ABORTION and the interview

[8744]

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Originally posted by smartreader
sure

Oh, OK. let me clarify.

I most certainly do not have a "religious motivation in my approach to treating a patient." In fact, the opposite is true. I decided to become a physician primarily for the money and the job security. (But that is a different arguement. Let's not go there.)

Earlier I implied that I was not a perfect Christian and I want to emphasise that for the most part I really don't care what my patients do as long as they are compliant with their treatment. I am no saint. And I am not a social crusader. I like most of my patients but I feel sorry for many of them and am tremendously interested in the freakish stories they have to tell.

And even if they're not compliant, hey, I can't follow them home and force them to take their pills. So I am very "laissez faire" when it comes to my fellow sinners.

Not to mention that anybody who has spent five minutes in an urban charity hospital would see the futility of trying to change anybody's morals.

But I draw the line at certain things. Abortion is one of them. (Nothing else comes to mind immediatlely.) And since I absolutely believe that abortion is murder, I cannot just "look the other way" and condone the practice by participating in it. This includes counseling, referring, and driving them to the abortion clinic.

(And you better believe before I applied to our two State Medical Schools I made good and sure that "abortion training" was not required in the curriculum.)

But that is not the same thing as "preaching" to patients. On the few occasions when women have asked me for advice on obtaining an abortion I simply told them that my religious beliefs forbid me from taking any part in the practice including referring them or telling them where to go. Period. I Don't recall that I called down fire and brimstone or threatened them with all nine levels of hell including Duluth on a Tuesday night.

I believe one woman was offended by my answer. The others apologized for putting me on the spot. One young girl was being more-or-less forced by her mother to have an abortion but wanted to keep the baby and she seemed relieved that a Doctor (well, student doctor) held views which mirrored her own.

I even had a patient who was a rape victim but decided to keep the baby because she was a devout Christian. I did not hesitate to tell her that I thought she was doing the right thing and that her simple but strong convictions put the rest of us to shame.

Now, I think some of you are confused. I certainly would counsel a woman with a tubal pregnancy that one of her options was elective abortion. Or a woman with a condition which is exacerbated by pregnancy to such an extent that her life is in danger. Then it really is a matter of choice. But some women will suprise you. I believe my wife would sacrifice her life for any one of our children.

My sister-in-law, by the way, refused an elective abortion for an ectopic pregnancy and nearly bled to death in the fourth month. But that was her choice. An ill-informed choice, I believe, given that it was a tubal pregnancy. (I believe that only an omental implantation has any chance of being carried to term. The tubes just don't have the blood supply for a large placenta.)

But I guarentee that she has a clean conscience.

 

[Naphtali]

Originally posted by MDTom
...than you better check the part in Leviticus that says 'Thou shall not lay thy hands on the dead skin of a pig.' So that if you have a literalist view, you better stop playing football, or you might suffer the rath of God!

(please excuse my dredging up of this quote from many posts ago, but I really feel the need to comment)

Why do I hear so many people (almost all of who seem be anti-Christian) quoting Leviticus? I mean, for modern Christians, this is perhaps the most irrelevant book of the Bible. I strongly suspect people making these quotes don't know much about Christianity.

See, Leviticus is the OLD covenant. God made the old covenant with Israel when He led the Jews out of Egypt. They didn't keep that covenant; and then He sent his Son (Jesus), who died for our sins (we are all, after all, sinners). Thus, there was a NEW covenant. ("For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."-- John 3:16) This is that "new and everlasting covenant" you may have heard of (if you've looked into to the matter, rather than skimming the Bible for out of context quotes).

Here's a passage that tells it quite well, I think:

8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:
9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
13 In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 8:8-13

In other words, I can lay [my] hands on the dead skin of a pig" all I want. Because of the new covenant, I'm not bound by the old.

My purpose of this post is not to preach at people. It's just to clarify a misconception I've often seen (here at SDN and elsewhere).

Naphtali

 

[sacrament]

The problem, Naphtali, is that so many people will pick and choose which portions of the "old covenant" to believe in. They'll discard the stuff about not wearing multi-thread garments, but happily quote the stuff about homosexuality. If the Old Testament is so irrelevant to Christianity, then why don't you all just rip it out of your Bibles.

