In a hospital in Nicaragua, after a total ban on abortion was passed, a woman with an ectopic pregnancy was allowed to languish, waiting for her fallopian tube to rupture before a doctor agreed to perform the procedure necessary to save her life and future fertility. Even though there was no doubt to the outcome of her pregnancy, the doctor refused to operate until the fetus was certifiably dead, and with no ultrasound available in that rural hospital, there was only one way to make sure.
This is the world that Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) would like to bring to America with the passage of H.R. 358, the so-called "Protect Life Act," a bill that would deny pregnant women access to emergency treatment, insurance coverage for abortion services and even information about how she could pay for an abortion. It's bad enough that one member of Congress would be willing to put women's lives at risk this way; that a majority of the House of Representatives voted for it is appalling.
While in the United States we may treat abortion restrictions as a political issue, elsewhere around the world, advocates and experts understand such restrictions to be public health and human rights issues. And in the United States this year, we have seen law after law passed that clearly violates international human rights standards.
Contrast Pitts' legislation with the report on legal restrictions on aspects of sexual and reproductive health presented to the United Nations on Monday by Anand Grover, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Health. The report states,
"Realization of the right to health requires the removal of barriers that interfere with individual decision-making on health-related issues and with access to health services, education and information, in particular on health conditions that only affect women and girls."
Indeed, the report highlights the growing global trend towards decriminalizing abortion. Everywhere, that is, except in the United States. In my home state of North Carolina this year, we have passed a number of barriers that "interfere with individual decision-making" on reproductive health: a mandatory waiting period, mandatory and biased counseling, and a forced ultrasound, all solely intended to place barriers and shame women who seek abortions, even if she has been raped or her life is in danger.
Just in the first half of this year, states enacted some 80 measures to restrict access to abortion (more than double the previous record set in 2005 of 34), all of which seem to violate the human rights standards set in international agreements. They include extreme restrictions, such as the one in Ohio that would ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected (six to 10 weeks' gestation). Several states, including Kansas, Tennessee and North Dakota have banned the use of telemedicine (key to delivering health services to underserved rural areas) for dispensing medical abortion. In Mississippi, a state ballot initiative, if passed, would mandate personhood from the moment of fertilization, possibly outlawing the most popular forms of contraception. Bearing in mind that 99 percent of American women have used contraception during in their lifetimes, this law would result in the violation of the rights of millions of American women.
Grover's report was developed following a thorough review of health research, national laws, international agreements and opinions and rulings issued by human rights bodies -- although it reads as if it were written about the United States:
"These laws make safe abortions and post-abortion care unavailable, especially to poor, displaced and young women. Such restrictive regimes, which are not replicated in other areas of sexual and reproductive health care, serve to reinforce the stigma that abortion is an objectionable practice."
In the United States, there have been laws on the books for decades that specifically deny young and low-income women access to abortion. Parental consent laws force young women to seek their parents' permission to have an abortion, regardless of their home situation. (Studies have shown that most teens will consult with a parent before deciding to terminate a pregnancy, but even those who risk violence or homelessness are still forced to produce at least one parents' consent.) And the Hyde Amendment bans the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion, explicitly isolating one health care procedure for purely political reasons.
Amnesty International has created an international campaign to raise awareness about the toll the total ban on abortion is taking on women in Nicaragua. Is it time to create one for women in the United States?
Follow Anu Kumar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/IpasOrg
Their rights are not being violated.
No human has the right to take fluid/bone/tissue/etc from another human's body without their permission.
We put doctors in jail if we find that they have so much as taken tissue from a corpse without the donor's permission. We don't hail them as heroes for the lives they saved with the stolen tissue. We call them criminals, strip them of their licenses to practice medicine ever again, and incarcerate them.
If you stole tissue to save a 1 day old babies life we'd do the same to you. Life is precious, but bodily autonomy is more fundamental and your not respecting bodily autonomy is a serious crime.
An embryo is not more privileged than that one day old. Quite the opposite in fact. And you may not steal her flesh to quicken it. She may give her flesh. You may not take it.
Prevent all conception of unwanted children.
And we have, today, technology that can do that. Vasectomy. 100% effective birth control ... for men. Unlike female birth control you can test in the lab to see if a vasectomy was successful by having a follow-up sperm count. So its 1/400 failure rate **doesn't result in an unplanned pregnancy**. It results in failing a lab test and trying again.
