Welcome to The Handmaids Tale.

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And so it begins...

Article title is surprisingly not misleading, but has essentially nothing to do with changes since Rowe v. Wade. The woman self induced an abortion at 25 weeks and 4 days (in October of 2021) after taking abortion pills without the oversight of a physician which violated preexisting 20 week abortion bans and self induced (non physician monitored) abortion bans.

South Carolina has draconian and dystopian laws pending and working their way through the legislature currently, but this particular incident is not the beginning of the hellscape we know is coming.

The fetus was passed the point of viability outside of the womb and you can argue about the morality of what she did endlessly, but at the end of the day she was arrested for breaking old and established laws within the state.

The Caravan is forming up in the predawn hours, in a Walmart parking lot in Columbia.

One by one, women of childbearing age arrive in cars driven by their mothers and grandmothers, and tearful goodbyes abound. Fleeing the violence and human rights abuses in their homeland, these women have no option but to seek freedom and safety in the first world.

The journey ahead is long, and fraught with danger, but these women see it as necessary to preserve their lives.

“Conditions here are just too dangerous,” said one woman, daughter in tow. “Between our failed health care system, 18th century economy, and the violence of our legislature against us, emigration is our only choice!”

“Women in my state should be considered ‘persons’ with rights, just like a fetus or blastocyst!”, said another.

In New York, California, and other states with “personhood” amendments for American women, preparations are being made to receive and acclimate refugees, while, in the fetus fetishizing states, the livestock are nervous.

This is one of the funniest documentaries I've ever read. Wish I could upvote more than once.

Thankyou for this well reasoned summary.

r/FunnyandSad

Which makes it an older violation of her rights and not a newer one. Still fucked up.

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Correct, we have a term for that time. It starts with a 'b'.

And we do weigh the rights of all of the people involved against each other. Since there's only one person involved until after birth, that's easy. "Potential" people (to use your term) aren't people.

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> arbitrary - based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

This is not remotely arbitrary. It's based on the point where the fetus is no longer a growth on another person, but is it's own person (see below on this).

As compared to pretty much every time based abortion ban, which are generally based on an actual "arbitrary" point in time, sometimes attempted to be justified by calling it "viability", but that's all over the place biologically speaking, while the laws generally aren't. And sometimes they pass laws that are supposed to be based on a heartbeat, but they're actually time based, and the heartbeat of a fetus is mostly just a pulsing tube for the first few month. Also, since a heartbeat itself has no impact on what makes us a person, it's also entirely arbitrary.

So, if you actually believe that it shouldn't be arbitrary, then feel free to join me.

And yes, the laws that we have in the US recognize that a person isn't a person until they're born. Prior to that, they don't have any of the rights that a person has, because "person" is a legal term, not a biological one. This isn't my opinion, it's just a fact. Most states grant some rights to the unborn, but not based on any personhood.

Its not a violation of her "rights" if she never had those rights to begin with.

It has never been much of an argument to say woman have a right to do this, anymore than say like in islam where a man has a right to unalive a woman who committed adultery.

Its my belief, and many others that no one has the "right" to interfere with anothers life in this kind of way. Specifically denying it, aka killing. Generally in western society its considered wrong to do so. So in my opinion this is a veritable crime and lead into the consequences such.

I do understand that it is your opinion that women don't deserve body autonomy rights. Generally, in western society, it's considered wrong to deny these rights. Unsurprisingly, some people who oppose these rights point to far right religious bullshit and mention things like "unalive a woman" in order to pretend that they aren't also on that same path. Of course, many others just point to their own religious justification for their stances as the reason to control others on this.

Meanwhile, it's interesting that you say "interfere with another's life in this kind of way", while making an argument that a fetus (a non-person) has the right to do that exact thing. Seems wildly inconsistent.

Either way, it seems your personal perspective on morals go directly against the core concepts of freedom, and you're denying that women should have rights over their own bodies as you or I do, so let's ignore the "rights" argument. Let's just go with a practicality discussion. Why is your opinion here a more practical stance for society?

You assume a great deal here, and I will do my best to address this comment as it is.

First off, thank you for replying in a way that opens up this discussion, without resorting to some sort of verbal barrage or demeaning of my character for such beliefs, and encouraging debate thereof.

For the majority of my life I agreed in abortions, that its the womans choice, and her place to decide. After the recent roe v wade overturning last year I began to look more seriously into it, and what all the commotion was about.

