An anesthetic could be used IV like propofol followed by beuthanasia. This would be more humane.

The scissors were used, at least in some cases, post-birth, not as an abortive procedure. Also scissors feel more visceral because everyone has held a pair of scissors so the whole thing is more real and thus more gruesome.

Are you also in favor of beheading instead of lethal injection in death penalty cases?

It seems clear that one is an accepted, tested and legitimate medical procedure, and the other is CUTTING A NECK WITH SCISSORS.

lol

Newest logical fallacy - begging the question.

"Not considering a fetus to be human life" does indeed mean abortion wouldn't be murder. But the question of whether or not it is a human life is in no way decided - that is in fact the point on which the two sides disagree. If it isn't a human life, which is apparently your argument,what is it? A non-human life? - Especially once he/she can exist outside of the mother's womb - at that point the parasitic argument is rendered moot.

If abortion is indeed a right, is it an unlimited one? Most rights can be exercised on a sliding scale of sorts - your right to exercise it is limited by its intrusion on others' rights. As even Roe v. Wade made clear - a fetus has more of a right to have his/her right to life considered the further along in development it is. Thus the differences spelled out in the limits of a woman's right to an abortion according to the trimester of development - which to return to my earlier point about ultrasounds would be much easier to deduce with an ultrasound than in trying to figure out when the baby was conceived, especially in an unplanned preganancy. Also, if we start framing the discussion in terms of competing rights, a strong argument can be made that if a woman is indeed in the tiny minority of women whose lives are threatened by a pregnancy her right to live supercedes that of the unborn baby.

I wish the debate weren't being lead by either side's more extreme members. I also think that ultimately the war will be won non-legislatively. But that's another thread.

Right. A doctor can look at an ultrasound and make a judgment as to how many weeks the fetus is. What is the reasoning behind FORCING a woman to view an ultrasound before an abortion?

I completely agree.

Right, but what's a few centimeters really? I don't see any difference between what the doctor did and partial-birth abortion, which wasn't even made criminal until 2003.

Actually, a better analogy is being beheaded (scissors) versus being drawn and quartered (current procedure). Both are gruesome. Are you unfamiliar with how abortions are accomplished?

I'm with aggieAXO. Woman and fetus should be anesthetized as standard procedure before any abortive procedure.

You are assuming a lot of facts by stating that the "nerves have hooked themselves up." People like to believe what they like to believe, but the nervous sytem in a fetus is very, very rudimentary. Even in a newborn, the myelination of the nerves and brain are so incomplete that they rely on us for everything. Why do you think they learn as they age? Because their brain develops the myelin and is able to function and send signals from one cell to the other more efficiently. Just because a nerve is present in a fetus does NOT mean that a 3 month fetus "feels pain" like you or I do. Even if the fetus appears to "recoil from painful stimuli," those can be easily explained by basic reflexes. It's the same as saying that because the nerves are there, a baby should be able to think the same as you or I, be immediately potty trained, go straight to school, etc. It doesn't happen because of the limitations of the nervous system as it matures.

What did I say to make you think I assumed that fetuses feel pain the same way fully developed bodies do? I'm not concerned about the degree of pain. I'd prefer there to be NO pain. If nerves are basically formed by the 12th week, regardless of how rudimentary, there is sensation.

Can you guarantee to me that there is no pain? If not, I vote to anesthetize.

In fact, here, the writer was begging the question just as much as the pro-choice writers he referenced.

"In the same breath you're arguing that people disagree on the premise and then trying to turn and state that one perception of the premise is right. Pro-choice individuals probably have a variety of perspectives on what precisely a human fetus is, whether it is life or not, yet still believe that a woman has the right to choose whether her body will support that fetus. Even at a vague level of viability - something that isn't a clear cut time frame - that fetus is still using her body to live.

Indeed these are all points of debate. Although I argue that because there is no clear line that one can draw whether by time, health, or others standards that would protect a woman's mental and physical health as well as her right to her own body, that the optimum solution is minimal restrictions along with education for kids and teens, access to general healthcare for all women, and high levels of support for pregnant women who WANT to have children (also no longer accepting slut-shaming in schools, work, or you know, life.) No one's like "YAY MORE ABORTIONS" except for a few hipsters who like to let people know how edgy they are.


Non-legislative would be my ideal as well. Also non-public referendum. But I'm a dreamer.
Considering "partial-birth abortion" isn't an actual procedure, which was the major complaint about the bill banning it, and every court in the US would consider THIS murder, I suspect you're being deliberately obtuse to try and make a point. It doesn't suit you.


Analogy fail. Contrasting the accepted procedure to one considered inappropriate and gruesome was the point he was making. Accepted procedure isn't inherently good, but you have to actually break it down on medical grounds not because it sounds icky. Snipping the spine of a newborn is murder, plain and simple.

Do you think there may be a reason why this isn't done? Medical reason that is.

Can you guarantee the safety of a mother whose fetus is anesthetized? You realize they share a circulatory system through the placenta, right? You're arguing with a medical professional about an ideal but not grounding it in facts.

Not at all. I have a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around the concepts that we're dealing with. For instance, on one hand, murdering a pregnant woman can trigger two counts of murder. On the other hand, abortion is legal. I have the same issue with "fetus in = abortion" while "fetus out = murder."

Now, it is. My point continues to be that the reaction from the onlookers is curious.

Absolutely.

Riiiight...and mothers in higher end facilities have been known to be anesthetized. We just haven't decided to make that the norm. It's not all that far-fetched of an ideal.

Only some jurisdictions trigger multiple murder counts if a woman is pregnant. Fetus becomes infant at birth. One often uses drawing a breath as the 'standard' but I don't believe that it's legal.


Only if they don't make the distinction themselves. Additionally it is curious you ignored the other aspect, the part where we've all held scissors so we can imagine it happening where most of us have not held other medical equipment on a regular basis.


If so, then why insist on it.

The mother is anesthetized, you were talking about the fetus.

Maybe I have an active imagination, because both ripping the fetus apart and stabbing/cutting it with scissors give me shivers.

I mean general anethesia, which takes us back to the line we're drawing. If there's a chance the fetus feels pain (and there is), I can't stomach the idea of hurting it. That's the second of two reasons I haven't ever been able to bring myself to do it.

I guess. Generally I don't imagine myself doing things I hear about in the news unless they're things that I would like to do. And I have a morbid sense of amusement, so I really can't relate.


Well, generally you don't anesthetize people unless they need it due to the risks involved. That can include mental health reasons, that's why sedation dentists on the radio here are doing such good business. But though no one actually enjoys the idea of causing any living thing harm, humans do so all the time. If anesthetizing the mother completely increases the risks to her, then the risk/benefit may not be wise unless the woman cannot be calm enough during the procedure without it.

Do you eat meat? While we can never be 100% certain, science tells us that the fetus wouldn't be able to feel pain in any way similar to that of a fully formed human. The reason I bring other animals into the discussion at all is because a fetus' nervous system is THAT underdeveloped.