How horrible is the Texas abortion law?

Really horrible. I think the Supreme Court will vote it unconstitutional if the case gets there. I heard the statement the lawyer made who is suing the doctor. He said something like he has nothing against abortion but would like the $10,000. It did make me laugh. As you said he wants to push it through the courts.

Can 100 different people sue the doctor for $10,000? I wasn’t wondering if the law allows for that.

I saw Carly Fiorina (Republican who ran for president in the 2016 primaries and former CEO of HP) on The View today and she said the majority of Americans are in line on reasonable abortion laws and that politicians purposely don’t want to solve the issue.

@JLeslie: I wonder what Carly Fiorina would call “reasonable abortion laws?”

If basic human rights can be stripped away so easily, it’s a sign the country and its form of government sucks. Hard.

The next person you meet who feigns concern for women under fundamentalist Muslim rule as justification for US wars can be punched in the throat. And if the US military wants to really do something other than bomb brown people for corporate profits, it should be planning an invasion of Texas this very moment.

Deplorable as are some of the other recent laws put on the books there.

I personally would never live there for these reasons alone.

Horrible.
I’m becoming so ashamed of my country that I would honestly move, except for my kids.

very horrible

@jca2 She had statistics that something like 60% of Americans agree to the right to an abortion in the first trimester so I think she was saying stop fighting over that already. She brought up that Democrats want the right to abort up until labor pains start at 9 months, and I always feel that is a misrepresentation. She said 80% of people don’t agree with abortion in the final trimester if I remember correctly. My memory might be off, but the basics are there that the majority of Americans agree on the extreme ends.

Carly Fiorina was pushing incindiery fraudulent accusations that inspired a right wing terrorist to shoot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, shooting 12 people, murdering three.

The View should not treat her as a respectable person and air her lies.

It’s bad. Really bad.

I’ve already shared my feelings and concerns in a question I posted earlier, and in responses on other threads. Not only is the Texas statute based on questionable medical science, it provides no exceptions to women who are victims of rape or incest.

But beyond those deeply troubling issues is the impact of government intrusion into personal liberty and private conscience. This crazy law basicallly turns women’s wombs into state property and encourages friends, neighbors, and total strangers to become paid snitches and informers. It turns Texas into a regime based on spying and attacks every democratic principal of privacy.

And it’s likely it will be overturned as a result of court challenges. The Department of Justice lawsuit against the state was carefully planned and will likely succeed in getting an injunction on enforcement. BUT – The bigger danger lies ahead with odds that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe vs. Wade early next year.

I don’t understand how any uninvolved person can have standing in court to sue someone.

Imagine if ten strangers (to me) tripped on my neighbor’s cracked sidewalk and broke their arms, and I sued the neighbor. The court would say, “you were not harmed, get out of here.”

If the Supreme Court upholds the law, it will be another in a long line of cases showing conservative justices don’t rule according to law, they apply the agenda they were seated to implement.

@Call_Me_Jay
That’s the way the law was written – - you don’t have to be involved. You just get money for turning in the Doctor, the woman, the Uber driver . . . .

@Tropical_Willie – The Texas abortion law is shit. BUT it specifically exempts women who may receive abortion services from prosecution.

Likewise, there’s no provision that allows lawsuits against mail carriers, taxi or rideshare drivers, internet or phone service providers, or drug manufacturers who don’t knowingly and directly asisst in performing any “unlawful” abortion. Instead it’s targeted at hospitals, doctors, nurses, and clinics that terminate pregnancies outside the vague timeframe provided in the statute. The idea is to financially intimidate medical professionals who support safe abortion access and put them out of business.

What everyone should appreciate is that this terrible law is unenforceable outside Texas.

Christian Sharia law, that’s not even Christian.

@Call_Me_Jay I’m no fan of hers, but I completely agree with her that politicians love the abortion wedge issue.

Yes, like everyone I’m appalled at the general idea that abortion, a protected right, has been severely limited in Texas.

