House votes to ban abortion after 20 weeks

[Torie]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

You're missing that it's none of your business. It's not up to you to decide.

Thanks Memphis. That was most helpful - as always.

[Torie]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

In the case of rape by a total stranger it probably wouldn't.  But many rape and incest cases are perpetrated by someone the victims knows, perhaps a family member or some other authority figure who may have coerced the woman into a very unhealthy psychological state and/or hold financial or logistical power over her.   Sadly, some husband-wife and father-daughter relationships are that way.  She may fear physical retribution if she seeks help.  In remote areas lack of access is a big issue for poor women.

So it takes more than 20 weeks to get to the abortion doctor because of all of that. And given that this happens out there somewhere, everyone gets to wait until the fetus is more developed, with brain waves, and looking just so human, and well - viable, or on the cusp, before getting around to deciding to kill it, and it's none of our damn business. I get it. OK we disagree, and not really you here, but just what gives one license to think somewhere with my views is some God damned no nothing kook who hates women, and is just bogged down too much with religion or something - as it were?  That is the part I really don't get. I find it highly honorable, except at the extremes, for one to hold all kinds of views on this issue. Why? Because it comes down to a fundamentally subjective attitude about the meaning and the role of a fetus, and when, in the cosmos. So we come down to different judgments - all done in good faith.

End of rant, none of it really directed at you. I'm irritable tonight, and Memphis can set me off sometimes. I consider that a character flaw of mine. Sorry.

[badgate]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks? Because of all the regulation and economic impediments Republicans have put in place between the point where a woman tests positive for pregnancy and gets an abortion to terminate the pregnancy. Republicans have limited the number of places the procedure can be performed. Republicans have made it so that you have to get a consultation a week in advance, as well as some states having waiting periods. If you make too low of a wage to afford health coverage (meaning you couldn't afford a birth control pill that would have prevented this pregnancy), you need a sizable amount of time to get the money together not just for the procedure, but if you're in a small town you'll need transportation money as well.

Here in Texas, you have to undergo a sonogram and wait another 24 hours for the procedure. The logic, Republicans tell us, is to make sure that the woman has really thought about it before she gets the procedure. Which is straight up insulting. If you don't think every woman that goes to a Planned Parenthood has given her circumstances a great deal of mature thought, weighed the options and decided carefully, you are out of your living mind.

I'd like to think I could get all of that done in 20 weeks, but I'm a dude, so I really have no clue. As such, I'm pro-choice, because I really shouldn't make that decision for anyone.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

badgate, the reason for all that obstruction is simple.  The Supreme Court has ruled that the state legislatures cannot place as many limits on the procedure as some state legislatures would like to place, so since they can't ban it, they try to make it as inconvenient as possible.

I don't approve of those waiting periods, but I do approve of requiring a sonogram.  Not so as to show them to the woman, but so that the abortionist can verify that it is indeed a pregnancy that has caused the cessation of menstruation and to gauge the level of fetal development and verify that the fetus has not crossed the threshold into legal personhood. (Note: AFAIK an intravaginal ultrasound is not required to do the above, so I'd be opposed to requiring that as it is invasive.)

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

For one thing, some women make it to their third trimester before they even realize they're pregnant.

[Napoleon]

Paul Broun voted Nay?

Broun was extremely offended that a rape/incest exception was added to the bill.

lol these people are nuts

[Napoleon]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

It might not take 20 weeks to decide to have one, but it very well could take more than 20 weeks to be able to afford one.

[Ebowed]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

You're missing that it's none of your business. It's not up to you to decide.

Thanks Memphis. That was most helpful - as always.

Actually, he's completely correct, and you need to be able to understand why if you are ever going to pretend to be moderate on this issue.  I don't desire to be so disgustingly condescending, but there is a very important aspect of physical autonomy to this that I believe you are able to comprehend - just put two and two together, and I am confident you'll get to four.

[TNF]

What a waste of time and effort.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

You're missing that it's none of your business. It's not up to you to decide.

