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jamesqSo you want to ban abortion outright, but that pesky Roe v. Wade thing keeps coming up? What do you do? Well, you could simply make it more and more difficult to get an abortion. After all, you're not actually banning it, you're simply putting up every conceivable (heh) roadblock to it. If the monetary requirements (you don't think the mandatory ultrasound is going to be paid for by taxpayers do you?) don't clobber you, then the barrage of presentations "to keep you informed" might catch you in a moment of weakness. Finally, if navigating all the roadblocks take too long you'll hit your 22 (varies by state) week time limit.
And let's not forget the lengthy, allegedly anonymous, forms you have to fill out. I say "allegedly" because, despite not having your name, they're sufficiently detailed to allow a good data-miner to figure out who you are. How many 6'4", 42-year old, males with red hair own a house in my postal code? I haven't named names, but I bet you could attach a name to that information without much effort. Same for women filling out this information. Then it gets put up on a publicly accessible database, ostensibly for research purposes. The next day a brigade of anti-abortionists just happen to show up on your doorstep.
I'd compare it to a sibling putting his finger as close to your face as they can while chanting "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." Except that's funny and this situation isn't.
If these are successful, I predict that even more roadblocks will be put up. Multiple presentations, multiple invasive medical procedures, more detailed forms, all to "keep the mother informed". Time limits will be clawed back (Oops, sorry, but the fetus has nerve tissue now, we can't let you abort this late). The goal being to make it to expensive in terms of time and money to ever successfully get in under the wire.
When abortion is still technically legal, but effectively impossible, they'll declare victory. Seriously, I fully expect some politician to happily stand in front of a crowd and say that "We've made abortion so difficult to get in this state that no one successfully got one last year. Yay!"
Women who try to take things into their own hands will be charged with homicide. This could include self-induced abortions, using a back-alley abortionist, or simply traveling to a less-restrictive area. People who try to assist them will also be charged.
Predictions:
Pro-choice forces will come up with some way of giving women information remotely. decentralized web-sites with information on how to do your own abortion safely. Anti-abortion forces will try to infiltrate these sites, set up "look-alike" sites, etc. Legislatures will try to make the web-sites illegal.
You'll need to give personal information when buying home pregnancy kits.
Laws that outlaw helping people procure an abortion will become more draconian. Walk a woman past the clinic's protesters? That's a fine. Take her to another state? That's jail time. Hell, simply encouraging someone to get an abortion will become illegal.
It makes me glad I'm Canadian. Things aren't perfect here, but they are better. Calgary has an abortion clinic and it's generally free of protesters (due to court injunctions they have to stay well away from it - typically hundreds of feet). Of course, the fact that the building is built to withstand small explosives is testament to the fact that we're not yet as enlightened as I'd like.
Anyway, the whole thing is another attempt to punish women for all kinds of things: Chief among them having sex. Also violating traditional gender roles - married homemakers should want babies, and unmarried women shouldn't require abortions because they're not having sex. There are no other categories.
It all boils down to men making the decisions because women can't be trusted to make the right decisions themselves. It's patronizing, mean-spirited and increases the amount of suffering in the world.
And let's not forget the lengthy, allegedly anonymous, forms you have to fill out. I say "allegedly" because, despite not having your name, they're sufficiently detailed to allow a good data-miner to figure out who you are. How many 6'4", 42-year old, males with red hair own a house in my postal code? I haven't named names, but I bet you could attach a name to that information without much effort. Same for women filling out this information. Then it gets put up on a publicly accessible database, ostensibly for research purposes. The next day a brigade of anti-abortionists just happen to show up on your doorstep.
I'd compare it to a sibling putting his finger as close to your face as they can while chanting "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." Except that's funny and this situation isn't.
If these are successful, I predict that even more roadblocks will be put up. Multiple presentations, multiple invasive medical procedures, more detailed forms, all to "keep the mother informed". Time limits will be clawed back (Oops, sorry, but the fetus has nerve tissue now, we can't let you abort this late). The goal being to make it to expensive in terms of time and money to ever successfully get in under the wire.
When abortion is still technically legal, but effectively impossible, they'll declare victory. Seriously, I fully expect some politician to happily stand in front of a crowd and say that "We've made abortion so difficult to get in this state that no one successfully got one last year. Yay!"
Women who try to take things into their own hands will be charged with homicide. This could include self-induced abortions, using a back-alley abortionist, or simply traveling to a less-restrictive area. People who try to assist them will also be charged.
Predictions:
Pro-choice forces will come up with some way of giving women information remotely. decentralized web-sites with information on how to do your own abortion safely. Anti-abortion forces will try to infiltrate these sites, set up "look-alike" sites, etc. Legislatures will try to make the web-sites illegal.
