[SPAM] Re: [extropy-chat] Abortion (was: Famous author self destructs in public!Filmateleven.

[Charlie Stross]

On 6 Jun 2005, at 20:25, Mike Lorrey wrote:

> If a fetus can survive outside the womb at 6 months (and many thousands
> do every day in this country), then third trimester abortion should be
> murder. Even Roe v. Wade agrees with me on this point, so if anybody is
> being extremist and hyperbolic, it is you, Samantha, and company, not
> me.

I'd like to throw an unintended consequence at you:

A point you might want to pay some attention to is that third-trimester 
abortions -- in the US or the UK or anywhere else -- make up a very 
small proportion of voluntary abortions; usually a pregnant woman who 
doesn't want to be pregnant has done something about it long before 
they reach the third trimester (at which point, aborting is almost as 
uncomfortable and dangerous as giving birth at term).

In contrast, if something goes wrong with the pregnancy -- resulting in 
a dead third-trimester foetus -- you may rest assured that not only is 
the foetus already dead, but its presence in the womb is a lethal 
threat to the ex-mother. This situation occurs rarely, but an order of 
magnitude more often than a voluntary thirty-trimester abortion. 
Unfortunately the procedure for removing a dead foetus is the same as 
for a third-trimester abortion. The result, therefore, of the recent US 
ban on third-trimester abortion is ill, unhappy women at immediate risk 
from a potentially fatal condition being shuffled between hospitals 
because the ob-gyn staff are terrified of being prosecuted for homicide 
if they give them the attention they need.

Now. What do you propose to do about that?

I'm deadly serious here. If you want to ban third-trimester abortions 
you need to explain how they're going to do so without risking even 
worse consequences ... such as women hemorrhaging to death because 
they've miscarried and the ob-gyn won't remove the corpse for fear of 
being prosecuted, or women dying in childbirth (and the child dying at 
the same time) due to late emerging complications of pregnancy that can 
no longer legally be avoided.


-- Charlie