gadgetlady

By what criteria or criterion do you determine when this fetus, who you have categorized as a human being, is deserving of the same protection of the law as the rest of us, the protection of not having his or her life ended arbitrarily by the decision of another person? By the way, fetus is just another name for unborn baby. It's a Latin term and there are various translations, among them "little one" and "offspring". Just as we have names for other stages of development - "newborn", "toddler", "adolescent", "tween", "elderly", etc. - they are all still human.

So is a full-term baby with complications then not viable? And is a pre-term baby who isn't viable not deserving of protection of the law? LOL! No, you obviously can and will believe what you want. I just see a logical inconsistency in the belief that abortion should be legal but limited. Everyone who believes they should be limited says something like, "It's a woman's body and she should have the right to decide" (leaving out the second body involved), but then something like, "But I think women shouldn't have them after xxx weeks." I even hear, "Abortion should be legal but women shouldn't have them just for the sake of convenience", or "If a girl/woman waits until the third trimester, it's her own fault and she shouldn't be allowed to abort." Here's the problem. Either the thing growing in the womb is a human being or it's not. If it isn't, yours and my and everyone else's arbitrary decisions about when abortion should be allowed are ridiculous. If it's not a human being, abortion should be legal for any reason, regardless of how arbitrary, and at any time during pregnancy. If the thing growing in the womb is a human being, however, then taking the life of that human being should only be considered when the baby's life causes the mother's life to be physically threatened (taking one life to save another). You can't count backwards from birth and pinpoint a time at which the baby goes from being a human being to being something other than a human being -- except conception. Life is a continuum from conception to natural death. The right to life isn't something we earn; it is part of our humanity, and to deny it to one class of people because of their age or where they live is the worst social justice imaginable.

Just a comment on this -- yes, our bodies and our minds do protect us against things like this. That, I feel, is something that the abortion industry preys upon. They routinely call the unborn baby a "product of conception", a "blob of cells", and the like. This is deliberate, to focus the mother's attention away from the baby. It's why the abortion industry routinely fights laws that require mothers to see ultrasounds before they abort, or laws that require full disclosure of fetal development. That being said, pattygreen, very often mothers who have had abortions suffer in silence. Be sure to give your niece a lot of unconditional love. She may really be struggling and afraid to talk to you about it because she knows you didn't want her to abort. She needs healing.

Viability varies depending on current medical technology. The problem with saying abortion should be legal until viability is that you are defining someone as a human being based on the advances of medicine. Human beings are human beings regardless of what the technology around them is doing. 100 years ago, a baby wasn't viable until much later than he or she would be viable now. So if, for example, a baby weren't considered viable in the 1950s until 30 weeks, but in 2008 a baby is viable at 19 weeks, the difference is only in the medicine, not in the baby. You are lethally discriminating against the 1950s baby based not on the baby's humanity, but on technology. It might interest you to know (and I have said this before in this thread) that doctors are working on an artificial placenta. How will that affect viability outside the womb? How would it affect your position about when abortions should be allowed?

Yeah, pro-lifers drove this woman to throw her baby out like a piece of trash. It's all our fault.

Oh, gosh, I try so hard not to say things that can be misinterpreted, but I think I've failed again. I didn't think for one second that YOU were trying to rationalize her actions. I meant that SHE was trying to rationalize her actions. I've had a long weekend and I'm sorry I wasn't more clear. People in crises can be incredibly heartless. I've seen it time and time again, unfortunately. It's very sad that human beings can get to the place where others are so unimportant to them. I'm not just talking about this issue. I'm constantly astonished by the wanton disregard for human life that is rampant in our society. I recently had a family friend who was murdered in cold blood in his place of business (police are still investigating but we think it was a murder for hire), and it really gave me pause about how someone could sink to the level where they could destroy another person, his family, his business, etc. It is very, very sad what we place value on in this society. Again, I was off on a bit of a tangent on the child abuse things, just trying to make a comparison to the devaluation of human beings in today's society. I know you didn't bring it up. I'm so sorry for what you suffered, though. Child abuse is a despicable act, more so than other types of violence (IMO) because it preys on the innocent. It is sad that more don't know about safe havens, or at least perceive them to be a viable option.

