Poll: Abortion, Roe v. Wade

[dowie]

That graph shows 57% fall outside 6 weeks. Throw in some crap like having to have more than 1 ultrasound a week apart or performed by the same medical professional and they'll easily push past that 6 week limit for a lot of women. I expect Texas to lower the time limit further or just outright ban abortions after November.

Is there known to be legislation planned to fully outlaw (elective) abortions in Texas or to introduce further restrictions on abortions in the state or is this just speculation?

 

[dowie]

When you have the Texas AG celebrating the complete ban by making it a holiday for his office and immediately saying he will appeal the court decision to block the ban, what does that tell you? Does it sound like the GOP in Texas are going to be reasonable when the man elected to prosecute citizens celebrates a complete ban? Is 6 weeks reasonable when most women won't know before 5 weeks? They are like rabid dogs on this subject and I fully expect them to make further restrictions because that is what these religious fundamentalists want.

Which court decision? It's not clear what you're referring to here?

 

[dowie]

I assume he is getting confused about the temporary court order for abortions under 6 weeks.

Ah oops, my bad on that one, it does seem like there is still a push for old laws still on the books simply banning abortion in Texas to stand (though there is also a legal argument that they've been abandoned by implication due to the passage of later legislation).

So effectively a 6 week limit is a ban to most intents and purposes as it means you have to both have a regular menstrual cycle, and take a test within a day or two of being "late" (or better yet, do one every day), then if you're getting the pill from your doctor, get an appointment with them and hope they'll prescribe it within the next week or so, or if you have to get it by mail, hope that it arrives quickly.

That's not true, see the chart above, 43% of abortions are carried out within 6 weeks. Medical abortions can be carried out up to 9 weeks, I suspect that some of those 6-9 week cases would have a bit more urgency about them in a situation where 6 weeks was the limit.

Obviously, it's not a good situation to be in, it's based on some silly beliefs about a foetal heartbeat or something... but it's not a ban, you'd still get half of the abortions done in such a situation. Pills in the post or trips out of state would unfortunately be needed for the rest.

 

[dowie]

Oh come on guys, the Kavanaugh accusation was incredibly weak and pure partisan nonsense, it was pretty embarrassing for the main accuser.

 

[dowie]

Oh another expert on sexual assault/rape accusations. This is the same expert who told us Derek Chauvin would be acquitted of murder as there was no evidence he was guilty

^^^ this guy just lies and makes things up as he goes along, I said I reckoned there was a 10% chance of him being found not guilty, I put more weight on him being found guilty of manslaughter and or 3rd degree murder or indeed a mistrial.

Of course, you'll just pretend to ignore that and make stuff up as usual.

 

[dowie]

A very very quick search of that thread, I know there is more in there but I really can't be bothered to trawl through over 8 pages of just your posts.[...]
[insert post that just reiterates what I just told you]

Sure you can't be bothered because you just made up a load of nonsense, it's pretty clear I thought it was more likely than not that he'd be convicted of one or more offence and only a 10% chance of an acquittal.

Whereas you claimed this:

This is the same expert who told us Derek Chauvin would be acquitted of murder as there was no evidence he was guilty

That's total nonsense and you know it, I said there was a 10% chance he'd be found not guilty/acquitted and sure enough you've gone into the old thread and dragged up a post that just backs up what I claimed, now you've got to switch to the fact I didn't predict that he'd be found guilty of all three, well neither did the prediction markets or a bunch of legal pundits either, that's nothing like the claim you originally made which is a complete lie.

 

[dowie]

Right above that 10% you answer the question "does anyone here think he's guilty of second degree murder" with "nope, not at all IMO"

So what? What does that have to do with the claim that I supposedly said he'd be acquitted when I clearly didn't say that.

 

[dowie]

Dowie you wrote you didn't think he was guilty of murder as Tefal has pointed out. You said there was a 95% chance he'd be acquitted of murder 2 and a 85% chance of acquittal for murder 3. Now I could be wrong but 95% and 85% is higher than 10%. Don't try and word play it, you expected, so believed he had a 95% chance of acquittal.

No, I said there was a 10% chance of acquittal (not guilty), it's literally in my post, you're the one trying to wordplay it by inferring some chance of acquittal and ignoring what I actually stated. Just like you made up your initial claim.

Where did I say there was a 95% chance of acquittal? My prediction was that it was more likely than not he'd be convicted of something.

What amazes me is his ability to have a strong opinion on just about everything. I mean if ever a post has screamed 'internet expert' this one is it. Literally breaking it down into percentages as if he's some kind of legal expert lol.

No, it's just airing an opinion on it, as lots of people did. Perhaps the notion of quantifying your opinion somewhat (given the different outcomes) is something that confuses you but it's not too hard to follow.

If you think using basic percentages = a claim to be a legal expert then that's more a reflection on you, it's a pretty dumb claim tbh...

