I am too aware of abortion doctors who run mills. As long as capitalism is the game in medicine in the US, you will have those who will encourage abortion who would do everything they could to keep the patient from seeing an ultrasound...because it's much easier to make that decision when someone chooses to merely talk about it as a mass of cells than it is to actually see it. Lots of money to be made. I know women who've been through this and have spoken to them in depth about this. Again...I believe there's another life here at stake...and when I start weighing intrusions into liberty, this one doesn't feel near as heavy as the other.
Ignoring all the legal / ethical / financial implications here, does anyone know if the Oklahoma law is in effect? I would be curious about: (1) Whether this has changed abortion rates (2) If it lowered them, then if there were followups with the women who ended up keeping the babies to see if they had regrets post-pregnancy (3) If it caused additional emotional stress on the women who did follow through with the abortion My initial view is that this law is severely misguided, unnecessarily intrusive and a financial burden. However, if the answers were: (1) Yes, lowered the rates (2) Few regrets (3) No major additional stress Then I think you actually would have a law that, while weird, would accomplish the goals of lowering abortion rates without taking away choice or causing undue burden/stress (which I think both pro-choice and pro-life people would be happy with). I don't think those would be the answers to the above questions, but I think it would valuable information to have.
The "regrets" thing would be impossible to measure accurately (think about all the factors that go into that), or the effect that a extra less-than-absolutely-wanted babies would have on society.
this loses me. my father had a jackass who was a father and never a dad. he saw him once in his entire life. he had a mother who never wanted to be a mom. he was seen as an inconvenience to both of them. his life is no less precious or valuable because of it....it's not any less worthy of the same protections that my life had being born into a family that wanted another child. we could be super-machivellian about this and just go ahead and exterminate the unwanted children that are already born using this as our motive..as our policy.
Forget children, there are plenty of adults that were born in those type of situations. Let's just do a census and find everyone in America that was born due to a one night stand, a poor couple not using a condom, a condom breaking, no birth control, etc. etc. etc. and just gas them since they are a burden on society. My wife will sure miss her very successful brother, but hey, at least the effect that "less than absolutely wanted baby" would be fixed after all these years!
It isn't unreasonable to think that children of unwanted pregnancies turn out a little worse off than kids who are very much wanted. I can't give you any stats except for the stuff about kids who do better in school (and probably later on) typically have a better home life, more parental involvement, and solid financial footing underneath them. Something that isn't likely to happen for an unwanted child. Not saying their life is worth any less, just saying that if we are trying to prevent abortions, trying to forcefully persuade mothers who don't want their child into wanting it (especially by an appeal to emotion, such as this whole "look at your unborn baby's picture" stuff) is not the right way to go. Focusing on preventing women who don't want children from getting pregnant in the first place is the way to go.
I'm thinking much simpler - just ask the mother. They wanted an abortion. Decided not to have one. Do they regret that decision? That's a complicated issue, but I'm not sure it's the core concern. There are lots of parents that want kids but really shouldn't have them, but we don't want society encouraging or discouraging abortions for that reason - at that point, you get into all sorts of ugly social engineering of society. And the flipside to your effect is that there's also the effect of moms being scared and not wanting a baby at 2 months pregnancy, but changing their mind down the line - so some or many of those people who change their mind could have absolutely-wanted babies by the time they are born. What are the benefits to society of those children being born? But again, these are side issues in my mind and as you said, very difficult to measure.
Does anybody ever regret having a child? Just because the majority of mothers do not openly regret it, doesn't mean we should go balls to the wall to try to prevent as many abortions as we can through whatever means. Some to-be-aborted babies turn out like Tim Tebow, some turn out not so much like that. I'm not going to declare the except as the rule to justify this law.
I feel like we are getting into an argument about something that really isn't germane to the discussion at hand, rather falling into the old argument about the merits of an abortion to begin with. I'm up for agreeing to just move past this particular point if you guys are? Forcefully? You believe this is forcefully persuading them? How so? As long as women can't keep their knees closed and men can't keep their zipper up there are going to be pregnancies that aren't "wanted" or "ideal." If our concern for the situation stops at preventing those we are voluntarily stopping the race well short of the finish line.
Do they have a choice *not* to do it? If not, then it is by force. This article says they can choose not to view the sonogram or hear the heartbeat, but they, by law, must have a sonogram performed, or else they are punished. Sounds pretty forceful to me.
Pretty simple, I want the government to tell us what to do to ourselves medically as little as possible, especially when it comes to matters as serious as this.
This is your original quote: There is a difference between having a procedure and being forced to decide to have the abortion. If you feel that the women seeing these pictures are likely to change their minds and therefore see it as a forceful measure, then the argument changes to something entirely different. If actually knowing what is being taken out of them would change their decision to do, then I'm not sure they should have the abortion anyway.
If you asked them anonymously, I would think so. Many parents feel unprepared and often wish they were not in the situation they were in, especially single parents. Certainly - but the question here is this "through whatever means"? If - and it's a big if - there's no real emotional harm to getting a sonogram, is it really an unreasonable means? For example, I don't think a waiting period is a terrible law. There's no real harm to it, and if someone is truly committed to getting an abortion, waiting 48 hours isn't going to have any real negative effect. But it would prevent a rash irreversible decision. On the flipside, asking a woman to go through 4 weeks of counseling where people try to convince her she's going to hell for getting an abortion would be considered unreasonable and harmful. The question is where in that spectrum this law would fall. And I don't think we can know that without knowing what kind of effect it has on women that go through the process. Too often, pro-life groups fight tooth and nail simply to make everything more difficult or illegal, while pro-choice groups fight tooth and nail to resist any attempt to regulate abortion more. So the automatic response from both sides is easy to predict. But in the process, pro-life groups don't always look at whether the things they promote are helpful either to fetus or mother (here, does this actually reduce abortions or just waste money?). And pro-choice groups don't always look at whether this might be a good thing for the mother (does a sonogram give the mom more peace of mind with her ultimate decision or does it cause emotional harm?) I'm not sure that we actually know how much of a concern this particular law is or what kinds of effects it would have.
Major, I commend you and I'd rep you again if I could. I think your position on this echoes my thoughts exactly and is the most rational way to consider this. You even mentioned my concern with the law, which is that I expect it is a waste of money and effort that produces little to no results. edit: LOL, turns out I could rep you again. It was Max I couldn't.
Apples and oranges. One counseling is to understand what could feasibly happen medically to your general health, etc while the other counseling has more to do with social and religious impact.
When I say "forcefully" I mean "without choice". As in, forcing it upon them. They are indeed "forcing" them to have a sonogram. I am not using "forceful" as a description of severity/intensity.
Why do I keep confusing this debate with the TSA scanner thread? I can't say for sure, and don't want to check, but it seems like the acceptable invasion of privacy threshold is wavering.
