Thread: “Twin reduction”: Our pro-death, vanity abortion culture in a nutshell

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http://liberallogic101.com/?p=4348

You have health and licensing regulations for businesses that cut your hair or do your nails; that groom your dog or pierce your ears ... but they refuse to allow similar regulations on a business that performs invasive medical procedures on a womans' body ? Anyone else see something WRONG with that ??

Mother Teresa may have stated the pro-life position best..



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Baby Nicole Munoz Was Never Given a “Right to Choose”
by Kristine Kruszelnicki | Washington, DC | LifeNews.com | 1/27/14 5:43 PM



The life of a 23 week-old fetus was aborted in the state of Texas yesterday, and ironically, the child’s mother wasn’t involved in the choice. In fact, had her mother still been conscious, a newly passed Texas law prohibiting the abortion of pain-conscious fetuses (beyond 20 weeks gestation) would’ve protected her life today.

But Baby Munoz was not your average “unwanted” fetus. Neither was the pregnancy that carried her, nor her eventual death anywhere near typical. Baby Munoz’ mother Marlise became brain-dead on November 26th when her wanted fetus was only 14 weeks old.

In order to give the fetus a fighting chance at viability, her hospital refused to disconnect her from life-support, going against the end-of-life wishes of Marlise and her family. And so began a lengthy court battle between Baby Munoz’ father Eric and the hospital, as lawyers and bioethicists argued over the Texas law that supposedly forbade the denying of life-sustaining medical care to a pregnant woman.

“The Texas Legislature can’t require doctors to do the impossible and try to treat someone who’s dead.” said bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan in a New York Times coverage of Baby Munoz story. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us...ml?hp&_r=1

And it’s true that under normal circumstances, maintaining a body that has no hope of recovering consciousness is unethical. After all, Marlise wasn’t merely vegetative, she had been declared brain-dead. Were it not for the fetus in question, Marlise’s life-support machines would’ve been turned off and her body interned many weeks ago. But there was a patient in the equation who was not dead. A developing human child with her own body and her own rights and whose life-support was currently her mother.

Baby Munoz lost her life yesterday afternoon. It was her father Eric who got the right to choose in the end, as a judge ordered Marlise taken off life-support per the family’s wishes. And thus a wanted fetus who had been one of two patients prior to November 26th, was downgraded to a non-entity, condemned to lose her life-support and be buried with her mother’s body. With rising concerns over fetal abnormalities, the hospital chose to not attempt a preterm delivery. Instead of only losing one patient, the hospital lost two.

Has the debate over bodily autonomy and “a woman’s right to choose” so blinded society that even when the issue has nothing to do with a woman still capable of choice, and even when the body in question is no worse off on a ventilator than in the ground, we nonetheless cannot grant a fetus the right to what he or she needs to survive? How have we come to fight for a fetus’ life via fetal surgery on the one hand, and yet deny a nearly viable fetus the basics of oxygen and nutrients on the other hand – simply because her mother’s family wants a body to bury sooner rather than later?

One may fairly point out that organ harvesting cannot be forced on a dead body if doing so violates the desires expressed by the individual while still alive. Despite the obvious controversy of forced organ harvesting, the case of the so-called “dead incubator” is not entirely analogous. Under ordinary circumstances a woman has an obligation to provide basic care and protection to her offspring, and as a biological member of the human family, the fetal offspring should see that same obligation extended to him or her.

Where the woman’s right to bodily autonomy conflicts with the right of the fetus to live, the loss of life is a greater loss than the temporary loss of autonomy, and does not nullify the basic rights a fetus should have as a human being. This is even more true where the loss to the woman is completely null and the loss to her family is but a delayed funeral.

Unfortunately, Baby Munoz is victim of a flawed Texas law being applied at last. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/brain-d...ital-1.2511890 Baby Munoz could’ve been legally aborted at 14 weeks by a conscious mother, so it’s a wonder the hospital saw her as a patient to be fought for in the first place. There were two bodies present in the Munoz tragedy, one still having had a hope of survival. For a brief time, the John Peter Smith Hospital acted as though that were true.

So goodbye, Baby Munoz. You join the countless vulnerable and dependent human beings deemed too young to count as individuals with their own rights. Perhaps you would’ve been born deformed and brain damaged. Perhaps you would’ve overcome your rough beginnings and survived just like the 27 week fetus recently born to a woman declared brain-dead when 15 weeks pregnant. http://guardianlv.com/2014/01/baby-b...-dilemma-video

We won’t ever know… But one thing is certain: your brief life has touched many. You won’t soon be forgotten.

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/01/27/b...ght-to-choose/

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Pro-choice supporters praise repeal of clinic rules
Feb 4, 2014 2:52 PM

BATON ROUGE - Abortion rights supporters are applauding the decision of Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration to shelve its rewritten licensing regulations for Louisiana's abortion clinics.

