Octopus Overlords

Isgrimnur wrote:

Grifman wrote:Great. Justify restricting the life of the unborn child by killing him/her. The onus is on you.

The rights of an actual person outweigh those of a potential person.

And I and my government do not agree on your assertion that the right to life extends to a fetus. A government is run for the (supposed) benefit of its citizens. As that requires you to actually be a citizen, that requires birth.

Zarathud wrote:Please get off your high horse.

We allow death all the time in legislative rule-making. Cars are potentially dangerous but the benefits outweigh the risks, never mind that the GOP is about to REDUCE access to health insurance (and reduce life).

See Roe v Wade for a more nuanced balancing of rights with respect to abortion.

NRA countenances zero restrictions and radicalizes around even perceived threats.

But aside from that, until you have to make the decision you really have no idea how difficult the situation. That's the point Lena Dunham was trying (poorly) to make. She hasn't been there but she's trying to empathize with people, not some hypothetical concept of life.

The best part about Roe v Wade is that in most cases female citizens would get to decide for themselves these religious, moral, ethical, personal and parental questions. No one is forced to have an abortion in the US. Only one side forces its will and ethical constructs on the other.

Grifman wrote:

NRA countenances zero restrictions and radicalizes around even perceived threats.

And exactly how it that different from Planned Parenthood, which fights any/all restrictions tool and nail? West Germany requires a 3 day waiting period and counseling before an abortion is allowed. Individual states have proposed similar laws and the abortion lobby screams bloody murder.

There were more than 40 abortion clinics open in Texas when lawmakers began pushing for the new restrictions. One measure would've required them to meet hospital-like standards — including minimum sizes for rooms and doorways, pipelines for anesthesia and other modifications. Another forced abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their clinic.

When the restrictions became law, clinics that couldn't meet those terms began closing their doors. By the time the high court agreed to take up the case, the number of abortion clinics in Texas had halved to 19. And there were no clinics open anywhere between San Antonio and El Paso.

Had the Supreme Court upheld the restrictions, Texas would have been left with as few as 10 abortion clinics — all in major metropolitan areas — to serve the state's 5.4 million women of reproductive age.

Grifman wrote:

Zarathud wrote:So what do you think does drive most abortions?

Birth control, not problematic pregnancies.

My wife was pregnant with a child confirmed to have trisomy 13 by genetic testing. Maximum life expectancy of 4 days even with extreme medical intervention assuming no complications during pregnancy. Carrying a dead baby to term would have been a real possibility, with massive risks. We chose to have an abortion so we could have kids later (two), preserve my wife's health and sanity and also spare the fetus massive suffering. It was not an easy decision and we are both strongly pro-choice.

And I have no problem with your choice.

Grifman wrote:

Zarathud wrote:So what do you think does drive most abortions?

Birth control, not problematic pregnancies.

RESULTS: The reasons most frequently cited were that having a child would interfere with a woman’s education, work or ability to care for dependents (74%); that she could not afford a baby now (73%); and that she did not want to be a single mother or was having relationship problems (48%). Nearly four in 10 women said they had completed their childbearing, and almost one-third were not ready to have a child. Fewer than 1% said their parents’ or partners’ desire for them to have an abortion was the most important reason. Younger women often reported that they were
unprepared for the transition to motherhood, while older women regularly cited their responsibility to dependents.

CONCLUSIONS: The decision to have an abortion is typically motivated by multiple, diverse and interrelated reasons. The themes of responsibility to others and resource limitations, such as financial constraints and lack of partner support, recurred throughout the study.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that defunding Planned Parenthood will be included as part of a bill to repeal ObamaCare.

Ryan said cutting off federal funds to the organization will be included in a “reconciliation” bill that also repeals the core of ObamaCare. The reconciliation process prevents Democrats from launching a filibuster against the measure, meaning Republicans won't need 60 votes to win on defunding.

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

Smoove_B wrote:Well that didn't take long at all:

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that defunding Planned Parenthood will be included as part of a bill to repeal ObamaCare.