I do, however feel the need to throw some reality shade on the pile on, and say at least kids with genetic disorders aren’t getting summarily aborted for a little while; at least some fetuses previously aborted for their skin color or father’s identity will survive for a while, until this this is overturned anyway.

I believe in choice, but I also believe Roe v Wade is flawed in its blanket protection of all abortions, even those done for evil reasons. I’m hoping the shit show Texas has created might end in some deep thinking, soul searching, and a more moral policy, all around.

@Smashley What policy? What makes an abortion ok in your mind?

I agree, it is difficult to create moral systems, but no one on the left is even trying on the eugenics issue. I imagine the solution is a legally permissive and socially enforced one, but I’m open to hearing ideas @JLeslie

@Smashley Eugenics seems to be a Republican way to try to frame Democrats as Nazis and an attempt to lure Black people into the Republican Party. Black people are not that stupid. Republicans have been saying Planned Parenthood is an organization knee deep in Eugenics.

No one is tying down Black people and forcing them to get abortions. Also, what exactly are you worried about? A white girl aborting a baby because she got pregnant by a Black man? I actually know someone who did that. She felt she had no choice because her parents were racist and strict Christians and she couldn’t fathom telling them or that her baby would never be accepted. I see racism as the problem there. This was 35 years ago, hopefully that’s less likely now.

What if all these people just used birth control or abstained? The baby would never have been created so the Eugenics schtick doesn’t work. Unless, you are against birth control? Sure birth control can fail, but it’s rare.

This says race is not a factor in who and how many abortions are happening. https://www.guttmacher.org/report/characteristics-us-abortion-patients-2014 It’s 2014, but I doubt it’s much different now.

As @Call_Me_Jay points out, this is outrageous: “any uninvolved person can have standing in court to sue someone.”
Never mind that the reason for the legislation (discourage abortions) is troglodyte thinking.
Someone accused has no right to collect legal fees when they win.
Whether or not you actually had anything to do with anyone’s abortion, you could be hauled into court based on charges under this law and have to defend yourself and your accuser suffers No consequences if and when the suit is thrown out.

@JLeslie – while I don’t accuse planned parenthood of eugenic thinking, it is at least worth confronting the eugenic theory of Margaret Sanger. Just like we need to confront Lincoln as a deep racist and Hamilton as a crony capitalist, we shouldn’t whitewash the past to suit our modern politics.

While the issue of racial eugenics may not be a very salient issue, I bring it up because it is obviously immoral, yet, like ableist eugenics, it is very legal. The real thing I have a problem with that we’re on our way to Iceland levels of ableist eugenicism. A full 77% of fetuses with Down Syndrome are aborted in the United States, today, and no one on the left, the side which supposedly represents the people, will risk anything to stand against it.

@Smashley Stand against aborting Down Syndrome babies? Your statistic of 77% proves people on the left and right agree with aborting them. The good news is we can detect the genetic anomaly much earlier now than 20 years ago.

Whatever Margaret Sanger did (I’m not going to argue about her) has nothing to do with Planned Parenthood today. When I was a young girl my family would never have bought anything made in Germany and 50 years later I have a Porsche in my garage. The German government today is not the Nazi regime.

I’m not whitewashing anything, I’m talking about today not history.

I guess this is just another instance where I see terrorists propagating the same messages to both the left and the right to divide America and people soak it up. Democrats accuse Republicans of being racist, and accuse them of not wanting to teach history. Republicans do the same to the Democrats. It’s a joke! Americans need to open their eyes and see who the real enemy is. I need to remember to add this one to my list.

@JLeslie – What a dodge. Germany has directly confronted its history, and actively worked to come back from it, as well as try to understand and prevent the forces that caused Nazism. I offered that as long as you acknowledge your past, you can move on from it, and you just went and said moving on just happens on its own.

So if people agreed that racism was good, and aborting mixed babies was good, then it would be moral to do so? And it would be good news that we do it so efficiently with genetic screening? Your response is dripping with such ableist thinking that I’m trembling as I type. You must acknowledge the irony, at least, that you have actually come around in this conversation, and begun arguing that eugenics is a good thing, if it’s bipartisan,

Good enough for ya, mods?

