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Trooper said:
I am all for zero restrictions for therapeutic abortions, but do you want zero restrictions for elective abortions, as well, allowing for abortions at any time and any stage?
There are two people involved in elective abortions that I necessarily trust.
The first is a pregnant woman. While it is true that women are human, and humans imperfect, legislatures and voters often presume that having two X chromosomes means one is inherently stupid. Listen to those who defend state-mandated ultrasounds; they're trying to help women make responsible decisions? Hey, women are doing okay on their own; they haven't wrecked the species, yet, and in truth I don't think they've done nearly as much damage as men. So, you know, let us not imitate those among our Republican and Christian neighbors presuming women inherently incompetent to make decisions about what takes place in her body.
The second is a doctor. While it is true that people like Kermit Gosnell exist, that will be true regardless of what laws we pass. But the question of, say, if an
"infant's feet is even a little bit wet" (then again,
"Who has made such an argument"?) is a delusional fantasy. As Bells has noted, everything gets even more complicated around thirty-three weeks; if a woman requests a nonmedically indicated abortion that late in gestation, any responsible doctor is going to explain the problems with that. You can probably find a doctor who will do it, and do it well, but the vast majority of doctors who perform abortions would hedge, regardless of abortion politics, on the question of whether it is ethical to do that to a pregnant female patient. We're talking about a major procedure that is pointless compared to the obvious alternative.
The actuarial considerations alone suggest that even in the coldest context, doctors have more reasons to not perform elective abortions in the latest stages of gestations, and those are based on considering the health of the pregnant female patient. Hospitals have every reason to want doctors to follow their ethical noses on this one, and insurance companies have every incentive to
demand such outcomes.
Dry-foot, to me, is an abstract rhetorical proposition resulting from the fact that it's not
my rights being bargained away in restricting abortion.
But these personhood proposals bring that concept squarely into focus, because they create a conflict by which dry-foot is a bright-line resolution; whatever else you want to assert for an earlier abortion threshold encounters this conflict. The functional question of
how to resolve the conflict is the important one, because right now there are two bills with some possibility of passing in the states. We already know the outcome in Oklahoma, since the court struck this from the 2012 ballot as facially unconstitutional. But either Oklahoma or South Carolina might well find itself in a position to haul this conflict into federal court not on the basis of PIU in general, but FAP specifically.
The fact that some human beings of either sex are less competent and functional than others does not warrant so broad a response. Consider running a battery of tests on men, under mandate of law, each year, including cystoscopy, to make sure they're as clean as can be, and then having the doctor lecture the man on the morality of sexual caution. I guarantee you that when the dust settles, men are going to be really,
really pissed at whatever obligations they might be required to undertake as a result of personhood.
The question, of course, is whether a personhood
statute can withstand constitutional scrutiny. Right now, the answer is apparently,
no.
Personhood advocates, naturally, are not pleased; they also seem to be a little confused about why they can't violate the U.S. Constitution. (The U.S. Supreme Court refused Personhood Oklahoma's appeal.) Which is why the Oklahoma legislature is trying to pass the stricken ballot measure as a piece of legislation, as if that will help. South Carolina is also trying to figure out how to pass a personhood law. But this hasn't made it to federal court, yet. I would simply ask, then, as I have Geoff, what you think is going to happen when one of these states forces the issue into federal court?
For me, sure. Unrestricted access. Whatever aesthetic notions might sway me to suggest it's unfair to abort at a given point in a pregnancy are
my aesthetics. As a question of law, however, the framework of my society is such that my aesthetics can be suited if one somehow persuades me to stop trusting women, as such, and stop trusting doctors, which would also be part of convincing me rationally—existentially and ontologically, primarily—that the organism
in utero trumps the person it exists inside.
However other people wish to govern a woman's body, I can promise that personhood
in utero is a
very dangerous way to go about it. And, you know, like Billvon said back in
November, 2012 (in the early days of the fifteen-month thread someone decided to revive in the atheism thread), there is a rational way around the implications of personhood
in utero—simply ignore the Constitution.
