No, but it's more than enough time to decide, excluding unforeseen medical issues. In other news Corrine Brown gets 5 years. Nice to see some consequences for once. Hopefully Menendez goes down as well, but it's already been 3 years since charges were filed, and he got off on a mistrial last month.
Agreed, but only if there aren't any bullshit roadblocks getting in the way of that time frame. I understand and advocate for personal responsibility, but it would be nice if the government wasn't actively trying to fuck you out of your legal right to have an abortion by making it near impossible to have one in a reasonable amount of time. The process is horrifying enough without the stress caused by the long dick of the government.
It would be cool if they stopped trying to close down every abortion/maternity clinic, defund planned parenthood, force doctors in rural areas to obtain hospital admitting privileges that are unreasonable, and force invasive ultrasounds on pregnant women in order to allow an abortion to take place. They can stop trying to make women hold funerals for fetuses. If they could just leave women the fuck alone for once in their lives, and promote healthy sex education, I would take more seriously the GOP stance on abortion.
Yeah, like every other issue there's little sanity to be found among the wild accusations and general craziness.
Who makes the determination of how much time is "enough time?" If it's 20 weeks, why is 21 unacceptable, and wouldn't 19 be better to many people? What method do we use to determine how far along the pregnancy is at the moment? A doctor's opinion? The memory of the woman of when her last period was and when she had sex? Those are not acceptable methods in my view. If we're going to have a distinct cutoff for abortions, we must have a distinct and accurate method for determining the progression of the pregnancy. Further, why the hell does anyone care when some woman you've never met has an abortion? How does it affect any of us personally? Is our society better off with more unintended pregnancies that result in births or fewer? I'll say two things again: If you do not approve of abortion, then you should definitely never have one. Also, everyone should read A Case of Need by Michael Crichton before they enter into a discussion about abortion. It completely changed my understanding.
How about a reasonable benchmark? How about we determine the earliest point in gestation that a premie can reasonably survive (50% mortality rate?)? Before that and you can kill the child. After that point and you have to let the child live.
The discussion is (supposed to be) around viability of the fetus outside the womb. Of course the GOP stays 2-4 weeks ahead of where science would put it. A lot of the state laws are currently built around that metric. I don't care if it's someone I've never met, mostly, but I don't like the idea that a father has no say late in a pregnancy. They shouldn't early on, but if you haven't decided in 5 months, or whatever cut off, I think it becomes too late to make that decision on your own. Men have essentially no reproductive rights at the moment (which is why I have limited sympathy when women complain about the state of things now) so I don't think that's an unreasonable compromise. Keep in mind with the father out of the picture the woman still has the option to give the child up for adoption as well.
Moore now has the explicit endorsement of Trump. The RNC is funding him again after dropping him a few weeks ago. Mitch McConnell walked back his expulsion from the Senate talk and said it's up to the voters in Alabama. How do you counter the claim that Republicans on the whole are fine with child molestion as long as whoever did it votes to advance their agenda?
So because men don’t have any reproductive rights, women should be forced to not have a an abortion at 20 weeks? What if the guy supports her getting a late term abortion? Would that make it ok.
If this topic can’t get any agreement on here it sure as shit isn’t going to have an easier time in real life.
There are some things that you just can't rationalize or debate... some thing are just a strong, moral conviction or belief. You can explain your position all you want, but there's really no realistic expectation that the "other side" will change their mind. All I can ask is that people respect the other viewpoints, and keep things civil. Whether it's hunting, or abortion, or the death penalty... some people just feel strongly about some things.
Moreso abortion which is so heavily intertwined with religion. Which you can't debate. You just can't. I've seen multiple debates/arguments which end with "Well, that's just what I believe". And that does it. There's nothing else to be said once someone says that. Once someone drops faith, it's pretty much impossible to discuss anything else on that topic.
Too many people believe that if you simply insult, shout down and belittle a person’s beliefs enough; they wil suddenly change that person’s mind and they’ll see the light. Nobody likes admitting that they’re wrong, even more so when it comes to the beliefs that they hand-picked for themselves. And its pretty much impossible for somebody to be wrong in topics with no true right answer.
People can feel free to believe whatever about it, it has no right answer. The only ones who are the assholes are the ones who say it’s a precious life, then turn around treat it like society's burden the second it is born. It’s like people who protest against stem cell research but refuse to nurture and raise those unused cells to life. Instead those cells go into the garbage, but at least it didn’t make baby Jesus cry.
No, because you’re not shaking a jar with a fetus in it in a teenager’s face. Having an opinion is harmless regardless of context. But there are plenty out there who take hypocritical action. I mean, we have had extreme cases in the past of people who were so pro-life they were willing to kill doctors to get their point across. You don’t like illegitimate children sucking up the economy, I don’t, nobody does. But I’m gathering you’re also not the type of person who is going to walk up and scream in their trash mother’s face. There’s a big difference between those two things. And fuck the people who do make life hard and threatening for others over opinions.
Can we just take a moment to talk data and statistics right now? Because, according to the CDC, there were about 6180 "late term" (beyond 20 weeks) abortion procedures in the US in 2012, which is about 1.3% of the total, and of those, 80-90% were done prior to 25 weeks. In reality, only about 9% of abortions are done after the first trimester, and the trend has generally been towards fewer and earlier abortions. The idea that a bunch of ladies are out there aborting healthy fetuses at 6, 7, 8 months is patently false. It is extremely difficult and expensive, not to mention painful, to have a late term abortion, and the risk of complication for the mother goes up with gestational age. Can you imagine finding out at 20 weeks that your fetus will never be viable outside of the womb, but having to carry that pregnancy to term? Having to deal with strangers touching your belly and asking questions about your pregnancy when your baby will probably die shortly after birth? Or being a 14 year old kid who isn't even having regular periods yet, who doesn't realize she's pregnant until she's a few months along and then takes a little while longer to work up the courage to tell her parents or seek help?
Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal wrote a piece that describes why this is: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe It's quite interesting, and if you dig his comics it's pretty funny as well. Too bad the conclusion is "there's really nothing you can do about it".