Concern for the protection of women’s lives in anti-abortion laws is not a pro-choice ploy. It’s a p

[pearl]

In my opinion there is no compromise that will be fair to a woman under these new anti-abortion laws.

Meanwhile, many pro-life Catholic thinkers have insisted that none of these laws endanger women in any way: They argue that these laws can be written in ways that will restrict abortion while allowing exceptions to handle miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and dangers to women’s lives in reasonable, commonsense ways.
But it is not at all obvious that this is true. Nor is it at all obvious that there is consensus about how to handle these situations in reasonable, commonsense ways, even within the church.
Take S.B. 8, the Texas law, which creates an exemption from liability for abortions “necessary due to a medical emergency.” What does that “necessary” mean? The law does not say. Is an abortion that would avert a 5 percent chance of death “necessary,” or must a doctor wait until the risk increases to a 25 percent chance? Is it enough to know that a mother will have a high chance of death tomorrow if the pregnancy continues?

Under both the Texas and Oklahoma laws, medical professionals who are fully confident in their diagnosis of a medical emergency and whose decisions would stand up to anyone’s moral scrutiny can still face legal liability. Because these laws allow plaintiffs, but not defendants, to recover legal costs, doctors and hospitals may be exposed to exorbitant costs defending their medical judgment against bad-faith lawsuits. It may even risk their freedom and livelihoods. Come September, if all goes according to the state’s plan, doctors in Oklahoma who are accused of performing an abortion that wasn’t sufficiently medically warranted might not just face a lawsuit but also a homicide charge.

How long after abortion is criminalized in Oklahoma will it take before a situation arises in which not a single doctor is available to perform a necessary, life-saving abortion for a woman who is too sick, or too poor, to travel elsewhere for it?

We cannot write laws that incentivize doctors to err on the side of allowing the woman to die and ignore the outcome that will result. If there are steep penalties for performing abortions that are later determined to have been unnecessary without strong mandates for doctors and hospitals to perform necessary abortions—which the church surely wants to avoid for religious liberty reasons—women will die. Not because of a renewed culture of life, but because of capitalism. We will have simply made it more costly to kill the child than to kill the mother.

The church’s moral teaching is that abortion should only be performed when the doctrine of double effect applies—when there is some morally neutral medical intervention that can save the mother while, unfortunately and unintentionally, resulting in the death of her child. It sounds simple in theory, much the same way that “necessary” seems like a sufficient legal descriptor in theory. But in practice, Catholic bioethicists are split on how and when to preserve the lives of mothers when their pregnancies become life-endangering.
Notably, under Texas’ law, at least one patient was told to wait until her ectopic pregnancy ruptured her fallopian tube—which would have put her at immediate risk of death from hemorrhage—because her doctor worried an abortion wouldn’t be sufficiently “necessary” under the law until that point.

It is time to create the space for an actual conversation. How we adjudicate these laws affects more than the unborn. Women’s lives are on the line.
We need to talk about ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in abortion law. | America Magazine

 

[Wildswanderer]

In my opinion there is no compromise that will be fair to a woman under these new anti-abortion laws.

Meanwhile, many pro-life Catholic thinkers have insisted that none of these laws endanger women in any way: They argue that these laws can be written in ways that will restrict abortion while allowing exceptions to handle miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and dangers to women’s lives in reasonable, commonsense ways.
But it is not at all obvious that this is true. Nor is it at all obvious that there is consensus about how to handle these situations in reasonable, commonsense ways, even within the church.
Take S.B. 8, the Texas law, which creates an exemption from liability for abortions “necessary due to a medical emergency.” What does that “necessary” mean? The law does not say. Is an abortion that would avert a 5 percent chance of death “necessary,” or must a doctor wait until the risk increases to a 25 percent chance? Is it enough to know that a mother will have a high chance of death tomorrow if the pregnancy continues?

Under both the Texas and Oklahoma laws, medical professionals who are fully confident in their diagnosis of a medical emergency and whose decisions would stand up to anyone’s moral scrutiny can still face legal liability. Because these laws allow plaintiffs, but not defendants, to recover legal costs, doctors and hospitals may be exposed to exorbitant costs defending their medical judgment against bad-faith lawsuits. It may even risk their freedom and livelihoods. Come September, if all goes according to the state’s plan, doctors in Oklahoma who are accused of performing an abortion that wasn’t sufficiently medically warranted might not just face a lawsuit but also a homicide charge.

How long after abortion is criminalized in Oklahoma will it take before a situation arises in which not a single doctor is available to perform a necessary, life-saving abortion for a woman who is too sick, or too poor, to travel elsewhere for it?

