There was more too it than that. Don't forget healthcare in the US is private and so various clinics can and do offer abortions. A big part of the bill was to restrict the places that could perform them to surgical centres, effectively closing most of the state's abortion clinics.

Now this wasn't a laudable attempt to stop back street abortionists from practising a grubby trade but a deliberate attempt to restrict access to abortions to reduce the number.

That would probably lead to illegal and dangerous abortions being done by back street abortionists especially for those woman who can't afford to go out of state for one (assuming that is a legal thing to do over there anyway).

Far better to agree a cut off based on medical evidence and stick too it. This wasn't that but a religious inspired move on the road to getting rid of abortions completely.

In my time I have travelled around USA extensively and its a great place but it really does my head in they have these Christian Fundamentalists who are as Bat Sh !t loony as the fundamentalists in other religions.

isnt the obvious argument if you don't know the answer, and I don't know the answer, and it is an ethical rather than medical question(which is why 39.9weeks wouldn't be an option, the fetus is a viable human outside of the mother) so the doctors can't know the answer, can't it only be the woman's right to decide?

El Barbudo wrote:One is inclined to respect medical opinion. But, as advances have been made in looking after premature babies, we must remember that the limit has been brought down from 28 to 24 weeks... And this has to be seen in a wider context of ongoing efforts to cut abortion further and further. IIRC, there are only very few late-term abortions now anyway – and for 100% medical reasons. Using the late-term issue is a spurious, but highly emotive and sensational one by the anti brigade (and for clarity, I am not meaning you here). El Barbudo wrote:Didn't say you were ... I said "before we get hysterical" ... Give over, an anti-abortion fundamentalist would never say anything like "Firstly, let me say that I do support abortion but not "late" abortion" Ah, but before that "firstly", you had already asked: "So, since when has a woman had the moral right to end a life just because the child is inside her body?" which, I suggest, uses precisely the sort of emotive language of the anti-abortionists. We're seeing the same attempts to attack abortion, using very similar tactics in the UK – from the likes of fundamentalist hysteric Nadine Dorries (who also wants abstinence education for girls – but not for boys – because that's worked so well in the past too) to the dear Jeremy Hunt, who has stated that he thinks a 12-week limit would be just about right (which the BMA has absolutely slated). Of course, this is the same minister for health who 'thinks' that homeopathy works too. So Hunt, for instance, would have backed the Irish hospital that refused an abortion to Savita Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant at the time when she started, fatally it turned out, to miscarry. Indeed, a woman can miscarry at any time during pregnancy (again, see the US fundamentalists who are now prosecuting women who have miscarried if they think she has been negligent). But the overarching point is that the reality is that lowering the time limit a couple of weeks would actually affect very few women – but that's not the point of this tactic: it's part of a much larger attack.

El Barbudo wrote:One is inclined to respect medical opinion. But, as advances have been made in looking after premature babies, we must remember that the limit has been brought down from 28 to 24 weeks... And this has to be seen in a wider context of ongoing efforts to cut abortion further and further. IIRC, there are only very few late-term abortions now anyway – and for 100% medical reasons. Using the late-term issue is a spurious, but highly emotive and sensational one by the anti brigade (and for clarity, I am not meaning you here). El Barbudo wrote:Didn't say you were ... I said "before we get hysterical" ... Give over, an anti-abortion fundamentalist would never say anything like "Firstly, let me say that I do support abortion but not "late" abortion" Ah, but before that "firstly", you had already asked: "So, since when has a woman had the moral right to end a life just because the child is inside her body?" which, I suggest, uses precisely the sort of emotive language of the anti-abortionists. We're seeing the same attempts to attack abortion, using very similar tactics in the UK – from the likes of fundamentalist hysteric Nadine Dorries (who also wants abstinence education for girls – but not for boys – because that's worked so well in the past too) to the dear Jeremy Hunt, who has stated that he thinks a 12-week limit would be just about right (which the BMA has absolutely slated). Of course, this is the same minister for health who 'thinks' that homeopathy works too. So Hunt, for instance, would have backed the Irish hospital that refused an abortion to Savita Halappanavar, who was 17 weeks pregnant at the time when she started, fatally it turned out, to miscarry. Indeed, a woman can miscarry at any time during pregnancy (again, see the US fundamentalists who are now prosecuting women who have miscarried if they think she has been negligent). But the overarching point is that the reality is that lowering the time limit a couple of weeks would actually affect very few women – but that's not the point of this tactic: it's part of a much larger attack.

Top post.