 

[Naphtali]

Originally posted by sacrament
The problem, Naphtali, is that so many people will pick and choose which portions of the "old covenant" to believe in. They'll discard the stuff about not wearing multi-thread garments, but happily quote the stuff about homosexuality. If the Old Testament is so irrelevant to Christianity, then why don't you all just rip it out of your Bibles.

Partly out of tradition. Partly because knowing what the old covenant was is still important.

I don't quote Leviticus about homosexuality either, and I have issues with people who do.

Naphtali

 

[SaltySqueegee]

Originally posted by greggth
If all physicians took this position, there would be no medically supervised elective abortions. Therefore, thousands or millions of women would have other people do it or attempt it themselves.

What would happen if abortions were performed using nonsterile equipment, with no history-taking, no initial examination, no medical facilities available to treat the woman in case something went wrong during the procedure (due, for example, to a pre-existing condition), no medical follow-up afterwards to make sure there was no infection?

Do we say, "well, any woman who tries to have an elective abortion deserves what she gets"?

I'm sure that there are physicians that will perform elective abortions. I am not one of them. That is where I see a line that I do not feel comfortable to cross. On the same note, I am not saying that I will prevent them from obtaining that elective abortion.

In my mind's eye, I can not rationalize myself into performing an elective abortion. Again, I am not going to stop someone else from doing it. I still respect other's opinions.

Agree to Disagree.

 

[SaltySqueegee]

Originally posted by Naphtali
(please excuse my dredging up of this quote from many posts ago, but I really feel the need to comment)

Why do I hear so many people (almost all of who seem be anti-Christian) quoting Leviticus? I mean, for modern Christians, this is perhaps the most irrelevant book of the Bible. I strongly suspect people making these quotes don't know much about Christianity.

See, Leviticus is the OLD covenant. God made the old covenant with Israel when He led the Jews out of Egypt. They didn't keep that covenant; and then He sent his Son (Jesus), who died for our sins (we are all, after all, sinners). Thus, there was a NEW covenant. ("For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."-- John 3:16) This is that "new and everlasting covenant" you may have heard of (if you've looked into to the matter, rather than skimming the Bible for out of context quotes).

Here's a passage that tells it quite well, I think:

8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:
9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
11 And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
13 In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 8:8-13

In other words, I can lay [my] hands on the dead skin of a pig" all I want. Because of the new covenant, I'm not bound by the old.

My purpose of this post is not to preach at people. It's just to clarify a misconception I've often seen (here at SDN and elsewhere).

Naphtali

Your point is well taken.

However, I was referring to a literalist fundamentalist. Not a person who is a dispensationalist, as you seem to follow. Believe it or not, there is a difference. One (literalist) takes all parts of the bible as literal truths stacking up over time, with punctuated periods of revelation (Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, David, Jesus, etc.). The other views each covenant as a renewing and replacing paradigm; for instance, Jesus has died for us, now we don't need to worry about sacrificing every other day to cleanse our sins, etc.

My original quote was addressing the literalist, while I believe your views differ a little from what I was originally addressing.

 

[Naphtali]

Originally posted by MDTom
Your point is well taken.

However, I was referring to a literalist fundamentalist. Not a person who is a dispensationalist, as you seem to follow. Believe it or not, there is a difference. One (literalist) takes all parts of the bible as literal truths stacking up over time, with punctuated periods of revelation (Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, David, Jesus, etc.). The other views each covenant as a renewing and replacing paradigm; for instance, Jesus has died for us, now we don't need to worry about sacrificing every other day to cleanse our sins, etc.

My original quote was addressing the literalist, while I believe your views differ a little from what I was originally addressing.

I see what you're saying. But, part of my original point was that, from a strict literalist point of view, Leviticus is STILL an outdated covenant. I don't see how someone can follow Hebrews 8:13 without discarding the old. ("In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.") To follow Leviticus is not to be a staunch literalist. It's not just that God gave some laws, and some time later gave some more laws. It's that He specifically said the new replaced the old. I feel that anyone who doesn't accept the new covenant has missed the whole point of the religion.

