This guy's reasoning is bizarre. Taking his view to its logical conclusion, women should not even be allowed to become pregnant because it's so risky. This of course is ridiculous. Can there be health problems associated with pregnancy? Yes. But are they are commonplace as this writer suggests? No. Going to work everyday carries with it the risk of death owing to being the victim of a crime or an accident, but we all go to work. A woman dying because of a pregnancy is rare.
Abortion has killed many, many more millions of unborn children than it has killed (a tiny percentage of) pregnant mothers. The title of this article should not be "Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves," but "Pregnancy might kill, but Abortion always kills."
8
No- the logical conclusion is that no woman should be forced to undertake such risks unless she chooses to.
23
@Al they are unborn, they are not children.
11
To Joseph Conrad is attributed the quote: "Every sort of shouting is a transitory thing, after which the grim silence of facts remains."
Some facts are self-evident. One of these facts is that pregnancy gives life. All of us who are considering these questions is alive because of a pregnancy.
With every sort of shouting the legislatures of New York and Alabama have come down on the extreme opposite sides of the political and social question of whether the life of a fetus should be protected by law, but the grim fact of biology is that abortion ends a human life.
The fetus is alive. It is human, it is of no other species.
79
@BR My appendix was alive. It was human, it was of no other species. The doctors took it out anyway because it threatened my health.
Law enforcement did not ask them to justify their 'reasonable medical judgment.'
157
@BR It is not viable. Sometimes the grim facts are that the fetus threatens the mothers life, or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
38
@BR For some strange reason, we have a huge segment of society who believes that dead things grow.
In reality and real life, dead things don't grow, but living things do.
Hence, the growing being inside a womb is a live thing..or it wouldn't grow.
Women who want to equate this to just another body part may want to look at their donor card on their drivers license. Women who often support abortion support donating kidneys and other body parts.
How 'bout donating a body part to one of the million American families on Adoption waiting lists instead of snuffing out a human being?
Or..how about all the pro-choice people who would explore in anger if someone terminated the lives of a 1/2 dozen unwanted puppies just after birth? The fact they have no qualms about the same being done to a real human is beyond my comprehension.
Perhaps they pray to a different God than I?
3
Article pretends that other States haven't already passed laws making Abortion less restrictive, up to and including the moment right before birth. Activists on both sides are just itching for a SC challenge. They think it is how they will motivate their bases. Pro-abortion activists want the showdown just as badly as anti-abortion activists. They will rue it after the fact but they want it so these laws are getting passed.
1
@GregP
There is no abortion of viable fetuses "at the moment right before birth" ubless you define induced labor or Cesarean sections as "abortion.". The situation you describe doesn't exist, and Roe v. Wade would already ban it, even if it did.
Pro-choice advocates -- and the majority of Americans --have been fine wirh Roe v. Wade for decades. It is only a minority of anti-choicers who want to challenge it.
If you have to misrepresent reality to make your point, it isn't a real point.
27
@GregP
Greg,
Words do matter.
It isn't "pro-abortion." It's "pro-choice". Worlds apart.
8
@GregP: Please listen to me carefully: NO ONE, EVER is “pro-abortion”. No woman ever wants to have one, but sometimes circumstances dictate that the woman needs one, whether it’s to protect her health (physical, mental, or emotional) or because she does not have the means to properly support a child for 20 years. And the correct terminology is Pro-choice, my friend.
7
Neither SCOTUS nor anyone else has ever declared or proven that abortion is not murder. It is the cessation of the gestation of a human life. Human life is valuable, among other reasons, because it is fragile. It is not created or sustained without effort and it is not at any stage without peril. This is precisely why the abortion of it; in self defense, in punishment or in the case of a woman’s right to choose, should ever be a simple and easy matter, available “on demand”.
1
I declare abortion is not murder. I’m sure I’m not the first but, there, I fixed that for you.
Precious and fragile are unrelated. A diamond is precious and durable. A mosquito is fragile and worthless.
Abortion should be available “on demand”, as you say, for precisely the reason you give: it is a fraught decision, both morally complicated and consequential. Exactly the kind of circumstances in which you don’t want legislators and judges supervising.
18
Killing a life to save a life is, at best, a zero sum proposition.
The whole abortion debate, whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, rests on whether or not a fetus has rights, and if so, what are those rights and when does he or she get them.
This op-ed makes sense if you believe a fetus has no value and is ludicrous if you believe he or she does.
5
The Taliban, Catholic clergy, and so-called "evangelicals" seem to have a lot of the same ideas about women and girls.
6
Dr. Hern,
After reading this article and your proclamation, "Pregnancy is dangerous; abortion can be lifesaving;" I am shocked out of my senses. Where are your words that reflect your medical oath to save lives? I am speaking as a mother of two, grandmother of four who treasures every beautiful moment of celebrating the gifts of life. It wasn't easy. After my fourth natural miscarriage, the one where my husband and I had to sign a death certificate, I was saddened beyond all understanding. If I had known then the statistics reported in this new research and link, I sure could have had a much easier time dealing with so much pain and loss. If there is a message that needs to be communicated, it's this one. Will you help spread it? "The majority of human pregnancies end in miscarriage!!"
https://www.sciencealert.com/meta-analysis-finds-majority-of-human-pregnancies-end-in-miscarriage-biorxiv
Thank you doctor for pointing out what the legislators fail to address.
3
A zygote, a blastula, and a fetus are not babies. Please stop calling fetuses "babies."
7
I cannot help but think if the male component of the conception were forced by federal law or imprisonment, minimally 50%, but up to and including 100% financially responsible for the product of said conception to the completion of the child's education into adulthood, we would not be having this discussion.
If you are not a woman, you have NO say as to a woman's reproductive rights period.
9
I wonder: If any of these laws ever actually go into effect, thereby preventing women from obtaining sought after abortions, when some of these women later die from pregnancy related complications will the courts hold states legally liable for those deaths? If so, it may be another avenue to overturn them.
3
Here is my question: Who elected the officials that voted for and signed the law?
Do the majority of Alabamans really favor such a law?
Serious question.
2
I think the pains and risks of pregnancy fully justify a woman's right to choose whose baby to have at what stage of her life. Her body is literally a gift to the lucky man.
5
She should maybe withhold the “gift.”