Anybody who thinks that the Texas abortion law is preventing eugenics has really drunk the Kool-Aid. No. The Texas abortion law is about one thing and one thing only. Forcing women to carry fetuses to term against their will and having private citizens sue anybody who might want to help them.

@Caravanfan – I don’t give an f what the Texas law is “supposed” to do. It has real, on the ground, impacts on human beings. One of those effects is effectively banning most abortions in Texas. Another is that ableist eugenic abortion, which is evil and rampant, is curtailed for the moment. I acknowledge it’s a shit show right now, why can’t you acknowledge that ableist eugenics is bad?

@Smashley That’s right, Germany does a good job at teaching their citizens the history and horrors. What does that have to do with people growing up in the US? I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach history. I’m saying we don’t judge people, companies, political parties, based on 100 years ago when they have consistently for years shown a different mindset and actions.

I gave you statistics, Black fetuses are not being aborted more. That’s the data. If you want to ignore the data go ahead. Ironically, I once had a Black Facebook friend say to me abortion is the secret of white people. Meaning we get pregnant just as much, but we abort more often than Black people. That was his perception. He was talking about the stereotype of poor Black women have multiple children they can’t afford.

@Smashley: “One of those effects is effectively banning most abortions in Texas. Another is that ableist eugenic abortion…”

There is no “other” here. If you are pulling any kind of “well, actually…” or deciding that there is any gray area here, you’re a huge problem and an enemy of women. That may sound simple to you, but there really is no other way to put it.

Dropping a nuke on a city also drops its crime rate to zero.

Thanks @product

Sorry guys, I thought maybe you wanted some diverse perspectives here, not just a circle jerk.
If you can’t have an honest debate about eugenics, you can’t have an honest conversation about abortion. I appreciate that you are all unflinching stalwarts for women, but defending their right to abort for any interpretation of any unwanted genetic material doesn’t actually help. Abortion is hard because it involves conflicting rights. Arguing that we must never include a moral consideration for the fetus is part of why the right to abortion has been slowly degraded over the years. It is simply an untenable moral suggestion, and those who stand by it are finding themselves on shakier moral ground than they understand.

@ragingloli – I appreciate the attempt at humor, but I’m actually talking about reality here.

@Smashley: “Abortion is hard because it involves conflicting rights. ”

It’s quite easy precisely because it doesn’t involve conflicting rights.

@Smashley: “Arguing that we must never include a moral consideration for the fetus is part of why the right to abortion has been slowly degraded over the years.”

This is very much not true.

@Smashley: “It is simply an untenable moral suggestion, and those who stand by it are finding themselves on shakier moral ground than they understand.”

Arguing for personal autonomy and reproductive freedom is pretty solid moral ground.

@product – ok, I guess I didn’t realize what a hard liner you were. But right you are, in your own very little world. Yes, if you believe abortion can never be immoral, I guess I just don’t understand you as a human. I do stand by the statement that your side is losing ground on this issue because of your gaping moral blind spots.

Are the rest of you cool with this products assertion? That abortion, for any reason, at any point in pregnancy, can never be immoral?

@Smashley: “But right you are, in your own very little world.”

Cute and condescending. But really, you need to cook up some pretty fucked up ideology to be able to argue that my daughter’s uterus is any of your business (or anyone other than her own).

This is one of the most simple “issues”, and is only complicated by those who wish to control women. Getting it wrong is pretty far out there considering how simple it really is. Call it my “own little world” if you want. But it’s not mine. It’s the reality of women who have to live in a world where people are up in their shit and making all kinds of excuses why they are.

^^Exactly.

An individual choice is something to be respected, but when more than three quarters of all fetuses with Trisomy-21 are aborted in the US, (99.99% in Iceland, btw) you must acknowledge something is fucked up with the status quo.

Do the majority of you guys actually believe what @product says? That there is no such thing as an immoral abortion, even one done in the third trimester because the parents or partner hates the sex, race or chromosome configuration of the fetus?

Or maybe you’re with @JLeslie that as long as eugenics is bipartisan, it must therefore be moral?

