That, as they say, is of course debatable.

For example, while YOU may feel that killing a live human being by injecting a pain reliever into him or her, then cutting off his food and water until he or she expires isn't any less disgusting than killing him or her by giving him or her no anethesia, ramming blunt scissors into his or her skull, then vacuuming out his or her brains while he or she twitches in agony, or by giving him or her no anesthesia, then using vicegrips to pull his or her skin off in strips while he or she writhes in agony, then chaining them down outside in the sun until he or she dehydrates to death, OTHERS of us may well feel that some of those killing methods are more barbaric and less humane than others, JHC.

Well, if the various abortion killing methods don't matter to you a whit, how about the various killing methods one could employ to kill a convicted murderer? Do you feel any of THOSE killing methods are "more humane" or "less humane" than others, or "more disgusting" or "less digusting" than others?

JHC, again, re-read post #143. The distinction is NOT (or should not be) that this is a more disgusting form of abortion, but that it is pointlessly disgusting. The exact same procedure could be done for the sake of the mother without that final, sickening act of crushing the skull.


I'm sorry if I missed it. Can you give me the post # again and I'll go back to it. But the question is not whether late-term abortions are ever necessary (sometimes they obviously are) or whether intact-extraction is necessary, but whether the procedure specified in the bill (which includes intact extraction AND then the active killing of the fetus) is, as a whole, necessary.

Again, not "more henious" but needlessly henious. Crushing the infants skull serves no purpose!

This may indeed term out to be the first step toward banning all late-term abortions not necessary for the mother. But to-date there is no consensus on what that kind of policy should look like. There is general consensus on this particular part of it, thus it became law. The rest will come (or not) depending on what consensus can or cannot be reached.

The law is about abortion. The court case is about abortion. The doctors who are the most familiar with reproduction and abortion claim this method of abortion is sometimes the "best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of the woman." Should the procedure should be compared to a tonsilectomy? I just don't see how that would be relevant to abortions.

__________________
The most important political office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis - First Jewish Supreme Court Justice

The American Spectator

Three cheers for President Bush, for the Supreme Court, and for all the decent people out there who still recognize the sanctity of human life.

And the pro-abortion ilk should be ashamed of themselves. But they're not.

We're comparing abortion methods to abortion methods. Name one method of aborting a fetus in which the fetus is given anesthesia and not mamed or dismembered. Seriously. Name one.



I will address this if you can name one abortion method in which the fetus is given anesthesia and not mamed or dismembered.

__________________
...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

How? In your professional experience, what is the preferable method of aborting the fetus other than crushing it's skull?


I think an answer to this is premature until you've answered the question I posted to the first part of your post.
I'll be back.

__________________
...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

How about just extracting it and seeing if it can survive with some help?
If not, well, there you go: abortion but without that sickening process of a doctor rushing to bash its skull in.
If so, then thank God we didn't crush the skull of a viable human child.

That is the problem with the skull-bashing portion of this procedure. Since I can't see any possible benefit it offers to the mother, the only reason I can think of for doing it is to make damn sure that the baby dies; to remove any chance that a viable child might have been born.
If it is actually necessary to save the mother, and someone can explain to me why, I'm certainly willing to reconsider (saving the child by killing the mother hardly seems wise). But so far I can't for the life of me see the point to it except to make absolutely certain that the baby dies, and to do it at the last possible second before the existing laws protect it.

A few pages back, I gave examples of one doctor who famously testified to protect partial birth, late term abortions. A couple of examples: fetus failed to develop skull or spinal cord, twins fused into one body.

After having posted the doctors example I made some impassioned remark about our failure of imagination being forever trumped by God/nature.

Three pages later, you still ask for examples.

__________________
...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

I think (and correct me if I'm wrong) you're refering to post #111. I fail to see how crushing the skull after it emerged could possibly benefit the woman in any of those cases. If you know of a way, I am willing to hear you out.

The Dr. you mention was defending the necessity of some late-term abotions, not this particular procedure and certainly not the final, grisly act that makes it so disturbing.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that late-term abortions might rarely be necessary to save the mother's life/health. Any broad-based ban on them should have to include such an exception.

And in the absurdly unlikely (and, thus far, umimaginable) senario that a woman's life depended on her child's skull being crushed after it was already outside of her, it is the responsibility of the court to not hold the doctor involved liable for deviating from the law in that one, unspeakably rare, incidient.
The Court has always held that just because a law could hypothetically, in some freakishly bizarre twist of chance, turn out badly, that does not make it a bad law.