The only (religious) thing that bugs me more than someone chiding all Christians for following Leviticus is a Christian chiding another Christian for NOT following it.

Naphtali

PS: Be careful what assumptions you make. I think you'll find that people who agree with my take on this VASTLY outnumber people who swear by Leviticus.

 

[WillowRose]

One could just as easily point to any of the many stages of neuralation--from the beginnings of the CNS at 3 weeks, to the first neuro-integrative process (detection of electrical activity in the brain and onset of motility) at 6-7 weeks, to the first signs of continous EEG activity (brain activity) at 30 weeks--as the markers by which personhood could be set.

I read a very intriguing argument based on the EEG activity marker mentioned by Mistress S. We use this standard to determine *end* of life when deciding whether a person is brain dead. Why do we not do the same when deciding beginning of life? If our self-awareness & capacity for reasoning is a result of this brain activity, how can we say any individual without it is a person?

To tie this in to the argument of competing rights and wherther the right to life trumps all others, it is fairly clear from U.S. law that it does not. When we perform organ transplants, we are deciding that one person's quality of life or even right to life itself outweighs the donor's right to exist. When the next of kin of a patient in a persistent vegetative state goes to court to present evidence that the patient would prefer to die, are we not deciding whether that patient's right to exist is greater than his/her right to a reasonable quality of life? Are we not allowing someone other than the patient himself to make those decisions?

I can already hear you saying, "but those people only live by virtue of a machine." However, prior to roughly 22-24 weeks gestation, the fetus only exists because the mother's body keeps it alive. The point of viability is not as concrete, but certainly a better compromise position than any other, IMO. I believe the most premature infant to survive was roughly 24 weeks gestation. Setting a cut-off point at 22 weeks to allow for error in calculation should exclude elective abortions of viable fetuses. The problem with this standard is that some states are so restrictive of 1st trimester abortions, it is nearly impossile for some women to obtain one. However, it is a decent place to start. That isn't to say that an infant born at 24 weeks has a reasonable quality of life, only that it has an outside chance of survival.

The judicial system is quite adept at weighing competing rights. But, there is a difference between existing rights and those that have not yet been realized. I cannot sue my neighbor to prevent him from doing something that might infringe on my right to something I might want to do some time in the future. My rights have not been realized and do not carry the same weight as those of my neighbor. Similarly, a pre-viable fetus's right to life has not yet been realized and should not outweigh the existing rights of the pregnant woman.

I agree that parenthood is a great thing, but unlike other women, I became more pro-choice after I became a mom. Both of my children were adopted. I don't think abortion was an option for their birthmothers. Even if it was, I am glad that isn't the choice they made. However, I realize how difficult it is to raise children even in a society where women do not become social outcasts by having an illegitimate child. I also understand from reading the words from my son's mom, just how hard it was for her to place her child for adoption--really the only choice she had. And I know that most women put a lot of thought into whether to have an abortion.

My sister-in-law, by the way, refused an elective abortion for an ectopic pregnancy and nearly bled to death in the fourth month. But that was her choice. An ill-informed choice, I believe, given that it was a tubal pregnancy. But I guarentee that she has a clean conscience. But I guarentee that she has a clean conscience.

My question is why is this considered elective? Was their any chance at all that this pregnancy would continue to term? And her husband...does he also have a clear conscious because they chose to risk your sister-in-law's life rather than end a pregnancy with little chance of going to term? I'm not judging your sister-in-law...just pointing out that there are waaaay more than two sides to this issue. Choosing not to abort does not necessarily leave one with a clear conscious any more than choosing an abortion leaves one guilt-ridden for life.

Oh, and if I were in Louisiana, I guess I would just have to discuss the option of abortion outside of public hospitals. If that didn't work, then I would certainly put myself up as a test case for what I consider to be an unjust and unconstitutional law. That is how strongly I feel about freedom of speech, freedom of choice, and the rights of doctors to discuss all options that a patient has questions about.

