepsis"

2 days agoechoangle

Sure, previous status quo was pretty much that practically. The "totally won't remove abortion protection" suprem court remove that middle ground.

The obvious issue here is that conservative pro-life is nit about life, it is about punishing women. They don't care about anyone born.

2 days agowatwut

The cruelty is the point

2 days agod4rti

There isn't, you're creating a situation where the doctors have to worry that offering care too soon could lead to their arrest.

This exact situation was the final straw that triggered a referendum in my country to legalize abortion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar

Imagine if we made it illegal to stop early cancers and required doctors only to treat it when it's terminal.

2 days agolawlessone

Hey, cancers have DNA too! We should outlaw removing tumors!

2 days agodrawkward

Surely, there must be a middle ground between you having personal autonomy and me having control over your body - how about we do 50/50 you doing what I want and you doing what you want, seem fair?

2 days agohobs

Not when you believe abortion is murder and a sin against God.

There is no scientifically plausible basis for a ban on abortion - it's entirely rooted in Christian fundamentalism, and those people do not believe in a middle ground.

2 days agokrapp

I upvoted because it was unfairly downvoted. I disagree with the scientism presented in the comment it self.

A secular, liberal-democratic society is based on property rights and bodily autonomy. In such a society, banning abortion makes no sense.

Science has nothing to do with it.

2 days agomuddi900

> There is no scientifically plausible basis for a ban on abortion

Is there a scientifically plausible basis for a ban on other forms of homicide, or on genocide?

Science just tells us that a 24-year-old Korean, a 6-year-old English child, an American five minutes before birth and a Frenchman 5 weeks before birth are all equally human beings and all equally different from any other human beings. It doesn’t have anything to say about the morality of killing any of them, or in what circumstances.

If your moral position is ‘no homicide except in self defense,’ then that plus the scientific facts points in one direction. If your moral position is ‘homicide of slaves, children, fœtuses and other humans owned by another is permissible when the owner desires,’ then that plus the scientific facts points in another direction. If your moral position is ‘homicide of those without a functioning brain is permissible,’ then that plus the scientific facts points in yet another direction.

Scientific facts on their own are just facts; they just talk about what is, not about what one should do or not do.

2 days agoeadmund

Science does not "tell us that" things are "all equally human beings" (the use of the term "human beings" here is already in the moral context). What it does do is allow use to draw inferences like "this thing will likely develop into a person" and "this thing likely won't". I do agree that the "science says" crowd is overstating the case in their own dogmatic way, but let's try not to lay the foundation to do the same thing just with the opposite conclusion.

2 days agomindslight

Well the scientific basis is that you're killing another human (the fetus, scientifically, is another human, with its own genetics).

Of course, you still need a non-scientific, moral basis to decide whether murder is bad, and other circumstances pertaining to abortion (in general and each case specifically).

2 days agotomp

>Well the scientific basis is that you're killing another human (the fetus, scientifically, is another human, with its own genetics).

Except killing another human is allowed in other circumstances, especially in Texas. Using "science" to make a special case for a fetus seems like a pretext when that science no longer applies outside the womb.

2 days agokrapp

Both “killing” and “human” are linguistic and philosophical concepts, not scientific ones. So “killing another human” cannot rest upon a scientific basis.

2 days agomcphage

How so?

"kill" = "cause to cease living", "living" is pretty well defined (it's not entirely obvious for edge cases, like viruses, but quite obvious for cells)

"human" = pretty obvious as well, simply look at genetics. I mean, obviously an offspring of two humans is a human (for the next 100k+ years)

2 days agotomp

I've got great news for you - there is definitely a middle ground, and it's already been implemented! Every state has, and has had, laws against terminating pregnancies when fetuses are viable to survive on their own. Legally and ethically, doctors must consider the interests of the unborn when considering an abortion. The narratives you're hearing that make it seem like unborn humans are being outright killed are deliberately leaving out relevant details - things like the fetus had already died, or had severe birth defects and could never actually live, etc.

2 days agomindslight

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2 days agodrawkward

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2 days agoemorning3

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2 days agogallamine

By 'life-altering', do you mean: Fewer women dying of sepsis?

2 days agogortok

The life altering policy change was the state inserting religious dogma into medical decision making.

These aren’t women looking to terminate a pregnancy. These are women whose fetuses are dying through no fault of their own who seek to live.

2 days agoSpooky23

You can use math to check if that is a significant change.

2 days agoIolaum

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2 days agogallamine
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2 days agoaSithLord

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2 days agomonooso

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2 days agoaSithLord

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2 days agoTaurenHunter

This sort of legislation will continue to be passed across the nation until a consequence is introduced.