YYB, if you're going to carry the banner for the Pro Choice Action Team, I strongly suggest you educate yourself. So far you've committed the major gaffe of not having a clue as to fetal development - the human fetal heart beat starts to beat by the 25th day of gestation. Bone structure develops almost immediately but the bones are tiny as long as the fetus is tiny, and they are rather soft early on, as is the skull.
Vaccuum curettage works all during the first trimester, but almost immediately afterwards (say, 17 weeks) more effort is needed to get out the bones and skull - but a Partial Birth Abortion is not needed until well into the second trimester.
Four out of ten babies born at the 24th week of gestation will survive. You probably didn't know that, either.
I assume you know that a normal gestation is 40 weeks.
You should also read up on the history of abortion in the US - apparantly you don't realize that abortion was legal in a number of states PRIOR to Roe v. Wade, Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington, while there was a quote unquote limited right to abortion in other states, including California, which made an exception when the mother's health was in danger, and in practicality in California that meant her mental health. I know a number of women who got legal abortions in New York in the late 1960's and in California in the early 1970's. As far as that goes, an illegal abortion in Louisiana cost $500 at the time, you could get them if you knew the right gynocologist, and I don't know any doctor who was ever prosecuted for providing one. The cops, judges and legislators all sent their girlfriends and daughters to them.
You probably should read Roe v. Wade, so you will know what you are defending. In a nutshell, Roe v. Wade said that no state could abolish abortion for the purpose of contraception in the third trimester, that all states could limit abortion in the third trimester, and that limits in the second trimester had to recognize that technology was constantly improving the chance of fetal survival earlier and earlier in a pregnancy. It was based largely on the historical fact that abortions were not illegal throughout recorded history until "quickening", that is, until the mother could feel the baby kick, which is about 15 weeks. There is, in fact, no Constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade, except for the right to privacy, a right nowhere enumerated in the Constitution.
How we have come from that relatively mild opinion to the opinion held by many, that women have the "right" to abort viable fetuses, no matter how far along, astonishes me.
Anyone who thinks that abolishing Roe v. Wade is going to end abortion, or send women to back alley butchers is just plain ignorant. All that will happen is that it will return to a state by state decision. |
