On 5/17/05, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Gary Denton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> > Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2005 5:00 PM > Subject: Re: Abortion and the Democratic Party Re: The American > PoliticalLandscape Today > > >Why do you want to get involved in medical decisions that endanger > pregnant > >women? > > I guess the answer to this lies in the difference between this procedure > and the procedure used sometimes with fetuses that are already known to be > dead. They are simply delivered dead...which is clearly emotionally > tramatizing, but can be the best action for the mother's physical health. > >From what I've been told, sometimes women are asked to carry a dead fetus > until they naturally go into labor, which sound very very difficult. > > So, AFAIK, the differences between these two procedures (not including the > waiting for full term to deliver), is determined by legal, not medical > factors. It is against the law to deliver than terminate the life of the > fetus....that's murder. But, if the delivery is not quite completed, it's > a legal abortion. >
Perhaps your right. I know that dead fetuses are sometimes carried to term, less medically risky, sometimes. But now some hospitals are always making them be carried to term because even on a dead fetus many hospitals will not do a dilation and extraction - too controversial. In the case I know about the d&e had a 4% complication rate, inducing a later birth and the procedure they used has a 29% complication rate. So banning partial birth abortions even applies to the unalive even with the law struck down. BTW, three separate judges have ruled the partial-birth abortion ban unconstitutional because it provides no exception for the woman's health. "According to responsible medical opinion, there are times when the banned procedure is medically necessary to preserve the health of a woman and a respectful reading of the congressional record proves that point," Judge Kopf wrote. "No reasonable and unbiased person could come to a different conclusion." In his 474 page judgement he went through the entire argument of both sides and concluded: "In summary, examined from the perspective of the trial record, substantial evidence is lacking to support Congress' Findings that there is "no credible medical evidence that partial-birth abortions are safe or are safer than other abortion procedures," and that the banned procedure is "never necessary to preserve the health of a woman." On the contrary, the trial record establishes that there is a significant body of medical opinion that contradicts Congress. No reasonable person could come to a contrary decision." I am thinking these arguments never go anywhere. I worry about the health of the mother and what happens if abortion is outlawed. We know it doesn't stop. Opponents argue about unborn babies or pre-babies, their souls, and the slippery slope. .As well as just spread lies, I think every community has activists spreading their facts about this "never necessary procedure." Another Judge was able to turn the trial into a show trial against the D&X abortion procedure - even though it's not clear that the D&X procedure is what the PBA ban actually bans. (The court in California ruled that the definition was too broad, contradicted medical definitions and was too vague. This third court in New York with a conservative judge found the procedure revolting but the law unconstitutional.) Legal background here: http://www.federalabortionban.org/in_the_news.asp Poland also recently restricted abortions. A study is out, it says what you would expect. Reproductive Health Matters volume 10, issue 19 (not online, sorry), has a report on the results of Poland's abortion ban (Poland banned abortion in 1993, except in cases of rape, a threat to the health or life of the mother, or a severely damaged fetus). The Polish abortion ban is fairly similar to what pro-lifers in the USA have proposed, except that American pro-lifers are opposed to health exemptions. The law didn't measurably reduce the number of Polish abortions; it did, however, force hundreds of thousands of women to obtain illegal abortions (and it drove the price of abortions way up). However, some women who need abortions for health reasons don't have the money or connections to obtain an illegal abortion, or cannot safely have an abortion outside of a legal hospital setting. The result, of course, is that women are hurt. Alicja became pregnant for the third time aged 31; her eyesight had deteriorated with each of her two previous pregnancies. A number of ophthalmologists agreed that another pregnancy could irremediably damage her eyesight, but they refused to write a letter to that effect. One finally did write the requisite letter, but Alicja was turned away from the public hospital where she sought an abortion. The obstetrician-gynecologist she saw there told her that the letter was "not enough" and destroyed it to prevent her from using it elsewhere. Because she could not raise the money to pay for a clandestine abortion, she was forced to carry her third pregnancy to term. As a result, she is now legally blind and unable to work or care fully for the child. Many other cases but so it goes. -- Gary Denton _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
