Opinions on abortion

[Seshat]

I am against it, unless it is to save the woman life. If they had been raped, or if they just don't want the child, then they could atleast give it up for adoption.

What about those of us who don't want a pregnancy? Even the best pregnancy, with no complications, leaves the body permanently changed. Pregnancy is not a trivial thing.

[Ryu]

The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that abortionists can tell women considering an abortion anything that what is inside of them is not a human being
How do people feel about that?

[Greenday]

Kinda hard to read what you meant there. Do you mean that someone who performs abortions is allowed to tell a pregnant woman that they aren't pregnant or something? If so, I doubt too many doctors would say that as they'd lose business.

New Jersey is a pretty liberal state. Girls can get an abortion even when they are a minor and they don't need parental consent.

[Ryu]

The case summary from what I've read is as follows
A woman went to an abortion clinic to discuss getting an abortion. She was about 6-8 weeks pregnant. The abortionist told her all that was in her was blood, that there was no human inside her. The abortion went wrong and there were complications. She tried suing the person. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that since she knew she was pregnant that it didnt matter that the abortionist told her that there wasnt a human being inside her, as thats not medical fact(as the court ruled), and she could not sue.

[Greenday]

There has to be more to it than just that. Maybe she saw a person who didn't hold a doctor's license. I just refuse to believe that the legal system is so fubar that they'd say a person licensed by the state for their specific job shouldn't have to know what they are doing.

[Ryu]

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q...g5MDIwODM4YmU=
"Is there a “baby in there”? That’s what Rose Acuna wanted to know from her obstetrician-gynecologist. She was six to eight weeks along at the time. “Don’t be stupid. It’s only blood,” the physician, Sheldon Turkish, allegedly replied."
Heres the brief: http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/courts...15-06.doc.html
The 2nd paragraph, if true, is horrible
"he further noted that those trained in the medical, religious, and philosophical disciplines had failed to reach consensus on the issue of when life begins." Unless you're using a different definition of life that isnt true, its a medical fact that life begins at conception, the argument is whether or not personhood begins at conception or not.

[AFPheonix]

......

This woman didn't have the wherewithal to go find a goddamn grade school biology book to see what stage of development her fetus had reached by the 6 week mark?
The cynic in me says that the doctor did the world a favor by not allowing her to reproduce.

The more even-handed person in me would have had the doctor roll his eyes, point out the frickin' chart on his wall that most clinics that deal with reproductive health have, and shown her.

[Greenday]

AFPheonix, it doesn't matter if she knows what it looks like on the inside or not. You can't see the inside of a woman without special tools which she obviously doesn't have. The doctor was totally guilty of malpractice, and once again, the legal system proves to be about as helpful as a big pile of crap. Except that'd be degrading to the crap.

How is this different from a doctor finding out a patient has cancer and decides to tell the patient they are perfectly healthy? It's not. It's telling lies, pure and simple.

[Seshat]

Okay. From the links you provided, the patient:
A) was told she was six to eight weeks pregnant.
B) had two children already.

Most likely (statistically), those two children were children of her own body, so she'd been pregnant twice already.

From these two facts, I believe the 'reasonable man' should be able to assume she knows that when one is pregnant, one is growing a baby. To think otherwise would be hopelessly patronising - unless the US education system is incredibly broken.

If the doctor didn't have a sheet in front of him stating that the patient was mentally handicapped, the doctor should be able to presume that saying 'you're six to eight weeks pregnant' amounts to saying 'you're pregnant'.

While we're in the second paragraph of the brief, we have an exchange which goes something like this:
Doctor: 'You're pregnant. You have kidney disease. If you continue the pregnancy, you'll die.'
Patient: 'Should I have an abortion?'

Or maybe (depending on who's story you believe)
Doctor: 'You're pregnant. You have kidney disease. If you don't terminate the pregnancy, you'll die.'
Patient: 'Oh.'