2
It is scientific fact that contraception and sex education dramatically decrease abortions, and that anti-abortion laws do not. It is verifiable truth that more women die in childbirth than because of abortion.
It is NOT science to state that an embryo is a person, and no amount of “belief” makes it so. As Jia Tolentino noted (May 17 NYT article on “the dishonesty of anti-abortion propaganda”), a six week old fetus is the size of a pomegranate seed, and, like that seed, may or may not ever achieve its potential for independent life. Up to 75% of pregnancies spontaneously abort before women know they are pregnant (chemical miscarriages), and up to 25% do so once pregnancy is detected. (https://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-complications/miscarriage/).
Are we now to grant voting and property rights to embryos? Count them in the census? Must they pay taxes? Will we tolerate the government tracking women's periods and requiring funerals for every miscarried embryo?
It’s time to stop basing reproductive rights policy on Monty Python (“every sperm is sacred”), The Handmaid’s Tale (women are vessels). Women are actual people, and America is not a theocracy. Every meeting of sperm and egg cannot have rights as a human being, especially without regard to those of living women and children. Women are not free and have no rights whatever if they cannot control decisions about their own bodies.
13
@Norburt
True!
1
It was the summer of 1950. I was five years old and my sister was three. My mom had been gone most of the day before and when she came home, she came into our room and laid down on the bottom bunk bed in the only bedroom in our small, three-room apartment in Brooklyn, New York. It was my sister's bed, so she had to slept on the top bunk with me that night. It was early morning when my dad came in and saw the blood. Then the ambulance came and took my mother away. My sister and I were crying. Our mom came home a few days later. It wasn't until I was an adult that I found out what had happened to her. It was at a meeting in support of Roe v. Wade and my mother told of her abortion. It was with a doctor and a nurse. It took place in an empty apartment on a kitchen table. There were no vacuum aspirators at the time so the doctor performed a D and C. After it was over, the nurse took my mom to a movie and made her stay there till the movie was over so she had an alibi as to where she was that day. The abortion didn't go so well. When my mother was taken to the hospital the doctors threatened not to treat her unless she told them who did this to her. She said it just happened. She didn't want to get the doctor in trouble—or herself. This is what women are up against. This is why my mother fought so hard for Roe v. Wade—she defended clinics, marched, spoke at meetings and rallies in defense of Roe v. Wade until her death on August 14, 2001. Her name was Sylvia Weinstein.
90
@Bonnie Weinstein Thank you for sharing your mother's story and for your witness to what women of her generation
(and apparently, we're headed back there) regularly experienced. Sylvia Weinstein! You paved the way.
10
I am profoundly pro-choice. I also think this headline is very much clickbait. To refer to pregnancy as a "life-threatening condition" reinforces the medical establishment's view that birth is always something to be pathologized and treated as illness, and that logic monoliths pregnancy and harms women and our agency when we seek pregnancy and birth services.
I also think the line that says "pregnancy is dangerous; abortion can be lifesaving" is a minimizing mischaracterization of pregnancy. I don't have any qualms with the way the author speaks about abortion, but I do have an issue with how pregnancy is being discussed (except for the mention of the disproportionate negative outcomes for women of color -- that is deeply important and I'm glad it's written here). I am 100% with the author on abortion saving lives, but to propose this sort of dichotomy, with dangerous and unsafe birth on one hand, and safe abortion on the other really lacks nuance -- and something this complex so needs us to acknowledge the complexities! This is not to say we can divorce these negative outcomes from their socioeconomic and racial contexts and that abortion access does not play a huge role in saving lives -- but that to frame pregnancy as inherently dangerous seems sort of cherry-picky to me. We should be careful, on the left, not to frame things in certain ways for political expediency (e.g. article's title) when it benefits us. It's the thing we criticize about the right.
1
@Jordan another thought I'm having is that this runs the risk of framing abortion rights as something that we should have access to because pregnancy is dangerous, not just because these are our bodies and we should have full, complete agency over what we do or don't do with them.
1
@Jordan
"To refer to pregnancy as a "life-threatening condition" reinforces the medical establishment's view that birth is always something to be pathologized and treated as illness, and that logic monoliths pregnancy and harms women and our agency when we seek pregnancy and birth services."
But its true. You may not like the wording, but it's true. Pregnancy and birth involve pathologies. This is not complex.
The purpose of this article is to dispel the notion apparently held by many people that pregnancy is no big deal for women-- that they just grow a belly, maybe puke a few times in the first few months, get a couple stretch marks, go to the hospital, push for a few hours or maybe have a quick little c-section, and then boom there's a baby. No big deal.
The second purpose of the article is to underscore why these draconian laws that have "exceptions" for serious risks to the woman's health are unworkable.
2
Every woman who supports the right to choose should stop having sex with a man unless it is for procreation. I'll bet you'll see a quick about face in places like Alabama.
5
Valid and important stats and points regarding women's health. THank you Dr. Hern.
The elephant in the room that rarely gets mentioned in the debate is sex. I dated an abortion Dr. many years ago, who put it well, "Men and women both enjoy sex, but women pay a price." Whether the price is risking childbirth or opting to terminate a pregnancy, this is a debate about our sexual freedom and ability to live in an equitable society.
How dare single, married, underage, middle aged, or other women actually enjoy sex on the same level as men do.
11
I laud Dr. Hern for writing the many truths about pregnancy. As a retired labor and delivery nurse, I have witnessed some of the worst risks that pregnancy poses, even cases that were supervised under the best of health care. Some women lived, a few did not.
10
"The intent of the Alabama legislature and its new law is clearly to prohibit and prevent abortions from being performed. "
I respectfully disagree. The intent in for the law to be vague so it will be challenged, so it will work it's way up to the new, improved Supreme Court so it will overturn Roe. Also, punish the immoral women! Not the men who had powerful, manly sex, no no no.
Just the women, shamed since antiquity, now newly shamed and punished in 2019 America. These old white men and the white women who cheer them, will happily imprison doctors and debate who gets to lecture women in public about their impure clothing. Our Christian Taliban takeover of America's values, for your viewing pleasure.
6
I realize that I am a priviledged white male who taught history on the university level for 40 years before I retired 20 years ago. My question is on abortion where has the dynamic of understanding that there may be intellecutal differencies that cannot be overcome.