Oh, and @JLeslie – the study you cited did indicate black women have more abortions than white women

White women were slightly underrepresented among abortion patients in 2014, having an abortion index of 0.7, while black women were substantially overrepresented, with a relative abortion rate of 1.9. Hispanic women were slightly overrepresented among abortion patients in 2014 (1.2)

@Smashley It’s not Eugenics. We SAVE Down Syndrome babies that nature and God would otherwise kill off. Down Syndrome males are born infertile. Many Down Syndrome children are born with heart defects and gastrointestinal disorders that need major surgery, and the surgeries are performed, we don’t just let nature take it’s course.

Want to fix whatever inequities there are in abortion by race no matter how small, then help Black people with financial equality, education, and availability to medical care. The link I gave you said ¾ of patients were low income.

You will never understand, because you have not been pregnant and worried for your life. You have not been pregnant and sick day and night to the point of hospitalization. You have not been pregnant with a fetus that cannot survive out of the womb. You have not been pregnant and the baby was born with a severe disease riddled with intense suffering day and night until it dies at a young age. This is about choice and control over our bodies and feeling SAFE that we will be able to get medical care.

An “abortion” in the 3rd trimester is called a delivery, @Smashley,and if the baby is viable they get medical treatment.

@Dutchess_III – not according to @product. He laid it all out in black and white. Viability isn’t even a standard he’s interested in. There is only none of your business.

@Smashley Then you have deliberatly misconstrued what @product is saying.

@JLeslie – are you serious? You absolutely are arguing in favor of ableist eugenics.

@caravanfan – how so? @product makes no carve out for viability in his absolutes. There is only good abortion, because, as he stated, the fetus is not a thing that deserves any moral consideration ever.

I’ll let @product answer this one. He’s a much better writer than I am.

No, @Smashley is correct: There are no moral considerations that a government need to consider regarding abortion. Abortion is healthcare, and women need to make their own choices.

In my opinion, it’s quite immoral to even discuss limiting reproductive freedom based on shit like “viability”.

@product – if we wheel this back to the start, I did suggest that the appropriate solutions were probably social, not legal. Could you agree we should make an effort to socially prevent abortions done for evil reasons?

@Smashley: “Could you agree we should make an effort to socially prevent abortions done for evil reasons?”

There are no “evil reasons”, so no.

And what does “socially” mean in this context?

Abortion for racist reasons is not evil?

Abortion is healthcare. No such thing as your “racist reasons” nonsense.

So in your world, eugenics is not a real issue, because it is good? Or it’s just no one’s business? Will you at least come out and state that the fact that nearly every fetus with Down Syndrome in Iceland is “chosen” for abortion is a good thing? I want to see you say it.

@Smashley: “I want to see you say it.”

Every woman who has an abortion has the right to do so, and fuck anyone who questions that. Seriously.

Do you see how we’re not talking about the same thing here? You’re engaging in questioning the morality of something that you have no right to engage in. Your actions here are disgusting.

You want me to do the same thing you are doing and make a moral judgement about a woman controlling her body and reproductive organs. I won’t do it.

Then just tell me that the fact that nearly every fetus with Down Syndrome in Iceland is aborted is a morally acceptable state of things.

Then extend that logic to say that if every baby ever were aborted, this would also be morally acceptable state of things.

I feel like we’re arguing vaccines here, ugh.

It. Is. None. Of. Your. Business @Smashley

@Smashley Out of curiosity, how many children with severe developmental disorders have you adopted?

@Smashley: “I feel like we’re arguing vaccines here, ugh.”

Tell me about it. I’m waiting for some “vaccines are a global conspiracy” line next.

@Smashley: “Then just tell me that the fact that nearly every fetus with Down Syndrome in Iceland is aborted is a morally acceptable state of things.”

Are you listening to what I’m saying?
Every fetus with Down Syndrome, every fetus without DS, every fetus that was aborted for any reason was – and has to be – the morally acceptable state of things. What other way could it be?

@Smashley: “Then extend that logic to say that if every baby ever were aborted, this would also be morally acceptable state of things.”