From either of these conversations, it's reasonable to assume the patient knew she was pregnant, and that she was at severe risk of death if she continued the pregnancy. If she'd had two previous pregnancies, or was even basically educated to a first-world standard, and wasn't mentally handicapped in a way that prevented her from understanding; it was quite reasonable to presume that she knows that pregnant = baby coming at the end of nine months.


Now, as for this sentence: "She claims that what she needed to hear from her doctor on the day of this visit was that she was carrying 'an existing living human being.'"
I wouldn't be able to say that. I would be able to say she was carrying a potential living human being, but that at that point it was tissue in development.

First sentence, second paragraph: "Acuna decided to terminate the pregnancy and signed a termination of pregnancy consent form."
A reasonable person, who presumed the patient was a reasonable person and not mentally handicapped or grossly uneducated, would presume that she understood the phrase 'terminate the pregnancy'.


Seventh Paragraph: "Judge Chambers noted that demanding that a physician advise a pregnant woman that her non-viable embryo 'is in all material respects equivalent to a person born alive,' would require the doctor to convey a value judgment not a medical fact."
I completely agree. Some of the people in this discussion would claim that an embryo is already a person. Some (including me) wouldn't. The fact that it's debatable and unproveable makes the judge's statement completely correct.

IMO, a doctor, in a position of ethical dilemna, should make it clear to the patient when they're stating known fact, and when they're stating their opinion. To do anything else would be swaying the patient's decision. In an ethical dilemna, the doctor should let the patient's wishes decide what gets done. (Now, if the doctor's ethics forbid him/her to do what the patient wants, the doctor shouldn't be forced to do it either. In such a situation, the doc should provide a referral.)

Hm. And now I realise that I do think the doctor was wrong. At least, he's wrong if he did say 'it's only blood'.
Even if he assumed she knew what 'you're pregnant' meant, he should have said 'you've got a six-week embryo in you right now. Do you need a refresher on pregnancy before you make your decision?'

That said, I think the woman was wrong too. At best, I would consider her handicapped or ignorant. If she had gone through two pregnancies with the whole lot of pre-birth pregnancy explanation classes and all the pregnancy-education material that's all over the first world, and still somehow missed the part where 'pregnant' means 'you have a potential human inside you', then she's incredibly daft.

I think the greater misbehaviour in this case is the patient's.

If the doctor didn't offer additional information, and especially if the doctor actually attempted to skew the patient into thinking 'it's only blood', the doctor was wrong.

But unless the patient was immediately strapped to a gurney and shoved into the procedure room (highly unlikely), the patient had plenty of opportunity to ask people what 'terminate the pregnancy' means, or what 'six weeks pregnant' means. And she should have already known! Especially if those two kids she had were prior pregnancies.

[Ryu]

You're right the woman should have been more educated but the doctor has a duty to patients regardless of their iq and should have made sure she understood what was going on in her body

[Seshat]

You're right the woman should have been more educated but the doctor has a duty to patients regardless of their iq and should have made sure she understood what was going on in her body

I read further into the second link (the link to the brief), to respond to you. Here's what Acuna admits she knew:

"In a certification, plaintiff explained that
'[a]t the start of a pregnancy, [she] knew that at some future date a human being would come into existence.' She understood that without some intervening circumstance or medical procedure, a child would be born, "

Sounds to me like she understood perfectly. If someone were to come to me and say 'I know I'm pregnant, I know that without a miscarriage or abortion I'll be having a child', I'd certainly assume she understood.


The sentence then goes on to say:

"but what she needed to hear on the day of her visit to defendant’s office was that she was carrying then 'an existing living human being.'"


It sounds like Acuna wanted the doctor to explicitly say that the embryo was 'an existing living human being'. In another part of the brief, she says she wanted the doctor to tell her that she was carrying 'a complete, separate, and unique human being'.