None of us is in her head so we can't really know. I just see more and more of these types of situations every year and I have to think about how young mothers in crisis situations might try to rationalize such actions, and I see in that twisted rationalization that the same baby that could have been "thrown away" from in utero can just as easily be "thrown away" ex utero. You see a similar situation with child abuse (systemic, familial, not the kind of ultimate abuse that this mother undertook). Child abuse has risen since 1973 (Roe), and despite common misconceptions, most abused children were planned and "wanted". The pro-abortion mantra that if we just allow mothers to abort, we will "cure" child abuse has been 100% disproven, as abortion is readily available and yet child abuse is consistently on the rise. I believe human beings run into problems when they try to compartmentalize basic humanity, drawing a dividing line between when a human being is a human being and when he's not. It's the same thing we saw with slavery and with Nazi Germany: if the "powers that be" simply define the person you want to oppress as "less than" human, some people can be convinced that it's ok to treat them as garbage. If a mother in a crisis situation can simply blind her eyes and view her child the same way she did a few months ago when the baby wasn't entitled to the protection of the law, I can see how she can be drawn to the point where tossing her baby in a lake or a trash can is acceptable. Will we ever know for a fact what brought her to such a place? It's doubtful. But I believe because we are not fundamentally a culture of life, things like this become easier and easier for people to rationalize.

I didn't mean to imply that you or anyone else here would do such a gruesome thing. What I meant was that for some people, since it's easy to deny the humanity of the unborn before birth, it makes it just as easy to deny the humanity of a baby right after birth. Life is a continuum, and just as the people in the abortion clinic found it easy to bag up the baby who survived the abortion and throw her away (because they do it every day with other babies who don't survive abortions), so also people in a crisis situation are susceptible to mentally denying the humanity of a newborn to the point of treating them like trash.

I think stories like this are a direct result of the abortion mentality. If a baby is disposable before birth, why not after birth?

There probably is. I actually haven't watched any of the interviews, so I'm only hearing stuff from other people (who knows how much of it is exaggerated or untrue). But still -- if she could save that much from her job, she shouldn't have been receiving government assistance.

What I don't understand is who paid for the IVF. It's not a cheap procedure. If the gov't paid for it, that's unconscionable. It's an elective procedure and shouldn't be covered by taxpayer money.

You know, on reflection, I am astonished by how calloused and cruel you perceive me to be. What do you think I think here -- "it's her own damn fault she had complications with an abortion so to hell with her"? When have I ever, ever portrayed such a cynical and cruel approach to mothers who abort? I've never expressed anything but compassion for them. I believe they are true victims of an industry and a world that tells them that by killing their children, everything will be all better. I've never pointed fingers at anyone on this board or anywhere else who has chosen to abort. It's just not who I am. It seems from your posts that you harbor disdain for me and my position, but now you're the one twisting my words.

It was my understanding, and I may be wrong, that she wasn't in need of medical care. However, if I am wrong and she was in need, of course she should have received it! I never said she didn't deserve medical care; I would never deny anyone medical care for a botched abortion (or any other ailment), regardless of whether I think the procedure is wrong or not.

On the contrary. I care for both. That's why I work with mothers both pre- and post-abortion to counsel them before they make the decision and to assist them in healing afterwards.

"It" was a baby girl who struggled to survive.

The problem, especially with this issue, is that when you make abortion a religious issue, those who don't believe in God dismiss it as an issue that doesn't impact them because they don't subscribe to your beliefs. I don't disagree with you that God impacts every area of our lives, but many people do, and in today's culture that means something. When Christians led the fight against slavery in the 1800s, they were able to attach the fight to Christian principles about human beings -- because it was commonly understood and people didn't reject that reasoning. But that is less and less the case these days. This is the same in other areas of life as well. "Don't kill someone because it is a violation of basic human rights": everyone understands that. You understand basic human rights to be Divinely granted, but not everyone does. So if you attach the issue of killing to solely Biblical reasoning, you lose a lot of people -- both philosophically and emotionally.