We went trhough this with wars of religion fought over what many regarded as life threatening differences. For example anabaptists believe that one much be born again and baptized. Roman Catholics who baptized at birth to free children for the onus of original sin. Both freely killed each other over such differences. Or when Islam sailed into the world scene, people of the book were spared conversion but pagans with their totally false religion were offered conversion or beheading. After centuries of killing paticularly in the west the enlightenment allowed for tolerance. You had your ideas about baptism but it did not threaten putting me in hell, you when you met your maker.
Why cannot the same tolerance be offered where there are differences in the belief when life begins. at conception, 8 days with heart beat; when could be viable out of the womb. Isn't the end result like baptism of being a person of the book the same. I will be judged by our maker when the time comes. But your decision on when life begins does not affect mine.
Pardon me for my Enlightenment influenced education in French History.
3
The problem with this article, and the reason it will fail to produce the desired impact, is that it is fact-based and science-based, and the anti-choice crowd don't generally care about evidence-based analysis, as evidenced by so many hysterical responses.
Pregnancy is risky to the health and life of the woman; that is a verifiable fact that is rarely discussed in this debate. Even more so when prenatal care is not available, which is a side affect of closing down women's health clinics in these states as has systematically been done because they also provide abortion and family planning access.
Evidence-based analysis also shows that the proven way to reduce abortions is through access to affordable contraception and comprehensive sex ed, both things vigorously objected to by those who want to eliminate legal abortions.
Facts don't matter to them, however.
11
The anti-abortion people ONLY care about the fetus. Living people, the potential widower and orphans? Not their concern.
11
Thank you for all that you do, Dr. Hern.
4
“Vagueness and confusion are tools of tyranny.” That says it all.
4
The whole reason for Roe Vs. Wade was to save life.
Women were showing up in emergency rooms and doctor’s offices—and they along with the life inside them—were dying because they had attempted unsafe abortions.
Women were inserting coat hangers inside their vaginas and into their cervix; they were drinking bleach; they were punching themselves in the stomach; they were throwing themselves downstairs.
There were also bad complications from pregnancies gone wrong.
And these women, and the life inside them, were both dying.
So the doctors and nurses and families who were heartbroken at burying two lives—the woman and the unborn—decided to make safe abortion legal so that at least one of those two lives would be saved.
If we get rid of Roe Vs. Wade, then we will go back to the world of two lives lost.
If you want a world with very few abortions, then have mandatory sex education from K-12 grades; provide free contraception in school and public restrooms; and teach young men that no means no.
Going back to the old days means two deaths—the death of the mother and the death of the unborn child.
Yes, it’s sad when a mother doesn’t want her pregnancy or when her health doesn’t permit her pregnancy. But can’t you see that keeping the mother alive has to be the first priority?
Would any firefighter rescue a set of embryos in a lab, but not rescue the nurses tending to those embryos?
No one loves abortion—it’s a matter of wanting fewer dead women.
11
The legislators who write these laws know the result will be increased rates of death among poor black women. That is their ultimate goal. Doctors will leave the state, maternity wards will close, rich women will go elsewhere to deliver, poor women will have babies at home resulting in higher death rates among the poor. The whole issue is about race not human life . Nothing puts more fear in to the heart of a conservative than to imagine that whites will be outnumbered by minorities. That is the goal of these bills
4
@MKR Not to mention that women will shun prenatal care for fear that they will be blamed if something happens to end the pregnancy.
4
Thank you Dr. Hern!
6
This law in Alabama and other South USA States is totally foolish, made only by men just to maintain power over women without any consideration of the consequences on women. It represents only a return to the Middle Ages and is not acceptable in the context of a modern civil society. In my opinion this law is a shame for the American society.
5
Thank you, Dr. Hern, for all the vital work you do and for taking the time and concentration you put into this Opinion piece to educate the public. Deeply appreciated.
Vivian Peters
author OOPS! Tales From A Sexpert
4
The legislators who pass such draconian laws don’t care if abortion saves women’s lives. After all, they are only women, so their lives don’t count.
8
The old order is terrified of the emerging power of a multiracial world where women share political power.
The unstated reasoning behind these immoral laws are at their core racist and misogynist. The laws will be used at the discretion of the courts to punish as they see fit, according to interpretation, and will work in favor of the supremacists who are enacting them - to force more white women to bear children regardless of circumstance, and purposefully leave black women to suffer and die.
6
I’ve said this all along: pregnancy is always a danger to the life of the mother. It’s worth the risk if the woman wants a child. It is not worth the risk when a hypocritical, know-nothing busybody tells you that you must stay pregnant because their morality trumps yours.
12
If we really want to save lives, end Catholicism rather than abortion. We'd save some young men from sexual abuse as well.
8
I was devastated when I learned I was pregnant - a result of an incorrect diagnosis of infertility. I knew what it would mean: the financial commitment, the impact on my career, the inevitable strain on my marriage, the total lack of societal support for parents. I had no idea what it would do to my body: I was healthy, fit, well-educated, had access to great health care, and had never experienced a serious health issue. I decided - and then we decided together - to become parents.
That choice made all the difference when my son's birth nearly killed me. Post ICU, post weaning off all of the medications, post all of the cardiologist appointments, the blood transfusions, and all of the medical interventions that saved my life, I am incredibly grateful to be here to mother my son. Parenting is harder than I thought it would be - and I love my son more than I thought I would be capable of.
I'm lucky to be alive. My husband still has his wife; my son has a mother. I chose to be his mother. No one - and certainly not the government - could have or should have made that decision for us.
12
When I had surgery at 21 to remove a fist-sized cyst which had grown on my ovary and which was causing me immobilizing pain, there were several things they didn't tell me before I went under. Such as that when I awoke, my throat would be sore and broken from the tube. And that in a day I would be in severe pain from the gas they'd put in my stomach during surgery. And that coming out of anesthesia can be a horrible, nightmarish experience.
Pregnancy is the same. Unless you really look hard, people don't talk about the postpartum depression, incontinence, bleeding, and split muscles that take months to heal. People don't talk about all the dangerous complications that can happen during pregnancy. People don't talk about how human pregnancy isn't natural the way it is for cows and deer and other mammals; we usually need help when we're giving birth. Because it's dangerous and difficult. Thank you to this author for his honesty; our culture works too hard to polish the pregnant experience with a ton of moonshine.