The former is a matter for spiritual and philosophical debate, and cannot (with current science) be proven or disproven scientifically. The latter is simply incorrect - a six to eight week embryo is missing a lot of key parts and therefore not complete, and is most definitely not separate.

So IF the doctor had ESP and could know what Acuna wanted, and IF the doctor was willing to make a moral judgement on his patient's behalf, and IF the doctor was willing to flat-out lie - then Acuna claims she would have acted differently.

Doctors aren't required to have ESP. Doctors shouldn't be making moral judgements on the patients' behalf (though they can make moral judgements on their own behalf). And doctors definitely shouldn't lie to patients. I note that the courts agree with me.
"Defendant and amici argue that it would be bad public policy, and probably unconstitutional, under the banner of the law of informed consent, to compel obstetricians to voice plaintiff’s non-medical and ideologically-driven viewpoint in the ongoing debate on abortion. They maintain that whether a six- to eight-week-old embryo is an “existing human being” is not a biological fact, but a moral, theological, and highly personal judgment that has sharply divided society, and therefore it would be inappropriate to impose a duty on doctors to take sides in this highly charged debate."

If the doctor did say something akin to 'don't be silly, it's just blood', then the doctor was at fault for saying that. However, since I now see that Acuna admits that she knew that 'pregnant' equals 'baby coming', I now think that all the remaining fault rests with Acuna. Who would probably be dead, along with her baby, if she hadn't had the abortion.

[Ryu]

To me, I dont know how she felt so I could be wrong, it seems she knew she would be having a baby but somehow thought that what was inside of her was not human yet and would become so later, which medically speaking is impossible, yet it is what the wording allows people to say as it is used to mean personhood rather than humanity
Something which is not human now cannot become human later, that is either a biological or medical law I cant remember which
So to tell her that she did have a human being inside of her would be medically accurate, whether or not it is a person is what must be argued but people are allowed to use terminology which confuses people. I do not think that is fair. There needs to be set definitions made for various terms related to pregnancy and abortion and the doctor needs to make sure the patient understands the terms as they are using them.

The problem with looking at this case is with the fact that we cant know what was going through the womans head and what she actually knew or understood.
However, the fact that the verdict of the case could be used as a basis for other cases is what scares me. What kind of terminology will people be allowed to use to make people think that getting an abortion is alright? Can they say that all that a fetus or embryo is is blood? If so, at what point is it no longer blood? Same with tissue. How long can the fetus or embryo be described with a term that could be misleading to the average person?
This case is about more than just the woman although I do feel the doctor may have let her down, I dont know.

[Seshat]

it seems she knew she would be having a baby but somehow thought that what was inside of her was not human yet and would become so later, which medically speaking is impossible, yet it is what the wording allows people to say as it is used to mean personhood rather than humanity

Whether an embryo is already a human/a person, or will become so, is a philosophical or religious issue, not a medical one. An embryo is living human tissue - and in fact, so are the ovum and the sperm. So is my finger.

A doctor should not sway a patient's mind in philosophical or religious matters. All the doctor can say is something along the lines of 'this is an eight week embryo, it has lost its tail, and is starting to develop organ, muscle and nerve function'.

Something which is not human now cannot become human later, that is either a biological or medical law I cant remember which

The cow tissue I ate last night for dinner was not human then, but will become human. Same with the corn chips I'm eating now.

But a cow embryo cannot become a human embryo.

So to tell her that she did have a human being inside of her would be medically accurate, whether or not it is a person is what must be argued but people are allowed to use terminology which confuses people.

Heck, I wouldn't call it a human being. I would call it a human embryo, or a human foetus, or even a human baby. I'd also call it human tissue. But to me, it's not a person yet, and not a human being. I acknowledge that to many people, it is. But to me, it's not.

I do not think that is fair. There needs to be set definitions made for various terms related to pregnancy and abortion and the doctor needs to make sure the patient understands the terms as they are using them.