Willow

 

[LukeWhite]

Originally posted by WillowRose
I read a very intriguing argument based on the EEG activity marker mentioned by Mistress S. We use this standard to determine *end* of life when deciding whether a person is brain dead. Why do we not do the same when deciding beginning of life? If our self-awareness & capacity for reasoning is a result of this brain activity, how can we say any individual without it is a person?

To tie this in to the argument of competing rights and wherther the right to life trumps all others, it is fairly clear from U.S. law that it does not. When we perform organ transplants, we are deciding that one person's quality of life or even right to life itself outweighs the donor's right to exist.

...

I believe the most premature infant to survive was roughly 24 weeks gestation. Setting a cut-off point at 22 weeks to allow for error in calculation should exclude elective abortions of viable fetuses.

Where to start. For one, the whole "brain activity" argument is a bit of a canard. It's notoriously difficult to measure fetal brain activity accurately, since the signals are overwhelmed by alll sort of other noise sources. But let's say persistent brain activity does start at 30 weeks. Let's draw the line of humanity there. So the children born before 30 weeks aren't human? Sounds like another prescription for infanticide to me. Imagine a parent of a baby born at six months saying, "You know, these NICU bills are getting costly, and we really can't afford it. Would you mind injecting our baby with some painless poison or just humanely crushing her skull with some forceps?" I doubt that they'd get much public sympathy, and yet it's entirely legal to do so now as long as the child's not been born.

Though that brings up the question of age of viability. I find that those advocating a pro-choice argument tend to have a fairly distorted view of the age of viability. I'm sure it's not intentional; it's just a matter of being exposed to one particular type of information. Pro-choice organizations don't talk about ages of viability for very good reasons: if people knew that babies born at 24 weeks in fact have a remarkably high survival rate (increasing all the time) and that the earliest viable premature birth happened a full MONTH earlier (at 20 weeks), that would obviously start to erode the tried-and-true trimester argument.

I agree that the age of viability is a good starting-point compromise, though by no means a good end-point. So let's use your logic, just adjusting for the actual figures. We'll lop two weeks off that 20-week point for the sake of surety, as you suggested, and we're down to 18 weeks. I doubt NARAL will approve. But then again, they've never had a problem with abortions well past the point of infanticide.

As for organ transplants, I'm afraid I don't understand your argument. All transplanted organs either come from those who are already dead, and therefore have no remaining right to life, or living donors who donate voluntarily after physicians ascertain that the risk of death, injury, or poor health is minimal. No hospital will let a parent donate their heart or liver to a child. So really, the principle for organ donation is based on just that right to life I mentioned.

 

[greggth]

Originally posted by MDTom
I'm sure that there are physicians that will perform elective abortions. I am not one of them. That is where I see a line that I do not feel comfortable to cross. On the same note, I am not saying that I will prevent them from obtaining that elective abortion.

In my mind's eye, I can not rationalize myself into performing an elective abortion. Again, I am not going to stop someone else from doing it. I still respect other's opinions.

Agree to Disagree.

It sounds as though you are condoning physician-provided elective abortions in the case where the woman is going to do it herself anyway and would thereby endanger her own life.

Immanuel Kant, as I understand him, and please correct me if I am wrong, would say that a person should do what would result in the best outcome if everyone in the world acted that way. So according to him, you should make your choice as if you were choosing for everyone. If you refuse to perform abortions, that means that you believe the best outcome would result if everyone else were to refuse to provide abortions, too. But it sounds like you believe that it is better for some physicians to provide abortions than for women to die of illicit abortions. What do you think?

 

[LukeWhite]

On the topic of rights to life and physician judgment of viability:

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cach...ture0502.html+preemie+survival&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Even physicians whose primary task is to save the lives of infants already born significantly underestimate their capacity for life. What about those whose primary interest isn't the survival of the fetus at all, but rather the claimed right to prevent any chance of that survival?

If we accept that life is worth protecting, and know that life is far more robust than even those who specialize in protecting it give it credit for being, surely it's reasonable to protect it beyond the limits we estimate.

 

[LukeWhite]

Some more info (Apologies to those who brought up philosophical or legal points I haven't responded too yet. Anatomy's keeping me from thinking too terribly abstractly.)

