Monday, July 01, 2013
Does the Democratic Party want to be known as the party of late-term abortion?
There's been a kind of polling consensus out there for years now that even your average pro-choicer at large opposes or feels squeamish about certain things like later-term abortions besides sharing a couple of other points with the pro-lifers. I've often wondered myself from a philosophical POV how does a doctor perform such a procedure and go home and sleep at night? and if you track historically the narrative arc of the whole pro-abortion movement there was in the past a definite trend to emphasive earlier term abortions and not to be seen as too keen defenders of this whole other ghastly business, indeed they've accused the lifers of purposely harping on it. Recently however there's been Gov. Cuomo's now stalled push in NYS to allow very late-term abortions for reasons other than the mother's life and now there's this story and it just leaves me scratching my head over why liberals/progressives/Democrats would even go this route. There's been a kind of latent creepiness/weirdness which has come to the fore these days in the whole pro-abort movement, a kind of Newtowning of Choice, a sort of philosophical monsterism and would Wendy Davis personally herself we willing to stand in the same room and witness such an existentially depressing procedure from start to finish? Is the average pro-choicer that you work with demanding this? Extremism by any other name......
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We all have our POV .
ReplyDeleteEven in libertine France abortion is illegal after 3 months. Over here in America the political classes celebrate a kind of Lilith feminism.
ReplyDeleteThere are many things wrong with your link BB and I'll break it down into two comments. The parents were concerned with the newborn suffering, how ironic when you consider the different abortion methods in use today. Not that long ago saline was the way to go and the fetus would swallow this poison and become scalded outside and in. How humane! Secondly I agree with the POV that says even a handicapped fetus is still a human life and why should its disability downgrade the act of what many would consider murder? The parents' attitude if taken to its logical end would also dictate that they should also have the right to snuff out their newborn's life for at least a few hours after its birth. Indeed there are ethicists out there who would counsel such.
ReplyDeleteNot that long ago former Supreme Sandra Day O'Connor said that Roe is "on a collision course with itself and medical reality." Let's remember Roe was decided in 1973 and there's been many medical advances in the fields of fetology and perinatology since then. Viability is built on shifting sands and is only based on current technology which even so there have been a few who have been born around 20 weeks and survived (e.g. Renee King). Was she not human? Re fetal pain many major medical groups like the Congress you mention are ardently pro-abortion and therefore a bias of sorts enters in. I researched the whole subject of fetal pain many many years ago and to break down such a complicated subject and I'll have to refresh my memory but some go with the cerebral cortex and others go with the thalamus enables the fetus to experience at least a primitive sense of pain although true we don't know what its emotional and philosophical experiences re such pain are. As such some say the fetus can feel at least a rudimentary sense of pain around 3 months which you or the Congres of OB/GYNs can happily dispute, I'm only reporting this but certainly at 20 weeks I would think the odds of fetal pain sensations are more solid. The only way to tell of course would be to study actual sonogrammed later-term abortions or ones done with the fetoscope which some say PP is in possession of such realtime footage so they can happily dispute it I would think.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to the pro aborts in Texas who were hailing Satan, I say it is about time they admitted their allegiance to evil.
ReplyDeleteThere's a definite sociopathic edge to some of the movement. Can't help thinking of that PP woman down in Florida I think it was who couldn't answer the simple question should an infant born alive after a late-term abortion be saved? then you have Kermit Gosnell which only now they've seemed to distance themselves from but they were hardly in the forefront of bringing him to justice.
ReplyDeleteBB in these pages has always been a supporter of late-term abortion, I understand that but the Law generally doesn't say that you can shoot someone in a wheelchair no matter how altruistic your motives in sparing him a life of suffering. So the issue becomes why is it ok apparently to kill a viable but handicapped fetus in the womb? Also let's say that in NYS to use an example abortions can be performed to 24 weeks does that mean the fetus is not human or a person at 23 weeks and 5 days but suddenly turns human in a mere two days? That's a legal construct but it's not logical.
ReplyDeleteAbortion itself defies all logic, Z-man, we all came to be the same way, are you and I only persons because we were wanted by our parents? Human life is not open to interpretation, it is what it is, abortion just makes excuses for the convenience, an easy way out of a perceived problem. Sad, really, that everyone isn't pro life.
ReplyDeleteInteresting too that BB and Saty aren't commenting here. The whole point of this piece is that the pro-choice movement, the women's movement is living in a timewarp, the medical framework of the 70's. The era of All in the Family and bellbottoms whereas to most folks who follow this stuff the whole science of the unborn has made tremendous advances since then. House even had an episode about fetal surgery. So what does Cuomo do in NY? he's pandering to the feminists of course because he's probably some day gonna run for higher office but he too feels that Roe is somehow graven in stone, a decision for the ages but the medical technology back then was so 1973. They also act like whether it's three months or twenty weeks that nothing's happening inside the womb, that it's all just an abortion.
ReplyDeleteI think they get away with it though by couching it in terms of don't interfere with a woman and her medical decision-making. Even if it's a late-term abortion and the fetus is handicapped it's still medical decision-making and that's the semantic trap they use. When I think of medical decision-making though I usually think in terms of what colorectal test should I opt for or a woman weighing the pros and cons of preventative double mastectomy, I usually don't think of medical decision-making in terms of killing someone.
ReplyDeleteI think with the whole Gosnell revelation and the uber pro aborts wanting to stick scissors into the skulls of babies that if seen on an ultrasound you could see the baby sucking its thumb, it must be pretty darn difficult to be on that side of the debate these days. It truly is disturbing to witness the lengths some will go to in order to keep a form of murder legal.