But they say they're worried that the rescinding of rules that they said would shutter the state's five abortion clinics is only a temporary reprieve.

About three dozen supporters of the clinics protested at the Department of Health and Hospitals building Tuesday. They also delivered 6,000 written comments about the now-scrapped regulations, in the hopes of getting to weigh in before the next rules are written.

Late Monday night, DHH announced it was rescinding the licensing regulations it had enacted before Thanksgiving and said it would rewrite them.

http://www.wbrz.com/news/abortion-su...Y9H_U.facebook

You have health and licensing regulations for businesses that cut your hair or do your nails; that groom your dog or pierce your ears ... but they refuse to allow similar regulations on a business that performs invasive medical procedures on a womans' body ? Anyone else see something WRONG with that ??

NYC: More Black Babies Killed by Abortion Than Born
February 20, 2014 - 11:31 AM - By Michael W. Chapman

In 2012, there were more black babies killed by abortion (31,328) in New York City than were born there (24,758), and the black children killed comprised 42.4% of the total number of abortions in the Big Apple, according to a report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

The report is entitled, Summary of Vital Statistics 2012 The City of New York, Pregnancy Outcomes, and was prepared by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Office of Vital Statistics. (See Pregnancy Outcomes NYC Health 2012.pdf http://cnsnews.com/sites/default/fil...lth%202012.pdf )

Table 1 of the report presents the total number of live births, spontaneous terminations (miscarriages), and induced terminations (abortions) for women in different age brackets between 15 and 49 years of age. The table also breaks that data down by race – Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander, Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Black – and also by borough of residence: Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island.

The numbers show that in 2012, there were 31,328 induced terminations (abortions) among non-Hispanic black women in New York City. That same year, there were 24,758 live births for non-Hispanic black women in New York City. There were 6,570 more abortions than live births of black children.

In total, there were 73,815 abortions, which means the 31,328 black babies aborted comprised 42.4% of the total abortions.

For Hispanic women, there were 22,917 abortions in New York City in 2012, which is 31% of the total abortions.

Black and Hispanic abortions combined, 54,245 babies, is 73% of the total abortions in the Big Apple in 2012.

The number of non-Hispanic white abortions was 9,704, and the number of Asian and Pacific Islander abortions was 4,493.

The total number of live births in New York City in 2012 for women ages 15-49 was 123,231. That is a rate of 14.8 live births per 1,000 women, which is the lowest rate since 1979, according to the report. In addition, the live birth rate (per 1,000 women) has declined 3.9% since 2003, when it was a 15.4 rate, states the report. (See Pregnancy Outcomes NYC Health 2012.pdf)

In addition, while there were 73,815 abortions in New York City in 2012, the rate of abortions per 1,000 women is down 8.6% since 2011, according to the report.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have not published their abortion statistics for 2011 or 2012 yet, they do have data for 2010. (See Table 12. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwr...cid=ss6208a1_w ) In the CDC’s numbers, there were 38,574 black babies killed by abortion in New York City in 2010; Hispanic babies aborted, 27,112; white babies killed by abortion, 9,220; and “other” aborted, 5,368. The total abortions in New York City in 2010 “reported by known race/ethnicity” were 80,274, according to the CDC.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/mich....d3pq5ePl.dpuf

comments

Isn't this what Margaret Sanger planned all along?

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Only in America is it a felony to be cruel to animals , but it is fine to murder via abortions.

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To put this in context .... the new Yankee Stadium seats 50,086 people;
Reliant Stadium in Houston Texas can seat 72,744 people ...
in 2012 we lost 73,815 lives - by abortions - in New York City ALONE.


Exactly as Margret Sanger intended.... cull the herd of racially undesirable people.

"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," she said, "if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
~ Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

Nick Reynosa: Although I’m Agnostic, I’m Proudly Pro-Life

Being an atheist or agnostic in America isn’t the easiest of tasks. Likewise being a pro-life college student on a campus where the key age demographic (18-24) accounts for 44 percent of abortions performed isn’t a cake walk either. Yet I remain steadfastly pro-life and agnostic; as one secular person I know has described it, we are a minority within a minority.

So why do I hold both positions? Let me attempt to explain. Because the abortion debate is so extensively peppered with red-herrings and distractions, an interesting way for me to explain myself is to state issues that are NOT the reasons I am pro-life.

I am not pro-life because I am “anti-choice.” I believe in the maximum amount of just choices between consenting adults. I think women and men should have the right to choose to have sex or not. They should be able to choose whom they have sex with and when and how often they have sex. They should be able to access whatever scientific sexual education materials they are interested in and whatever types of birth control they prefer. Men and women who are not ready should be able to choose adoption and whether the adoption is open or closed. Women and men who are struggling as new parents should be able to choose to apply for government assistance for the sake of their new child.