13
It’s a conspiracy of silence to keep women ignorant.
5
The suicide rate for adoptees is four times the general population.
Anyone who thinks that all unwanted children should be born needs to sincerely talk with more adult adoptees.
16
Universal health care (for those who want to have a child,) distribution of birth control and day-after pills through the health system, and sex education in the schools provide a much better solution than abortion. But the same people that decry abortion, hate all of the above.
The "pregnancy kills" argument makes it sound like we should come up with an ex-vitro solution for parents, and invent artificial wombs so we can rid ourselves of all of this unnecessary pain and suffering.
3
To the chorus of people insisting that the life of a developing embryo or fetus is of equal or more value than that of the woman carrying it: Let's be totally honest. If you really believe that, and a frozen embryo bank were on fire, you'd "rescue" a vat containing two frozen embryos before returning to save an actual person trapped in the fire. After all, by your logic, two "people" who happen to be frozen in test tubes would be a higher priority than one person who happens to be thinking, sentient and likely heavily invested in the well-being of family and friends. Right? If not, you need to admit that embryos and fetuses do not warrant the same rights as real people. Everyone is entitled to feel as they do about life in a womb (or test tube or petri dish), but it is absurd to grant it legal personhood. End of sentence.
15
The logic posed here is incredibly flawed. The fetal mortality rate from abortions is 100% for the babies that undergo the procedure. Abortions kill people too. Trying to mask the fact that an abortion kills a person is omitting the primary purpose of the abortion.
I understand the need for abortions in extreme situations and I would not advocate for an outright ban on abortions, but let's not try to gloss over the fact that every abortion kills a baby.
117
@Ben
This gets at the absolute basis of disagreement, which is that those of us who are pro-choice do not believe that abortion kills a person. People who are anti-abortion do believe that abortion kills a person. There's no way around that -- it's a matter of belief, and it's not a scientific question but a moral and ethical one.
That's the entire impasse, really. From the perspective of Dr. Hern, who wrote the op-ed, his logic is entirely consistent. From your perspective it is flawed. You are both correct, because it comes down to the one fundamental belief.
The only way I have found to get around that is to point to all of the statistics which show that abortion is not less common when it is illegal, but is more dangerous. Outlawing abortion actually results in the same number of abortions but more deaths. So if you are truly pro-life, and truly anti-abortion, your goal should be to promote education that reduces rates of pregnancy, but not make abortion illegal. That would, in fact, be entirely logically consistent with your personal belief system.
654
@ES Good point, to an extent. But if 'prevention of killing' was top priority, then why do so many 'pro-lifers' support 2nd amendment rights, and (historically) oppose birth control?
187
@ES Well stated. I agree that increased education and pregnancy prevention are very important. Pro-lifers trying to outlaw all abortions is a not a viable solution and will just result in more problems as you mentioned. Hilary Clinton at one point said that abortions should be "safe, legal, and rare". As a pro-life advocate I can say that I agree with that.
69
Pregnancy is natural. Can we at least acknowledge that? So, what does nature teach us about sex? Is it merely a recreational activity? Or is it the source of life itself?
Contraception and antibiotics are wonderful and they are also the basis of what many think are their free and enlightened attitudes about sex. Abortion is the back up plan. What the culture calls free and enlightened cheapens life and cheapens sex to simple recreation. As this article does.
But, I am old enough to know that illegal abortion doesn’t mean abortion doesn’t happen so I remain pro choice. But sickened by this article.
2
@JK I agree with you on most of your points but I think that laws do shape the culture to the extent that when something is legal (drugs for example), people begin to see it as not bad/harmful. Making something illegal also greatly decreases its incidence, even if it never eliminates it.
1
A lot of sex is recreational. Maybe most of it. I wouldn’t say “merely”, and I hope that’s not your experience.
1
It’s disingenuous not to include the statistics on complications from abortion in any discussion on the risks of pregnancy. A D & E procedure carries its own set of dangers including permanent loss of fertility and death. And no I’m not even considering the Gosnell and Brigham victims. I’m talking about supposedly competent doctors in accredited hospitals. There’s also mental and emotional health issues that can and do follow some women for years. Tell the truth.
55
@JR Sure, any medical procedure carries risk. Given that these laws will not stop abortions, just drive them underground, what do you think is riskier, abortions performed by a doctor (or overseen by one, in the case of drug-induced) or performed by the woman herself or a non medical professional?
129
@JR Did you read beyond the headline? Or did you simply read the headline and jump to your ideological conclusion, which was written for you by patriarchs? Because you apparently missed this data showing abortion to be much LESS hazardous to women's mortaility:
"By comparison, a study in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology on abortion mortality from 1998 to 2010 found that for the 16.1 million abortions performed during that time, the overall death rate was 0.7 per 100,000 procedures. The death rate for early-abortion procedures — those that took place within the first eight weeks of the pregnancy — was less: 0.3 per 100,000."
119
@JR, Dr. Hern does not dismiss risk of abortion, but gives the actual rate per 100,000. Every medical ANYTHING poses some risk. I know a person who had life altering complication from placement of a single IV. There is no comparison between the high risk of pregnancy - any pregnancy - and the very low risk of abortion. Period. And the propaganda about mental anguish in women who have aborted is just that - propaganda. Studies show very few women regret their decision.
141
Thank you for this article. Although feminists don't want to hear from her, Camille Paglia spoke 30 years ago about the barbarity of pregnancy. Forcing women to give birth is cruel and unusual punishment. Abortion is the last vestige of mans control over women. These laws must be struck down and women must have total autonomy over their bodies.
5
You're on the wrong side of morality when you suggest that the procedure that ALWAYS results in death saves lives.
60
@davidadelman
Great reasoning behind opposition to war. I assume for that same reason you oppose all war. War ALWAYS results in death, even if it saves some lives.
28
@davidadelman This is one of those sententious pronouncements that doesn't hold up under scrutiny. For example, all war results in death, but some wars save lives. And we say many wars are morally justified because the killing is done for a higher purpose. Were the battles fighting Hitler, for example, on the wrong side of morality?
