Beto O’Rourke on Third-Trimester Abortions: Should be Decision the Woman Makes

[7_Sorrows]

Cathoholic:

I will still show WHY you would be wrong to de-personalize those first and second trimester babies too.

An embryo is not a baby.
A second trimester fetus is not a baby.
I’m not de-personalizing. I’m not attacking.

As far as third trimester, the fetus is getting delivered either vaginally or c-section.

I get that you’re angry, but trust me when I say that the pro-life movement will change more minds with facts than with calling an embryo or pre-viable fetus a baby. Third trimester pregnancy, most people will empathize with calling the fetus a baby, but they will still think the procedure should be allowed (not forced) if the doctors deem it medical necessity.

A second trimester fetus is not a baby??!!
I am pretty sure I was in my 4th month when I first felt movement. I knew it was a baby inside me that had been growing
since conception.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Women have reproductive organs and
sometimes their are complications because of that. I had complications for
43 years and I had one full term pregnancy and possibly 2 miscarriages.
I had a caesarean section with my son
which was painful and was more like having major surgery than childbirth.
There are risks in all pregnancies. I have
never regretted the birth of my son.
Women unfortunately suffer in many ways because of our biological makeup.
Surgery is not easy on the body, but sometimes it is necessary.

 

[MamaJewel]

You aren’t pro-choice from a legal standpoint. You are pro-choice legally and morally, or you wouldn’t hold that position. Admit it to yourself.

Tell me, when you switched from actually being pro-life to pro-choice, did you stop believing that unborn children are actually living children? Or are you just now ok with killing children when it’s convenient?

I am pro-choice from a legal standpoint because I grasp how law could quickly devolve into the State making choices for a woman’s pregnancy. From a legal standpoint, the law that gives a woman the right to choose abortion, also gives a woman the right to practice NFP and have the number of children her God sees fit to give her. That is what the law does. It says a woman has the right to self-determination of her body, free of government interference.

The right to choose is the right to choose (to be pregnant if desired or not to be pregnant if desired). The laws of privacy and autonomy and bodily integrity keep women from forced abortion or forced birth.

Once again, and I know it peeves you, I don’t believe one human being has the right to another human’s body from a legal standpoint. In law, if one person or group can be forced to give the use of his/her body systems to keep another human being alive, that can (and will) become problematic very quickly.

And I switched from being pro-life to pro-choice because what I miscarried wasn’t a child nor a baby. I took college-level life and physical science classes, learned the basics of embryonic/fetal development, and came to those conclusions that using logic and reasoning.

From a moral pov, I hate abortion because it does stop the developing human being. But I don’t view abortion as murder since the developing human is requiring the direct use of another person’s body. That said, I’m not going to help a woman procure an abortion nor am I going to pay for one either.
Why? Because the embryonic/fetal stage human being is alive and growing through the process of differentiation. I am not going to interrupt that process, because once it’s dead, it’s dead. There is no longer a chance of afterlife in my world.

If the woman isn’t having a medical emergency, and the pregnancy or fetus isn’t having a medical emergency, then I’m not getting involved. Her choice issue is between her and her doctor.

I’m not a doctor, but like most doctors, I believe in the ethical principles of “do no harm” and “do good”. I also believe in the right to autonomy, bodily integrity, and informed consent. Most doctors won’t perform elective abortions because of the principles to do no harm and to do good. That’s why abortionists are in such short supply. If physicians don’t want to perform an elective abortion, they don’t have to. They also have the right to autonomy (as well as conscientious objection) too.

Btw, law doesn’t equal morality. A person can have a legal point of view that is different from a moral pov because of how law is applied in different circumstances.

 

[MamaJewel]

And which of your children would you rather not have because of health complications today?

That’s a loaded question.
You could very well have also asked me,
“And which one of your children would you rather not have because of marital rape?”

Please, I am a person, not a uterus.

I was a convert to the Catholic faith.
I worked my butt off to live what I was told that the Church teaches.
Those children that I was open to life having, their Catholic-practicing, Rosary praying father had no problem dumping them on me to run off with a co-worker.

My priest and bishop couldn’t have cared less. I asked to meet with each one on separate occasions and got a dismissive wave of the hand in response.

Me, I am the one who stayed on, loving those kids, encouraging those kids, and cheering for those kids through their pain, even though I was in excruciating pain myself and needed 2 surgeries.

On top of that, one of my kids had a debilitating chronic illness at that time and another would be diagnosed with a life-threatening illness a few months after the divorce was finalized.
But I’m still here taking care of my children.

Hindsight is 20/20. My kids and I are alive, so it’s not a matter of this or that.

 

[MamaJewel]

Dancing around this issue of personhood, makes it easier for euphemisms, rationalization, and rhetorical obfuscation to premeditatively murder this innocent human person.

There hasn’t been personhood with a zygote/embryo/fetus in law. Not even with a viable (quickening) fetus has the law granted personhood before birth in Western culture. To have personhood, one has to be born.

And if a fetus is granted legal personhood, whose legal rights prevail when there is a conflict of interest? Trust me, there will be conflicts because pregnancy is not a benign condition.

You accuse me of rationalization and de-personalizing a human being. I’m not.

I look at the history of pregnancy, birth, concepts about personhood, etc.
Historically, pregnancy losses haven’t been considered the loss of a person.
Its pretty safe to say that more pregnancies end in miscarriage than people die of cancer each year.
We don’t keep a tracking system in place for miscarried unborn like we do for the people diagnosed with cancer.
Why? If so many people are experiencing intrauterine death shouldn’t the government and people be concerned?