There are. Gamete. Embryo. Foetus. Baby.

But the doctor is not qualified to say whether the potential human is a 'person' or not. That's an issue that's puzzled philosophers, religious people and ethicists.

In the absence of humankind actually knowing, the parents have to be the ones to decide whether the embryo is a 'person' or not.

However, the fact that the verdict of the case could be used as a basis for other cases is what scares me. What kind of terminology will people be allowed to use to make people think that getting an abortion is alright?

That's not what the medical community or the pro-choice community wants. (Except for a few extremists - we have fanatics on our side too.)

What we want is for the doctors to be allowed to stand aside and let the patient make up her own mind. If she wants to talk to her priest - GREAT! Good. Wonderful. The point of personhood is a matter for religious, ethical and philosophical debate. She SHOULD be consulting her priest. Or rabbi, or imam, or philosophy professor, or whoever she wants to consult.

Can they say that all that a fetus or embryo is blood? If so, at what point is it no longer blood?

No. It's not blood.

Same with tissue.

They can say it's tissue. They would be considered to be conducting malpractice if they let the patient think of it as 'mere' tissue, or 'just' tissue, without the understanding that this particular tissue is an embryo.

And before you jump up and down and say 'that's what Acuna thought!', I remind you that she herself said she knew that 'without [intervention], a child would be born'.

I now realise that I haven't read anything that specifically says she knew that 'termination of pregnancy' constituted intervening in a pregnancy - but geez, you'd have to be very ignorant to not realise that, wouldn't you?

How long can the fetus or embryo be described with a term that could be misleading to the average person?

Like 'foetus' or 'embryo'?

Pregnancy magazines. Pregnancy books. Pregnancy websites. Pregnancy programs. I can't turn around in this culture (Aussieland, not USA) without seeing lots and lots of information about what pregnancy is, and what a foetus is, and what an embryo is, and what stages of development there are.

There's so much information out there, in our faces, about 'when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much'. And that information uses the same terms doctors use.

There are only two issues I consider to be of importance in this case:

1. Did the doctor say the stupid, incorrect and malpractice-valid phrase 'don't be stupid, it's only blood'?
If so - he sucks, he should be slapped down hard, the patient should get some compensation for being ignorant enough to believe him.

2. Should the doctor make ethical decisions for the patient?
NO! No way, no how, no never, bloody hell no!


Hm. I'll grant a potential third issue:

3. Should patients be better informed than they are?
If Acuna is typical, yes. She should have been sat down with a sensible midwife and told the facts of life. Preferably before she had her first child. Or she should have picked up a pregnancy magazine, or read a pregnancy website, or watched Discovery Channel, or something.

[AFPheonix]

AFPheonix, it doesn't matter if she knows what it looks like on the inside or not. You can't see the inside of a woman without special tools which she obviously doesn't have. The doctor was totally guilty of malpractice, and once again, the legal system proves to be about as helpful as a big pile of crap. Except that'd be degrading to the crap.

How is this different from a doctor finding out a patient has cancer and decides to tell the patient they are perfectly healthy? It's not. It's telling lies, pure and simple.

The doctor performed an ultrasound. So yes, she DID see what was inside of her. She bloody signed a consent form in which she acknowledged that she understood what was going to happen. If at any point she wasn't sure what was going to happen, it was entirely her responsibility to find out. And the cancer thing is not at all a parallel to this. The doctor did not lie about what was going on in her body, he told her straight up she was pregnant. SHE was the one that brought up the idea of aborting it, not him.
If anything, the doctor could be accused of poor bedside manner. The "it's only blood inside" comment is still only ALLEGED. The doctor does not confirm that that was the language he used. Malpractice is not a valid charge here, as he completed the exam and abortion without incident.

[Greenday]

Alright, well, from the first one, the only thing I see from it is the doctor telling the woman that there's only blood in there. I didn't see anything about an ultrasound or any such thing.