Perhaps you see all fetuses as inherently more important than the woman carrying them? If that's the case, come out and own up to prioritizing a fetus over a woman.
35
@davidadelman No, Sweetie, although abortion is a painful thing to have to do, there are many circumstances in which it saves the life of the mother. But, of course, that is just some stupid woman, so who cares, right?
49
A fetus is a potential person. A woman is an actual person. Which one of them should be making a woman's medical decisions? Which one of them has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Exactly.
31
I agree with everything but your first sentence. A fetus is an actual person. Hope this helps. Never thought I’d have to say that
That’s not true merely because you think so.
You can define “person” however you like. Just don’t succumb to the illusion it matters.
A fetus cannot survive detached from the mother until it’s “viable” — able sustain itself outside the womb — by definition. In 40 years since Roe, despite myriad medical advances, that definition has proved remarkably stable.
Prior to viability, the fetus is not viable. Depending on point of view, it’s either part of the mother’s body, like a finger, or parasitical, like a hook worm. Either way, shouldn’t it be up to her to decide what to do? Who appoints anyone else to decide what she does with her own body?
2
This argument is an affront to basic reason. Pregnancy that results in an abortion kills the fetus and therefore a human. None of us would be here today if at some point in our existence we were not a fetus. The difference here is that the fetus has no voice, no money, no power. The fetus cannot vote nor raise its voice in self-defense. It is summarily wiped out. If a fetus survives nine months of gestation in our world today s/he is lucky. There is murder going on all around us under the incredibly devious guise of "a woman's right to choose."
4
“And therefore a human”. Prove that and you win the day. Fail, and the rest of us are justified in ignoring that unproved, irrational assertion.
2
It's time for Women's Advocates to label the "pro life" movement the "Anti-Woman Movement." That's what it is. These Anti-Woman supporters are like the Climate Change Deniers--they reject science and want to put their fates in the hands of an unseen religious deity. They don't actually support life (after birth when we know it's there), they just want to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else.
4
Pregnancy is life threatening. Abortion is life threatening. Life is life threatening.
Where's the discussion about the circumstances the unwanted child faces?
Banning abortion has little to do with medical science or the Bible. It has more to do with the oppression of women by a segment of society that feels it knows best for everyone.
The bottom line: the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. However, it doesn't guarantee the right of a minority to legislate a narrow interpretation of religion negating medical science and defining morality.
Despite the recent opinions of privileged southern white male politicians, women have a sovereign right to their own bodies and are fully capable of making their own reproductive and healthcare choices.
1
Romans 1:28 - And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
Shouldn’t people give some thought to the possibility that their is a higher Law, and a Lawgiver that we may have to give an account to one day? If this universe is not just some cosmic accident, and their is a Creator (I’m only suggesting the possibility), don’t you think He might have an opinion on what is moral, right, and true?
@Michael Howe So, which higher power or religious text would you use? We aren't all Christian, and we are neither a Christian country nor a theologically governed one. If you believe G-d has an opinion on the matter, you can live your life according to what you consider Her opinion to be. But please do not force it on everyone.
Besides, my personal opinion is that any higher power would favor autonomy over one's body and free choice - but then again, I don't assume that such higher power is male, as you do.
4
Dr. Hern has forgotten his Hippocratic Oath: "First, do no harm."
Incredibly, he has also forgotten how he got here. His mother did not choose abortion. Her pregnancy saved him. And, now, this is how he pays her back and the humanity he is supposed to serve.
Such madness.
2
Intellectually, this is a seriously flawed argument. One could well make the same argument that war saves lives and justify any act of violence, including violence against any class of people.
More problematically, what signifies new life is described as death-dealing. What always involve the termination of life is celebrated as life-giving. At the level of emotions, absolutely repulsive.
2
What a perversely creepy title and premise: Life is dangerous, therefore kill it. I am pro-choice, but editorials like this make me understand why some people are not. There really is a hatred of life in this piece, a hatred of existential contingency, or pain -- i.e., of life.
2
No, I think it is safe to say that the Alabama legislature does not care about black women's lives as much as they care about white women's lives.
Yes, pregnancy is very hard on a women's body and yes, it does often kill or injure a woman.
Nothing in this article is wrong.
4
I am appalled, Dr. Hern. Really?
I could barely read past « Every pregnancy poses a ‘serious health risk’ to the mother » without cringing. Then what followed was all doom and gloom. The allopathe looking at pregnancy and birth through the ‘what could go wrong’ lens. Sadly, that point of view is why the US is #46 in the list of World Maternal Mortality rates. Too much technology and fear getting in the way of the organic process and the enhancement of the mother’s power. I am pro-choice, but your argument is ridiculous and undermines rather than supports that view. I sure hope no pregnant Mom reads your words. They will do nothing but harm her, body and soul.
1
Please. The only reason *more* women don’t die in childbirth in the US is because of ‘unnatural’ medical intervention. Throughout the history of mankind, pregnancy and childbirth has always been the number one cause of premature death in women (and girls).
5
@Deb Agree 1000%, and would only add that injury to the baby at birth was also significantly higher without modern "unnatural" medical intervention. Any pregnant woman should enter her pregnancy understanding the risks and the available medical means to mitigate such risk, assuming she has access to that care.
2
How can you trust a man that enable the law to occur.
What comes to mind his belief in god and religion, not he woman that is going through pregnancy.
It's time for common sense to come to all people and not just the select few.
Open your minds, all, for that is the best thing we have. K
They. Don't. Care. It's not about life, it's about control.
10
Life does NOT begin at conception. About 50% of all fertilized human eggs are never implanted in the womb and pass out of the woman's body. What do these anti-choice folks propose to do about that, if they think these are millions of lost human beings!
This is a very complex issue. The government does best by keeping out! Religious zealots would also do best by keeping out! That's why the Supreme Court recognized a woman's right to privacy in her reproductive decisions. It's between the woman and her doctor. Period!
If you don't like abortion, then don't have one! Other than that mind your own business and let others deal with their own lives. No woman has to care what some religious zealot across town or across the country thinks she should do!
