You haven’t noticed you’re whatabouting?
FFS:
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/state/idaho/article206437109.html
However, providers now will be mandated by law to report a woman’s age, race, how many children she has, if any of their children have died and how many abortions they have had in the past.
How the unholy fuck is this legal when HIPA privacy laws make my father answer the same two dozen questions every time he’s admitted to the hospital-- even when he was released from that same hospital less than 48 hours previous???
If it’s not going on in their own uterus, then they don’t deserve a say. Period.
And that goes double for all the hateful, heartless wretches who’d happily force a woman to give birth against her will, yet refuse to so much as lift a metaphorical finger to help her house, feed, clothe or care for the resulting child.
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I don’t really know what you want here. You say that Tom Shakespeare wrote a good paper … but it’s 20 years old, and from another country. People in the US don’t have access to prenatal testing for free. People in the US (like 15 million women in TX) may not have the right to access their results truthfully. People in the US may not be allowed to use prenatal testing information when deciding to continue a pregnancy.
You have to pardon me if I don’t actually think this is a good paper in the context of this discussion. Does it matter, to me, right now in the US that doctors in England apparently forced women to have abortions? You say:
But I am in that situation, right now. If, at any of my scans, there was evidence of Down’s, I couldn’t choose abortion for that reason.
Doctors do this. My doctor was very clear about what would she would recommend and what specialists the hospital contracts with if any of my tests turned up something abnormal.
From my perspective, the US has swung far away from informed consent - crisis pregnancy centers that lie to women, medical practitioners being allowed to lie to women, women being disallowed from considering certain types of testing output in their reproductive decisions, testing not being covered by all insurances - that it’s really hard to see this article as anything other than another attack on choice. The cultural context in which it was written is not at all the same as the cultural context you’re trying to apply it in.
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All of that is valid critique.
I apologise for any offence caused; it was not my intention. When I posted, I was not thinking about the current legislation. Instead, I was responding to two particular points that I’m a bit sensitive about in the current environment.
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The eugenics concerns of the disability community are valid. Although they are often disingenuously coopted by the forced-birth movement, there is a legitimate fear underlying that.
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Disability is not disease.
That is really all I wanted to say. Again, I apologise for the misjudgement.
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I’m going to close this until I can review it properly. It’s late here now. Will do tomorrow.
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Thanks. I was able to review the flags. I think things are back to being civil again.
I’ll just weigh in here - my neighbor is anti-abortion. Her newborn has Downs. When she learned that he would most likely be born with Down’s, it was really hard for her and her husband to come to terms with the news. They were upset to learn that 80% of people who learn about Downs during a pregnancy choose to terminate.
I am glad that children who need extra attention are not being born to families that do not feel they can care for them. However, I do see another viewpoint on this issue.
To me, a lot of the issues around abortion come down to the total lack of support that we have in this country to raise our families. How many people might choose to keep their children if there were child care, proper facilities and help for the disabled, if all of the burden of raising children didn’t come down on moms to cope with all by themselves? If we had adequate healthcare?
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No problem. It’s a hard subject. My husband has worked pretty extensively with abused women, and the foster care system, and we’ve had the discussion about what we’d do in case of disabilities. And there’s no good answer right now, because we can’t afford to care for a special needs kid (because of issues @MarjaE and @ChickieD highlight with cutting resources for that), but foster care in the US is … not good for most of the kids in it. There’s just no winning. Unless you’re rich, I guess.
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I still don’t get how “pro-lifers” don’t march against war, or the death penalty, or murder of people who’ve already been born.
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It’s not about preserving human life, it’s about absolute male human control over female human life.
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