Spoke to my father, head of a neonatal unit, to get a few stats on ages of viability:

24 weeks: Very high, well, well north of 50%. The only reason it's not higher still is that some hospitals still give parents the option of resuscitating at 24 weeks. If it were done as a matter of course, the survival rate would be higher still.

22 weeks: The standard and current age-of-viability cut-off. The survival rate is 5%. His unit gives parents the option of resuscitation between 22-24 weeks; 30% generally take it. He estimates that the survival rate if all parents chose resuscitation would be 15-20%, with no extraordinary increase in costs. In other words, a 300% increase in expenses would lead to at least a 300% increase in survival rates. He estimates that the lifetime cost, including costs of disabilities, for these kids is probably a few million dollars. I believe that's right around or under what most actuaries peg as the reasonable value of a human life when considering safety improvements, legal judgments, etc.

21.5 weeks: They've had one of these in his unit, and she lived to 4 years.

20 weeks: He has trouble seeing how this would be possible, and so it's likely that the anecdotal evidence I read for that is due to an error in judging gestational age.

 

[8744]

Originally posted by WillowRose
I read a very intriguing argument based on the EEG activity marker mentioned by Mistress S. We use this standard to determine *end* of life when deciding whether a person is brain dead. Why do we not do the same when deciding beginning of life? If our self-awareness & capacity for reasoning is a result of this brain activity, how can we say any individual without it is a person?

To tie this in to the argument of competing rights and wherther the right to life trumps all others, it is fairly clear from U.S. law that it does not. When we perform organ transplants, we are deciding that one person's quality of life or even right to life itself outweighs the donor's right to exist. When the next of kin of a patient in a persistent vegetative state goes to court to present evidence that the patient would prefer to die, are we not deciding whether that patient's right to exist is greater than his/her right to a reasonable quality of life? Are we not allowing someone other than the patient himself to make those decisions?

I can already hear you saying, "but those people only live by virtue of a machine." However, prior to roughly 22-24 weeks gestation, the fetus only exists because the mother's body keeps it alive. The point of viability is not as concrete, but certainly a better compromise position than any other, IMO. I believe the most premature infant to survive was roughly 24 weeks gestation. Setting a cut-off point at 22 weeks to allow for error in calculation should exclude elective abortions of viable fetuses. The problem with this standard is that some states are so restrictive of 1st trimester abortions, it is nearly impossile for some women to obtain one. However, it is a decent place to start. That isn't to say that an infant born at 24 weeks has a reasonable quality of life, only that it has an outside chance of survival.

The judicial system is quite adept at weighing competing rights. But, there is a difference between existing rights and those that have not yet been realized. I cannot sue my neighbor to prevent him from doing something that might infringe on my right to something I might want to do some time in the future. My rights have not been realized and do not carry the same weight as those of my neighbor. Similarly, a pre-viable fetus's right to life has not yet been realized and should not outweigh the existing rights of the pregnant woman.

I agree that parenthood is a great thing, but unlike other women, I became more pro-choice after I became a mom. Both of my children were adopted. I don't think abortion was an option for their birthmothers. Even if it was, I am glad that isn't the choice they made. However, I realize how difficult it is to raise children even in a society where women do not become social outcasts by having an illegitimate child. I also understand from reading the words from my son's mom, just how hard it was for her to place her child for adoption--really the only choice she had. And I know that most women put a lot of thought into whether to have an abortion.



My question is why is this considered elective? Was their any chance at all that this pregnancy would continue to term? And her husband...does he also have a clear conscious because they chose to risk your sister-in-law's life rather than end a pregnancy with little chance of going to term? I'm not judging your sister-in-law...just pointing out that there are waaaay more than two sides to this issue. Choosing not to abort does not necessarily leave one with a clear conscious any more than choosing an abortion leaves one guilt-ridden for life.

Oh, and if I were in Louisiana, I guess I would just have to discuss the option of abortion outside of public hospitals. If that didn't work, then I would certainly put myself up as a test case for what I consider to be an unjust and unconstitutional law. That is how strongly I feel about freedom of speech, freedom of choice, and the rights of doctors to discuss all options that a patient has questions about.