Again, the right for women to control their bodies is the morally acceptable state of things.

If you don’t like abortion (for whatever reason), you should likely take up the issue with your god (or mother nature or whatever). The fact that humans carry around a fetus in their body doesn’t sit well with you, and you want a find a way out of it. There just isn’t. That is the reality, and you want to limit abortion by pretending that this biological reality doesn’t exist or that the right of the carrier should be limited.

@gorillapaws – none yet, but I plan on it eventually, when I build my new house. One kid with developmental disabilities is all I feel I can handle right now! Perhaps that means I’d want to abort a child if I thought I’d have another like her, but I just don’t think I could. Thank God for IUD’s!

@product – no. I do not want to control anyone. I want people to do what is best for them, I just wish they hadn’t been so biased by society that they enforce eugenics upon themselves. I want people to not hate or fear disability to such a degree that it is eugenically eliminated from society.

I want my daughter to have friends like her. I want to tell my son that his sister’s life has meaning and value, and know that the world around us believes that too. I want someone to acknowledge that we did the right thing and didn’t risk her life with amniocentesis, and decided to take on the challenges no matter what. I want to tell a person who opted out of the life we chose because “they couldn’t do that to a child” or “with the world today…” or whatever other, deeply ableist rhetoric they use to justify their choice to abort, to go fuck themselves.

@Smashley – Well, I now understand (a little) why you feel so strongly about this. Thanks.

Besides our great disagreement on abortion rights, I do think you might be leaning into terms like “eugenics” and “ableist” a bit much here. I’m quite versed in the latter, and I don’t see how ableism applies to this conversation at all – even within the framework you have presented. And I don’t even see your “eugenics” applying here. Rather, it seems like it it’s just a continuation of every other decision that goes into pair coupling and choosing to create a child (choosing a mate with particular characteristics, etc). I could be wrong, but doesn’t “eugenics” imply an intent to populate the earth with humans of certain genetic makeup? Not mating with someone of the most diverse (racially, developmentally, etc) genetic makeup is hardly cause for declaring “eugenics”. Similar variables at work in your description of DS abortion, it seems.

@Smashley Every child should be wanted by their parents. And that begins with giving them a choice.

Does it ever end well for the child when choices are taken away from the parents?

If you want want to fight eugenics, start with education. Not government regulation of women’s bodies.

@raum – I have stated endlessly that I believe the solution is a social one, not a legal one. Yes, thank you, education does factor into this, but ableist education is toxic in its own way. I’m just hoping that the shitstorm created in Texas might inspire some conversation and mutual understanding, and eventually wind up with a better direction overall. I guess I should say I wish it never happened, but it did, so I’m hoping for the best,

@product – I don’t think I am using the terms incorrectly at all. Ableism here is the corrosive factor that infects the conversation and the social norms. It steals personhood from the conversation (regardless of what you think of fetal personhood, to a potential parent, the fetus is often very much a person) and turns the genetically different fetus into a pitiable thing, less than human, not worth enough in its own right to justify its own existence, much less the chance that it might experience suffering.

The eugenic element is that beginning with obvious chromosomal differences, but inevitably getting to questions of genetic markers of intelligence or body “normality”, we are making termination for genetic difference a regular part of our day to day lives. Our society will eradicate some genetic diversity altogether, given the chance, and will certainly limit its expression in many forms. I don’t see how this isn’t eugenics.

And thanks for softening your tone a little when you learned I had “standing” on this issue, I was getting sick of everyone dismissing me for having a penis. I still prefer to debate morality with blank slates, but that just doesn’t work for everyone I guess.

@Smashley So you are preventing pregnancy. Is that Eugenics?

@JLeslie – It could be, if it were being used by the population in a concerted effort to rid the population of a certain kind of person. But no, that is not how I use an IUD. I mean they’ve totally been used unethically to control populations, but that’s not how my society uses them.

@Smashley But, that’s what you are doing. Preventing another pregnancy. My society/country doesn’t use birth control or abortion to rid the population of a certain type of person either. Individuals decide whether to prevent pregnancy or have an abortion the same as you.