It is reversible when you want to have kids and it is an obvious societal good to make sure that Dad wants the kids too. Fathers are important. And you'll be a better father if you know that having kids was a choice you made, not something She Did To You. If you got your vas reversed to conceive them **you'll be a better dad to them***. Huzzah!!
A gentleman does not put the heavier load in his ladies backpack when they go hiking because he is physically stronger and can carry it easier. A real man does not grab his wife and thrust her between himself and danger.
If you really care about her, why would you risk making her face unwanted pregnancy or abortion when **it is so easy** for you to protect her from that?
IUD's increase cramping and pain. Vasectomies have a few days of mild discomfort then are pain-free. And again, even if it was equal pain for both instead of continual pain for the woman vs moments for the man, what kind of man would put his beloved through that to save himself?
The pill messes with your hormones/emotions It also frequently causes weight gain. It can randomly stop working in combination with other medication. Vasectomies have no such side effects and will not just stop working one day. You don't like it when she's moody and hormonal and *she doesn't like it either*. Win-win!
Correctly used condoms work in 99% of sexual encounters. So 1 out of 100 ... How many times do you and your spouse/significant other have sex per week? Well there are 52 weeks in a year. you do the math. Are you such a selfish coward that you'll put her through unwilling pregnancy or abortion - possibly derailing finishing her education - to save yourself a quick snip?
Then there is cost. Over time using vasectomy to control your fertility saves a lot of bread.
It doesn't just make sense, it makes dollars and cents.
Medicine has progressed a mite since then.
Details in the hidden reply to oooprettywoman.
I'm not saying it should be done either way but you do make a compelling areguement.
What the Catholics and those who truly subscribe to Augustinian moralism would respond with is that anything that prevents to process of procreation is sinful. Not my personal belief but that is most likely the biggest arguement agaisnt it you will find.
But it should absolutely be made as available as possible and *actively encouraged*. And if an abortion happens everyone should be asking *why he wasn't shooting blanks if a child wasn't the goal*.
As for "go forth and multiply". God said that in fricken *Genesis* when there were only two of us and the survival of the species was in questions. We went forth. We multiplied. Check it off the "to do" list and get over it.
Today there are round 7 billion of us. The survival of the species is safe. And God is causing pregnancies to miscarry constantly. Even God clearly doesn't want every act of sex to result in procreation.
So its mighty arrogant for any mere mortal to demand it even if our constitutional democracy permitted religions to make such demands.
mentioned Women's Rights, and most of the posts degraded women - using shame, guilt, and often punishment ( for women having sex.) Seems they want women who seek abortions to feel evil. There could be an untapped dark side in those who continually seek gratification by calling SO MANY women evil. . .more than one in four women in the US have abortions every year.
I also noticed that a good many posters are ignorant about what actually happens with 98% - 99% of abortions (that take place from a few to up to 24 weeks) continually calling the fertilized egg/embryo/fetus a "baby," due to the flood of propaganda accepted by far right/TP/religious fanatics and others susceptible to fearing or denying science.
The most obvious thing I read, was that when pro-choice people commented about how anti-choice folks didn't seem to care about ACTUAL living, breathing, crying, poor babies, motherless babies, foster babies, or malnourished babies, (and older children) there were no responses from the anti-choice folks. Very telling IMO.
"Each year, two percent of women aged 15–44 have an abortion. Half have had at least one previous abortion.[2,3]" (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html) Only on the internet will you find someone throw out a statistic and be an order of magnitude off. Other than that legit points.If you don't mind, when do you think the 'fetus' becomes a baby?
Its very common. For all you know you owe your life to it.
You could be the wanted child she used abortion to delay family formation for. If she hadn't had a prior abortion, you might not exist.
As he watched it buck and flail with its sharp little hooves thrusting about he wondered, "Why doesn't it do that in the womb?". Prey animals have to be up and moving as fast as possible after birth to stay with the safety of the herd. They are hardwired to fight free of tissue that binds with powerful instincts that have them running about in minutes.
So why was this actively writhing foal *not* acting this way a few minutes before in the womb?