ReplyDeleteAnd it is NOT a medical decision in most cases.
ReplyDelete& I don't think murder is too strong a term here even if I avoid it in the rest of the abortion debate. The further along you go, the closer to some viability framework you get to well more folks are gonna term that murder at that point. You get sucked into a kind of moral muck or quicksand at that point and that's why I don't get the Cuomo strategy of just pandering to a feminist minority at the expense of the more moderate public middle.
ReplyDeleteMany many years ago I once wrote a letter to a major Catholic newspaper and they published it and in that long letter among other things I said the pro-abortion movement is in large part evil. Now if you're a mature writer you question things you've written in the past although I don't see many bloggers doing that these days so over the years every once in a while I'd question that statement of mine, mull it over back and forth. I've always come back to my original conclusion though and feel more strongly about it these days with recent developments esp. re the pro-choice movement's bunker mentality with late-term abortions. There really is no heart here, it's a kind of existential brutality and thought it important enough to blog about.
ReplyDeleteCrickets from the lefties, my guess is they actually do have limits as to how far they will argue to suck brains out of little babies, I am slightly encouraged.
ReplyDeletePro-choicers only like to discuss and highlight their political stance and this is the problem I have with the two resident liberal commentators here. They never want to admit there's any philosophical problems with Pro-Choice beyond the political stance like how society views the handicapped or sex-selection abortions or what if Barack Obama their beloved liberal president was never allowed to be born. It's always the same mantra, choice this or that, medical decision-making, whatever but they need to move beyond the mantra. On another matter dunno how you perform a partial-birth abortion and go home at night and just konk out on the pillow and sleep like a baby. The dream patterns of abortionists would be interesting if they were ever studied, is there guilt or a conscience? Thank you for commenting here Beth as always.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about how they sleep at night, that is an interesting point there, I think more about how they feel when they reach their final judgment and realize oh crap, maybe puncturing those little skulls wasn't such a good idea.
ReplyDeleteThat's what gets me about the pro-abortion crowd, you'd think they'd want to hedge their bets instead of rolling the dice with God. Now I don't know how God would rule in this case but there's no fear of Him. Hell is such a complicated theological subject and I've blogged about it a few times, I've gone this way and that but from a personal faith angle and this is just me but I don't think you live that kind of life and at the end just pop into a rolling pasture of green verdant hills with cotton candy hanging from every tree. Hedge your bets no? then there's karma to consider.
ReplyDeleteFirst we gotta get those pesky nuns under control.
ReplyDeleteYou've always had religious involved in the abortion cause. Back in Nathanson's day it was the Clergy Consultation Service but I keep getting back to my point don't like the Church form your own. The Cuomos, the progressive nuns et al. and if popular opinion is to be believed if they had done this it'd be a major offshoot of Catholicism by now. What did all the exciting schisms and breakoffs end with Martin Luther? all the rebs and heretics have closed up shop and prefer to complain about the Church from the inside? no more religious drama or excitement it seems.
DeleteYep, I can remember when nuns spent their time doing Holy Marys,
ReplyDeletemanipulating rosaries and keeping their mouths shut. (If they happened to teach, they took it out on terrorized students). Just sayin...
But do they actually expect the Church to change to their POV? Such a tall order! all this energy spent complaining with a highly unlikely result. It'd be like if I became a Mormon but disagreed with most of their teachings. I'd have to assume your typical Mormon out in Utah believes certain things, there's a kind of doctrinal cohesiveness but with modern Catholics they're all over the map.
DeleteWhat do you make of Pope Francis "Who am I to judge"?
ReplyDeleteBB don't get me wrong religious people have the right to disagree with their religious institutions but there's something to be said for cohesiveness. Agree or disagree with Mormons you know where they stand, the same cannot be said for Catholics. Take Satan, now the Church teaches that the Devil and demons are real. Some Catholics believe in the Devil and demons and many do not including some bishops but if you don't believe in the Devil why are you a Catholic? A disagreement here and there ok but when there's too much disagreement you don't stand for anything imo.
DeleteJust googled the nonjudging Francis and brought to mind the late Malachi Martin's comments re Fatima that somewhere down the road we might get a kind of heretical pope or antipope who will steer the Catholic masses the wrong way. That's not my view of Francis but might be the more ultra-traditionalist/Mel Gibson wing POV. Francis would do well to acquaint himself more with Catholic prophecy to better parse his statements. As for his view re gay-oriented priests who am I to disagree but would add in the wake of the recent clergy sex abuse scandals now would not be the best time to press the issue.
ReplyDeleteThere is much to be said for tradition, Z-Man. It practically defines our culture in many areas. IMO, the Catholic church was
ReplyDeletea bit slow back in the millennia (Gallileo, etc), but ultimately
it changes to reflect the times. This doesn't have to result in
changes to the fundamental belief, but rather the wants and needs of the people who the Church serves. Does God really care whether
the mass is latin or a national tongue? Any organization can be totally top down, but I would argue that has at minimum disadvantages-and ultimately self destruction. So the current
arguments, philosophies and discussion should be viewed by all involved as healthy...less, as you note, the few remaining nuns
flee to the Mormons. Seriously, though, traditional inertia is
very strong and I would not look for any great surprises..perhaps
just a better inter-church dialog.
Re the Church "but ultimately it changes to reflect the times". You see that's the thing, what if the times are bad? You've heard to be in the world but not of it and traditionally the 3 Things to watch out for are the world, the flesh and the devil. The world, the times were never known to be great so why reflect them?
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