We cannot write laws that incentivize doctors to err on the side of allowing the woman to die and ignore the outcome that will result. If there are steep penalties for performing abortions that are later determined to have been unnecessary without strong mandates for doctors and hospitals to perform necessary abortions—which the church surely wants to avoid for religious liberty reasons—women will die. Not because of a renewed culture of life, but because of capitalism. We will have simply made it more costly to kill the child than to kill the mother.

The church’s moral teaching is that abortion should only be performed when the doctrine of double effect applies—when there is some morally neutral medical intervention that can save the mother while, unfortunately and unintentionally, resulting in the death of her child. It sounds simple in theory, much the same way that “necessary” seems like a sufficient legal descriptor in theory. But in practice, Catholic bioethicists are split on how and when to preserve the lives of mothers when their pregnancies become life-endangering.
Notably, under Texas’ law, at least one patient was told to wait until her ectopic pregnancy ruptured her fallopian tube—which would have put her at immediate risk of death from hemorrhage—because her doctor worried an abortion wouldn’t be sufficiently “necessary” under the law until that point.

It is time to create the space for an actual conversation. How we adjudicate these laws affects more than the unborn. Women’s lives are on the line.
We need to talk about ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in abortion law. | America Magazine

You are worried about the one in a million exception but not the millions of aborted babies.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

I think those without a medical degree shouldn't make these costly medical decisions which affect others in terms of laws and the implementation of said law.

 

[joe1776]

You are worried about the one in a million exception but not the millions of aborted babies.

Your mistake is that you are using the reasoning function of your brain rather than trusting your conscience (moral intuition), and that reasoning function is failing you.

If your conscience was telling you that abortions are wrong, they would FEEL wrong, and that feeling would be followed by an urge to severely punish the wrongdoer just as it does when you hear of a cold-blooded murder.

Pro-lifers don't feel the urge to severely punish the woman for terminating her pregnancy. Instead, they want to punish those who assist her; which makes as much sense as punishing the accomplice but not the wrongdoer.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Your mistake is that you are using the reasoning function of your brain rather than trusting your conscience (moral intuition), and that reasoning function is failing you.

If your conscience was telling you that abortions are wrong, they would FEEL wrong, and that feeling would be followed by an urge to severely punish the wrongdoer just as it does when you hear of a cold-blooded murder.

Pro-lifers don't feel the urge to severely punish the woman for terminating her pregnancy. Instead, they want to punish those who assist her; which makes as much sense as punishing the accomplice but not the wrongdoer.

No it's perfectly logical. The woman act from emotion, the abortion provider acts for profit.
And of course they feel wrong.
Of course, there are some coldly calculating women who just kill the child without remorse, I'm sure.
If my conscience didn't tell me it was wrong, I would not oppose it.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

In my opinion there is no compromise that will be fair to a woman under these new anti-abortion laws.

Why should women or the left compromise at all with a religious belief? It doesn't belong enshrined in the law anywhere. The goal is for women to have access to safe, legal abortions if they are victims of incest, were raped, have a life-threatening pregnancy, have a dead fetus in utero, or are a pregnant female. Any of those is fine. Her call.

You are worried about the one in a million exception but not the millions of aborted babies.

The aborted fetuses don't need worrying. The person whose pregnancy threatens her does.

You work at an IVF clinic. A fire breaks out. You can save either the last toddler in the company's day care, or a case of a dozen viable embryos in the freezer, but there is not time for both. Do you save the one or the many? If you answered the embryos, you are consistent. Why worry about the one toddler but not the dozen "babies"? But most people would save the child.

 

[GardenLady]

The church’s moral teaching is that abortion should only be performed when the doctrine of double effect applies—when there is some morally neutral medical intervention that can save the mother while, unfortunately and unintentionally, resulting in the death of her child. It sounds simple in theory, much the same way that “necessary” seems like a sufficient legal descriptor in theory. But in practice, Catholic bioethicists are split on how and when to preserve the lives of mothers when their pregnancies become life-endangering.

I have read in Catholic publications that if there is an ectopic pregnancy the diseased fallopian tube can be removed, with the double effect of aborting the (nonviable) fetus, but that it is not permissible to open the tube, remove the fetus, and close/preserve the tube, because then the intent is to abort.

I have read that a cancerous uterus can be removed because removal of a diseased organ to save the mother is permissible, though it has the double effect of ending the pregnancy. BUT if the cancer is somewhere else (say, colon), it is not permissible to have an abortion so that the mother can have surgery/chemo/radiation, because it is not a case of double effect but direct abortion. So the mother is SOL.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

 

[joe1776]

No it's perfectly logical. The woman act from emotion, the abortion provider acts for profit....

Your logic escapes me. Killing, as an emotional act, is OK? If the provider is assisting in a murder what difference would it make if it was done with no charge?