But men and women should not be able to choose to take the life of their child. Not all choices are moral; the choice to own slaves is immoral, the choice to discriminate against minorities is immoral; choice is only the embodiment of freedom when those choices do not harm others.

I am not pro-life because I am against “women’s health.” I support the right of any woman to abort a pregnancy that poses a risk to her physical well-being. According to the Guttmacher Institute, only twelve percent involved issues with the mother’s health. In contrast, half of all babies aborted are female, and one-hundred percent of innocent female fetuses’ health is affected when they are intentionally killed. As the late and renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens stated, “In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain . . . break some bones and rupture some organs.” Therefore I ask: is the purpose of women’s health to keep women’s hearts beating or intentionally stop them? I support women’s health by opposing the 1,750 baby girls that were unjustly killed yesterday, are being unjustly killed today, and will be unjustly killed tomorrow; that’s opposing a real “war on women.”

I am not pro-life because I against bodily autonomy. I believe that men and women should be able to put whatever they want into their bodies so long as they are willing to accept the consequences. Pregnancy is not applicable to this principle because both parents should accept the risk of parenthood by engaging in consensual sex. In rape cases, because consent is not present, I do believe a bodily autonomy argument is compelling and therefore I do support an exception for rape cases.

I am not pro-life because I am a clueless, sexist man who will never get pregnant. I consider myself a male feminist. I do not want to send all women back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. On the contrary I have an equal amount of respect for women who wish to focus on their education or careers, for women who wish to be stay at home as mothers, or for those who wish to do both at some point in their lives. I hope my future spouse is an intelligent, accomplished, and independent woman; likewise I wish to live in a world where my future daughters have the same opportunities available as my future sons. In fact I hope the day Roe v. Wade is overturned, we have a pro-life female chief justice and a pro-life woman as our president. And on that beautiful day I would love to have pro-choicers lecture me about sexism.

I am not pro-life because of religion or politics. I am an agnostic and a registered independent. I hold some liberal, some conservative, and some libertarian viewpoints. I am certainly not pro-life because I want to create a wedge issue to divide people. I wish people would naturally recognize the dignity of the unborn. This would save me the time and money trying to persuade them; however if they don’t recognize fetal humanity I have a moral obligation to try to show them.

I am not pro-life because I want to restrict people’s freedom. If I am a “culture warrior” in any sense I would not be on the conservative side. In fact I am very socially libertarian on every issue except abortion. The right to an abortion perverts the very notion of freedom. As the classic libertarian quote states, the freedom to swing your arms stops at the tip of someone else’s nose. Likewise our sexual and reproductive freedom stops at the tip an innocent’s baby nose.

http://liberallogic101.com/?p=7642

After-Birth Abortion
The pro-choice case for infanticide.
By William Saletan

Just when you thought the religious right couldn’t get any crazier, with its personhood amendments and its attacks on contraception, here comes the academic left with an even crazier idea: after-birth abortion.


No, I didn’t make this up. “Partial-birth abortion” is a term invented by pro-lifers. But “after-birth abortion” is a term invented by two philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, they propose:


[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.

Predictably, the article has sparked outrage. Last week, Reps. Joe Pitts, R-Penn., and Chris Smith, R-N.J., denounced it on the House floor. But it isn’t pro-lifers who should worry about the Giubilini-Minerva proposal. It’s pro-choicers. The case for “after-birth abortion” draws a logical path from common pro-choice assumptions to infanticide. It challenges us, implicitly and explicitly, to explain why, if abortion is permissible, infanticide isn’t.

Let’s look at some of those assumptions.

1. The moral significance of fetal development is arbitrary. I often hear this argument from pro-choicers in the context of time limits on abortion. In a debate last fall, I drew up a timeline of fetal development, week by week. The response from Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, was that it would be arbitrary to use any point in that timeline to draw a legal limit on abortion rights. Giubilini and Minerva seem to share this view. “Abortions at an early stage are the best option, for both psychological and physical reasons,” they write, conspicuously omitting the idea that abortions at an early stage are better than late ones for moral reasons. “Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life,” they write. “Indeed, many humans are not considered subjects of a right to life,” such as “spare embryos where research on embryo stem cells is permitted” or “fetuses where abortion is permitted.”

Furedi accepts birth as the first logical time limit, though not for reasons of fetal development. (See her comments 44 minutes into this video.) But Giubilini and Minerva push beyond that limit. They note that neural development continues after birth and that the newborn doesn’t yet meet their definition of a “person”—“an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.” Accordingly, they reason, “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus, that is, neither can be considered a ‘person’ in a morally relevant sense.”

