While almost all of what PDS said was a waste of brain processing power and time, I did find the proposal to leave the baby in-tact during termination of the pregnancy to be interesting.
While it's not ideal in many cases, as often-times, the abortion might be done to keep the baby from living a bad life because the the parents know they can't provide for it, it does satisfy the "what about the 'bodily integrity' of the baby?" question. Leaving the baby in-tact would obviously lead to more kids in the adoption system, which, as we all know, is awful. But, I could see baby bodily integrity - Non-lethal abortion procedure - being an argument used by the pro-lifers in the future (If they haven't used that argument already. I apologize if I'm missing updated information on the subject. I'm brand new to the abortion debate from the legal perspective.).
Not to mention, I think leaving it in-tact makes the procedure itself vastly different, and more complicated/dangerous/damaging, since the body isn't ready for birth during the time of the abortion.
Just my thoughts.
The vast majority of abortions happen in the first 12 weeks.
Not sure how the fuck you'd keep a 12 week old fetus going.
Of course. I may have been unclear about the abortion types I was referring to.
While most of the abortions that happen are considered early term, I would argue that most people, regardless of which side they're on, have issues swallowing the reality of the late term abortion. Specifically, the ones in which the baby could technically be allowed to live on its own, outside the womb.
I was just pointing out that PDS's mention of leaving the baby alive during termination of these pregnancies solves a few of the problems/fills a few of the holes in the bodily integrity argument, and would likely make a late term abortion less controversial (For lack of a better word at the moment). But I was also pointing out that leaving the baby alive during these types of abortions would cause other problems, such as an increase in health risk. Which leads me to what QG pointed out below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intact_dilation_and_extraction
Read that whole thing before you come back to this thread.
Thank you for the link, I did actually learn quite a bit about abortion procedure and risks. However, I think there may have been some confusion on this link's application to my points above, or the link above was simply your indicator that the basis of my argument wasn't viable.
As far as I can tell, the procedure you linked to above requires the use of a fatal injection to the baby. I'm not completely sure if that's the case in all in-tact dilation and extraction procedures, but that appeared to be the case, based on the article. My points above, however, were based on the assumption that the baby would be in-tact and alive, meaning the abortion procedure would have to be non-lethal.
Interestingly enough, the in-tact dilation and extraction procedure appears to have no increase in health risks, contrary to what I expected. What I'm not sure of, however, is whether the fatal injection is required in order to keep the health risks low on the mother, considering she is not dilated to the extent that a normal birth would entail. I imagine that with lower levels of dilation, the baby would have an increase in health risks if it were not to receive the lethal injection. I assume, in this case, the risks would increase for the mother as well.
The procedure which extracts an intact fetus is only used in late-term abortions, which are almost universally abortions of a wanted fetus because the fetus was abnormal and unviable. While the terminology may imply that the mother is a passive recipient of this process, in reality it is usually very similar to induced labor; she experiences not only the pain of labor and delivery, but also additional pain due to the fact that the labor must essentially be forced, as her body isn't ready to give birth, and also the nightmarish emotional pain of knowing that the fetus is dead. There are many medical reasons that this process is safer for the mother than foregoing the labor and delivery through surgical removal, and there is also an important emotional reason, which is that it allows the grieving would-be parents to see and hold the dead fetus, which is often considered to help with the grief process.
I stand corrected. This was also outlined in the link QG provided, but didn't mention the fact that the pain and process of labor is still experienced by the mother (Not that that changes the argument, the decision is obviously still in the mother's court). Thanks for the clarification.
In other words, the specifics of an abortion should be between a woman and her doctor. No one else has any place making those decisions, especially including the government.
I completely agree. I wasn't contrary to this at all. I was simply pointing out how the argument to keep the baby alive (Not just intact) during termination of the pregnancy could limit some controversy, but also introduce more problems. And those problems would obviously make the rights argument even more important, as you and QG have just demonstrated.