 

[SomeRandom]

You are worried about the one in a million exception but not the millions of aborted babies.

Tell that to the living breathing mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, children, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc of those “exceptions.”
Indeed tell that to the actual doctors who will inevitably encounter such instances.
Just because it might not happen 100% doesn’t mean it’s not impactful. Especially for the actual women involved. Sorry but their medical decisions should be made by the pregnant person thats actually affected by such phenomenons with the help of medical professionals,
Not politicians who seem to not know basic biology. (Seriously, the ignorance I’ve seen displayed by them would get them laughed out of a primary/elementary school class in the rest of the world.)
And make no mistake these are medical decisions.

Sorry but in terms of priorities, I care about the already living people and I don’t want to potentially kill someone’s mother, sister, daughter etc. My conscious would disown me.
I don’t want abortion to happen, but making it illegal is detrimental to all.
As the US has so keenly demonstrated to the rest of us with its disgraceful headlines as of late
Also statistically speaking I don’t think such instances are actually one in a million.
Miscarriages (in the early trimesters) is more like 10-15 percent of all pregnancies.
Ectopic pregnancy in the US is like 1 in 50. So they’re fairly common actually.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Why should women or the left compromise at all with a religious belief? It doesn't belong enshrined in the law anywhere. The goal is for women to have access to safe, legal abortions if they are victims of incest, were raped, have a life-threatening pregnancy, have a dead fetus in utero, or are a pregnant female. Any of those is fine. Her call.



The aborted fetuses don't need worrying. The person whose pregnancy threatens her does.

You work at an IVF clinic. A fire breaks out. You can save either the last toddler in the company's day care, or a case of a dozen viable embryos in the freezer, but there is not time for both. Do you save the one or the many? If you answered the embryos, you are consistent. Why worry about the one toddler but not the dozen "babies"? But most people would save the child.

I don't play stupid " what if" games. They are all humans.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Sorry but in terms of priorities, I care about living people and I don’t want to potentially kill someone’s mother, sister, daughter etc. My conscious would disown me.

If you care about living people you should care about the unborn, because that's is what they are.

 

[SomeRandom]

If you care about living people you should care about the unborn, because that's is what they are.

I don’t see how that follows. They are living in the sense that they're an organism, sure. But biologically speaking it’s more akin to how we classify bacteria or single cells organisms to be “living.” That’s just biological fact. Meanwhile the actual person who is pregnant is living in the more colloquial sense of the word. As in they have lives, they have dreams, aspersions, possibly a job or attending school, maybe they even have children literally depending on them. They have family, friends, co workers etc.
A fetus has the potential to have those things in the right circumstances. Sure. I want those circumstances to pan out.
But like I said, these medical afflictions are fairly common in the grand scheme of things and must be taken into account and dealt with. Otherwise you could end up killing people or throwing perfectly good doctors in jail for merely upholding their HIPPA oath.
Indeed these people have lives and friends and family who would also be affected.

Like I said, I don’t want abortion to happen. But as demonstrated by the US as of late, making it illegal just causes far more suffering. For all involved. And I tend to err on the side which causes the least amount of suffering overall

 

[Sheldon]

In my opinion there is no compromise that will be fair to a woman under these new anti-abortion laws.

Meanwhile, many pro-life Catholic thinkers have insisted that none of these laws endanger women in any way: They argue that these laws can be written in ways that will restrict abortion while allowing exceptions to handle miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and dangers to women’s lives in reasonable, commonsense ways.
But it is not at all obvious that this is true. Nor is it at all obvious that there is consensus about how to handle these situations in reasonable, commonsense ways, even within the church.
Take S.B. 8, the Texas law, which creates an exemption from liability for abortions “necessary due to a medical emergency.” What does that “necessary” mean? The law does not say. Is an abortion that would avert a 5 percent chance of death “necessary,” or must a doctor wait until the risk increases to a 25 percent chance? Is it enough to know that a mother will have a high chance of death tomorrow if the pregnancy continues?

Under both the Texas and Oklahoma laws, medical professionals who are fully confident in their diagnosis of a medical emergency and whose decisions would stand up to anyone’s moral scrutiny can still face legal liability. Because these laws allow plaintiffs, but not defendants, to recover legal costs, doctors and hospitals may be exposed to exorbitant costs defending their medical judgment against bad-faith lawsuits. It may even risk their freedom and livelihoods. Come September, if all goes according to the state’s plan, doctors in Oklahoma who are accused of performing an abortion that wasn’t sufficiently medically warranted might not just face a lawsuit but also a homicide charge.

How long after abortion is criminalized in Oklahoma will it take before a situation arises in which not a single doctor is available to perform a necessary, life-saving abortion for a woman who is too sick, or too poor, to travel elsewhere for it?

