SCOTUS removes Roe V Wade

[DarkTZeratul]

Just curious, but how exactly does that legislation square with the Constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of movement?

It completely ignores it, because fuck you that's why. The only important amendments are the Second and the First (but only insofar as it lets evangelicals impose their beliefs on everyone else and not vice-versa), and the rest are just suggestions.

[s_bushido]

Just curious, but how exactly does that legislation square with the Constitutionally enshrined right to freedom of movement?

Your first mistake was assuming they give the slightest shit about respecting people's rights. I mean...not respecting people's rights is basically one of the core pillars of their philosophy as a party.

[Breccia]

Indiana sues hospital that provided abortion to Ohio resident, who, somehow, found a hospital in Indiana of all places when Ohio denied her.

"Well she should have thought of that before having sex."

She was raped.

"Oh...um...well, surely there are other options for a healthy adult to handle the situation."

She's ten.

There is no common ground between pro-life and pro-choice.

[Edge-]

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/...d/70890640007/

The Indiana Supreme Court’s disciplinary commission filed a complaint Monday alleging that Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita violated professional conduct after his statements in 2022 about the case of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who sought an abortion in Indiana and the doctor who performed the procedure.

The complaint alleges that Rokita violated professional conduct rules in statements he made about obstetrician-gynecologist Caitlin Bernard on a Fox News show hosted by Jesse Watters on July 13, 2022, specifically when the attorney general referred to Bernard as an "abortion activist acting as a doctor — with a history of failure to report.”

Additionally, the complaint states that Rokita violated confidentiality requirements by making statements about an investigation into Bernard prior to filing a complaint with the Medical Licensing Board.

In a statement, Rokita said he planned to respond to the commission's complaint, adding that the complaint "stemmed from grievances, which mainly referenced media reports."

"We will continue defending Indiana’s laws and ensure that licensed medical professionals and other healthcare providers are held accountable when they violate their patients’ privacy and fail to obtain consent," Rokita said in the statement.

The complaint, filed by the disciplinary commission’s executive director Adrienne Meiring and deputy director of litigation Stephanie Bibbs requests Rokita be disciplined for professional misconduct and pay required expenses.

Bernard's legal counsel, Kathleen DeLaney, said her legal team cannot comment on the charges because they weren't involved.

"We will watch how the Disciplinary Commission process proceeds and let the complaint speak for itself,” she said.

Republicans, in their rush to show just how extremist they can be on this topic, find themselves likely violating ethics/professional guidelines when they stop following the rules and make shit up because it sounds good for their Fox News interview and they've got bigger political ambitions.

[The Stormbringer]

Indiana sues hospital that provided abortion to Ohio resident, who, somehow, found a hospital in Indiana of all places when Ohio denied her.

"Well she should have thought of that before having sex."

She was raped.

"Oh...um...well, surely there are other options for a healthy adult to handle the situation."

She's ten.

There is no common ground between pro-life and pro-choice.

So, are we at the point where it's morally acceptable for us to start forming mobs with pitchforks, torches, and shotguns to deal with these motherfuckers? Just asking for a friend. No advocation for violence here, no no, just some perfectly legal protesting, I assure you!

[Breccia]

So, are we at the point where it's morally acceptable for us to start forming mobs with pitchforks, torches, and shotguns to deal with these motherfuckers? Just asking for a friend. No advocation for violence here, no no, just some perfectly legal protesting, I assure you!

Actually I think the question is if it's ethically okay. Mobs with torches and pitchforks are probably still illegal.

[Endus]

Actually I think the question is if it's ethically okay. Mobs with torches and pitchforks are probably still illegal.

We really need to revisit the concept of violence, as a society, starting from scratch. Too many people try and argue "violence is never justified!" while simultaneously trying to argue "comply with the law and the police will stop tazing and shooting you!"

Completely incapable of seeing the latter as "violence".