8
There is a great deal of magical thinking and ignorance about pregnancy and childbirth. Women enter pregnancy (either intended or accidental) with pre-existing health problems: type 1 diabetes, quite often, or hypertension, or lupus, or perhaps even cancer, maybe cervical or lymphatic, or breast, cancer they didn't know they had. The embryo can develop with a condition incompatible with life: anencephalia-- lacking a brain, or only having part of a brain developed, or hypoplastic left heart syndrome-- we can't fix this. These things happen more than the general public wants to hear about. But they need to hear about it, because ignorance, wishful thinking and misguided self-righteousness will kill women, no joke. There will be many fewer OB's practicing in states where treating an incomplete miscarriage could send them to jail for life, and not treating it could kill their patient-- a hobson's choice they don't want to subject themselves to. There will be a chilling effect around early pregnancy and women will linge, bleeding, in ER's to develop infections, sepsis, septic shock, DIC, death. It's all not so clear cut as it seems to people who never see blood or death. These are medical decisions and they need to stay that way. A handful of these cases made Ireland change their minds about making abortion illegal. I fear we are not as compassionate or as wise as the Irish.
6
Uneducated Americans are still arguing with religious mystical ideas.
The most violent nation on earth , 6 times the violent crime rate of Europe in average. 7 times the incarceration rate of Europe, by far the highest incarceration rate of the world. Still the death penalty, the last industrialized nation not to have abolished it.
Still selling pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers by thousands of tons all over the world, killing species by the day for ever.
Still arguing about barbaric abortion laws. Americans.
5
I wonder what would happen if only the women in Alabama were allowed to vote on this law. Hard to believe that they would approve it.
As a former long-time Republican, I see no earthly reason for any woman to vote Republican until they start shunning the christian zealots that Barry Goldwater warned the party about.
5
As a man, I support a woman's right to choose what to do with her body. It is 100% evil and unAmerican to want to exert control over the most fundamental possession of another person: their body.
15
@Rich Thank you, Sir. "Evil" and "unAmerican" are exactly the right terms. This is a question of freedom.
2
From the bottom of my heart- thank you, Rich.
1
This article appears to take a reasoned, mathematical approach to the abortion "problem". Unfortunately, the objections of the anti-abortion movement seem based, not on reason, but on hysteria. (Should I add: a hysteria that only religion could inspire ?).
6
@eclectico Yes, and that is evidenced by the response to this article. As a women who has given birth two times to three children, and never had an abortion, I can state without doubt that pregnancy has long and lasting impacts on a woman, and that's with good health care, something which many of the women forced to give birth will not have access to and which these states are not addressing. I chose pregnancy, and do not regret it; others choose abortion, and they deserve the same autonomy and choices as I had (and that men have over all their health care choices, of course).
3
I at least respect pro-lifers who are consistent in their claim that human life is sacred, i.e. they are not hypocrites who decide the fetus is suddenly less sacred in cases of rape or incest.
But it needs to be stated more often in this debate: the
"sacredness" of a pre-viable fetus, even from the time it is a clump of a few cells, is a religious belief. People who have that religious belief have no right to force it on women who don't.
There is no more difficult issue than that of where to draw the line between the right of a woman to control her own pregnancy, including the right of a woman not to have religious views forced upon her, and the right of the state to protect people's rights. That line was reasonably drawn by Roe v Wade.
5
Dr. Hern is overstating his case. When i was going for my Bachelors degree i wrote a paper about Roe v Wade. In my research i discovered that pregnancy for a healthy woman is beneficial. Female mammals are genetically designed to bear children. While it's true that those medical conditions he mentioned do exist it's an extreme overstatement to say that a woman is at risk from the moment she becomes pregnant. It sounds to me like the doctor is trying to make a case for his own profession as an abortion doctor. Thousands of women in the US get pregnant every year and only a small percentage of them are at risk.
4
Dr Hern has presented a reasoned perspective that exemplifies too much of the abortion/anti-abortion division: logic does not drive the debate, and often exacerbates it.
Both sides present their own case, with enough fever to burn up any kind of rationality. No right answer is available in this situation, and handing the matter to the courts has turned an ethical issue into a legal one with crazed political consequences.
That said: White men, for the most part, making decisions for all women seems absurd, legally and morally. While abortion is best not a first-line option for ongoing contraception -- and who believes it really is? -- it should not bear the outrageous burden of criminal murder heaped on it by the religious right.
The old guideline applies: your freedom ends when it encroaches on my freedom. When anti-abortion advocates establish laws that punish women for their individual choice to govern their bodies, that freedom has gone beyond the boundaries. Screaming murder is a travesty, like yelling fire in a crowded theater.
But boundaries have already been crossed, and the mess we are in is likely so deeply entrenched no legal decision will untangle it. Dr Hern's approach will only worsen the climate of conversation. But then, I don't know anything that will improve it either.
1
Dr. Hern is probably right in stating that these vague laws will result in fewer OB/GYNs willing to practice in the state, and also fewer family doctors and midwives willing to participate in deliveries. How can they, when they cannot be sure that a decision they make won't result in criminal charges? This will only leave the women in these states more vulnerable and increase the chances of an increase in maternal deaths.
2
Are any of those people who drafted, signed, including the Governor of Alabama, championed for that law willing to adopt a baby from an unwanted pregnancy? Are they willing to assume any personal responsibility emotionally or financially for a baby from an unwanted pregnancy? The frenzy over the r is ummatched to the future resentment which stigmatizes the baby throughout childhood, The distain for the Mother who, in many cases needs government assistance, is never ending. People use the reasoning for the zealots fight it is to control the women's bodies. It is never said it also includes the ire over the choice they made to have sex over abstinence as if procreation was the only reason to engage in sex. They know Planned Parenthood is as about birth control, they don't conduct abortions in those states. It's about their insiduoos desire for sex only for procreation, so Pence had a very short sex life.
4
Your medical science ignorance is astounding. But then again not surprising given what you are advocating. Josef Mengele would have been very much in agreement with your rationale.
4
This question is a matter of religious faith, so lets leave it there. Those who oppose abortion on religious grounds don't have an abortion. Those of us not of your faith will live by the laws established by our country and answer to our own God for our actions on judgement day.
Our founders came to this country to escape religious persecution, Catholics burned Protestants and Protestants burned Catholics and other faiths were persecuted as well including atheists. The founders formed a secular government that does not favor one religion over another in the creation of our laws.
So, lets live by these laws and do the best we can to respect each other.