Willow

It's considered "elective" to distinguish it, I suppose, from "spontaneous abortion" and "Intrauterine Fetal Death."

And my understanding is that there is no way a tubal pregnancy can go anywhere near term.

There is no prohibition in Louisiana preventing a physician in her own practice or in a private hospital from discussing abortion with patients. The law only applies to public hospitals. And, as there is an abortion clinic just a mile or so from our hospital you can rest assured that abortion is not illegal in this state either.

We have one thing in common. I would put myself up as a test case for the right of a physician to be guided by his own morality.

 

[WillowRose]

As for organ transplants, I'm afraid I don't understand your argument. All transplanted organs either come from those who are already dead, and therefore have no remaining right to life, or living donors who donate voluntarily after physicians ascertain that the risk of death, injury, or poor health is minimal.

Organ transplantation was within the context of the discussion on brain activity. Excluding those who voluntarily give their kidneys or a part of a liver to somone, organ donors are kept artificially breathing and pumping blood until their organs are harvested. "Death" is determined by the lack of brain activity. I was merely correlating it to the argument previously referenced on determining when life begins. Society seems to have little trouble making a determination on when life ends and rarely argues that next of kin have the right to decide what happens to individuals in those situations.

But let's say persistent brain activity does start at 30 weeks. Let's draw the line of humanity there. So the children born before 30 weeks aren't human? Sounds like another prescription for infanticide to me. Imagine a parent of a baby born at six months saying, "You know, these NICU bills are getting costly, and we really can't afford it. Would you mind injecting our baby with some painless poison or just humanely crushing her skull with some forceps?" I doubt that they'd get much public sympathy, and yet it's entirely legal to do so now as long as the child's not been born.

It is also entirely legal to remove them from life support, refuse resuscitation, or refuse to put them on life support in the first place. In any of those cases, you have removed the infant from the thing sustaining its life only without adding a gruesome picture to your argument. The difference (other than location) is that the ventilator has no rights of its own whereas a pregnant woman does.

Again, I come back to the issue of quality of life. Those who would make elective abortions illegal often give no weight to the issue of quality of life. The same is true for those who support a ban on late-term abortions. If a woman does not find out until after amniocentesis that her fetus has a severe defect, then what.....? She should just be forced to continue a pregnancy and give birth to a child whose quality of life is severely compromised? What if the child lives for 3 years or so and is in constant pain the entire time? Is *this* what the right to life groups are fighting for? The right to allow someone to suffer? Most of those same people wouldn't let their *dog* suffer for 3 years before it died! But they'd insist that a child do so? Would it be better if she had to have a C-section instead of a D&E so that the fetus could smother to death instead of having its skull crushed under anesthesia?

I suppose women could carry to term and place a child for adoption...that way someone else could watch it suffer and die. That would be much more palatable.

By the way, I did *not* argue that a fetus was not human until 30 weeks. I was simply pointing out an interesting (IMO) argument for "personhood." Even if you say 22 weeks is the earliest that a small percentage of infants can survive and allow for 2 extra weeks, you're still within the 2nd trimester of pregnancy and well beyond what most states will allow as an elective abortion. I've already addressed my own opinion on quality of life, so I won't reiterate.

A couple of years ago, my aunt was in the hospital on bedrest trying to sustain a pregnancy after losing all of her amniotic fluid. Her doctors told her she had to go to 22 weeks before there was even an outside chance the baby would survive. She went into labor at 20 weeks and the baby did not even survive labor. She spent 1 1/2 - 2 hrs delivering a baby that she knew had already died. I can't even imagine forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy for months knowing there was little or no chance that it would end in the birth of a living, healthy child.

Willow

 

[ewing]

yeah...I once performed an abortion on an interview. It was like the end and the doctor said I could shadow him. It was chill, no fancy D&E crap. Whenever an attending asks you if you want to try something, you should go for it...it's the only way you'll ever learn.

 

[LukeWhite]

I'm going to restrict my comments to just one of the arguments above: disabilities and quality of life, a classic rallying cry for the pro-choice wing of society.

