Dornier Pfeil wrote:yomomma wrote:Let me ask you -- at what stage of gestation do you think is a viable baby? Do you believe in imposing restrictions on any kind of abortions at all? Even if you believe most women wouldn't have late term abortions or post viability abortions (assuming it's a healthy baby and mother), are any worth the price of allowing it? Personally, I don't want any viable babies to be aborted. Again, when I say viable, I mean, they can live outside the womb, are healthy, "normal", as in they will have a reasonably good quality of life and won't risk the life of the mother.
For *me*, it's a moral, nuanced conundrum. I want women to have full access in their first trimester, but I don't think women should be allowed to have full, unfettered access for any reason other than medical reasons (including those in which a baby's quality of life is significantly diminished) based on women's rights over the life of the baby. I hope I don't sound like an extremist, it just goes against the fiber of my humanity, like enlisting child soldiers to fight a war. KWIM?
I think the point you are missing is that pro-choicers don't think we have the right to decide that for someone else. It is not my power, privilege, right, entitlement, what have you, to decide something that only the mother and her doctor should be deciding. Viability is situational to the pregnancy in front of the mother/doctor and not solely a function of a calender count. That is the problem with this argument. You think you should have some kind of say in deciding something you have absolutely no knowledge about--namely someone else's physical/social condition and the physical condition of the fetus in a future that hasn't happened yet. Can you possibly know every eventuality a woman is likely to face that affects viability? Why do you think you deserve that?
When I lived in San Diego, the wife of my best friend was an OB/GYN, Sometimes bad things happen right up until the end. We're talking fetus' dying in the last week of pregnancy type of bad things such as the one woman who had developed Graves disease (hyperthyroidism) which caused a 9-month fetus to die of a heart-attack. The woman was scheduled to come in the next week for forced labor if she didn't drop. Instead, the healthy-through-pregnancy, well-developed and sound baby died.
Women can suddenly having their own medical problems, like eclampsia which can be very severe (multiple organ failure of the mother). Monkey 1 was born at 26 weeks because Crazy Ex developed eclampsia went into contractions, her water broke as she went into premature labor and then fell into a coma leaving the surgeons with necessity of performing a c-section to save both their lives.
Anyway, I have my feelings about abortion. I'm not a fan of it, to say the least.
But I know the risks of pregnancy. They're small, but they're not zero. And they're certainly not trivial when the pregnancy goes wrong. And, with very rare exception, not a single lawmaker has a fucking clue. So I keep my mouth shut, I support Planned Parenthood and I let the poor woman and her doctor make the decisions. It really isn't my goddamn life or business and I'll be damned if I don't fight those who have no business trying to make it their business.
