you're right, I change my position, they can counsel all they want if they are willing to show the procedure to the mother on video.
Are you telling me we are going to the Supreme Court to decide if we can eat steak? Why not make my suggestion an option? And anything I said about politics or elections was in jest, I care little about political platforms.
I think the proffered purpose is to collect better data on why people get abortions so they can better tailor programs to combat abortions. I think this is a legitimate benefit of the law. And, putting that information on the internet would allow private actors (like nonprofits) to leverage that data as well for their own efforts. I do think the program is problematic though. Personal identification is probably easily avoided by getting your abortion in another county, or by telling people that it must have been some other divorced 23 year old female with a 10th grade education from another county that had the abortion on September 19th at the local clinic. It'd only be relevant in the smallest counties (the smallest in Oklahoma has 2,900 people). But, it's not reasonable to make a law that forces people to drive to neighboring counties to get their abortions. I also got the impression that it was the doctor who was filling out the paperwork, which would mean customers would not be directly providing data that would expose them. I don't think there will be much shame effect, unless all the pro-choice propaganda succeeds in getting people to think they could be identified, or that they could identify others by checking out the website. One possible aim would be to increase the workload on the clinics by snowing them under a lot of paperwork, increasing their cost to operate. Some additional recordkeeping is reasonable, given the State's interest. I don't know if the required burden is reasonable or punitive. I recognize it is still a bit problematic with HIPAA. I'll let the lawyers decide that; I can't tell. Otherwise, I don't think it is so bad as all that.
Ottomaton, I will check this out later, but put me on record as being for the humane treatment of animals... watch farmaid this week on Directv- good stuff
I thought this might be a better way to keep statistics for medical purposes and monitor trends etc... but posting it online and making that kind of info available to the public not only seems completely disrespectful, ineffective, and unethical, it seems illegal?? I'd almost rather they just pass out condoms to kids than this method.
For all those who say they hate the idea (and I'm one of them), IIRC that during the health care debates there was discussion of making the health care records public online? Isn't that kind of the same thing?
I agree with the electronic medical record system as long as you have to opt-in, and not required to do so.
Out of curiosity, what is the argument against an electronic medical record system? Patient privacy is highly guarded; people lose their jobs over poor management. I understand if that is still a concern, but this is all to make the health professionals jobs easier and to allow them to have access to all your information to make a much better diagnosis. IMO, the good grossly outweighs the bad.
Who has an abortion at 38 weeks? Many babies don't even stay in the womb that long. My son was born at 29 weeks and by the time he was 38 weeks from conception, he was almost 13 pounds.
I'm pretty sure this would be illegal. Seems a lot like invasion of privacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_laws_of_the_United_States
We were discussing this in school the other day and the teacher said babies are born closer to 40 weeks or a little over 9 and-a-half months after conception.
The payoff for a birth is instant. The payoff for an abortion stretches over time, in terms of emotional, economic and personal freedom. A more balanced choice could substitute the birth video with spending a week or two with a similarly-aged and maritally- and economically-situated Mom, see the good and the bad based on your particular situation.
You pick the week, I'd be good with anything after the 12th, my firstborn son came in the 38th week, maybe I had that stuck in my head?