@JLeslie – I’m gonna risk using a vaccine analogy, because why not? Freedom is great. Vaccines are great. Vaccines work best when many people take them. It may be preferable to leave freedom alone, but when the sum total of the decisions of freedom cause a public health emergency, well, then maybe your free choice was also a wrong and antisocial one.

When a person aborts a child for having a genetic difference, they are also normalizing that behavior. Motivations are complicated, but the sum total of those motivations and free choices is kinda fucked up, and the Iceland example noone wants to touch gives us an idea where we could be heading. I’m saying a person that aborts a child for life-compatible genetic differences is doing a fucked up thing, regardless of any law.

Another thought experiment: would a law requiring “options counselling” to parents of all female children, that resulted in 0 female children being born in the whole country be moral? Switch chromosome 23 for 21 and this is exactly what is happening in Iceland today.

@Smashley “I’m saying a person that aborts a child for life-compatible genetic differences is doing a fucked up thing, regardless of any law.”

I tend to agree with you, but the point is that we can’t legislate away fucked up things. Women have the right to make that choice about their bodies. If you want to educate them about those choices, please do so, but removing their ability to make those decisions is an even greater evil.

“I’m gonna risk using a vaccine analogy, because why not?”

Maybe because it’s a bad comparison? Fetuses aren’t contagious pathogens that spread through a population with exponential rates of transmission causing hospitals to overflow and people to die because there are no ICU beds.

@gorillapaws – you don’t have to be so literal. I don’t think it was a bad analogy at all. More Freedom > less freedom. If freedom = awful stuff happens because people make bad choices with that freedom, then limit that freedom somewhat. I think a good social construct of shame should suffice for the issue of eugenics.

@Smashley “I don’t think it was a bad analogy at all.”

Argument from Analogy is only effective insofar as:

- “The relevance (positive or negative) of the known similarities to the similarity inferred in the conclusion.
– The degree of relevant similarity (or dissimilarity) between the two objects.
– The amount and variety of instances that form the basis of the analogy.”

@Smashley “More Freedom > less freedom.”

This premise is an overly-simplistic model. There are many complexities in deciding which freedoms we limit (legally) and why. There are/have been many things that are morally wrong that aren’t illegal, and things that are/have been illegal that are not morally wrong.

Contagion is completely different than a pregnancy. I can’t catch your pregnancy.

I do agree that ethical considerations should be looked into and discussed as science continues to advance. Eye color, IQ, gender, genetic diseases, physique, I really have no argument with you about that. I do think we need to keep up and be cautious. I don’t think the current abortion situation in the US comes anywhere close to causing concerns about these things. Neither the US government nor any of our state governments are pushing people to abort. There is no SYSTEMatic aborting of certain groups.

No matter what I’m going to want to protect a woman’s right to have control over her body.

@JLeslie there may be no policy in place to ecourage biased trait selection, currently, but we certainly have a system. Like I stated in the Iceland example that still noone wants to touch, the policy is to give “genetic counselling” which just happens to result in 100% of fetuses with Down Syndrome being aborted. Even without a similar policy here, 77% of fetuses with Down Syndrome are arborted. This is a system.

@Smashley I did not see a link for Iceland. If you’re willing to post it again I’ll read it. Are they forcing women to abort? Or, is their health care better at getting it diagnosed while in utero? I don’t live in Iceland, so again in my country it is not a government policy, it is individuals.

A family member of mine by marriage once helped a friend who lived outside of the US get an abortion here. Her friend’s fetus was diagnosed with some sort of genetic anomaly, possibly Down’s I don’t know, and her country will not abort. So, women will pay for plane tickets, hotels, and procedures, to get those abortions done. She had the money to do it, and to get it done safely. Women will try crazy shit in desperation to abort. Women wind up dead.

@JLeslie https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/down-syndrome-iceland/

@Smashley It’s definitely a complex issue. Not as simple as changing genetic counseling. (Though that is a critical part.)

If we want to tell parents that they should have this child, we also need to tell them that there will be resources for them, their community will value their child and their child can have a good life.