It's always interesting to see the cavalier assumptions people advocating abortion make about a disabled person's quality of life. I tend to wonder how much time they've spent actually investigating that quality.

Let's take just one example: Down's Syndrome, which isn't nearly as common as it used to be one reason: as soon as many parents find out that their child has Down's syndrome, they're often likely to abort, encouraged by those tireless advocates of reproductive health that assure them their child will be better off dead. The vast majority of DS pregnancies detected are aborted.

I think it would be fascinating to walk into a few Planned Parenthood clinics and take a survey of what they think the quality of life of a Down's Syndrome child is. Unfortunately, I have no research on that. I do, however, have an article from a pro-choice organization that expresses distress at the fact that people are less willing to abort for deformities than they used to be:

http://www.prochoiceforum.org.uk/aad1c.asp

I know people with Down's Syndrome, and I know that their quality of life, as judged by how much they enjoy it, is at the very least on par with those who have a more socially acceptable number of chromosomes. If anything, they're generally happier, friendlier, and more joyful than the norm. They're capable, for the most part, of living alone, holding down a job, and establishing meaningful relationships.

Yet this is exactly one of those disabilities held up as a poster-child for why abortion should be legal. Oh, the stresses and strains of raising the child! those advocating abortion cry. What a hard unhappy life they'll lead! They may live a mere 25 or 30 years and cost society great amounts of money...why bother, when a simple snip here, injection there, can end the problem before it starts?

Again: I know people with Down's Syndrome, and it's self-evident that they're as human as the next person, if not more so; they have a unique sort of joy that never fails to inspire those around them. They are, beyond the shadow of a doubt, assets rather than liabilities to society. Yet the only way most are ever born is if they slip through the diagnostic cracks and are born before the disease is detected. Society's decided that those with DS are better off not being born, and society's wrong.

I put very little stock in arguments that make judgments about someone else's quality of life. When I hear the legions of those afflicted with DS coming forward and telling me that they wish they'd never been born, or parents of DS children saying, "Gosh, it's a shame the doctors didn't catch that; this is miserable," I'll pay more attention.

 

[LukeWhite]

Originally posted by WillowRose

It is also entirely legal to remove them from life support, refuse resuscitation, or refuse to put them on life support in the first place. In any of those cases, you have removed the infant from the thing sustaining its life only without adding a gruesome picture to your argument. The difference (other than location) is that the ventilator has no rights of its own whereas a pregnant woman does.

This is incorrect. Most NICU units give parents the option of resuscitation within a certain time frame (usually up to 24 weeks). They aren't obligated to, though.

In the United States, this decision is left up to the physician--there's no law saying that parents can refuse resuscitation or life support for their child. The reason's obvious: the child's life is not the same as the parents'.

I'll also add that the "gruesome picture" is crucial to my argument. There's a fundamental difference between withholding medical care, and performing an active procedure to terminate life. Arguing that crushing a baby's skull in utero is the equivalent not resuscitating a child is pretty self-evidently illogical.

A relevant case study:

-------------------------------------

Baby Doe in Bloomington, Indiana
In 1982, a Bloomington, Indiana child with Down's Syndrome was born with a connection between his food-pipe and windpipe, a condition know as trachea-esophageal fistula. This prevented the child from being fed since food could not reach the stomach.

A routine operation could have been performed by several surgeons in a 50-mile radius. Because the child had Down's Syndrome, the parents refused to grant permission to operate and had decided to starve the child to death. When word of the situation became public, a dozen families came forward and offered to adopt the baby.

The parents refused. Though it would have cost them no money, time or effort to allow someone else to raise their child, the parents, their doctors and the Supreme Court of Indiana said they had the right to starve the child to death.

The child died seven days after birth, before the U.S. Supreme Court could hear an appeal to the Indiana decision.

In addition to the horrible injustice, another troubling aspect of this case was the the reaction by pediatricians and pediatric surgeons. More than two-thirds stated that they would go along with the parents' wishes to deny life-saving surgery to a child with Down's Syndrome. Almost 75% said that if they had a child with Down's Syndrome, they would let the baby starve to death.