 

[dowie]

Somewhere in that thread I read a post where dowie said words to the effect that the prosecution hadn't proved its case on the murder charges. Now I really can't be arsed to trawl through 8 pages of post [...]And using percentages like that is frankly laughable, like he's a legal mind giving his professional opinion on each charge

You're just making things up aren't you, you seem to have conflated different things too. This is just clutching at straws now because you blatantly lied with your intial claim.

This is your original claim:

This is the same expert who told us Derek Chauvin would be acquitted of murder as there was no evidence he was guilty

Yet if you look at what I actually said... I only put down a 10% chance that he'd be acquitted, 35% chance of a mistrial and a total of a 55% chance he'd be found guilty of (at least one of the charges; 35% for the lowest + 15% for the next + 5% for the next.)

If you want you can well ackchually and say one of the charges was manslaughter (I think the other two officially were homicide), it's still rather different from what you claimed.

Exactly. He is one of a handful of armchair/keyboard "experts" on here in fields that take years of not just education but working in that field before you could be considered an expert. I don't doubt he's an intelligent guy but sometimes its ridiculous. That whole thread was full of posters calling the result based on their own bias but calling it legal understanding and they couldn't have been more wrong.

So just like you then... it's a bit hypocritical, don't try and pretend you didn't have an opinion on the trial, or ditto to the Rittenhouse case - what was your view there again? Did you get that one wrong?

Colonel_Klinck the only man on the internet with no bias, if he airs an opinion then it's all fine, if other people air an opinion then it's just their bias and heaven forbid anyone gets a prediction wrong...

I mean this is literally an internet discussion forum, the general discussion section is full of people airing opinions, since when did you need to be an expert to comment on say Covid, or the war in Ukraine or Brexit or some court cases etc..?

This has all just stemmed from you making up a complete lie and then getting called out on it, seemingly because you're still salty that people had the wrong opinions in some thread from months ago.

 

[dowie]

Dowie if you think there is a 5% chance of a guilty verdict for murder 2 then that leaves acquitted or mistrial as the only options on that charge. Mistrial will likely mean the trial again or the judge says no you are acquitted. Your whole percentages in that post actually make zero sense as the way you've done it is that he could only be guilty of 1 charge. You've made it all add up to 100 but spread over the variables you've listed when more than 1 were possible because there were multiple charges. In the end he was guilty on all charges, how does that work with your adding up to 100?

A mistrial is not a guaranteed acquittal, this isn't even relevant to the thread, let's face it you made up a claim you couldn't support and now you're reaching.

I was quite clear that 10% was my belief for acquittal, trying to pretend otherwise is just an outright lie by you.

 

[dowie]

I'm not sure Saudi is a good example, they require three doctors + the patient's husband/partner to approve the abortion... which could lead to all sorts of the same higher-order effects as you have in the US too where abortions are restricted, technically allowed for medical reasons but fear of prosecution/litigation has its own impacts.

I think the other worrying thing with the US is that simply because lots of this is new and so you're going to get additional higher-order effects of bureaucrats being overly cautious bureaucrats, common sense can go out of the window in favour of a massively risk-averse (in terms of legal risk) approach even if at great cost to the patents.

 

[dowie]

That's where I would draw the line too. Although I'd also consider up to the point of birth on the basis of personal autonomy. But I balk at drawing the line that far along. But is that balking a reasoned position or purely an emotional one? I'm not sure.

Well, what about within seconds of giving birth? Some abortion machine or doctor with a big hammer is ready to smash the newly delivered baby? Is that significantly worse than killing the same baby just minutes earlier while it was still inside the woman? The vagina as a magical gateway...

Viability might become a different issue in the future. What if technology advances to such an extent that viability comes down to a few weeks after conception? We can't make a functional artificial womb yet, but that might become possible at some point in the future.

Yup indeed, it's perhaps a useful red line right now but in future, if you're able to go from say a ball of cells through to a baby ready for the outside world in an artificial womb then it becomes rather moot and what people are really interested in is more how much of a human is this thing at this stage... at the ball of cells stage (embryo -> blastocyst) I'd say that most people don't care to give it any rights, I mean IUDs, morning-after pills deal with that. The heartbeat at 6 weeks thing that some Republicans have latched onto seems dubious too, it's not really a heart at that stage.

It's really going to be some later stage where it has developed more, where it perhaps would be closer to being viable today... personally, I think the cut-off should be a little bit before viability (in today's tech) and should tech improve I don't see any reason to change that.

Like a ball of cells is disposed of quite regularly in women who say have a coil device fitted as a contraceptive... should they be forced instead to have those removed and put in an artificial womb? Obvs I'd say the vast majority of people wouldn't think so. So that a ball of cells might be viable to be grown in an artificial womb in future and therefore technically the point of viability becomes 0 weeks should probably render viability moot as a line in the sand, it's just perhaps a useful one to refer to these days.

 

[dowie]

Maybe a possibly workable interim measure would be for doctors to classify ectopic pregnancies as not actually pregnancies. I think the difference is fundamental enough to justify classifying them as being different things. Without intervention, one will usually result in two living people and the other will only ever result in death.