Thanks Memphis. That was most helpful - as always.

Actually, he's completely correct, and you need to be able to understand why if you are ever going to pretend to be moderate on this issue.  I don't desire to be so disgustingly condescending, but there is a very important aspect of physical autonomy to this that I believe you are able to comprehend - just put two and two together, and I am confident you'll get to four.

And there is a very important of ethics you need to be able to understand.  Where a human life is involved, other considerations must take second place.  I realize that for many who are pro-choice there is only one human life involved that of the woman, indeed I hope that is the belief of all who favor legalized abortion.  However, when and if what is inside a woman's womb becomes a human life is a subjective question, not an objective one.  If more than one human life is involved, then an option to terminate one of them is not ethical except under the circumstance where it is impossible to eliminate the risk that at least one of them will perish if an abortion is not performed.  I believe you are able to comprehend that, but you also appear to be so certain of your own belief that only one human life is involved that you are condescending to any who fail to see what you think is so self-evident.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

Democrats Voting Yea:
Henry Cuellar (TX)
Dan Lipinski (IL)
Jim Matheson (UT)
Mike McIntyre (NC)
Collin Peterson (MN)
Nick Rahall (WV)

Republicans Voting Nay:
Paul Broun (GA)*
Charlie Dent (PA)
Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ)
Richard Hanna (NY)
Jon Runyan (NJ)
Rob Woodall (GA)*

* I'm assuming these two voted against it because it wasn't restrictive enough.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Republicans Voting Nay:
Paul Broun (GA)*
Charlie Dent (PA)
Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ)
Richard Hanna (NY)
Jon Runyan (NJ)
Rob Woodall (GA)*

* I'm assuming these two voted against it because it wasn't restrictive enough.

Probably they disagreed with the inclusion of a rape or incest exception.  At 22 weeks or later, I can't see how one can ethically include such an exception.  If you aren't convinced enough that it is a human being at that stage of pregnancy that you'd be willing to allow an abortion in the case of rape or incest, then you should allow an abortion if there was no rape or incest.

(Incidentally, the reason some reports are saying 20 weeks and others are saying 22 weeks is because there is more than one way to count the weeks.  Traditionally it is weeks since the last menstruation, but the bill uses weeks since fertilization, which is more precise, especially for women with irregular menstruation.  Viability, the current cutoff point is considered to be at week 24 on the traditional scale and week 22 on the fertilization scale.)

[Linus Van Pelt]

I don't agree that the rape exemption in an otherwise anti-abortion position is incoherent or sentimental. This isn't actually my position, just to be clear, so I don't really seek to defend it, but I do think it can be articulated in a somewhat principled way.

It's not incoherent to think that there are beings whose killing can be justified by weaker considerations than the killing of a person, but who still have some moral interests so that not all harms against them are acceptable. Most of us, after all, think something like this about some animals. On the one hand, we don't think that an animal's life should really be valued in law or morality like an individual person's, so that killing a cow should be treated just like killing a person. But on the other hand, the existence of laws against gratuitous animal cruelty is widely supported. To make the analogy with abortion slightly clearer, one possible position on this spectrum would be that the killing of an animal is justified only by the avoidance of major harm to a person, but the harms need not be as great as would justify the killing of a person. Think of a vegetarian who opposes widespread slaughter for food but agrees with the sacrifice of lab animals in research into a debilitating but not instantly fatal disease. One can certainly disagree over whether this is the right balance, but I don't think it's an incoherent or inconsistent position.

In principle, one might think of a fetus like this. And one particular version of this position would be that forcing a person to carry a child in whose conception they didn't consent is a particular such harm, so rape justifies abortion when it is otherwise unjustified.

Again, I don't actually accept this entire combination of views. There are many questions that could be asked about it: why is a fetus like this, when in pregnancy do the morally relevant transitions occur, how do we know, etc. But these are the same difficult questions that any view of abortion faces, not simple questions of consistency.