Obviously its a good thing it wasn't. Female mammals are not armored inside to protect themselves from the damage a conscious fetus could wreck on their innards (you've seen a premature baby grab and pull on a toy ... imagine if it innocently/curiously tried to pull its umbilical out of the uterus wall).
But what is the *mechanism*.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378886
It boils down to Oxygen. I take it away and you pass out. Not asleep. Unconscious. your big expensive brain takes a lot of metabolizing, a lot of O2, to run. When O2 is scarce its the first thing the body turns off.
There isn't enough O2 in the womb to turn the brain on even when the brain is present.
The actual term is not "pro-life" because you will find that a large number of those who claim to BE pro-life are also pro death penalty, pro war on Iraq and Iran, pro militarization, anti social programs, anti science, anti Muslim, anti atheist, pro corporation..
None of which are pro-life. More pro-misogyny.
Besides, abortion and choice isn't a damn bit their call. None of their business at all unless and until they are pregnant and carrying that clump of cells. THEN they have a choice and that choice is only specific to that specific clump of cells.
But of course they have to be up in everyone else's business in order to focus on their own hypocrisy
Manufacturers of tempting unhealthy food ... unclean energy ...
People die for lack of a willing donor every day.
Lots of them.
Change that and THEN we'll argue about whether fetus's are people too.
Start by goggling "romainian orphanages".
How small, you might ask?
Apparently small enough to fit in a womans uterous.
I promise, I'm not hiding any jobs between my legs!
When fertilization is achieved it is a living organism, I think it's a blastocyte. It has the ability to become a human child down the line, it is on that trajectory, but is not one at that point, and won't be for some time. Many things can happen during that time before viability and the mother's life takes precedent.
My beliefs are different than yours and both must be respected. Each individual must be able to make the choice for herself in relation to her beliefs, her God if she believes in one, and her doctor. It's a violation of not only human rights but, in this country, right to privacy to attempt to legislate your beliefs on others. It's also religious persecution.
Particularly when the life of the mother is at risk, no one has the right to place the life of the fetus above the life of the mother. It most certainly is a human rights violation and if the mother was left to die the person responsible must be held accountable for manslaughter or murder. An embryo or fetus cannot survive without the host body--the mother.
http://www.blackgenocide.org/abortion.html
It's called responsible parenting.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html
http://www.tungate.com/new_page_4.htm
In other words, there were probably more abortions in 1972, when they were illegal, than there are today, when they are legal.
It should not be up to (mostly old) men to decide what goes on in a woman's belly.
If they are very much pro-life, they can have a say prior to the conception.
That said, have you considered the study of Donohue and Levitt of the University of Chicago that claims that legalized abortion has had a significant impact on crime rates 18 years later?
The study is easily available on the Internets and also here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime.
In the end, the abortion debate has nothing to do with women's health or protection, but with restriction and power.
Semper fi
What I feel, and what millions of Americans of Americans feel, is that yes it does. This doesn't mean that the issue should be completely settled in favor of banning abortion, as there is still ample room for discussion. But to ignore the issue completely, and pretend that your opponents simply "hate women," that is not the way to come to a consensus and settle the issue.
Semper fi
Fact: A Zygote is biologically living. It is a single cell (for a small amount of time I might add).
Fact: It is genetically human. I think basic reasoning works here butI can elaborate if needed.
Fact: A zygote is a seperate lifeform from that of the woman. Its DNA is unique and not the result of genetic mutation(as is the case for cancer).
So my conclusion is that life is not potential as you say but,is actually there. Just because it is not what we commonly think of as life, myself included, does not mean it is not living.
Twelve Human Rights Key To ReproductiÂve Rights:
1. The Right to Life
2. The Right to Liberty and Security of Person
3. The Right to Health, including Sexual and ReproductiÂve Health
4. The Right to Decide the Number and Spacing of Children
5. The Right to Consent to Marriage and to Equality in Marriage
6. The Right to Privacy
7. The Right to Equality and Non-DiscriÂmination
8. The Right to be Free from Practices that Harm Women and Girls
9. The Right to Not be Subjected to Torture or Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment
10. The Right to be Free from Sexual and Gender-BasÂed Violence
11. The Right to Access Sexual and ReproductiÂve Health Education and Family Planning
InformatioÂn
12. The Right to Enjoy Scientific Progress”
Is that you Eve Ensler?