Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, eliminating constitutional right to abortion

"It's what God intended and planned for them"

- Commodore

 

I believe many doctors and hospitals will prioritize their own safety when the penalty for violating abortion laws is jail time. Unfortunately, we can expect to see more of these cases in the future. The real issue is that the court system is being used to resolve medical decisions that should be left up to doctors and their patients. It is not the government or lawyers' place to argue against a doctor's best judgement for their patient's care.

P.S. I have read that projection can be a way to gauge how far one would go to support an immoral act (in this example, for a political statement).

 

as a practical matter, I would be fine with a legal exclusion for this circumstance versus generalized legal abortion

 

Without a religious argument that devolves to incorporating the concept of a "soul" can you tell me why a woman's life and her aspirations, fears etc are less valuable than a clump of non-sentient cells?

 

equally valuable

 

Without a religious argument that devolves to incorporating the concept of a "soul" can you tell me why a woman's life and her aspirations, fears etc are equally as valuable as a clump of non-sentient cells?

 

At what point does this "clump of non-sentient cells" gain rights and who decides when that time is?

 

A woman and her doctor, not old ass politicians from DC or state.

 

As I alluded to earlier, its naive to think that doctors will provide service within this narrow protection of a loophole when the broader atmosphere is menacing. The doctor's judgement will be second-guessed by courts. And if a court disagrees with the doctor's judgment, he can face prison, the loss of his license to practice and his well-paying job, etc. Hospitals can be sued or face reputational harm or stricter regulatory control. A doctor in Florida would have to be a hero or a fool to stick his neck out for a poor mother with a suffocating baby. Making an exception in the law is not enough to create an environment in which providers are willing to help patients who fall in that exception. You need to give hospitals and doctors assurances that they won't be punished for their good faith application of those exceptions. The abortion ban exceptions don't provide that. Maybe a decade and many cases of settled-law from now, that comfort will exist, but there is a lot of suffering to be borne before we get there on the abortion ban path.

 

Josef Mengele was a doctor.

But sure, just avoid the hard question and give a glib non-responsive response.

 

Medical experts. I'm sure they have some understanding when brain development is high enough for basic sentience (desire to avoid pain, desire to live).

 

You’re reaching…and I stand by my statement.

 

value is subjective (we likely would value our child's life over a stranger's)

better to say all citizens are entitled to equal protection under the law, and taking a life is a crime (other than self defense or as a legal punishment)

 

The answer definitely isn't "6 weeks after conception" which most of hede extreme bans are. So it seems like a bad faith question on your part. If you want to debate the time frame between like 3 months and 6 months and debate when basic sentience forms between those time frames, by all means let's have a debate amongst ourselves while at the same time acknowledging scientific consensus which means you can't throw around singular doctors as evidence. Doctors aren't even research scientists anyway. It's not like they are subject matter expert in cognitive research and brain activity.

But again, we at the very least know the answer isn't "6 weeks".

 

So without a religious argument that incorporates the concept of a soul, why are a non-sentient clump of cells a "citizen"?

 

I think that's the problem. No one can answer that question. Anyone who does is lying to you and themselves. The solution to that is grounded in morality and trust. Personally, I trust women and doctors to make the best decisions. Some believe the States are better at this, which I completely disagree with. But as a society, I understand that you can't completely trust all women and all doctors. Roe was the compromise that I thought struck the right balance where there is some check, but plenty of room for trust and doctors to make the best decisions. That balance is now gone. It's now up to the States to decide what's best, not women and doctors.

 

you're assuming there one choice that's morally superior to all others. we should be forthright about the fact there is no good outcome for the child, and I am uncomfortable assuming I'd know what's best for her. at 28 weeks they're well into 3rd trimester, and killing a child in-utero, even if destined to die soon after full-term birth, is not a morally defensible result, imo.

 

Lots of people are medical experts. Assuredly, some will disagree with each other.

Even defining what constitutes "life" or when it begins probably creates disagreements.

Like the definition you just posited. Why the hell should I or anyone else take that as gospel?

 

@Andre0087 and it sounds like you are positing that "Doctors" should be the ones to determine when an abortion should or shouldn't take place but that's not a well thought through position that presents a whole host of problems.

Some doctors don't believe in abortion at all.

Some doctors may believe in extreme access to abortion.

Just leaving it up to individual MDs around the country is a terrible idea.

It merely attempts to glibly circumvent the question.

 

I'm not making that assumption. Quite the opposite. When there is no morally superior choice, the last thing you want to do is to disallow a personal choice of what someone believes is morally superior for themselves. You would want to be able to make that choice if you were in that situation, not the State. The State here is not uncomfortable with assuming what's best for her.

In this case, the State has incentivized the landscape such that there is practically no choice but to carry the pregnancy to term, although there is no chance of survival and great suffering for both the woman and the baby once born, who will suffer from suffocation without working lungs. The woman and her family didn't have the choice to choose what they believe would be the best moral and health choice for them.