That said, I am researching second and third trimester abortion because many posters here have stated that these procedures are not medically necessary. So far, I have found conflicting professional opinions on this issue. Dr. Stiles says there’s no medical necessity ever, but Dr. Gunter says there is. Dr. Hern does the procedure electively and for medical necessity. I’m going to look at what the AMA, ACOG, and others professional associations say about it.

Most people are under the impression that it is done for medical necessity (which I was).

 

[Ridgerunner]

There hasn’t been personhood with a zygote/embryo/fetus in law. Not even with a viable (quickening) fetus has the law granted personhood before birth in Western culture. To have personhood, one has to be born.

In my state, anyway, if you kill a pregnant woman you can be charged with a double murder, not just one. There are plenty of other states with similar laws. And some of them say exactly that an unborn child is a human being.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/fetal-homicide-state-laws.aspx

 

[Annie]

@MamaJewel

Also, the unborn can inherit.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I believe you’re right.

 

[qui_est_ce]

FirstFiveEighth:

And which of your children would you rather not have because of health complications today?

That’s a loaded question.
You could very well have also asked me,
“And which one of your children would you rather not have because of marital rape?”

Please, I am a person, not a uterus.

I was a convert to the Catholic faith.
I worked my butt off to live what I was told that the Church teaches.
Those children that I was open to life having, their Catholic-practicing, Rosary praying father had no problem dumping them on me to run off with a co-worker.

My priest and bishop couldn’t have cared less. I asked to meet with each one on separate occasions and got a dismissive wave of the hand in response.

Me, I am the one who stayed on, loving those kids, encouraging those kids, and cheering for those kids through their pain, even though I was in excruciating pain myself and needed 2 surgeries.

On top of that, one of my kids had a debilitating chronic illness at that time and another would be diagnosed with a life-threatening illness a few months after the divorce was finalized.
But I’m still here taking care of my children.

Hindsight is 20/20. My kids and I are alive, so it’s not a matter of this or that.

MamaJewel,
It sounds like you have a lot of anger against your husband and are blaming the Church for your problems. I don’t blame you. There are a lot of good priests and bishops in the world. Nobody is perfect. Don’t paint them with the same brush as those who have hurt you. Keep your eyes on Jesus and keep loving your children. That’s what saved me in my ill-fated marriages (two of them) and through my miscarriages. I’m blessed to have the children I have. They’re not perfect and they don’t go to church, but I love them and they love me. I pray for them every day.

Life isn’t always easy, and sometimes it seems as if I am the one who has the most suffering. But you never know what burdens another person is carrying.

I will keep you in my prayers.

 

[qui_est_ce]

Btw, law doesn’t equal morality. A person can have a legal point of view that is different from a moral pov because of how law is applied in different circumstances.

Substitute Negro for fetus. Those people who favored slavery in the 1800’s believed that slavery was a good thing because the white man was superior to the Negro. The Negro, being inferior, was better off being a slave.

You can’t define a human by technology. A 20 week old fetus would not have survived outside the womb 50 years ago. Does that make it any less a life than a 20 week old fetus today?
Technology changes.

A life will always be a life no matter how small.

 

[Cathoholic]

VanitasVanitatum . . .

She is right that it isn’t a baby at those stages . .

She is wrong.

If a woman delivers a second trimester “pree mee” at say 28 weeks,
the NICU nurses don’t say to her, . . .

. . . “Would you like to hold your fetus now”?

They DO (correctly) say . . .

. . . . “Would you like to hold your baby now?”

.

Just becase there are various fetal developmental stages
does not mean the tiny human is no longer a “baby”.

This is “weasel language” the pro-abortion activists use to
help depersonalize the baby
and de-sensitize people to murdering these babies.

They are enemies of women and enemies of babies.
(The pro-abortion activists in the world are the enemies here.
Not necessarily the poor woman who is their stooge and fell for the arguments for a variety of reasons).

Don’t fall for it.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

All of this is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo dancing around the facts that you want to ignore.

The right to choose is the right to choose (to be pregnant if desired or not to be pregnant if desired). The laws of privacy and autonomy and bodily integrity keep women from forced abortion or forced birth.

“Forced birth” is a made up term to make it sound like pregnancy is a disease. It is just as nonsensical as saying “forced breathing”. It’s simply called being pregnant.

Once again, and I know it peeves you, I don’t believe one human being has the right to another human’s body from a legal standpoint.

It doesn’t peeve me. I don’t believe one human being has the right to do anything to another human being’s body either. Hence I am against abortion. Because the other entity in your “bodily autonomy” charade is…a human being.

I’m not a doctor, but like most doctors, I believe in the ethical principles of “do no harm” and “do good”. I also believe in the right to autonomy, bodily integrity, and informed consent.

That’s a cool story. You have yet to demonstrate how “bodily autonomy” for a woman equals the right to end the life of her child. Nor have you even explained how a developing child is not in fact a developing child or a human being. Saying “I went to college” doesn’t count. So did I, and if your college taught you that a newly created human zygote/embryo/fetus, as you are fond of combining, is not alive and not human, I would recommend that you ask for your money back because that is blantantly false. Until you can demonstrate that to be true all I see is a lot of fancy inuendo for “my convenience is a sufficient reason to commit murder”. You are all about violating the bodily autonomy of the child by using lethal drugs and tools to end its life, so you don’t actually fully believe in bodily autonomy. You just want it to be legal for a mother to end the life of her child for her own convenience.

 

[prayerrider]

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[prayerrider]

Yes! And, women do have the “right to choose.” They have the right to choose, or not, to engage in sexual intercourse. They do not have the right to brutally end the life of another, fully human being with its own genetic uniqueness–a person.