Not really necessary or likely to make any difference, this is more of a higher-order effect in that it isn't necessarily illegal but there is now an overly cautious approach from hospital bureaucrats.

 

[dowie]

I feel as if its self explanatory, its not my business to say a woman cannot have an abortion

Why not?

Suppose a baby boy is born a week premature, the father doesn't want it and takes it away to drown it peacefully in the sea...

Is that also not your business? Or maybe that's not women's business as it just concerned the father and a son?

In the 00s the US banned partial-birth abortions, these could include viable births towards the end of the second trimester, a partial-birth abortion involves allowing part of the baby to be born and then killing it, the SC held that that ban was compatible with Roe v Wade. I suspect that plenty of people, looking at the details, especially when it involves viable foetuses/babies would consider it infanticide.

Personally, I don't see much distinction re: the womb being some magical gateway, killing an otherwise viable baby when it's in the womb or whether it's partially out of the vagina or whether it's been born all seems like infanticide to me and IMO ought to be restricted to things like medical emergencies (when needed to save the mother's life, with attempts to save the baby too as a secondary concern) or when dealing with a stillbirth, miscarriages or severe abnormalities etc.

Ethically scientists can get into trouble for say experimenting on reviving say parts of a pig's brain when there are worries that triggering some electrical activity could stimulate some degree of consciousness... yet with abortions of viable human foetuses AFAIK there isn't much thought given to using say anesthesia when killing them even though there is plenty of reason to believe they could feel pain at say 21 weeks.

Personally, I think the cut-off needs to be a bit before viability for abortion on demand, there needs to be time for someone to find out their pregnant and to make a decision, 6 weeks is way too short... but once you start getting to say 20 weeks then it's pretty much getting to an infanticide situation. Some of the EU countries with say 15, 16 week limits seem to have it right IMO.

 

[dowie]

I understand i might not explain things properly, but do you get my point?

@dowie , that is why not.

Not really. Also, you didn't answer my question posed above.

 

[dowie]

Absolutely horrendous.

Basically they are happy for a 9 year old girl who was raped to go through with a pregnancy.

10 year old, I think the alleged rapist was an immigrant too so I guess both sides have an angle to run with now.

Though it isn't clear that she definitely couldn't get an abortion in state, it seems it might have actually been the case that one was sought out of state in part to keep it on the down low... which might have been somewhat undermined by a dr using the case for a bit of clout on social media.

 

[dowie]

I dunno, it seems kinda consistent... if you genuinely believe that it's killing a baby, that abortion is murder etc.. then it would be quite logical, given that belief, to argue that though a rape is utterly tragic there shouldn't then be a murder carried out too. One innocent life has already been harmed, killing another is not the solution etc..

The argument for people holding those views, that abortion is murder, would have to be more along the lines of health, danger to the mother etc..

 

[dowie]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXkkKXwXgAMS3YO?format=png&name=small

Representative called the whole story a hoax and lie.
Then deleted his tweet later without mention.

It's a common enough fallacy people make to be fair - conflating absence of evidence with evidence of absence. See for example the supposed credentialed "experts" at the beginning of the pandemic declaring that "masks don't work" then later having to do a u-turn on that, it's the same logical fallacy there.

In this case, he's referring to a story examining the evidence or rather lack of for this case - obviously, it made some headlines initially so reporters followed up on it however the story was only based on one source and reporters couldn't really confirm it... this was a reportable offense for any doctor handling such a patient but when they followed up with the state's AG he seemingly wasn't aware of it:

Ohio AG hasn’t heard ‘whisper’ of evidence for child rape victim seeking abortion - Washington Examiner

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said his office has not found any evidence of a 10-year-old rape victim in the state who, according to a report cited by President Joe Biden, was six weeks pregnant and traveled to Indiana to receive an abortion. "Not a whisper" has been heard of a report filed...

www.washingtonexaminer.com

"We have regular contact with prosecutors and local police and sheriff's. Not a whisper anywhere. Something maybe even more telling, Jesse, my office runs the state crime lab. Any case like this, you're going to have a rape kit, you're going to have biological evidence," Yost told Fox News host Jesse Watters. "There is no case request for analysis that looks anything like this."

So that lead to some obvious questions of whether this actually happened or not... however the politician has fallen into the fallacy of not just pointing out the lack of evidence (at the time) but making a positive claim he can't back up that this was a hoax.

 

[dowie]

I think this is going to be a big L for the GOP, they're probably going to take a significant hit for this relative to what they could have got in the mid-terms. The silly thing is that the Mississippi law that resulted in the overthrow of Roe was kinda more in line with the views of most Americans, if they'd stuck with that in various Republican states then they'd be onto a big winner here. Instead, they're just bodging it up completely with things like these 6 week bans or even bans that don't allow for medical/rape exemptions etc..

That's one of the things, IIRC they use sales of the morning after pill in their version of the abortion stats, then try and make out that every abortion is at the third trimester stage.

Eh? Where have you seen that happen? That sounds pretty sus/made up even for the hardcore anti-abortion types.