Abortion Ban

infundibulum · March 22, 2018, 4:37pm

Yeah, I’m glad these fucks can’t hide behind “Love Both” rhetoric anymore.

CameronH1403 · March 22, 2018, 5:02pm

They are never about “pro-life”, just control the women.

infundibulum · March 22, 2018, 5:14pm

Oh, of course, but I absolutely know people who will dispute that fact and point to the “pro-lifers’” words as evidence. Whatever words they say, these actions are indisputable.

kxkvi · March 22, 2018, 5:14pm

I see the Church of the Undying Fetus is gaining ground.

MarjaE · March 22, 2018, 8:42pm

ChickieD · March 23, 2018, 3:06pm

The same country where the ~~pope~~ cardinal kicked out of the church the mother who assisted her 8 year old daughter to get an abortion after she was raped by her stepfather?

come_to_mumma · March 23, 2018, 3:38pm

And by liking your post, I really mean “for fuck’s sake”.

I truly feel sorry for any girls snd women living in Ohio and needing sn abortion. Laws like this make an already distressing and difficult decision so much worse.

gadgetgirl · March 23, 2018, 4:15pm

This is the thing that bothers me, though – IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE DISTRESSING AND DIFFICULT.

Well yes, it can be. If you wanted a child and then abort because the pregnancy isn’t viable, of course that’s going to hurt a lot.

And while it’s not as major a procedure as the fet-o-philes make it out to be, you don’t want to use it as general birth control.

But a lot of the stress and angst around abortion comes from fet-o-philes guilt tripping you. Last night I came across a tweet by someone claiming to have Downs syndrome, cheering an anti-abortion law because it meant “no-one would get to kill people like her”. Um, babies with Downs are still being born in places where elective abortion is legal. It’s just exaggeration and melodrama to say otherwise.

It’s laws and fet-o-phole attitudes that compound the distress and trauma, not the procedure itself.

CleverEmi · March 23, 2018, 6:16pm

If my mother had NOT had an abortion when she did, she would never have gone to my father’s country and met him. My siblings and I would NOT have been born at all. Counterfactuals go both ways.

gadgetgirl · March 23, 2018, 6:17pm

Or another baby with Downs except this time they decide to keep it. Bottom line is that all this hand-wringing over the reason for the abortion is second-guessing the person wanting the abortion, and assuming they need instruction on the reason when the only reason they need is not wanting to be pregnant.

infundibulum · March 23, 2018, 6:53pm

It’s always interesting that the concern for the developmentally disabled gets trotted out for preventing abortion. But these same people push for bills that allow doctors to lie to patients about ultrasound results, thus preventing parents of fetuses that may become disabled children to make arrangements for appropriate care of the child, if born. Almost like the goal is to keep people poor and desperate, and women shackled to the home.

CleverEmi · March 23, 2018, 7:30pm

seems%20legit

(As in, you’re completely correct.)

MarjaE · March 23, 2018, 7:52pm

And they cut any supports, want to block-cut Medicaid, plan to add work requirements to cut disabled people out of Medicaid, etc.

Wanderfound · March 23, 2018, 8:47pm

I recognise that disability-related arguments are commonly coopted by forced-birther bastards to push their vile agenda. However…

Abortion rates for pre-natally diagnosed Down’s amongst parents unfamiliar with disability issues are not far from 100%.

From the perspective of the disability rights community, a person with Down’s is healthy. Disability is not disease.

This is a good paper by Tom Shakespeare:

In this article, I argue that it is unhelpful to characterise the current practice of prenatal testing as straightforwardly eugenic. However, I demonstrate that the medical profession, and the context in which reproductive decisions are made, undermines the capacity for free choice, and promotes eugenic outcomes. I propose a position which accepts women’s right to choose, but opposes social and cultural pressures for selective termination of disabled people. Finally, I suggest measures which will make it easier for prospective parents to make an informed choice about their reproductive decisions.

gadgetgirl · March 23, 2018, 9:08pm

With both an aunt and an uncle with Downs, I’m not sure what “unfamiliar with disability issues” means. Still sounds like second-guessing. “Abortion rights are sacred, but if the fetus was going to turn into a disabled baby you’re a eugenicist” is a helluva thing to say.

And if the decision is to have the abortion even with an “informed choice”? Are they still eugenicists then?

Again, if we respected people’s reproductive choices in the first place, this wouldn’t even be a debate.

MarjaE · March 23, 2018, 9:29pm

Making it hard for parents to raise neurodivergent children, and making it so they can’t be confident of a future once they’re adults because everything’s set up to hurt people… takes away reproductive choices.

infundibulum · March 23, 2018, 9:34pm

Maybe this is quite different in the UK, where the author is from, but:

If the notion of choice and informed consent in ante-natal screening is to be a
reality , parents have to be trusted to make their own decisions about their pregnan-
cies, rather than rushed onto a conveyor belt where they are forced to make choices
which they have not been prepared for, on the basis of tests which they have not
requested …

this is not at all my experience with prenatal testing. I’ve been offered prenatal testing, for about $1k extra money, out of pocket. I ultimately opted not to take the tests, since I don’t have underlying predispositions to anything being tested for. I think there are a lot of places where informed consent is not as good as it could be, but this seems very out-of-step.

And it would be illegal for me, in my state, to seek abortion because of something the tests showed. They have to be honest with me about the results of those tests (unlike TX, where I had my first), but I can’t use the results to make decisions about continuing the pregnancy.