I also have to disagree with:

It steals personhood from the conversation (regardless of what you think of fetal personhood, to a potential parent, the fetus is often very much a person).

There is no “regardless”. This is very much the crux of the issue here.

@Smashley Also, yes. If you’re debating government regulation of women’s bodies, whether you have a vagina or not does matter.

Thanks for the link. So women in Iceland are not forced to get the test nor to abort, but of the women who get the diagnosis, 100% abort.

The video points out in the US most of the reluctance is because of religious views, but I would point out there is incredible peer pressure in religious groups, and it is not just a religious foundation of when life begins, but pressure, guilt, and almost a glossing over of how difficult raising children with disabilities can be.

The video also points out the ethical issues are complex and questions what will be going too far.

Seems all reasonable to me, and that they are thinking about all of the angles.

You might not realize that as a young girl I used to play with a Down’s Syndrome boy. I used t love going to his apartment, his mom was really cool, and he had a bar to play on in the house, and I didn’t even realize he was different. I remember my mom telling me he had Down’s syndrome and saying his face was different and describing it to me. I had not noticed. Years later she told me his mother had a really tough time, and had told my mother if she had just been a couple of years older they would have caught it, because they did not test women under age 35 back then. I guess they could have, but they didn’t. Her husband had left when their son was young and he just couldn’t hack it. My interpretation is she definitely would have aborted if she had known. She never had more children.

I have two friends with children who have some disabilities that include physical problems and lower intellectual capacity, and one I think if they had known while pregnant they would have aborted, and still would say it today, even though they of course love their daughter. The other I don’t think would contemplate it.

One school friend of mine grew up with a brother who had either Down’s syndrome or some other disability, I do not remember, and it was fairly severe. She never had children, and I think partly was the fear of having a baby with problems similar to her brother. Seems a shame. She is beautiful inside and out, and only was caring and wonderful with her brother, but I think seeing what both her parents and her brother went through she did not want to risk it. I assume either she would not consider abortion or worried when we were younger that they would not be able to detect a problem. Now, there are a lot more medical advances.

the video talked about initial testing at 10–12 weeks. That’s great! It used to be testing was in month five, and then there were better tests in the fourth month. It also used to be that only women over 35 were tested, but now I think it is maybe across all ages some basic tests, I am not sure all the standard tests that are done when women are pregnant now.

Don’t get me to cussing. It’s worse than horrible it’s T Total bullshit. More fascist garbage from a party who want to take rights away from women at the same time they scream bloody damn murder if anyone mentions gun control. Don’t mess with our right to run around like Rambo, or suggest that we might be wise to keep guns away from mental cases and children. But thoughts and prayers when a school is attacked and scores of teachers and students slaughtered. Screw these freaking neo Nazi morons. And shove your thoughts and prayers up your ass. End of Rant.

^^I wish you were my neighbor. You’re so entertaining.

Lol @JLeslie well thank you and I wish we were neighbors as well. I just need some cool down time. This is a very sore subject with me. I know, whoul’da thunk it, right? ; ) Have a great evening :)

@Smashley “Are the rest of you cool with this products assertion? That abortion, for any reason, at any point in pregnancy, can never be immoral?”
Yes.
Up to the point of birth and its first breath, the fetus is part of the woman bearing it, and she has every right and obligation to do what she thinks is best with it.
If you’re looking to religious cult backing for any other determination, note that all the mentions in the Judeo/Christian Bible of life starting mark that at the first breath.

@dabbler Ending a pregnancy is not necessarily killing the fetus. A woman can choose to deliver in her 8th month, but killing the baby is something else. The baby is not dependent on the mother in the 8th or 9th month, it can survive separate from the mother.

@JLeslie Viability outside the womb is a useful benchmark, as far as I’m concerned.
But nobody can convince me a mass of cells barely advanced from a zygote is a person.

@dabbler Yes, I think there was some genius in the viability ruling.

I think most arguments regarding the last trimester are distractions. Most Americans are in agreement on that, both liberals and conservatives.