[Person Man]

I don't agree that the rape exemption in an otherwise anti-abortion position is incoherent or sentimental. This isn't actually my position, just to be clear, so I don't really seek to defend it, but I do think it can be articulated in a somewhat principled way.

It's not incoherent to think that there are beings whose killing can be justified by weaker considerations than the killing of a person, but who still have some moral interests so that not all harms against them are acceptable. Most of us, after all, think something like this about some animals. On the one hand, we don't think that an animal's life should really be valued in law or morality like an individual person's, so that killing a cow should be treated just like killing a person. But on the other hand, the existence of laws against gratuitous animal cruelty is widely supported. To make the analogy with abortion slightly clearer, one possible position on this spectrum would be that the killing of an animal is justified only by the avoidance of major harm to a person, but the harms need not be as great as would justify the killing of a person. Think of a vegetarian who opposes widespread slaughter for food but agrees with the sacrifice of lab animals in research into a debilitating but not instantly fatal disease. One can certainly disagree over whether this is the right balance, but I don't think it's an incoherent or inconsistent position.

In principle, one might think of a fetus like this. And one particular version of this position would be that forcing a person to carry a child in whose conception they didn't consent is a particular such harm, so rape justifies abortion when it is otherwise unjustified.

Again, I don't actually accept this entire combination of views. There are many questions that could be asked about it: why is a fetus like this, when in pregnancy do the morally relevant transitions occur, how do we know, etc. But these are the same difficult questions that any view of abortion faces, not simple questions of consistency.

and of course this notion of abortion being murder but "not exactly" could be why most pro-life people do not support  and almost all abortion bans do not have abortion followed by the death penalty or life imprisonment, but by similar prison terms as one would expect from robbing a bank, stealing a car or perhaps rape where the victim is an adult and is not injured.


Then again, having exceptions and relatively mild punishments in abortion bans do allude to the fact abortion being a crime is not inspired by the notion that aborting a fetus is the same as killing a person in lay and wait or cold blood but by something else. This can vary from imposing one's religious views about sexuality to secular social and demographic experiments.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

Let's not forget date-rape drugs that knock women out. They don't know they're being raped. One moment they're enjoying a nice date with a swell guy, then they come too and they're not sure what just happend! Their clothes could still be on, with no physical marks if they couldn't put up a fight. Can women "feel" something down there that's not right? I don't freaking know, because i'm not a woman.

Let's make a scenario where she wakes up in her bedroom, fully/mostly clothed, and isn't sure what just happend, whether he used protection or not. How is she to know what happend?

When she misses her next menstrual cycle, I would imagine she should have a strong indication that something had happened.  Granted some women have irregular menstrual cycles, but the 20th week of pregnancy is after when quickening occurs (well after in the case of someone who has previously had a pregnancy).  So we're talking about extremely rare edge cases here.  Given the importance of human life, it behooves us to consider other means to address those edge cases before declaring an open season on killing people because of the crimes of their biological fathers.  (For example, better and more widely available health care to help ensure that women don't discover they are pregnant after the cutoff point for an elective abortion and to ensure that they are able to have one in a timely fashion if they so choose.)

[Badger]

Why does it take more than 20 weeks to decide to have an abortion after being raped? What am I missing here?

For one thing, some women make it to their third trimester before they even realize they're pregnant.

This is quite true. Without pontificating on the bill itself, two very close (married) friends of mine didn't discover their pregnancy until only several weeks before the birth. They are as far from sterotypical low-information "having the baby in the girl's room during prom" types one can imagine.

Without being overly graphic, they were completely thrown off by: a) the mother's menstrual cycle would periodically skip a month or two (not unusual, I understand); b) the mother had a "fake" period (i.e. heavy spotting) a couple months into the pregnancy (again, not unusual); and c) she's heavy-set and only gained about 5 pounds by the time they learned of the pregnancy.

Fortunately, the baby was fine and, 16 months later, I was reminded this past weekend how cute he is.