Paraguay successful at denying 11-year old incest victim abortion

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Depends on the 11-year old whether a pregnancy would be a danger.  For most it would be, but the doctors were of the opinion it wasn't in this case. At some point you have to trust experts, or does that only apply to global warming?  The pregnancy was well past the point where I think abortion on demand must be an option and close to the point where I think it should not be an option, so despite that not being in Paraguayan law, it didn't have much of an effect.

This is a hard case, but it looks like other than they should have caught on to what was happening sooner, I can't say that I fault the Paraguayan authorities here. The fetus was close to viability, the female was not at immediate risk, and I don't believe rape or incest should make abortions easier to obtain.  The sole valid justification for restricting abortion is to protect what is considered to be a human life and no matter how vile the biological father is, that vileness has no bearing on whether it is a human life.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I don't believe rape or incest should make abortions easier to obtain.  The sole valid justification for restricting abortion is to protect what is considered to be a human life and no matter how vile the biological father is, that vileness has no bearing on whether it is a human life.

The girl is a human life as well, and it is reasonable to protect the human already in existence (with established emotional ties to other humans and importance in their lives) over the unborn. Bearing your rapists child is an extremely traumatic occurrence that is likely to inflict her for the rest of her life. Health of the mother includes mental health of the mother. It can not reasonably be limited to psychical health.

So despicable decision/law all around.

What makes you think an abortion would be less traumatic than a birth? 

Perhaps the fact that she chose the former.

Citation? I've seen in news reports that the mother was seeking to get her daughter an abortion, but they've been understandably silent about the girl. But that's rather beyond the point anyway. If 11 year olds were capable of making informed decisions about what would help them best recover from tragedies such as this, they wouldn't be minors. Obviously her thoughts about the situation should be given a high degree of importance in deciding what would be best for herself, but it can't be the sole factor, and unfortunately once the fetus reached the point of viability outside the womb, the decision needed to be tilted in favor of the unborn child. Had this case been brought to light earlier in the pregnancy then the case for abortion would have been stronger. Paraguay's law is too restrictive, but as I said before, I can't see where that was a factor in this case.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

So we should base policy upon the presumption of poor implementation? The main fault of Peruvian law enforcement in this case appears to be its attempt to blame the mother, but that has no bearing on whether an abortion should have been allowed in this case.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

So we should base policy upon the presumption of poor implementation? The main fault of Peruvian law enforcement in this case appears to be its attempt to blame the mother, but that has no bearing on whether an abortion should have been allowed in this case.

Your missing part of my point, the officials could've made a decision quick enough to abort the pregnancy long before what we consider partial-birth abortion.

Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the effort here to set the abortion limit at 20 weeks. The U.S. does not have one of the most permissive set of abortion rules in the world because a majority of Americans want it that way. By the time the pregnancy came to official attention, in most countries that allow abortion on demand at some stage of pregnancy, this pregnancy would have reached the point where it would have been allowed only if it was deemed needed to preserve the life of the mother.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I got that she was raped, Andrew. What you seem to not get is that regardless of whether or not she had the abortion, she still would suffer from the trauma of rape.

Now, mental health is of course important, but we don't kill people to treat the mental health of others. Your definition of a person obviously does not include a 22-week fetus, but there are those for which it does. (As I've stated before, my uncertainty over the personhood status of fetuses between quickening and viability means I'll leave that value judgement to others who are less uncertain.) Under Peruvian law (as well as under the law of most countries that permit abortions) that 22-week fetus is treated as a person who cannot simply be killed without due consideration. (My understanding is that at 22 weeks is when the situation was discovered, if it was actually earlier, then it does affect my position for this specific case.)

One can argue that the doctors made the wrong call concerning the physical risk and/or the mental risk to the mother. You might be right about that. Neither of us is an expert in reproductive health. You almost certainly are right that those doctors faced social pressure regarding the decision, but that same pressure would also affect those who might have done the procedure in Paraguay even had the law allowed the abortion without getting an medical opinion as to its necessity into the legal record. If said social stigma was the determining factor in their decision, it would have been just as determinative regardless.

However, to argue that mental anguish alone is sufficient to justify putting to death another being, even a non-human being, is to me self-evidently wrong.  It seems to me a sociopathic elevation of the individual above all else that would enable one to answer the question found in biblical myth "Am I my brother's keeper?" with the answer of no.