Pro Choice does not mean we encourage abortion but it does mean we want to be able to make our own decision within our faith, laws and medical advice and not be restrained by another's religious beliefs. Lets work together in areas that could reduce the need for abortion like, education on birth control, human sexuality education, poverty...
3
@George
Thank You.
It's disturbing that women who are half of our population do not have the same rights over their bodies that men take for granted. To be clear I am over 68 I was adopted at 2 months old by my parents who could not have children. I understand that if abortion was legal when I was born I might not be here. However I sincerely believe in women's rights to choose what is done to them in healthcare.
4
This dystopian screed tells how much our casual attitudes about sex have cost us. The cause of abortions and pregnancy is sex, and it may not be the game we portray it to be. I suppose that means that we value the sex act much more than we respect its consequences.
1
@TD the decision for a woman to choose pregnancy or its termination is not a consequence of modern day sexual liberalism. women (and their societies) have sanctioned abortion for various reasons through history. what is new is privileging a fetus or even an implanted egg over that of the mother.
4
Who is the state to control one’s sex life? That’s the issue behind the pro-life movement. They want to impose their puritanical beliefs on the rest of us. They have shown they care little for the child a woman is forced to birth.
4
Dr Hern,
Thank you for this.
My grandfather, a famous obstetrician and, later, my own doctor agree with you.
You are a hero to me for writing this!
12
If a woman doesn’t have a right to stop an unwanted pregnancy, then there should be consequences for the man who got her pregnant.
My Abortion Amendment:
"States that deny women the right to get an abortion must perform a DNA test of the unwanted fetus to determine the identity of the father. The father of the unwanted baby will be required to pay for all pre-natal care. In addition, so that the mother can work and support the child, the father must provide child support until the child is old enough to go to school."
There is no Fetus without a Sperm. If they assault our right to walk away from a pregnancy, then we must assault their right to do the same.
19
If life is so important why are so many pro birth people upset with publication of the risks women take during pregnancy? If life is so important why aren't pro birth folks taking in homeless children instead of putting them in cages? Or taking away healthcare? Or protecting them when they're in schools?
17
The premise of this article should in a logical world come de facto and by simple attrition. But when you have the Religious Right, specifically Evangelicals, trying to get rid of the notion 'A Woman's Right to Choose', logic is totally, as the saying goes, off the board, erased at every turn.
And with these latest 'state actions' to eliminate and replace this common-sense-strategy of looking at abortion as a medical issue altogether, we see the Right abandoning their using the 'Death by a Thousand Cuts' strategy. They are going 'Grub Hub', wanting it all and wanting it now.
3
My body, my choice. It is not for me to judge a woman who chooses to safely abort a pregnancy before the fetus would be viable. Most women don't take this decision lightly. If the woman was raped or knew she could not properly care for the child, it is not for us to judge the woman making that choice.
There are way too many children in foster care or damaged by a childhood where their needs cannot be met. Access to safe abortions is necessary.
14
Yes!!
We need to talk about the dangers that come along with pregnancy. No woman should be forced to risk her life if she doesn't want to be pregnant.
We can argue about the small percentages of late-term abortions if "pro-life" advocates are willing to stop talking about women getting abortions for "convenience." Yes, a late-term fetus is different from an embryo. There is a place for balance and some solutions to the challenge of creating that balance. Pretending that every pregnancy is a gift from God will not lead to that place.
9
A tenuous argument at best. 20.7 deaths per 100,000 means 99,989 pregnancies where mothers lived. But a time least it is a perspective that seeks to address the lived reality behind the abortion debate (life, death, and the character and quality of both) and not the two-edged notion of choice. Individual freedom to choose is used to justify the NRA’s gun extremism, resistance climate change initiatives, and other issues. Making choice the ultimate value has dangerous consequences. Content matters...a lot.
1
No one is getting criminally prosecuted for objecting to climate change.
6
As a retired nurse who worked in maternal and child health, I agree. And so little investigation and coverage of the unwanted children and their care or lack thereof. Speaking of coverage, why nothing reported in the NYT on the antiabortion marches yesterday? And why so little coverage of the women candidates for president? These 3 subjects are connected and need to be addressed.
24
@Jackie Garbarino
I meant pro choice marches. I certainly am not anti abortion.
2
Finally! I’ve been waiting for the medical articles pointing this out. Even the best pregnancy can go wrong and it is the right of every woman to protect her own future, health, and life.
10
This article fails to point out the death rate from abortion. I practiced family practice medicine in the United States for 38 years; and I delivered lots of babies. I never once saw a maternal death. I know this is not a statistically sound conclusion; but...it is my impression; and I think that the only reason for a maternal death is poor obstetrical care by doctors.
1
@Edward Manring--The article states: "... a study in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology on abortion mortality from 1998 to 2010 found that for the 16.1 million abortions performed during that time, the overall death rate was 0.7 per 100,000 procedures. The death rate for early-abortion procedures — those that took place within the first eight weeks of the pregnancy — was less: 0.3 per 100,000."
3
The article states "abortion mortality from 1998 to 2010 found that for the 16.1 million abortions performed during that time, the overall death rate was 0.7 per 100,000 procedures. The death rate for early-abortion procedures — those that took place within the first eight weeks of the pregnancy — was less: 0.3 per 100,000."
1
Which is much better odds than the baby, which I would guess is almost 100% fatal. Pregnancy is not an illness.
2
If the law isn't unconstitutional for violating the the privacy rights of patients it's unconstitutional for violating the due process rights of physicians. A law which will deprive a person of his or her freedom for engaging in prohibited behavior needs to be very specific about what that behavior is.
6
This is a refreshing point of view - and I think it's about time that we all start to think deeper and not to take it for granted that for any woman to be pregnant and to give birth is a simple matter.
13
Why do people continue to make arguments against abortion restrictions that don’t address the problem of fetal personhood? This is the point of contention. Every other consideration is contingent, tangential or irrelevant.
2
@Thomas They do address fetal personhood, and there are many comments on it below.
1
@Thomas They do address it, but they apparently don't come to the same conclusion you did. Check out some of the comments on fetal personhood below.
1
@Thomas: People are not born with any conception of personhood. It is learned from the experience of living.