I have heard so many and continue to hear mainly emotionally charged arguments and circular ethical stances within the "pro-choice" community.
Believe me I am open minded to hearing all postions on the matter, and continue to be, however none of the logical arguments are particularly sound. Your position of 'personhood' being legally defined at birth is so far amongst the best stances, however even so falls quite short of being convincing.

Now I will respond to your comment directly : I never said woman "dont deserve body autonomy rights", nor do I hold a moral stance as such. Woman have the choice and freedom to decide upon a partner, and have full body autonomy in this regard. It is her choice of whom she allows to enter her, and whom she chooses as a partner to do so. When a woman consents to sex, she inextricably consents to the possibility of being impregnated. This seems to be something that is majorly overlooked in the pro-abortion circles.

If she becomes pregnant, from her choices , she now must accept her body is changing again, and once gestation phase begins, just like her monthly period, she has no choice on the matter. She already made her choice by consenting to sexual intercourse.

Furthermore I fully believe she has the right to birth control at this phase. Let me also include that when one is graped/forced into this I believe in prosecuting the male who violated her body autonomy in this way as well. Likewise if she knows this occured, I do believe in early stage abortions, but if she fails to act, then she must bare the child to term as then the fetus will become a human, which is not fair to jointly punish the child for the fathers criminal misconduct. I also am aware this kind of situation is terrible for the mother and there should be greater measures of support for her in this case.

This leads now into my main premise on the matter; A woman has all the freedom of choice prior to gestation, however once she receives the sperm that is the completion of her choice. She is now responsible + accountable to/for the human life growing inside her. To take unnatural action otherwise at this point is akin to denying an inevitable emergence of a human existing. The definition of such a denial of life is 'killing', and the legal consequence of killing another human is being liable to charges of murder in the court of law.

Likewise all thru out history it has been a common tactic of oppressors to dehumanize a group for political sway. Such was the case of slaves in america [3/5th vote], jews in germany [yellow star] , and so on and so forth. This is now a common argument justifying the procedure to artificially induce early labor.

The extent of trauma on every level of the womans body from this kind of surgery is absolutely life changing. Their body is literally meant to have children, so its my "practical" opinion the law should protect their rights in this way.

Not allow them some special priviledge to deny life to a human being they no longer want to be responsible for. Hence the islam example, which I was stating because I disagree with that as a special priviledge as well.

Per usual I expect many downvotes and perhaps emotionally charged hyterics or whatever. However this is my stance on the matter and likewise I believe as a man I do have a say on this, because it can and has affected my own life.

I have more worth than an parasite does.

> I have heard so many and continue to hear solely emotionally charged arguments and circular ethical stances within the "pro-choice" community.

Your entire comment here is based on emotional outtakes. You have made multiple claims that don't fit reality when it comes to the medical situation. You started with a denial of what I said, and then jumped with both feet into a long argument that a woman's body, mind, and "spirit" are to be devoted to reproduction. You pull the old tired (and always false) line to say that abortion is murder. You even compare abortion to slavery and the Holocaust.

You decided to abandon the very things you claimed to base your stance on at the start, and instead relied on BS and emotional crap.

When you make a comment that comes close to living up to your standards, then maybe it'll warrant a response. And maybe if you answered my questions about practicality rather than making a emotional rant, we could have had a better conversation as well.

But I do need to pull this out and comment on it:

> Their body is literally meant to have children

Nobody who claims that they believe in the rights to bodily autonomy of women can ever say this and be honest and consistent. Their body is literally meant to do whatever the hell they want to do with it, because our country is supposed to care about freedom, and that line goes directly against that.

And I don't mean any offense (though I am calling you a liar here), but with that line and the paragraph on how women are "the channel" to some false inevitability, I don't believe most of the stuff that you said about doing research and coming to a new stance. It seems more like you spent some time talking to your pastor and listening to his bullshit instead of looking up how pregnancy or abortion work at all (or the laws as written right now).

It's funny, you start saying that I assumed things. I didn't assume anything. You said who you were and have just reinforced everything that I said above. Good luck in your path to understanding. I was once fooled by the BS that a religion taught me about abortion and pregnancy. You can learn the truth of how female biology works. It's not hard, and there are plenty of resources out there.

Sorry but maybe actually read what I said and we can have a discussion.

Assume ; verb : Suppose to be the case, without actual proof.

Your entire reply is quite literally overflowimg with assumptions + pointedly charged declarations.