Carrie, you are seeming to ascribe to me some nefarious purpose. I tried to cull down what you said into one or two simple sentences. I didn't try to twist your words. For the record, then, in your own words: is it the case that the reason you're upset about this situation is because the mother didn't receive the medical care she should have? And is it also the case that you are not upset about the fate or suffering of the baby?

It's possible she felt that way, but parents can certainly donate their embryos to other couples. Most doctors implant several embryos because they expect some to die. It's unusual to implant 8 and have 8 survive to birth.

Thank you, ma'am :smile:

Where did you hear that? (not challenging you -- just want to know the facts so I get it right :smile:). It's still not an uncommon response to a lost child.

Well, I thought your post did say that. Does your dismay at the situation have anything to do with the baby at all? Or is it all what the mother went through? I apologize for my misstatement of the facts. I should have looked more at this particular situation before saying what I did. However, you will generally find that abortion clinics, with their intense lobby power, are less regulated than veterinary clinics and often have things like this going on. A chain of clinics was shut down in Los Angeles recently with similar issues. If you have ever listened to people who have come out of the abortion industry (doctors, nurses, clinic workers), you would likely be horrified by the tales they tell.

I understand what you're saying. Especially because I am someone who doesn't believe abortion is a religious issue at all, but rather an issue of social justice.

I think perhaps you don't know the procedure for this type of late-term abortion. It is a several-day procedure; on the first day, laminaria (a form of seaweed) is inserted into the cervix to dilate it. The goal is for the woman to actually and literally go into early labor and deliver a dead baby. She wasn't given drugs and told to wait in a waiting room; the abortionist inserted the laminaria, sent her home, and told her to return the next day. The next day, as she was waiting for him to arrive to finish the "procedure", she went into labor and delivered the baby before he arrived at the clinic (he was 2 hours late). There would be no reason to have an ambulance come or take her to an ER because technically, nothing was going wrong. The only thing wrong was that he was not there to ensure that the baby was born dead. However, that being said, is what you're saying is that you're upset about what the mother had to go through? That your dismay at the situation has nothing to do with the baby, but rather that the mother shouldn't have been subjected to having to view her live baby stuffed into a biohazard bag? I hope I'm understanding correctly and not twisting your words.

I think what pattygreen was trying to say, albeit in a way that offended you and didn't hit home for you, was that she knows there are a lot of women who suffer because of their decision to abort and she wanted them to know there was a way to get healing. Again, doesn't apply to you and that's just fine. But some people do need to hear it and know that there is a path to wholeness again. Someone told me today that the woman who had octuplets and has a fascination with having children had an abortion at age 16 (I haven't read it anywhere myself; just heard it from someone). If she did, her situation makes a little more sense; it is not uncommon for post-abortive women to want to have a lot of kids to "atone" for what they've done. I'm not saying it's right; I'm just saying there are all sorts of varying post-abortive responses that can be helped through various healing resources available. Again -- if they don't apply to you, more power to you. But there are definitely those to whom they do apply.

Carrie, if you don't want to discuss the issue, why do you keep posting in this thread? Not that I'm trying to chase you off -- it's your right to do it -- I'm just wondering what the problem is. I have had my pro-life views challenged here and elsewhere. I'm not afraid of the issues, and I'm not afraid of the responses by those in favor of abortion. I don't think I'll change my mind on the issue. Are you concerned you might change yours? Or are you just skittish about arguing about it? We're going round and round about why we you don't want to argue about this issue, so instead we're arguing about arguing. Why not just get down to the brass tacks and talk about the real issue, since we're arguing anyway?