I didn't think I could be more disgusted with this group of elected officials, but here we are.

On Friday, a group of Planned Parenthood supporters stood outside House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office holding 87,000 petitions asking him not to defund Planned Parenthood. In response, Ryan sent out six security guards in order to block the delivery and also had a sign on his door that read, “Only scheduled appointments will be admitted.”

On Friday, a group of Planned Parenthood supporters stood outside House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office holding 87,000 petitions asking him not to defund Planned Parenthood. In response, Ryan sent out six security guards in order to block the delivery and also had a sign on his door that read, “Only scheduled appointments will be admitted.”

A more important driver of the declining abortion rate, Jones said, appears to be improved access to contraception, particularly long-acting birth control options like IUDs. She noted that women in the United States have been using the highly effective devices in growing numbers for more than a decade, and said the declining birthrate suggests more women are preventing unwanted pregnancies.

"Abortion is going down, and births aren't going up," Jones said.

Pyperkub wrote:

Republican Rep. Tony Tinderholt introduced a bill titled “Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act,” which would both ban and criminalize the procedure altogether by making abortion — and the provision of the procedure — a felony.

The bill recognizes “the rights, powers, and privileges of all unborn children at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth,” and categorizes the fetus as a “living human child.”

In turn, abortion would be treated as a criminal homicide, except in cases where the individual’s life is at risk due to complications during pregnancy. This also means that anyone who has an abortion or provides the procedure could face felony charges and lose their right to vote.

State Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, has been placed under the protection of the Texas Department of Public Safety after receiving death threats following his filing of a bill to criminalize abortion in Texas, the Texas Tribune reports.
...
The threats began after Tinderholt filed his Abolition of Abortion in Texas Act on Jan. 11, according to his political consultant, Luke Macias. Under House bill 948, both abortion providers and women who receive an abortion could be charged with murder.

A bill advancing in Oklahoma would require a woman to get the written consent of the fetus’s father before obtaining an abortion.

The bill, which passed out of a House committee Tuesday, would also require a woman “to provide, in writing, the identity of the father of the fetus to the physician who is to perform or induce the abortion,” according to the bill’s language. “If the person identified as the father of the fetus challenges the fact that he is the father, such individual may demand that a paternity test be performed.”

The bill’s author, Rep. Justin Humphrey (R), could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But in an interview with The Intercept earlier this month, Humphrey said that men should be able to have a say over the fate of a fetus, and suggested that a woman has greater responsibility in a relationship for preventing pregnancy because she would be the “host.”

“I believe one of the breakdowns in our society is that we have excluded the man out of all of these types of decisions,” he said. “I understand that they feel like that is their body,” he said of women. “I feel like it is a separate — what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’ And you know when you enter into a relationship you’re going to be that host and so, you know, if you pre-know that then take all precautions and don’t get pregnant,” he explained. “So that’s where I’m at. I’m like, hey, your body is your body and be responsible with it. But after you’re irresponsible then don’t claim, well, I can just go and do this with another body, when you’re the host and you invited that in.”

The bill, as well his description of women as hosts who “invited that in,” has provoked outrage from many corners.

[Sen. Charles] Schwertner, the Republican chair of the Texas Senate's Committee on Health and Human Services, spent Wednesday morning introducing and defending a bill that would ban most women from donating fetal tissue from their abortions to science. His legislation was bundled with two other anti-abortion bills — one to throw out the safest abortion procedure for second-trimester pregnancies, the other to mandate all abortion remains are buried and cremated — penned by two other GOP senators, Charles Perry and Don Huffines.

After discussing the bills amongst themselves, the committee opened the floor to three hours of public testimony — which started with a bang.

"I'm here on behalf of all absent women, families and doctors across the state whose lives will be negatively impacted by this bill," began the testimony of Maggie Hennessy, a UT student and intern with NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. She was the fourth person to speak (of more than 50).

