The one thing I find hopelessly cruel — other than the obvious things that everyone else has noted — is that the type of abortion banned was the one that allowed a family to say goodbye to and bury a very wanted child, often named, who was assigned a birth certificate. It was one way of allowing women to view and hold their dead babies after delivery, one avenue of emotional healing after having gone through the majority of a pregnancy and then given the dire news that the pregnancy wasn’t viable.
I can’t imagine making it so far through and then having to deal with the disappointment.
Jill explains these kinds of situations in far more detail here.
Amp has a good round-up of reactions, Amanda offers two excellent posts, Digby shatters the “icky” argument, LeMew tackles the legal perspective, as does Jack Balkin in two pointed posts.
Dahlia Lithwick for President.
Anne makes another point I’ve been chewing on all day: “While we should be concerned for reproductive choice/freedom/rights, also in peril is the medical privacy between an individual and their doctor for any circumstance. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want some estranged politician having a say in any of my medical decisions.”
Word.
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Preemptive statement: Not interested in one’s opinion on abortion, feminism, or religious-central morality. Any statements thereof will not make it out of the moderation queue.
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want some estranged politician having a say in any of my medical decisions.”
That’s why so many of us fear and fight against government-run health care.
*headdesk* right, having ginormous profit-driven bureaucracies who of course are -in no way- subsidized by the government having a say in my medical decisions is much better. especially when that decision is NOT TO TREAT ME AT ALL UNLESS I SOMEHOW WIN THE GODDAM LOTTERY.
I don’t want some estranged politician having a say in any of my medical decisions.
Sorry, but we passed that line in what–?1912–by allowing the government to regulate medicine sales. There are lots and lots of medicines that your doctor can’t prescribe for you, even though they are available in Europe, or Japan, or Mexico. And (of course) there are lots of people who can’t legally give you any medical advice whatsoever (it’s called “practicing medicine without a license.”)
Oh, but we have government run health care.
It protects the right of insurance companies to decide what treatments are right for us, and whether they will pay for them, or not.
It protects the right of pharmaceutical companies to ignore cheaper, less toxic drugs because they won’t make as much money on them.
It protects the right of hospitals to run at a profit.
And it protects the right of whoever goes after us for the bills of trying to keep our loved one alive.
Perhaps we should think about this differently.
It’s an excellent point. A couple very close to me had a fetus diagnosed with Trisomy 18 a few years ago; they chose to go through this route. The church they belonged to actually baptized the baby following the procedure, honoring both the wisdom of the parents’ heartrending decision and the reality that a potential person was not going to come into this world.
They had a body to bury. That was a blessing to them.