Im not making any assumptions about you as a person, however you are, and are incredibly off with most of them. It seems you want to paint me in a particular manner, to fit the image of someone you disagree with. Like I mentioned, and you highlighted, pro-abortion debatees tend to degenerate into these kinds of tactical theatrics. An attempt to deflect and invalidate my entire comment in your first sentence is evidence of this.

Previously I was willing to debate the various things I brought up and was forthcoming with my beliefs. However this seems to have lead to a personal attack on me and my character which collapsed the possibility of entertaining different ideas and even attempting to find common ground.

There are just so many ways you twisted my words that it doesnt seem like you even read thru what I took the time to type out. None of what Im saying is from religious belief or advocacy, the only beliefs Im presenting are my own.

Additionally like I said I was pro-abortion until the recent supreme court ruling brought this to the forefront of public discourse and outrage.

Im also unsure how you are debating the biological facts of my argument, such as woman baring children. You can ask any mother, ask your own, its a very spiritual experience. It just is.

Beyond that you didnt even provide a claim for what your stance even is. All you stated is my comment reinforced your completely false assumptions, about me as a person, calling me a liar because you just simply disagree with me, and convienently ignoring the bulk of what I presented.

Ok? 🤷

I did, that's what led to that comment. I started to respond to various things, and then as your comment got worse and worse, I deleted that and made that comment. Also, I referenced parts of your comment from all over that comment, so it's a pretty ridiculous take to say that I didn't read it.

Either way, I'm not particularly interested in your discussion. You've made it clear that your stance is that a woman's body is not her's, but exists for the purpose of procreation. You've made this very clear in multiple statements (this requires no assumptions). I don't see me saying anything that will make you change your mind on this, and I don't see a reason to entertain the same BS that was pushed on me as a youth many years ago.

And when you were asked a direct question at the start, you ignored it, so I don't really think you're interested in discussion, either.

Also, there is little discussion available when one side is dodging questions, and the other side thinks that they're also a liar (I'll take the blame on that belief). Like I said, good luck in your path to understanding, if that's legitimate. You'll need it if you think that comment up there leads to actual discussion.

Edit: When I responded, the only thing in the comment above was the first line, and that's what I responded to. Unlike your prior comments, I'm not reading the rest. /u/tomtomcowboy: Editing in a much longer response 15 minutes after I made my response is pretty damned shitty.

Not in Texas you don’t.

>Edit: When I responded, the only thing in the comment above was the first line, and that's what I responded to. Unlike your prior comments, I'm not reading the rest. /u/tomtomcowboy: Editing in a much longer response 15 minutes after I made my response is pretty damned shitty.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious from the chain of comments he's not a good person.

That should lead to something happening more for her health than anything. A pill abortion at 25 weeks is absolutely that needs a doctor, and she should have easy access to one if she didn't.

Viability is a good indicator. While there are obviously outliers, there's a clearly defined moment at around the ~23-24th week of pregnancy where the fetus becomes very likely to survive outside of the womb. After the 25th week, it's almost guaranteed.

Before this moment, it's fully dependent on its mother to survive, and abortion is just that - abortion, and there's nothing wrong with it, the fetus is just a part of the woman's body, over which she should have complete control.

But later, it's killing someone who could have lived. You could end pregnancy and still have a living person, even if they'll need a few more months in an incubator. I find this a lot more controversial, although I'll refrain from making any judgements - every case is different. Nevertheless, there is an objective distinction.

And the law agrees almost all around the western world. Nearly all European countries ban abortion after the 20th week, and just about every US state used to have a limit at 25-30 weeks before the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

"I've never seen or read it, but if it doesn't have abortion in it, it sounds like a good show!"

-Some lunatic on Twitter

So if I surgically attached my blood network to your blood network such that it'll take 2 months until an operation can be safely performed to separate the two of us without killing me, you'll be willing to live with me for the next 2 months.

Biologically, this is mostly just dogma and legal definitions. Viability varies entirely by the technology available to the caregivers. For example, in low income countries, about half of babies born prior to 32 weeks died. Viability is not a biological fact, but simply shifting human medical capabilities. (Here's more on viability, including the various legal definitions.)

Of course, this brings up a controversial topic. Right now, we have the technology to put a fetus in an artificial womb. Lambs have been grown from 4 weeks in these conditions. The only reason why we haven't seen more experiments on humans is because of ethical issues and laws. This technology effectively puts viability into the first trimester (and eventually, we likely wouldn't even need gestation to start in a person at all).