Hennessy verbally shredded Sen. Huffines bill against second-trimester abortions. Her voice shook with anger as she scolded lawmakers for openly putting women in danger.

"Ms. Hennessy —" Schwertner interrupted a minute into her testimony. "Your time is done."

But Hennessy went on, saying, "I urge you to all stop playing with reproductive health care like it's your own political puppet." That's when Schwertner dropped the gavel — so hard that he shattered the glass table before him.

"Your time is done," he repeated.
...
And if Schwertner was really table-breaking concerned about the time allotted for public testimony, he probably wouldn't have let the first speaker (and dozens after), a representative from the anti-abortion advocacy group Texas Right to Life, ramble on in support for twice as long as Hennessy was allowed to speak.

Norma McCorvey, who was 22, unwed, mired in addiction and poverty, and desperate for a way out of an unwanted pregnancy when she became Jane Roe, the pseudonymous plaintiff of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that established a constitutional right to an abortion, died Feb. 18 at an assisted-living facility in Katy, Tex. She was 69.

Her death was confirmed by Joshua Prager, a journalist currently at work on a book about Roe v. Wade. The cause was a heart ailment.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Texas can't cut off Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood over secretly recorded videos taken by anti-abortion activists in 2015 that launched Republican efforts across the U.S. to defund the nation's largest abortion provider.

An injunction issued by U.S. District Sam Sparks of Austin comes after he delayed making decision in January and essentially bought Planned Parenthood an extra month in the state's Medicaid program.
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Sparks' decision preserves what Planned Parenthood says are cancer screenings, birth control access and other health services for nearly 11,000 low-income women at 30 clinics. Texas originally intended to boot Planned Parenthood in January but Sparks told the state to wait pending his ruling. Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi and Louisiana have also had similar efforts blocked.

Sparks' unsparing opinion excoriated Texas for not providing "any evidence" of Planned Parenthood wrongdoing and stalling on the ouster for nearly a year.

"A secretly recorded video, fake names, a grand jury indictment, congressional investigations - these are the building blocks of a best-selling novel rather than a case concerning the interplay of federal and state authority through the Medicaid program," Sparks wrote. "Yet, rather than a villain plotting to take over the world, the subject of this case is the State of Texas's efforts to expel a group of health care providers from a social health care program for families and individuals with limited resources."
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A Houston grand jury indicted two activists behind the videos over how they covertly gained access inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, but a judge later dismissed the charges.

Barbara Pierce Bush, the daughter of former President George W. Bush, will headline a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in North Texas on Wednesday.

She will be the keynote speaker at Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas' annual Fort Worth luncheon, helping to raise money for an organization that provides an array of reproductive and sexual health services, including abortions.

Bush's public appearance before the group is striking, given that her father, President George W. Bush, was a staunch abortion opponent during his time as Texas governor and as president.

Article wrote:Bush's public appearance before the group is striking, given that her father, President George W. Bush, was a staunch abortion opponent during his time as Texas governor and as president.

Published science does not support that this treatment works. Despite this, HB 1128 requires abortion providers to give patients information regarding progesterone therapy to “reverse” abortion. Untrained elected officials are prescribing medical counseling which doctors must provide, and requiring this counseling to include referrals for medically unproven therapies.

....

The majority of House members were convinced scientifically objective information was important – except for “abortion reversals”, in which case non-scientific counseling is mandatory. The contradiction is puzzling; the disregard for science is disheartening; and the legal requirement that providers include medically unproven therapies when counseling patients is dangerous.

Paingod wrote:Wait - abortion reversal? That's not ... uh... ??!??

WHAT IS MEDICAL ABORTION?

About a third of women who seek abortions in early pregnancy choose medical abortions because they want a less invasive procedure than a surgical abortion.

In the United States, medical abortion involves taking two drugs. The first - mifepristone - thins the lining of the uterus and loosens the connection between the embryo and the uterine lining. The second - misoprostol - softens and opens the cervix and causes contractions to push out the pregnancy.

The second drug is taken at home hours to days after the first drug.