To me, there are stages in the development of the foetus.
Unfortunately, the one word "abortion" covers all stages of termination, regardless of the differing considerations, so I shall use different words (and as un-emotive as I can ) to differentiate between terminations at different stages.
The first one is the early stage when it is no more than a collection of cells and, at this stage, I don't have any any ethical issues about termination during that stage, and decisions at this stage must usually finally rest with the woman.
Subsequent to that, the foetus has developed into an immature human and termination in that stage is tantamount to ( or even is ) euthanasia (for which there could could still be valid reasons but give rise to other ethical considerations).
The issue I have is in the apparent grey area between those stages, it's not just a simple cut-off ( tbf, no-one in the thread has suggested otherwise).
The ethics of termination in that grey area must take into account medical opinion about viability but, as I don't yet see unanimous agreement about a clear cut-off point, the woman would (imo) have a difficult decision to make.
Somewhere, close to 24 weeks, whilst thinking we are terminating a collection of cells, we could be euthanasing a perfectly viable baby ... so, we could move the limit to, say, 22 weeks to clear up that margin of error.
I am not saying we should, just that we could.
I don't know whether that puts me in agreement with you or not.

Calling it a "woman's right to choose what she does with her body", as some do, is simplistic and unhelpful, the point is really about the stage at which society judges (via ethical consideration) that the decision is no longer hers.
If society decides that it is, say, 18 weeks (a deliberate exaggeration on my part to illustrate the point) then, providing that due ethical consideration has been taken, society is not overriding some sort of innate right of womankind.

A point was raised earlier about the situation when a woman has been sexually abused and doesn't realise she's pregnant until after the "grey area" ... in that case we are into a euthanasia discussion.

Finally, regarding the debate in the US, when does one person's conscience trump democracy?
Never an easy one, that.

There is a clear line of logic that does explain why it is a woman right to decide what she does with her body. Whilst the fetus cannot survive (or is unlikely to survive) outside the womans body, it isn’t an immature human, it is a part of the womans body. The same as my arm cannot survive without my circulatory system, by bodies infection and disease fighting mechanisms, my bodies ability to break down nutrients etc etc, it is my body. The same applies for a fetus. There is a point at which that changes, where the baby is able to survive outside the mothers body (or is likely to) it has made that transition from a part of the woman’s body to an independent form of life. Now I don’t know exactly at what point that change is complete, nor I guess do you, nor do the medical professionals have a clear consensus. So we work on the basis of what we know for sure, and when we fall in to the grey areas then whose opinion on it should carry the most weight? Mine? Yours? The Governments? Some reactionary or religious organisation? Or the person who has this thing growing inside them?

As for the question of democracy, I struggle to see democracy in the majority having a legal power of the individuals body.

I don't disagree with that.
What I disagree with is the phrase about a woman's right to choose being rolled out as though she is the sole arbiter.
Society, via democracy and considered ethics, can and must place the limits on where her choices are allowed.

You seem to have already done all the thinking and have arrived at a logical and considered view and can ignore the broad-brush nature of the phrase because you hear it with an unspoken parenthesis about the cut-off point.
But the phrase still remains, at best, only partially true in this context.




It's not unprecedented, e.g. laws about seatbelts, helmets and drugs ... we revive attempted suicides ... etc.
As someone mentioned earlier, filibustering is fine when one agrees with their point but not fine when one doesn't.
That's what I mean about the innate conflict between conscience and democracy.

If you don't have a uterus, therefore never face the possibility of being pregnant, it doesn't really matter what you think.

A woman's body is her business, who someone has sex with is their business (consent permitting, obviously), who someone marries is their business.

Religion shouldn't come into it as the US is constitutionally a secular state.

The major problem in defining a cut off point is that there is no cut off point in nature - no-one can state with any certainty that any random foetus would be able to survive if delivered at 22, or 23, or 24 weeks and there is no set date at which a baby is suddenly an independent unit.

Just checking random facts on t'internet shows that a couple of births at just under 22 weeks have survived and one of those was in 1987 when treatment was almost experimental, so its possible.

The stats I've read though state that only 9.8% of birth at 22 weeks survive but at 23 weeks its 53% and at 25 weeks its 83% - these babies still need massive medical intervention of course but it indicates roughly where the moveable line in the sand should be.

Having said all that most dates of development are educated guesswork anyway based on the date of a mothers last menstrual cycle before the pregnancy - so any development stage given can't really be pinned down to an accurate week number unless you allow two or three weeks worth of variation - something you can't do if you're basing an abortion law on very defined timelines.

Riiiight ... so you'd allow abortion right up to birth if the woman decided so?
Thank you, you have demonstrated exactly what is wrong with the phrase about the woman's right to choose.


Not really relevant to the issue but, for the sake of response, I agree.


True but, ethics come into it and many people's ethics are informed/influenced by religion.
Even as an atheist myself, I have to admit they must have the right to voice their ethics, distorted as I find them to be.