Treating a fetus as a fully grown human simply because we have medical technology isn't much of an objective distinction, but is a shifting line that moves based on location, financial resources, time, and a ton of luck.

And yes, much of Europe is more backwards than the US is on abortion. It's something we were leading the world on for a long time.

That is a fair point which I've failed to consider. While I still can't think of a better distinction, this seems like a pointless discussion - abortions performed after the 25th week make up a statistically non-existent portion of all procedures, even in places which allow abortion up to the very end. That suggests they're only made in exceptional circumstances, and banning them would be harmful, supporting the view that all abortion should be legal. However, I do not feel qualified or entitled to making opinions or suggestions on this topic, and I'll gladly leave it to doctors who know what they're talking about, and women who these laws actually concern. Here's hoping they'll be the ones actually leading the discussion, and not religious-lunatic politicians with zero respect for human rights...

That's actually one of the biggest reasons to oppose restrictions at that point in pregnancy. Women who get abortions that late in a pregnancy almost always have exceptional situations, either medical or personal, and as you said, would be harmful. It's kinda like what the Utah governor said about the trans sports bans, there's so few of them and they're doing their best to work things out, that treating the situation with compassion rather than anger and prohibition makes the most sense (though sadly, they then overrode his veto, passing law that screwed over like 4 children in the state, at that time).

A fetus is not a parasite. This is basic biology.

I support bodily autonomy and would not deny a woman that. I would never force a woman who was raped to carry a child to term. If a woman freely engages in intercourse knowing she could conceive forfeits her bodily autonomy by consenting to sex. Saying a woman can’t kill her offspring that the openly produced is like saying forcing a man who had consensual sex to pay child support is slavery. It’s a ridiculous argument.

The fetus cannot survive on its own and provides no benefit to the mother. It just takes and takes from her. That is a parasite.

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You do. I have more worth than an infant. Doesn’t mean I get to kill an infant. A fetus is a human being and should have the basic human rights granted to all humans, the most basic of those is the right to life. Unless a fetus is a grave health threat to the mother, a mother should not be able to terminate the life of a human being who was conceived by the consensual actions she engaged in to bring this human being into existence.

What if it isn't consensual? What if the baby does pose a threat? When you take away abortion from everyone, it makes it harder for anyone to get it even if they fit your criteria for being allowed to have one.

Harder to get…because abortions to save the life of the mother are relatively rare. If the life of the mother is in jeopardy, hospitals should preform the procedure, not some hole in the wall, seedy abortion clinic.

If it is not consensual, I think that is a much harder argument against abortion because the rights of the mother were violated.

So we have seen this in action and what we see repeatedly is that the hospitals in question just wait for the mothers to get so sick that what was once a simple medical procedure turns into a life or death situation. Is that right?

I haven’t seen that. Can you show data on how common that is.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/health/abortion-texas-sepsis/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/woman-died-ireland-abortion-ban-warning-americans-roe-v-wade-rcna35431

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/07/26/1111280165/because-of-texas-abortion-law-her-wanted-pregnancy-became-a-medical-nightmare

3 over an 11 year period with only one woman dying in Ireland. This is anecdotal, but laws can be written to better handle medically necessary abortions for specific conditions. The answer is not to legalize abortion for all to make it easier for a minute percentage of pregnancies.

In 2021 1035 people where murdered with knives. Should we ban knives to protect the rights of people?

Between 2012 and 2023, the period of time in the articles you cited, over 8,000,000 abortions have occurred in the US. That is the killing of 8,000,000 human beings. By comparison to the material mortality rate, there are about 1,000 times more abortions than deaths from maternal causes, and almost all of the maternal deaths were not due to lack of access to abortions.

CDC’s definition of maternal mortality:

“A maternal death is defined as, “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy,” but excludes those from accidental or incidental causes.”

Finland and Ireland had strict abortions laws and yet their maternal mortality rates were much lower than the US.

How many of those children would have been born and actually lived? How many of them would have been given loving home and not been killed?

Tell me, what is the US maternity rate and how does it compare to that of other countries?

Considering the overwhelming majority of abortions are done out of convenience and not due to the child having an abnormality, I would say most of the 8,000,000. I don’t understand why abortion advocates ask if the child would have been loved. If given a choice between being loved by my parents and being killed, I’d choose life every time. Should we kill children who were born but are neglected by their parents? Should we killed people with Down Syndrome or some disability?