Weirdly, these are usually the same people who like to talk about the 2nd Amendment as a response to tyranny, because they're completely fuckin' clueless about what they're saying.

[Edge-]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/healt...ong/index.html

Just when Beth and Kyle Long received the worst news of their life, an Ohio law made their searing pain even worse.

For four years, the Longs tried to have a baby, enduring multiple rounds of grueling fertility treatments. In September 2022, Beth finally became pregnant.

But an ultrasound four months later showed that most of the baby’s organs were outside the body.

The condition, called limb body wall complex, is rare.

“It’s just not survivable,” a doctor involved in Beth’s care told CNN.

“They will die. There’s no way there will be a life,” said Dr. Alireza Shamshirsaz, a spokesperson for the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, who was not involved in Beth’s care.

The condition posed dangers for Beth too, and the bigger the baby was, the higher the risk of complications, including dangerous bleeding that might require a hysterectomy. They say their doctor urged them to terminate the pregnancy as soon as possible.

But when the Longs tried to schedule the abortion, they found out that their insurance wouldn’t pay for it.

Beth takes care of breast cancer patients at a state-owned hospital. She’s employed by the state of Ohio, and state law bans her health insurance from paying for abortions except in certain cases.

Endangerment to the life of the mother is one of them, and although she was at an increased risk for potentially deadly complications, Beth’s life was not in imminent danger, and the Longs say their doctor told them the insurance wouldn’t cover the procedure.

Beth and Kyle would have to foot the bill: between $20,000 and $30,000. After spending $45,000 on fertility treatments, they didn’t have the money.

It took them three weeks to make arrangements to go to a hospital that could perform the complicated abortion at a lower price. It was hours away, in another state.

During that three-week wait – a wait they had to endure only because of the Ohio law – the risk to Beth of potentially deadly complications grew. Their ability to try to have another baby was delayed, and their “agony” couldn’t end, Beth said.

“I was in mental anguish,” Beth said.

“It felt very inhumane for both our baby and for my wife,” Kyle added.

The hospital they found was a three-hour drive away, in Pittsburgh. Away from their regular obstetrician, whom Beth had known for years; away from their doula; away from their friends and family. The Longs were alone.

More on the kind of harm Republicans continue to allow to happen to women when they could prevent it.

There was absolutely no reason for this woman to suffer a non-viable pregnancy that post a risk to her health, this is genuinely just a matter of health care and that's it as the developing fetus had no chance of survival ever. Kinda hard to live with organs on your outside.

This is the kind of literal torture that Republicans appear to want to force women to risk when they get pregnant. This seems to continue to be a feature of Republican policy on this topic, not a bug.

[The Stormbringer]

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/healt...ong/index.html

More on the kind of harm Republicans continue to allow to happen to women when they could prevent it.

There was absolutely no reason for this woman to suffer a non-viable pregnancy that post a risk to her health, this is genuinely just a matter of health care and that's it as the developing fetus had no chance of survival ever. Kinda hard to live with organs on your outside.

This is the kind of literal torture that Republicans appear to want to force women to risk when they get pregnant. This seems to continue to be a feature of Republican policy on this topic, not a bug.

Of course! Gotta punish those uppity women for fighting for the right to vote, to be considered people, to have their own property and jobs, to be able to divorce abusers, to be anything other than breeding machines and sex toys for them to abuse.

This is what Republicans have wanted the whole time. This is why they talk about "the good ole days", the days where the only people who "mattered" were white men.

I gotta agree with Endus here. We really should revisit the role violence plays in our society. If politicians are capable of forcing this kind of pain and suffering on people, why shouldn't we also be able to force equivalent pain and suffering on them?

[tehdang]

Speaking of features and bugs, North Carolina legislators had an opportunity to craft a better bill, but sadly, moral compunctions would not allow that. Opinion piece commenting on and citing an article by Duke physicians in the New England Journal of Medicine:

It is no secret that the medical establishment is chock full of abortion absolutists who loathe the idea of any meaningful limitations on abortion. But when North Carolina legislators reached out to Duke University OBGYN experts to target potential health exceptions to a post-twelve-weeks prohibition — in other words, to be nuanced — the self-righteous professors refused to help.