Women rarely change their minds before completing the treatment. Doctors are required to report such information to the manufacturer of mifepristone. Between 2000 and 2012, less than 0.004 percent of women taking mifepristone changed their minds, Grossman said.

"Women are very sure of their decision by the time they go to the abortion clinic," Grossman said.

___

WHAT ARE THE CLAIMS FOR 'REVERSAL'?

Progesterone is legitimately used to prevent preterm birth in women who are at risk of early delivery. Some claim it can counteract the effects of an unfinished medical abortion.

Dr. George Delgado in San Diego, California, is the chief advocate. He is medical director of Culture of Life Family Services, described as "the 'flip-side' to Planned Parenthood" on its website. The clinic "offers true reproductive health care and abortion alternatives to women," the website says.

Delgado published a paper in 2012 about six women who had taken mifepristone, the first medication in the two-part medical abortion, then had a series of progesterone shots. Four of the six women had healthy babies. The other two aborted.

Delgado says he has given progesterone to several hundred other women who also changed their minds after starting a medical abortion. He says he has a 60 to 70 percent success rate and hopes to publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal.

"If there's a way to give them a second chance at choice, it will be a wonderful thing," Delgado said.

In pushing a replacement for the Affordable Care Act that cuts off funds for Planned Parenthood, Republicans are out to reassure women who rely on the major health care organisation that other clinics will step up to provide their low-cost breast exams, contraception and cancer screenings.

Texas is already trying to prove it. But one big bet is quietly sputtering, and in danger of teaching the opposite lesson conservatives are after.

Last summer, Texas gave $1.6 million to an anti-abortion organisation called the Heidi Group to help strengthen small clinics that specialise in women's health like Planned Parenthood but don't offer abortions. The goal was to help the clinics boost their patient rolls and show there would be no gap in services if the nation's largest abortion provider had to scale back.

The effort offered a model other conservative states could follow if Republicans make their long-sought dream of defunding Planned Parenthood a reality under President Donald Trump. Several states are already moving to curtail the organisation's funds.

But eight months later, the Heidi Group has little to show for its work. An Associated Press review found the non-profit has done little of the outreach it promised, such as helping clinics promote their services on Facebook, or airing public service announcements. It hasn't made good on plans to establish a 1-800 number to help women find providers or ensure that all clinics have updated websites.

Neither the group nor state officials would say how many patients have been served so far by the private clinics.
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The Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which awarded the funding to the Heidi Group, acknowledged the problems. Spokeswoman Carrie Williams said in an email that the agency had to provide “quite a bit” of technical support for the effort and make many site visits. She disputed that the contract funding has been as slow as Everett alleged.
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Planned Parenthood and its supporters say the failures show the risks of relying on unproven providers to serve low-income women, and that Republicans' assurances about adequate care are only political rhetoric.
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On Tuesday, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 15 percent of low-income people in rural or underserved areas would lose access to care if Planned Parenthood loses funding. The analysis also projected several thousand more births in the Medicaid programme in the next year.

Moliere wrote:When SNL Weekend Update accidentally links abortion to a baby instead of a clump of cells?

A federal court on Friday permanently blocked Mississippi’s law that threatened to close the state’s only abortion clinic by setting a hospital-privileges requirement the clinic couldn’t fulfill.
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Mississippi was one of several states with laws saying physicians who work at an abortion clinic must obtain privileges to admit patients to a local hospital. Mississippi’s law never fully took effect because of a protracted court battle.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization sued the state before the law was to take effect in July 2012, saying the requirement could block access to a constitutionally protected medical procedure.

U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III let the law take effect but prevented the state from closing the clinic while physicians sought hospital privileges. The state sought to overturn Jordan’s decision, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2014 that the law could cut off abortion access in Mississippi.

Moliere wrote:Joe Rogan talking to Colin Moriarty about abortion. Although pro-choice he understands the need for an honest conversation about what abortion really is and how difficult the issue can be to discuss.