This case, along with that of Baby Jane Doe in New York motivated Congress to pass legislation in 1984 prohibiting the withholding of "medically indicated" treatment from any disabled newborn.

----------------

 

[indo]

You had a good point until you called the poster a "performing animal". Nice work, Mr. Limbaugh.

Originally posted by Panda Bear
Har Har. You in no way "stood your ground." In fact, you caved in and gave the craven answer that is expected of you by the dominant liberal intellectual culture in this country.

"Stood your ground." Man, that's a hoot. All you did was regurgitate the force-fed orthodox opinion which is required of those who are ostensibly pro-life but are too chicken-**** to say anything that might offend anybody.

"Standing your ground" would have involved saying, "In no way will I ever perform, refer for, or advise a patient to have an elective abortion because I find the practice morally repugnant and I fear the Lord more then I fear you or any other person who is placed over me."

Now that would have been a courageous answer.

Ho Ho Ho. Man. Oh boy. You really told them. You really gave them a shockingly original answer which they did not expect. Har Har. I particularly liked the way you courageously NEVER let your own personal beliefs enter into the conversation. How brave! Move over, Rosa Parks, cause we got us another Lion.

I bet the interviewer patted you on the head and gave you a treat like the performing animal you are.

 

[indo]

At what moment does life begin?

 

[8744]

Originally posted by indo
You had a good point until you called the poster a "performing animal". Nice work, Mr. Limbaugh.

I'm sure he got over it.

 

[SaltySqueegee]

Originally posted by greggth
It sounds as though you are condoning physician-provided elective abortions in the case where the woman is going to do it herself anyway and would thereby endanger her own life.

Immanuel Kant, as I understand him, and please correct me if I am wrong, would say that a person should do what would result in the best outcome if everyone in the world acted that way. So according to him, you should make your choice as if you were choosing for everyone. If you refuse to perform abortions, that means that you believe the best outcome would result if everyone else were to refuse to provide abortions, too. But it sounds like you believe that it is better for some physicians to provide abortions than for women to die of illicit abortions. What do you think?

... But I'm not Kant...

In the famous words of McMullin (Science Philosopher), The extremes (pro-life, pro-choice) will average each other out, and you will have some variant in between. It's a sort of built in checks and balances system within any given community.

 

[gary5]

Originally posted by kaos
I heard something to that effect too.

Yep, know your audience.

 

[Yahweh]

2.) adultery (Lev. 20:10)

VII

 

[funkless]

Commandment XI. Thou shalt not bump troll up six-month old threads, esp. when they're exhausted political threads and you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to contribute to the topic. What a tool.

BTW, I think we should be able to abort up to the 30th trimester, post-partum. Just to be sure....


--Funkless

 

[OSU ACTON]

x

 

[JohnHolmes]

In my interview, I will not back down on my beliefs. I would tell a woman considering abortion that there are other options, ones that will not end the life of her fetus. The right thing to do is not always the easy thing to do. I would refer her to a counselor to discuss why she is having sex before she was able to handle a pregnancy(Not that she needs to get married before she has sex, or even be willing to keep the baby- but to have sex as a woman you should be mentally able to accept the possibility of carrying a pregnancy to term and either raising the child or placing it for adoption. If she wasn't able to do either of these two things she has no business having sex). I would give her information on adoption and names of social workers who could help her locate appropriate resources if she decides to raise her child. If she is religious I would refer her to her religious leader for support. I would also reccomend family counseling if she is having trouble at home with parents, and couples couseling if she is in a relationship. I think the key helping a woman who is facing an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy is support, not ending the pregnancy.

Would you discuss with her the possibility of an abortion including how to get one, which is guaranteed to her under law. You didn't mention this in your discussion ... or would you not provide the professional services you are ethically and contractually obligated too because it does not fit your personal preference? To be completely ignorant of a medical procedure or unable and unwilling to discuss it is unacceptable. What you seem to be telling us is you will invoke your personal veto power over societal rules you do not like, right?

Holmes

 

[Gleevec]

I am Pro-choice before conception, Pro-Life after.

LOL!

In any case, you should have told her one of her options is abortion. Otherwise you are trying to play God, and that's no good.