And now they are bragging about it in the New England Journal of Medicine. From, “The Ethics of Abortion Care Advocacy–Making Exceptions to the Rule:”

Lawmakers proposing abortion bans sometimes seek guidance from Ob/Gyns on potential lists of exceptions to incorporate into such bans. Creating lists defining when abortion is medically necessary places clinicians in the ethically fraught position of providing input on laws that will harm patients.

Well, limitations sure don’t hurt the babies that are born–which from what I understand, are counted in the many thousands since Dobbs, precious people who will now have the opportunity live full lives.

Despite our commitment to advocacy, when legislators asked us to provide lists of maternal or fetal health exceptions to incorporate into the law, we refused. We felt strongly that legitimizing exclusions was unethical, and we implored legislators to have compassion for people needing abortions after 12 weeks. Although 90% of abortions in the United States occur in the first trimester, bans based on gestational age disproportionately affect young people and low-income people, and the gestational-age limits used in such policies are often too early for many fetal genetic and anatomical diagnoses to be established.

Although not providing a list of possible exceptions risked a less medically informed bill, we found it ethically problematic to attempt to protect certain patients’ access to abortion care while compromising care for others. If clinicians engage in negotiations that lead to restrictions on abortion, we fail to uphold our duty of nonmaleficence, since patients who have conditions that aren’t deemed “exception-worthy” are harmed.

Of course, that ignores another patient, the gestating baby.

Why allow a “less medically informed” law to be enacted? Ideology:

Limiting access to abortion care by means of exclusionary lists exacerbates health injustices and disproportionately harms disenfranchised and marginalized patients, since more privileged patients are more likely to have timely access to care and to be able to travel for abortion care. Enacting exclusions also further stigmatizes abortion care and creates a false dichotomy between acceptable and unacceptable care. We care for patients with myriad personal and compelling reasons for seeking abortion care. These reasons often aren’t reflected in exceptions included in abortion bans. In addition, when legislators receive lists of exceptions from physicians, they tend to promote their legislation as being approved by doctors, even if the physicians involved were primarily trying to reduce harm.

And then they yell that the laws passed in states restricting an atmosphere of open season against fetuses are ham-fisted.

And they seem to prefer abortion to birth:

When carrying a pregnancy to term is 14 times as likely as undergoing legal abortion to lead to death, some would argue that the risk associated with pregnancy alone is sufficient to merit care.

By “to merit care,” they mean killing the gestating baby.

There is a strongly implied threat to cease practicing obstetrics if abortion isn’t open-ended:

How long can thoughtful, compassionate clinicians continue to practice obstetrics when laws prohibit them from providing necessary care to their patients? These laws exact a high cost not only on patients, but also on clinicians.

And pro-lifers have to admit they are wrong!

Until we find a way to start discussions from common ground — acknowledging that abortion is health care — the most effective way of advocating for our patients may be to bear witness to how care, or the absence of it, shapes their lives.

For many Americans, abortion is fraught with conflicting ethical and moral considerations, and polls show, that majorities are not absolutists either way. But it seems to me that the pro-life side focuses on both protecting the unborn baby and helping mothers in need. In contrast, for these abortion absolutist professors, the baby’s life isn’t even worth a passing mention, and, it would seem, of no more importance than a burst appendix. Ugh.

National Review

I would laud legislators that are seeking bans on abortion with exceptions to reach out to medical doctors on how to define and what constitutes conditions putting the mother's life or the baby's life at substantial risk. But this article points out that lawmakers are sometimes turned down, and cites doctors at Duke University refusing to do so. The story on poorly crafted exceptions in the language appears to have two sides. One, doctors feel compunction in aiding a law they oppose, superseding feelings towards lessening harm as a result of passed legislation. In doing so, their profession is complicit in criticism directed at the laws by stating that their exceptions are poorly crafted. It also mitigates the force of certain appeals consisting of claims that the laws' unintended ambiguity on certain cases of fetal defect/life-threatening conditions was, in-fact, maliciously crafted to achieve ambiguity.