2. Prior to personhood, human life has no moral claims on us. I’ve seen this position asserted in countless comment threads by supporters of abortion rights. Giubilini and Minerva add only one further premise to this argument: Personhood doesn’t begin until sometime after birth. Once that premise is added, the newborn, like the fetus, becomes fair game. They explain:

[I]n order for a harm to occur, it is necessary that someone is in the condition of experiencing that harm. If a potential person, like a fetus and a newborn, does not become an actual person, like you and us, then there is neither an actual nor a future person who can be harmed, which means that there is no harm at all. … In these cases, since non-persons have no moral rights to life, there are no reasons for banning after-birth abortions. … Indeed, however weak the interests of actual people can be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero.

You may find this statement cold, but where’s the flaw in its logic? If the neurally unformed fetus has no moral claims, why isn’t the same true of the neurally unformed newborn?

3. Any burden on the woman outweighs the value of the child. Giubilini and Minerva note that philosophers such as Peter Singer have presented arguments for neonaticide for many years. Until now, these arguments have focused on what’s best for the baby—in the words of recent Dutch guidelines, “infants with a hopeless prognosis who experience what parents and medical experts deem to be unbearable suffering.” Giubilini and Minerva merely push this idea one step further, calling their proposal “‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice.”

“Actual people's well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of,” they observe. Accordingly, “if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford.” An after-birth abortion might be warranted by any “interests of actual people (parents, family, society) to pursue their own well-being”—including “the interests of the mother who might suffer psychological distress from giving her child up for adoption.”

4. The value of life depends on choice. Pro-choicers don’t accept the idea that the path from pregnancy to maternity, being natural, must be followed. They argue that the choice is up to the woman. Some assert that the life within her has no moral status until she chooses to give birth to it.

Again, Giubilini and Minerva simply extend this logic beyond birth. Since the newborn isn’t a person yet, its significance continues to hinge on its mother’s decision. Neonates “might or might not become particular persons depending on our choice,” the authors argue. Until then, the newborn imposes no obligations on us, “because we are not justified in taking it for granted that she will exist as a person in the future. Whether she will exist is exactly what our choice is about.”

5. Discovery of a serious defect is grounds for termination. Fetal development can turn tragic at any point. Most people agree that abortion should be permitted when a grave defect is discovered at amniocentesis. In the partial-birth abortion debate, pro-choicers extended this rationale, arguing that abortions in the third trimester should be permitted when horrible defects were identified at that stage. Giubilini and Minerva take this argument to the next level, noting that defects often remain undiscovered until birth:

An examination of 18 European registries reveals that between 2005 and 2009 only the 64% of Down's syndrome cases were diagnosed through prenatal testing. This percentage indicates that, considering only the European areas under examination, about 1700 infants were born with Down's syndrome without parents being aware of it before birth. Once these children are born, there is no choice for the parents but to keep the child, which sometimes is exactly what they would not have done if the disease had been diagnosed before birth.

The authors conclude that “if a disease has not been detected during the pregnancy, if something went wrong during the delivery, or if economical, social or psychological circumstances change such that taking care of the offspring becomes an unbearable burden on someone, then people should be given the chance of not being forced to do something they cannot afford.” And it isn’t clear where the line against infanticide would be drawn. “We do not put forward any claim about the moment at which after-birth abortion would no longer be permissible,” Giubilini and Minerva write. They doubt that “more than a few days would be necessary for doctors to detect any abnormality in the child.” But critics are already noting that many defects are discovered later.

In sum, the authors argue:

If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.

I don’t buy this argument, in part because I agree with Furedi that something profound changes at birth: The woman’s bodily autonomy is no longer at stake. But I also think that the value of the unborn human increases throughout its development. Furedi rejects that view, and her rejection doesn’t stop at birth. As she explained in our debate last fall, “There is nothing magical about passing through the birth canal that transforms it from a fetus into a person.”


The challenge posed to Furedi and other pro-choice absolutists by “after-birth abortion” is this: How do they answer the argument, advanced by Giubilini and Minerva, that any maternal interest, such as the burden of raising a gravely defective newborn, trumps the value of that freshly delivered nonperson? What value does the newborn have? At what point did it acquire that value? And why should the law step in to protect that value against the judgment of a woman and her doctor?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health...anticide_.html

Originally Posted by hblueeyes

Unbelievable.

Me

Pro-choice supporters praise repeal of clinic rules
Feb 4, 2014 2:52 PM

NYC: More Black Babies Killed by Abortion Than Born
February 20, 2014 - 11:31 AM - By Michael W. Chapman

After-Birth Abortion
The pro-choice case for infanticide.
By William Saletan

which post ?