We cannot write laws that incentivize doctors to err on the side of allowing the woman to die and ignore the outcome that will result. If there are steep penalties for performing abortions that are later determined to have been unnecessary without strong mandates for doctors and hospitals to perform necessary abortions—which the church surely wants to avoid for religious liberty reasons—women will die. Not because of a renewed culture of life, but because of capitalism. We will have simply made it more costly to kill the child than to kill the mother.

The church’s moral teaching is that abortion should only be performed when the doctrine of double effect applies—when there is some morally neutral medical intervention that can save the mother while, unfortunately and unintentionally, resulting in the death of her child. It sounds simple in theory, much the same way that “necessary” seems like a sufficient legal descriptor in theory. But in practice, Catholic bioethicists are split on how and when to preserve the lives of mothers when their pregnancies become life-endangering.
Notably, under Texas’ law, at least one patient was told to wait until her ectopic pregnancy ruptured her fallopian tube—which would have put her at immediate risk of death from hemorrhage—because her doctor worried an abortion wouldn’t be sufficiently “necessary” under the law until that point.

It is time to create the space for an actual conversation. How we adjudicate these laws affects more than the unborn. Women’s lives are on the line.
We need to talk about ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in abortion law. | America Magazine

Not just their physical lives, there is their emotional wellbeing as well. Why do people have to insist others live their lives according to their beliefs?

If you don't like abortions don't have one, or help anyone else to have one, but they shouldn't tell other people they have to live their lives according to their beliefs. I guess tolerance isn't really part of Christian beliefs, for anyone claiming to be a Christian who wants to enslave and control women.

 

[Wildswanderer]

A fetus has the potential to have those things in the right circumstances.

Which is the vast majority of circumstances. And most abortion is merely for convenience. The life of the mother excuse is just that. No one is going to let her die if it comes to that.

 

[Sheldon]

If you care about living people you should care about the unborn, because that's is what they are.

We should care about sentient women, and the pernicious idea it's ok for others to make decisions about what they do with their bodies. Enslaving people is not caring about them.

Insentient blastocysts, zygotes and developing foetuses are part of a woman's body, they can never be given more rights than the woman whose body they part of.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Insentient blastocysts, zygotes and developing foetuses are part of a woman's body, they can never be given more rights than the woman whose body they part of.

No... they need the same rights as any human, which includes the right to life.

 

[SomeRandom]

Which is the vast majority of circumstances. And most abortion is merely for convenience.

Vast majority is still not all. Also stats?
Just curious

The life of the mother excuse is just that. No one is going to let her die if it comes to that.

Except they will. As has been already demonstrated by countries that made (or has made) abortion illegal with the exception of medical necessity. We already have examples of this throughout the world. The US isn’t special in that regard.
Why do you think so many countries reversed their anti abortion laws? Including Ireland a heavily catholic country no less!
Doctors were forced by law/fear of legal repercussions to allow mothers to literally die. Not because they didn’t intervene, but because they were forced to wait too long, as per their laws.

Also it’s not just the life of the mother we’re discussing here. A doctor fearing legal retribution will intervene in say an ectopic pregnancy (remember that’s 1 in 50 pregnancies in the US) only when it becomes life threatening, if that’s how the law is worded. Meaning that instead of intervening when it was actually medically necessary to (helping to keep intact fertility and indeed inner health) they will wait until they are more certain they won’t face legal retribution. Meaning the overall health of the patient is jeopardised. A doctor should never have to do that.
I say that as someone who’s medical system is quite literally the responsibility of the Government. And even our politicians tend to leave that sort of thing between the doctor and patient, because even they know they shouldn’t interfere.

 

[Sheldon]

most abortion is merely for convenience.

Most people recognise abortion is a human right, some are troubled by it but also recognise it's not their decision, but a minority of intolerant bigots, who like to pretend they "care" about an insentient clump of cells, like to insist others must live according to their beliefs, when the truth is they simply can't cope with anyone living their lives and not caring about the archaic beliefs others seem to think trump human autonomy.

If you anyone doesn't like abortions, then they don't have to have one.

 

[Sheldon]

No... they need the same rights as any human, which includes the right to life.

Well you can believe whatever you like, and others can believe what they like, and a woman gets to make decisions about her own body.

Unless you're happy to be told what you can and cannot do with your body of course? Only I doubt that is the case is it.

 

[GardenLady]

No... they need the same rights as any human, which includes the right to life.

Does it include being counted in the Census while in utero? Being claimed as a dependent on taxes while in utero? Hmm... the Catholic church does not hold a mass of Christian burial for a miscarried or aborted fetus--maybe they and other churches should have to do that kind of thing?