I don't have access to the medical journal, so can't quote the entirety of sections that were quoted in the article from it. I wish and hope that this is an on-going discussion among doctors on the ethics of advising legislators. If you don't want shitty laws, advise and advocate for less shitty laws. If you don't want to get your hands dirty in laws you oppose as a whole, then kindly don't complain when they're less well-crafted and have to go through years of court wrangling and uncertainty. One nasty little consequence of this process is giving the impression that the progressive position is tolerating bad 6-week 12-week and 15-week bans, in the hopes of getting better representatives and better future laws with criticism of their defects. It might be political successful (time will tell), though very morally questionable, to say, "I oppose this bill for being rushed and poorly-written ... and object on moral grounds for using my medical expertise and time to advise better writing."

[The Stormbringer]

Speaking of features and bugs, North Carolina legislators had an opportunity to craft a better bill, but sadly, moral compunctions would not allow that. Opinion piece commenting on and citing an article by Duke physicians in the New England Journal of Medicine:

This is one of the most biased things I think I've seen you post. Please don't post garbage like this. The amount of misinformation and propaganda against abortion is fucking absurd. You wanna know why OB/GYNs don't want to say where exceptions should be? Because they know that they cannot account for every single exception, and if they give a list to politicians, those politicians will then make things as ironclad as possible to prevent anything BUT the list of exceptions they're given, and will point to the OB/GYNs and say, "LOOK?! SEE?! WE LISTENED TO THEM! THE SCIENTISTS! THE DOCTORS! YOU CAN'T BE MAD AT US FOR REMOVING YOUR RIGHTS AND LETTING WOMEN DIE!"

That's fucking why. Holy god damn shit, it's not hard. It is not about them advising and advocating for 'less shitty laws', it's about not giving these scumbag politicians a stamp to stomp on women's rights even harder than they are now. If these people actually gave a fuck about "helping mothers in need", then they wouldn't be pursuing this crap to begin with.

And god, that drivel about "precious people who will now have the opportunity live full lives". Yeah, I'm sure they'll live full lives with parents who didn't want them, weren't ready to have them, couldn't afford to have them, or wanted to spare them pain and suffering of existing with various medical issues. Especially when the people advocating for those precious people will not actually give one penny towards making their lives better. Such full, very precious, wow.

Congratulations, you actually pissed me off on this one. Normally I'm able to just ignore the worst stuff you say, but this one actually made me mad.

[jonnysensible]

the ban is morally questionable (abhorrent actually). a lot of concern trolling when the obviously evil lawmakers are the only party to blame here for adverse outcomes.

[PosPosPos]

-Pretentious word salad snip-

It is not morally questionable to refuse to be blackmailed by Republicans and their anti-science, anti-women policies.

It is also not morally questionable to reject bad faith invitations to debate, like when Republicans confront healthcare professionals and preface their invitations with "submit to our hateful, harmful policies, or be forever labelled 'killers of gestating babies'".

But it seems to me that the pro-life side focuses on both protecting the unborn baby and helping mothers in need. In contrast, for these abortion absolutist professors, the baby’s life isn’t even worth a passing mention, and, it would seem, of no more importance than a burst appendix. Ugh.

Case-in-point when conservatives are shameless enough to state this while also forcing ectopic pregnancies to carry to term.

Refusing to cooperate with what can only be described as pure evil isn't "morally questionable", it's the obligation of every remotely decent human being with any shred of morality and ethicality left within them.

[Edge-]

Case-in-point when conservatives are shameless enough to state this while also forcing ectopic pregnancies to carry to term.