You'll need to give personal information when buying home pregnancy kits.
Laws that outlaw helping people procure an abortion will become more draconian. Walk a woman past the clinic's protesters? That's a fine. Take her to another state? That's jail time. Hell, simply encouraging someone to get an abortion will become illegal.
It makes me glad I'm Canadian. Things aren't perfect here, but they are better. Calgary has an abortion clinic and it's generally free of protesters (due to court injunctions they have to stay well away from it - typically hundreds of feet). Of course, the fact that the building is built to withstand small explosives is testament to the fact that we're not yet as enlightened as I'd like.
Anyway, the whole thing is another attempt to punish women for all kinds of things: Chief among them having sex. Also violating traditional gender roles - married homemakers should want babies, and unmarried women shouldn't require abortions because they're not having sex. There are no other categories.
It all boils down to men making the decisions because women can't be trusted to make the right decisions themselves. It's patronizing, mean-spirited and increases the amount of suffering in the world.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 09:29 pm (UTC)"If they make the decision not to fund abortion then they really have to start making the decision to start funding contriception, child care, and issues that arise from forcing teenagers to become single parents."
I think the immortality issue also stems from the fact that most religions had prohibitions against it, and the darwinist and evolution of the species couldn't see any adaptive function to childlessness.
The scientific findings on childlessness have actually gone though a change recently - in that they've figured out that there is an evolutionary benefit when some of a population remains childless. Since your personal genetics are carried on through neices and nephews in a large enough degree that the benefit of having extra caretakers in the population (or those who pass on cultural knowledge) becomes an evolutionary advantage to the population as a whole. (Interesting stuff - if you are into that sort of thing)
no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 09:47 pm (UTC)Religion. That's a whole converstaional spur in one word.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 09:54 pm (UTC)I'm OK with this.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-29 10:47 pm (UTC)that gives some people a greater proclivity towards considering the larger tribe (ie: humanity) as being family.
ie: their kin bonds are similar in strength to their tribe bonds... which effectively means they will protect and nurish the tribe (be that knowledge based or in a more physical way) to the same level or greater then they will their own family.
no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 09:56 pm (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:05 pm (UTC)After all, if I hold you prisoner, I don't get to say there was no harm because I let you free after nine months.
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:06 pm (UTC)It's not the child I object to... I wouldn't want to be pregnant!
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:12 pm (UTC)The fact is though the person might not wish to go through pregnancy, they can chose to pay not to.
my comment above was directed at
"If they make the decision not to fund abortion then they really have to start making the decision to start funding contriception, child care, and issues that arise from forcing teenagers to become single parents."
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:15 pm (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:26 pm (UTC)But once again it's the consequence of a choice.
I chose to play the lottery and go to the casino. If I lose my house and all my possessions. Should the government give me the money back because of a bad decision?
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:45 pm (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:49 pm (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:46 pm (UTC)Unwanted pregnancy and losing your property to gambling are not equivalent situations. Sex is a basic human need, perhaps not as dire a need as air/food/water, but a need nonetheless. Telling people that their only option is to abstain based on a risk of pregnancy (which can be mitigated somewhat by birth control) is basically telling them that they can't have pleasure, they can't have intimacy, they can't express love (yeah I know these don't precisely line up with sex, but to a lot of people, they're damn close).
STDs are a much more apt analogy. We can cure Gonorrhea, but since catching an STD is a result of choosing to have sex, should people be forced to live with it?
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:54 pm (UTC)While sex may be a basic human need, gambling is an addiction. Some people control it better than others. Some people can not live without gambling.
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-30 12:51 am (UTC)Thank you... I couldn't agree more with what you said about sex & abstinence... I couldn't put it into words... but yes that's where my thought pattern was going!
So instead I opted for the tongue in cheek response.
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-30 01:17 am (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:33 pm (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:45 pm (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:56 pm (UTC)There is some... it correlates roughly to the length of the pregnancy before the occurance of the event that leads to the loss.
Thus if you abort early during a pregnancy due to natural causes or choice a woman suffers less psychological trauma then if it occurs either later or after the child is born.
This has to do with the hormones involved in the mother/baby bond that start occuring at conception and continue to build until the baby is weaned... and then gradually drop off after.
Hence there is more trauma involved with giving up a newborn or a late term pregnancy (typically once people feel movement of the child the trauma of the loss of said child soars tremendously).
Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:58 pm (UTC)Re: no need for teenager parents/single parents due to no abortion
Date: 2010-04-29 10:56 pm (UTC)It would vary person to person depending on what their views of abortion are... but carrying a baby to term causes far more attachment & therefore psychological trauma than an abortion which is why anti-abortionists in the US want mothers to have scans... they want the mother to form an attachemnt.