I still havne't seen any. Post #111 offered no explination of how killing the fetus outside the womb was in any way useful to the woman. If you think I've misunderstood it, please clarify how the act of crushing the fetus' skull after it emerged was beneficial to the woman.
Or if you were speaking of a different post, I apologize for missing it, can you please direct me to it?

Actually, to anyone familiar with the basics of the English language it is VERY ambiguous, and it is MORE reasonably understand to assert that partial birth abortions MAY be a better option over alternative methods of ABORTING the baby, but nowhere does it assert that it is every a neccesary alternative to LIVE BIRTH.

Given that the AMA HAS asserted that it is never medically neccesary to do a PBA given the alternative of LIVE BIRTH by completing the delivery, I would think most rational thoughtful people would want the ACOG to state this unequivocably. But they don't.

Cite for me exactly where in their statement is the option of live birth even alluded to or implied?

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

Cite the option of live birth in a discussion of abortion methods? This is a joke right?

__________________
The most important political office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis - First Jewish Supreme Court Justice

Thank you for proving the point, and demonstrating how utterly fixated on killing babies the left is. The question isn't whether or not PBA is the only, or even the preferable method of ABORTING the baby, the question is whether or not it is ever medically neccesary (even your own citation has made clear it could not come up with a single instance where it is) or even a moderately preferable compared to all options for terminating the PREGNANCY.

The ONLY reason for performing a PBA rather than a full live birth is to kill the baby, PBA is NEVER medically superior to the option of COMPLETING the birth.

Bottom line, if the objective is to terminate the PREGNANCY, then PBA is NEVER medically superior in ANY WAY to simply finishing the delivery (which is almost fully completed and is infact delayed in order to kill the baby). The PBA is only superior if the objective is to KILL the baby.

The AMA has made it clear that it is NEVER neccesary to protect the life or health of the mother (given the equally safe and effective option of live birth), while the ACOG willfully ignores for political and ideological reasons the single most obvious alternative, and limits its scope of discussion to methods of aborting rather than terminating the pregnancy in order to obfuscate and deceive some people who are so god damn studpid as to not understand the basic distinction.

THAT is why you cannot produce any completely unambiguous, matter of fact statement from them that there is EVER any medical superiority or neccesity to PBA over simply completing the delivery of the baby without killing it.

__________________
"It's a good feeling to shoot a bad guy. Something you democrats would never understand. Americans are homesteaders, we want a safe home, keep the money we make, and shoot bad guys!"

----Denny Crane

1) What I'm fixated on is sticking to the subject.
2) There is no such thing as a "PBA". What I and ACOG are talking about is "Intact Dilation and Extraction"
3) Abortion is a legal procedure. ACOG claims that in some circumstance Intact Dilation and Extraction is the safest method to accomplish that procedure. Congress (and now the court) have ignored the medical advice of the doctors most intimately familiar with the issue in an effort to "protect" women by denying them what is sometimes the safest method of abortion. Trying to frame the issue in any other terms is just dishonest.

__________________
The most important political office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis - First Jewish Supreme Court Justice

The law in question clearly defines what Partial Birth Abortion is. If that term had no legal meaning before, it does now. If that isn't what your talking about, then you aren't talking about this law.

The law still allows Intact Dilation & Extraction as far the the intact extraction of the fetus goes; there is no ban on that. The ban only applies when, after the extraction is part-way completed, the doctor then actively and purposefully kills the baby/fetus.

All aspects of Intact Dilation & Extraction that benefit the mother are still perfectly legal, on the the additional act of actively killing the fetus has been outlawed.

Nothing clear about it at all. The definition in the legislation is deliberately vague and fits a variety of circumstances. This court found it not to be unconstitutionally vague but the fact that it's not unconstitutionally vague is not the same as saying it has any medical meaning. And in the text of the legislation the real name is used. The "partial birth" crap is only for the tv cameras.

The idea that there is some form of abortion which does not actively and purposefully kill the baby/fetus takes my breath away.

This court bent over backwards in order to hand the religious right a political "victory" on this issue. Of course it's not really a "victory" at all for people who wish there were less abortions. But it's a great soundbite for republican politicians and it does penalize a small number of women who may suffer health problems as a result of their doctor no longer being able to offer this option. And I guess that's good enough for some people.

__________________
The most important political office is that of private citizen.
Louis D. Brandeis - First Jewish Supreme Court Justice