Refusing to cooperate with what can only be described as pure evil isn't "morally questionable", it's the obligation of every remotely decent human being with any shred of morality and ethicality left within them.

It's sad because that quoted bit from the op-ed in particular is incredibly dishonest.

Republicans are consistently given opportunities to actually pursue pro-life policies: Better pre and post-natal care for girls and women, better reproductive education and access to information and tools to practice safe sex, more funding for young mothers including the return of the expanded Child Tax Credit that lifted millions of families with young children out of poverty.

On a purely policy level, this is complete and total fiction that Republicans/conservatives continue to repeat.

[Endus]

Speaking of features and bugs, North Carolina legislators had an opportunity to craft a better bill, but sadly, moral compunctions would not allow that. Opinion piece commenting on and citing an article by Duke physicians in the New England Journal of Medicine:

National Review

I would laud legislators that are seeking bans on abortion with exceptions to reach out to medical doctors on how to define and what constitutes conditions putting the mother's life or the baby's life at substantial risk. But this article points out that lawmakers are sometimes turned down, and cites doctors at Duke University refusing to do so.

And you can't understand the moral objections to doing so that oblige them to do so.

A 12-week ban is not "nuanced". It's entirely arbitrary in its approach to restricting women's rights. That they had the timeline first and asked doctors to retroactively help in justifying it demonstrates how there was no "nuance" being considered here, at all.

This is like responding to abolitionists with "come on, be reasonable, we have to have slaves, maybe we just need fewer slaves. Can we agree that no one can own more than, say, 10 slaves? That's reasonable, right? Let's compromise, okay?"

That's the level of outrageous dishonesty and lack of humanity on display in your article.

It would be funny, how you're citing an article trying to defend an arbitrary and meaningless attack on women and frame the doctors refusing to participate as the villains, if your efforts weren't actually harming women every day in the USA. It's monstrous and abusive and dehumanizing. But that's your goal.

It should go without saying that opposing that kind of intentionally harmful misanthropy and refusing any compromise with it is the only ethically justifiable path forward.

[PosPosPos]

It's sad because that quoted bit from the op-ed in particular is incredibly dishonest.

Republicans are consistently given opportunities to actually pursue pro-life policies: Better pre and post-natal care for girls and women, better reproductive education and access to information and tools to practice safe sex, more funding for young mothers including the return of the expanded Child Tax Credit that lifted millions of families with young children out of poverty.

On a purely policy level, this is complete and total fiction that Republicans/conservatives continue to repeat.

The entire article can be summarized into: "Healthcare professionals rightfully refused to accept or compromise with Republican anti-science, anti-women, anti-child stances and policies, so conservative author tries to morally blackmail the former into submission".

[tehdang]

This is one of the most biased things I think I've seen you post. Please don't post garbage like this. The amount of misinformation and propaganda against abortion is fucking absurd. You wanna know why OB/GYNs don't want to say where exceptions should be? Because they know that they cannot account for every single exception, and if they give a list to politicians, those politicians will then make things as ironclad as possible to prevent anything BUT the list of exceptions they're given, and will point to the OB/GYNs and say, "LOOK?! SEE?! WE LISTENED TO THEM! THE SCIENTISTS! THE DOCTORS! YOU CAN'T BE MAD AT US FOR REMOVING YOUR RIGHTS AND LETTING WOMEN DIE!"

I know this is an emotional and charged subject. I still thoroughly reject your approach and framing. If you're busy screaming about all the bad things legislation crafters are going to do, and that's why they have no part, then obviously the most extreme pro-life legislators are going to blame your allies for encouraging mistakes instead of correcting them and de-facto encouraging errors in laws affecting women seeking abortions within the exceptions in order to help them be overturned. That's just politics.