That sets up a weird hierarchy: a disabled fetus has more rights than I (a living, breathing woman) do, and an able-bodied fetus has fewer than both. When really, the woman needs to have all the rights.

Wanderfound · March 23, 2018, 9:57pm

Prospective parents who have personal experience of people with disabilities, or who have been exposed to educational materials about disability, are significantly less likely to abort a fetus with a disability.

That is not anywhere close to what Tom Shakespeare is saying.

For a quick summary of some of the issues:

There is a tendency within the medical profession to assume that all disabled pregnancies should be terminated. Often, this outcome is presented to parents as an inevitability rather than a choice: “I’m sorry, the test shows abnormalities. We can arrange for the termination procedure right now.”
Regardless of intentions, the current situation does produce eugenic outcomes.
The disability rights community, as represented by folks like Tom, are not advocating any restriction of the right to choose. They are advocating for creating structures that encourage (not compel, encourage) an informed choice.
Most of what they advocate is about changing the attitudes and procedures of medical personnel, so that they no longer assume that disabled lives are worthless. They would like doctors to (I) not assume that all disabled pregnancies should be terminated, (II) inform their patients about the existence of educational resources, and (III) make use of the professionals who specialise in this area (e.g. genetic counsellors). Non-directive counselling is a big thing in this field.

Here’s a relevant bit of the Shakespeare paper:

Earlier, I argued that current genetics practice could not be regarded as strongly eugenic, in my view, because it operates at the level of individual choice, not state population policy. However, I also demonstrated that there is evidence of eugenic views among some geneticists, and there are important qualifications to be made about the capacity for informed consent and individual choice: this section considers such evidence.

There is evidence that the choice to have antenatal tests, and the freedom to decide whether or not to proceed with pregnancy, is not as free and open as the medical establishment would suggest (Farrant, 1985, p. 110). This is particularly the case for disabled women, for instance the person quoted by Kerr et al. (1998a, p. 21):

I don’t think the test for disability in the unborn child is presented as a choice, when I said I didn’t want tested the doctor was shocked and she tried to talk me into it because it’s an easy test, everybody gets it done nowadays, it’s simple. But I don’t think there is a choice, I think that we’re pressured into taking as many of these tests as are available.

However, for all women, obstetric procedures are now like a roller-coaster, where testing may take place without the knowledge of the pregnant woman or where testing is presented as a routine procedure. Women are not encouraged to exercise choice and control, and place considerable trust in the expertise of their advisors (Porter & MacIntyre, 1984). Farrant found that a quarter of consultants said their policy was to give the AFP screening test routinely without offering women any explanation of its purpose or any choice about whether or not they participated in the screening programme (Farrant, 1985, p. 110). Green & Statham (1996, p.143) show that the routine use of screening means that:

pregnant women do not necessarily make an informed decision to undergo screening and diagnostic tests. They may not see it as appropriate to make a decision, they may not be given information on which to make a decision, may not read or understand information they are given, or may not know they are having a test.

The very existence of a test for foetal abnormality can create pressures to use the technology. Therefore, it is naive to say that technology is neutral, because the possibility of obtaining prenatal genetic information inevitably creates new problems and dilemmas which were not previously available, and the implication is that testing and selection is a desirable outcome. Marteau & Drake (1995) found that where women gave birth to people with Downs Syndrome, having declined the opportunity to have prenatal screening, they were consequently more likely to be blamed for their situation.

Having had a test, there are further pressures if it indicates the presence of foetal abnormality. Indeed, some doctors would only offer testing for women who were prepared to act on the results: research by Jo Green (1995) found that one-third of obstetricians surveyed would require a woman to agree to termination of an affected foetus, prior to allowing a woman to receive diagnostic screening. Yet desire to know about the status of a foetus does not necessarily translate into intention to terminate. Around 30% of women say they would not consider termination on grounds of foetal abnormality (Green & Statham, 1996, p. 144). However, many of these women would use prenatal testing. Furthermore, the only possible ‘action’ to be taken on diagnosis is taken to be termination of pregnancy: the other alternative is `inaction’, namely to do nothing. The choice to act is made more difficult by the level of risk and doubt intrinsic to many test findings: for example, the large number of false positives, the lack of knowledge about the severity of a particular condition. Finally, research has found a significant level of confusion among obstetricians as to the current law, and an unwillingness to perform late terminations (Green, 1995).

gadgetgirl · March 23, 2018, 10:19pm

Okay. How does that contradict the reason doesn’t matter, it’s the pregnant person’s right to choose? In that case, the doctors are making assumptions about choices. That’s on the doctors, not the parents. As @infundibulum points out, this is leading to situations – not hypothetical, but in existence right now – where a disabled fetus has more rights than both an abled fetus and than the person carrying it. And as @CleverEmi pointed out, forcing someone to have or not have a specific child has impacts on the rest of their reproductive choices.

Bottom line: stop judging people for the reasons around the abortion they freely chose to have, and stop telling people whether or not to continue with their pregnancies.

Wanderfound · March 23, 2018, 10:24pm

It does not. The right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy, for any reason, is absolute.

Yes, it is. Which is why medical professionals are the focus of disability-rights advocacy and scholarship rather than individual parents. The issue is structural, not personal.

I don’t believe that either Tom Shakespeare or myself did that.