The Next Abortion Battleground: Fetal Heartbeats
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Friday, October 21, 2011 20:19
VIEWED: 1696
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You gotta give 'em credit for being imaginative; ever since Roe, they've found more and more ways to make abortion more difficult, if not actually impossible. They've got many tactics, and now "supportive Pregnancy centers":
Abortion opponents have a new weapon of choice: the “heartbeat bill.” A coalition of anti-abortion groups told the Associated Press last week last week that it was pushing to enact laws in all 50 states that would make women listen to a fetus’s heart beat before they could abort. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has introduced a similar federal bill, The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act, in Congress.
When the Supreme Court decided Roe, critics of abortion vowed to get it overturned. They have not succeeded in that. But they have managed to pass a wide array of laws — some upheld by the courts, others struck down — making access to abortion more difficult. The Supreme Court has ruled that states can impose some restrictions, such as 24-hour waiting periods and parental consent requirements, but has struck down others, such as laws forcing women to notify their spouses. The heartbeat laws are the latest effort in a decades-long campaign that — as conservatives gain strength at the state level—appears to be gaining ground.
Recently, abortion opponents have been pushing some tough new restrictions — and prompting lawsuits over whether they go too far. Five states — Indiana, Kansas, Alabama, Idaho, and Oklahoma — have adopted laws that ban almost all abortions after the five-month mark. Meanwhile, Ohio is considering enacting the most extreme anti-abortion law in the nation. Its House of Representatives has voted for a bill that would ban all abortions once a heartbeat can be detected, which can occur as early as six weeks. That is a frontal assault on Roe, which recognized a right to abortion until “viability,” the point — around the 22nd week — when a fetus can survive outside the womb.
The new heartbeat bills don’t go quite as far — they would simply require abortion providers to make the fetus’s heartbeat audible to a woman seeking an abortion. Supporters argue that making the woman listen to the heartbeat — or look at an ultrasound image of the fetus, as Bachmann’s bill also requires — is important for true “informed consent.” They also believe that women who are provided with this kind of information are less likely to end their pregnancies. According to Bachmann, a poll by Focus on the Family, a group opposed to abortion, found that when women who were undecided about whether to end a pregnancy were shown an ultrasound of the fetus, 78% did not have the abortion.
Abortion rights advocates, however, insist that the heartbeat bills are an attempt to interfere with women’s right to make private medical decisions. They argue that the state has no business trying to lobby patients about medical procedures, or to turn doctors into government mouthpieces. At the moment, popular opinion is sharply divided on whether the state should require women to confront evidence of a fetus’s development. A Gallup poll in July found that 50% of those surveyed supported laws requiring women to be shown ultrasound images of their fetuses, while 46% were opposed.
But critics of these bills scored an important win in August, when a federal judge struck down parts of a new Texas law requiring women seeking an abortion in most cases to view a sonogram and listen to the fetal heart beat. Judge Sam Sparks ruled that the Texas law — which Gov. Rick Perry helped to push through the legislature — violated the First Amendment. “The act compels physicians to advance an ideological agenda with which they may not agree,” he said. The issue could end up in the Supreme Court. http://ideas.time.com/2011/10/17/the-next-abortion-battleground-fetal-
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The centers are typically Christian charities, often under the umbrella of one of three national groups: Care Net, Heartbeat International and the U.S. National Inst
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The heart beat thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I know the agenda that they're secretly pulling for. And the abortion clinics themselves do bother me for the opposite reason. Mixed feelings.
Even though I now what they're trying for, part of me thinks there might be genuine medical uses for it. I mean, say instead of being an underhanded and intrusive effort to change the mind of someone seeking an abortion, something wrong was found with the developing heart and they realized the fetus wouldn't live to term anyway or complicate the pregnancy/risk the mother's life. It could happen.
The only thing I really REALLY object to is if they try to require a vaginal ultrasound. It doesn't have to be a body part stuck up in there to be rape.
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Originally posted by Bytemite:
The heart beat thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I know the agenda that they're secretly pulling for. And the abortion clinics themselves do bother me for the opposite reason. Mixed feelings.
Even though I now what they're trying for, part of me thinks there might be genuine medical uses for it. I mean, say instead of being an underhanded and intrusive effort to change the mind of someone seeking an abortion, something wrong was found with the developing heart and they realized the fetus wouldn't live to term anyway or complicate the pregnancy/risk the mother's life. It could happen.
The only thing I really REALLY object to is if they try to require a vaginal ultrasound. It doesn't have to be a body part stuck up in there to be rape.
Texas is requiring exactly that, Byte. That's right, they're REQUIRING, by law, women to be "raped" by doctors, including a graphic description of exactly what is being done to them. That script is written by the legislature, no less.
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill
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I'm fine with laws about hearing the heartbeat etc. But I'm not fine with the vaginal ultrasound requirement for the same reason as Byte, it just seems ooky and space invasive. Sure when the woman gets an abortion they're probably going to go in that way, but still. But I'm fine with the heartbeat listening and tummy ultrasound rules, maybe it will help put things in perspective for some women.