Around half the states in this country have some form of 6-18 week bans with and w/o exceptions. I think acknowledging the legislative majorities doing this and courts interpreting this is a pretty ground-level entry point. I'd like to see some groundswell of debate among physicians and their professional organizations, and publicized debate, beyond just attacking the people making these laws and hoping they go away. That's a little too anti-Democratic and callous for me. "If they have a majority to pass a 15-week ban with exceptions, at least put energy and effort into making those exceptions actually cover significant threat to the life of the mother and severe fetal anomalies that will cause the death of the baby." I know there's a certain morally righteous position that says a bad law shouldn't have any good person's fingerprints on it. I don't think that ends the debate on changing first and second trimester abortion bans in states that have them or are considering them.

But, really, if you have anything from the quoted article and perspective to discuss instead of dismiss, I will try my best. The doctors themselves acknowledged the competing impulses before coming to their position.

Congratulations, you actually pissed me off on this one. Normally I'm able to just ignore the worst stuff you say, but this one actually made me mad.

I had a little trouble remaining non-pissed at the suggestion that violence may be appropriate that happened on the last page (you yourself saying "are we at the point where it's morally acceptable for us to start forming mobs with pitchforks, torches, and shotguns to deal with these motherfuckers?" and a sarcastic comment at advocating violence. There's already been too much arson vandalism and threats of violence in the context of pro-life organizations and crisis pregnancy centers in the wake of the Roe repeal.

And god, that drivel about "precious people who will now have the opportunity live full lives". Yeah, I'm sure they'll live full lives with parents who didn't want them, weren't ready to have them, couldn't afford to have them, or wanted to spare them pain and suffering of existing with various medical issues. Especially when the people advocating for those precious people will not actually give one penny towards making their lives better. Such full, very precious, wow.

That's the pro-life view. They should have the opportunity to live full lives, and some make exceptions for severe fetal anomalies. I appreciate your full opinion. In fact, I believe you know the pro-life side also labels this quoted section as drivel as well. Human life is a little more precious and its sudden and elective end deserves more consideration than the parents readiness and current financial circumstances. But I only want to note that both sides will call their mainstream arguments and counter-arguments drivel, since this is a worldview and values debate at its heart.

[AntiFascistVoter]

Did anyone bother to look the author up .. his bio blurb on google reads like a punchline.

Wesley J. Smith is an American lawyer and author, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center on Human Exceptionalism, a politically conservative, pseudoscientific, non-profit think tank. He is also a consultant for the Patients Rights Council.

A pseudoscientific think tank, is quite the contradiction of terms.

I seriously want to know his whereabouts on Jan. 6 2020. He could have been a witness to L Brent Bozell.


The national review likes to pretend they're serious conservatives. But his article list, https://www.nationalreview.com/author/wesley-j-smith/, is a top 40 of Lee Atwater's Kultur Kampf. Double dipping on the transphobia.

[Dead Moose Fandango]

At this point, it should be a law that if you're against an abortion for anyone raped without special health circumstances ie it could easily be fatal to the "mother", you're labeled pro-rape and should be on a list.

[tehdang]

In respecting @tehdang's opinions on abortion, assuming what he's conversed about the topic with me is what he truly feels, his opposition to abortion is relatively tame among the pro-life crowd. He seems generally ok with abortion before viability.

But he has an unhealthy obsession with the 3rd trimester, and some seemingly simmering worry that doctors and pregnant women are doing evil shit. When that's as far away from the truth as you can get. I don't know if there's any logic he can accept in regards to that. Abortions in the 3rd trimester are just so fucking rare these days(and necessary!), and I don't know why he can't see that.

I did quote the Atlantic article and discussion on doctors that would perform such abortions purely based on the woman's desire to have one. The abortions themselves number above ten thousand; far above other rare but constantly discussed topics like police shootings of unarmed suspects and deaths from AR-15s. Rare in the sense of comparing them to first and second-trimester abortions, but not rare in the sense that they number less than a hundred. I already wrote many posts on rarity back in the context of the Atlantic article, so I'd refer you to them if you want more complete thoughts on why limiting them is proper.