And I would ask you to consider a specific reality:
There are already fetal protection laws in many states, ostensibly passed to protect pregnant women from domestic abuse and other violence; these laws are, instead, being used to prosecute women who are drug addicts, or have mental health problems, and become pregnant, or even women who have simple accidents. Additionally, do you know where the geuinely unethical medical professionals are? I mean, sure, we can always point to outliers like Kermit Gosnell, but consider the professional in New Mexico who deliberately sabotaged a woman's IUD and then refused to correct the issue under a conscience clause? Doctors who will lie to their patients in order to reduce the potential for an abortion. That whole, hopefully outlying, mess at JPHS last year. The doctor who took out a court order to confine a pregnant woman in the hospital for nonmedically indicated bedrest, purporting to be guarding against miscarriage, and ultimately having every appearance of contributing to miscarriage. The aged doctors who go on to legislative careers—one pops up in the news once or twice a decade—pushing against "rape exceptions" for anti-abortion laws because they're a doctor and they can tell you a woman just can't medically get pregnant from a rape because the juices ain't flowin', or the tubes are all spastic, or what the hell ever. And look at how far that excrement made it. It actually had an effect on the last presidential election, and contributed to Democratic gains in the U.S. Senate[sup]†[/sup]. Personhood will, in addition to striking abortion, prohibit two of the most popular and effective methods by which women can "take responsibility for themselves". And the question is
coming. It will arrive in federal court, with some probability of doing so before 2016, although it will be interesting if South Carolinia or Oklahoma move before the midterm. But the point is, the question is coming. And still—a year and a half we've been trying to have this discussion about what happens when one of these laws is enacted and enforced—people demand we talk about something else.
These FAP proposals—
any PIU proposal, actually—are dangerous to pretty much everybody who
doesn't live inside another person. And this question is coming. So what's the problem? The Turducken is amusing in the sense that you laugh because it's the nearest thing to
decency one can manage. It is also significant of just how absurdly people want to talk about
anything but reality when it comes to this question of a woman's human rights.
And the response
this community has generated? I just wish one of these folks running interference for the anti-abortion crowd under a ridiculous pretense of outrage founded in ignorance would actually have the courage to just come out and explicitly tell women to go fuck themselves. Because that is the tacit message. Over a year and a half, now:
Women's human rights under an extant anti-abortion proposal? We demand you talk about something else.
So for whatever reason it's important to you, yes, I technically do hold dry-foot as my standard,
because it's not my body and rights at stake. And
every argument attempting to persuade me to declare a stake in governing a woman's body tracks back to appeals to emotion and aesthetics, or else presuppositions of women's general stupidity or evil, and the general corruption of any doctor who will provide abortion services.
And those appeals are
excrement of particularly bovine metaphor.
The data are clear; abortion access has contributed greatly to women's economic and educational access, and improved mental and physical health.
FAP will take that away.
My dry-foot assertion has no effect under the current Constitutional framework of the United States of America. But it does coincide with the first obvious bright line answering the conflict that emerges
because of FAP and PIU assertions. So of course, some are outraged and demand we talk about anything else. After all, the fact of legislative efforts to bring this question to the fore, and which bring dry-foot into specific consideration, are irrelevant to the outrage and need to talk about anything else.
So as it really seems to matter to you, yes, my answer to your inquiry is the same as it has always been, the same as I explained in the
thread that seems to have sparked all this useless outrage—my resolution is to simply assert that what takes place inside a woman's body is her own business.
And, yes, it's true, I do have my own aesthetics in this. Maybe if my society had a better regard for women in particular, and showed greater concern for the people who already exist in the world generally, perhaps I might feel differently. But in Nebraska, a female can be old enough to breed, but not old enough not to. They're prosecuting women for being drug addicts who become pregnant, or are mentally ill and become pregnant, or simply have accidents. And those laws were supposed to protect pregnant women from
other people. One of the most notorious turns, indeed, is in South Carolina, where they are pushing a FAP bill. They're attempting to make that sort of sleight
mandatory.
We cannot disconnect the fact that the question arises from the circumstances that elevate it. I beg your pardon, then, if I am not amused by
a year and a half of people throwing insane temper tantrums in order to avoid this discussion. I suppose I ought to thank you in that context, as you're only asking me to reiterate what's already on the record.
____________________
Notes:
[sup]†[/sup] A brief note aside, from the Pacific Northwest: Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) ran the Senate Democrats' election campaign; the scuttlebutt is that she was several down the list, with everyone ahead of her turning down the request from Majority Leader Reid for want of keeping the bruising loss they expected off their political record. Sen. Murray, on the other hand, guided the Democrats to a win. There's a reason she's number four in the Senate; there's a reason Reid puts her front and center on so many important issues. And the thing is, she knew exactly how to hit Republicans where it hurt when they gave her not so much an opening as an engraved invitation. But the GOP hasn't learned, has it? On they go, pushing in the states, and even introducing a perennial bill in Congress.
Works Cited:
Supreme Court of the State of Oklahoma. "In re Initiative Petition No. 395, State Question No. 761". April 30, 2012. The Oklahoma State Courts Network. May 22, 2014. http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?citeid=465514
Minor, Jack. "Court's 'Pontius Pilate' move to open abortion challenge?". World Net Daily. May 14, 2012. PersonHoodOklahoma.com. May 22, 2014. http://personhoodoklahoma.com/news/2012/05/courts-pontius-pilate-move-to-open-abortion-challenge/