I think that we need more accessible prevention controception and more options for people so they can keep and raise their babies without being in such dire economic straights.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Why not force them to look at the aborted foetus afterwards. Force them to take it home. Why not stick pins in them at the same time. Let's make women suffer a little bit more. Hooray.
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I'm curious if you would support a bill that mandated the observation of animal execution before people are allowed to consume meat. Because I would consider the killing and eating of animals to be a far more selfish act than abortion ever could be.
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While I agree with the sentiment Magons, that argument is a little bit slippery slope for me.
The last part also hits me in my personal belief basket, in that I don't think it's possible to remove the suffering from existence entirely. People can certainly try to lessen the pain of others, sure, and I would call it good intentioned, even if the attempt fails and increases pain.
Increasing suffering is not necessarily itself evil - most of us do that just by existing.
But ultimately, in my estimation, this whole argument, and the actions of the particular group in question, comes down to a morality debate of a truly morally gray issue. It pits my chaotic side that believes in personal choice with the side that believes living organisms are in some way special, or at least important/significant on some level. In this case, it's the lives of patients and the unborn in question, with restriction or no restriction of choice impacting which life is worth living or not (the patient? the unborn?).
This is an impossible balance, and a question that can have no known answer. All I can object to is when one side or another takes some action outside of that specific grey area.
Choice is generally constrained in society, but some constraints or coercive acts against choice are more abhorrent than others. Those are violations. Rape is abhorrent and a violation. Vaginal ultrasounds without consent are abhorrent and a violation.
Talking about something someone doesn't want? Underhanded and intrusive guilt trips? Beyond being annoying or inconvenient, doesn't really ping my violation-o-meter.
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Uh, Byte, they've already gotten laws on the books that a doctor doesn't HAVE to tell a woman if that's the case, and the woman (or her husband if she dies) can't even sue the doctor for it. While "the life of the mother" is technically an exception (not to THOSE laws, but to others prohibiting abortions), the laws I mentioned kind of preclude that, if the doctor isn't supposed to tell the woman the fetus endangers her life, OR that it wouldn't make it to term. It's all up to God, you know...
say instead of being an underhanded and intrusive effort to change the mind of someone seeking an abortion, something wrong was found with the developing heart and they realized the fetus wouldn't live to term anyway or complicate the pregnancy/risk the mother's life.
Oh, and those clinics? Their priority is stopping abortion; they "offer" other services, but few get much priority, whereas at Planned Parenthood, 96% of what they do is offer services that AREN'T abortion. Big difference.Quote:
Boy, you got THAT right, Riona, and that's kind of the crux of it. But these clinics don't offer birth control or education on anything but abstinence...which, as we know, works so well...
I think that we need more accessible prevention controception and more options for people so they can keep and raise their babies without being in such dire economic straights.
They also provide economic support...at least up until the pregnancy is too far along for abortion. After that, their "support" becomes less prevalent, especially financial support. It's the same old thing; they want to prevent abortion, but don't care much about what happens once the baby is born.Quote:
While I wouldn't support a bill or law on that issue, personally I wouldn't mind at ALL if kids were educated on the matter. I'd go beyond that to how the animals are bred and kept prior to being slaughtered. Nothing like that is ever going to actually HAPPEN, of course, not in our meat-prevalent society, and I wouldn't want it to be forced on anyone any more than I want any of the other anti-choice games they're playing, but if people really KNEW how what they're eating got there, I think it would speed our turning away from meat, which personally I think would be a good thing. That's just me; no doubt the vast majority feel otherwise.
I'm curious if you would support a bill that mandated the observation of animal execution before people are allowed to consume meat.
Hell, educating kids on the results of MANY of the things they do and will continue to do into adulthood would be lovely, but that kind of education is never going to happen, or if it ever does, it's way, WAY in the future.
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Uh, Byte, they've already gotten laws on the books that a doctor doesn't HAVE to tell a woman if that's the case, and the woman (or her husband if she dies) can't even sue the doctor for it.
Not sure about god, but it sounds like maybe two different interpretations of the Hippocratic Oath are coming into play. In the old Greek, there was both a line about "Do no harm" and something like "A doctor will not help a woman terminate a pregnancy."
Obviously nowadays with better observational techniques for the pregnancy, the later one is less relevant in the case of serious risk to the mother, but it looks like some elements want to hold fast to the old ways without exception for the modern technology. But then the medical field has always been a ridiculous bunch of ritual and tradition and less so much science.
I'm still left wondering if this isn't two sides of the same coin. Yes, PP does other things, but it also boils down to one side kills the fetuses, one side tries to kill the mother while she's carrying the fetus (and therefore kills the fetus too).
The whole debate is just a mess. Why should I agree with either side?
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I think if a doctor is unwilling to tell the mother that she is in danger if the pregnancy progresses, then the doctor should work in a different department where such an issue isn't relevent. I can't imagine any reasonable doctor not telling a woman if her body is in danger if she carries the child.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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