1
The White House, christians and the republicans all seem to be acting as though there is no separation of church and state anymore. this is part of the Constitution this law in Alabama is based on religion and therefore it violates the Constitution
14
@Allie: The moronic legislation enacted in 1953 that decreed the US "under God" nullified freedom from religion here. This awful law still stands with no standing allowed for anyone to plead harm from it.
1
I find it so weird that in America pro-choice people feel compelled to argue their point on 'a foetus' is not a person.
In the rest of the world, it is okay to say....
..."I am deciding I do not want to be pregnant or have a baby".
Really, there should be no problem with this.
15
@EC I find it really weird that here in America the forced birth people feel compelled to argue their point that a zygote or fetus is a "baby" with all the rights of a sentient human being.
1
Good article about the very real risks of pregnancy. There is one proven way to decrease the number of abortions, universal access to birth control. Unfortunately, access to birth control is usually opposed by the same politicians trying to make abortion illegal. It is impossible to argue with the supposedly “pro life” movement because they lie about their motivations, perhaps even to themselves. The underlying impulse here is not to save lives but control women’s sexuality.
18
@Sue Nim: Religion is generally beliefs held without possibility of substantiation.
1
Yes, it is important to acknowledge the reality of the risk posed by pregnancy. Although the outcome of pregnancy, in the great majority of instances, is thankfully life, the tragic alternative is real. Abortion, furthermore, does on rare occasions directly save a mother's life. In the case of the fetus, however, a "successful" abortion in every case brings death. The title of the editorial seems to elide that truth for the sake of provocation. In a wrenching moral question of this nature, all truths must be acknowledged and factored into the equation, including both those the author wishes to be considered and those the author wishes to ignore.
1
@RGRobins As long as you don't believe that a fetus is more important than a living, breathing woman there is no moral problem.
1
Dr. Hern's argument betrays the absurdity inherent in an anti-abortion law that makes exceptions in cases where a woman's health is at risk. Anti-abortion laws prioritize the potential life of the embryo or fetus over the life of the pregnant woman in every case. As Dr. Hern states, pregnancy itself poses a serious physical health risk. Unwanted pregnancy also poses a risk of increased antenatal and postpartum depression and anxiety, additional serious health issues which would adversely impact the pregnant woman and fetus. Every woman with an unwanted pregnancy and no access to abortion is at serious risk of medical and psychiatric problems, and this exception for the health of the woman could be exercised in every case by any physician brave enough to practice medicine in a state with these antiquated laws on the books.
11
I don't like working in Trauma or on Labor and Delivery. Both have lots of life and death emergencies. BOTH.
16
If pregnancy is so risky, why are men according to Alabama law allowed to get women pregnant without their explicit (written) consent? A women becoming pregnant without her consent should be able to sue the biological father of the child. And, let’s think about it, what would happen if the punishment for men impregnating women without their consent would be the same as for a doctor performing an abortion?
21
Abortion like euthanasia results in the death of a fellow human being. These are ethically slippery slopes that I would like to think we can trust individuals to navigate. Pieces like this and arguments that a baby (no-one ever said "the fetus just kicked") is no different than a tumor make it much harder to believe that we are morally capable of making these choices.
5
@I want another option I believe women are morally capable of making their own decisions. That's the option I want. As for the usage of "baby--no matter what the prospective parents call it, it's not a baby until it's born. I often hear people refer to beloved pets as their "babies." That usage does not make a cat or a dog human.
21
Dr. Hern has a myopic view of what a human life is and it's markedly different than arguing for a woman's right to control her own body.
2
Dr. Hern,
You are my hero. If we manage not to destroy the planet, it will be because of the deep empathy and imagination of people like you, who are capable of putting themselves in someone else's shoes.
Thank you for speaking up when it matters most.
18
Whether or not a fetus is a human being is an irrelevant red herring in this debate and a question with no objective answer. Some say abortion is murder, some say it's not. I hate to be blunt, but that's besides the point.
The problem is where the fetus exists.
INSIDE A HUMAN BODY.
No law can tell a person what or "who" they can remove from WITHIN THEIR BODY. Even if a "human being" is growing inside your body, no stranger or authority figure has a right to tell you, it cannot be removed.
The government's authority ends outside of the human body. If the government wants to say that it owns a zygote, embryo, or fetus as soon as it comes into existence, then let that government also support that fetus for all of its days. Until the government does that, it is not entitled to lay claim to it, even if the fetus were something that naturally grew outside of a human body.
The "human or not" debate is a moral issue worth discussing. But no matter what the conclusion of that debate is, Roe vs. Wade must stand, unless we wish to give up the only true liberty, the control over what's inside an individual's skin.
34
@Formerastor I'd be a lot happier if the anti-choice group proposed this: Remove the clump of cells without harming the woman, put the cells in an incubator, and when the fetus is viable/an actual baby, have all its care, upbringing, and education taken care of by the state till the age of 18. The mother can just wash her hands of the situation (as the father may have already done) and no "babies" will be killed. OK, I am aware that this is not technologically possible at the stage most fetuses are aborted, but the religious right keeps pushing their agenda on the grounds that it *may be possible* someday. So why should the woman be involved in pregnancy and childcare at all, if it's all about the baby and not her? And if the state wants those children so much?
9
After reading this, I suppose that after giving birth three times I should be thankful I'm alive. I understand the author's point in showing just how inane these pieces of legislation really are - they don't adequately define the terms they use, having been drafted by non-medical professionals. My concern, however, is with Dr. Hern's description of pregnancy as a "life-threatening condition" and giving ammunition to those who would discriminate against pregnant women who are trying to stay on the job - as they're entitled to.
1
The phrase "killing a baby" from the forced-pregnancy crowd on this thread begs the question, i.e., assumes as a given that very thing that is in question. I vigorously dispute that a 6-week-old fetus is the moral equivalent of a human being outside the womb or its mother. Harry Blackman fully realized that medical technology (always improving) makes fetal survival more likely as the pregnancy progresses, which is a wonderful thing.
But she who controls the language controls the legislation. A feritilized zygote is not a baby. I therefore find the unquestioned assumption that a woman in a clinic has killed one (a baby) to be both unreflective and rude. That's a religious claim, not a legal or moral one. The last thing we need during a medical emergency is the advice of a cleric.
32
@Mark Buckley Well stated!
Please explain to me why these facts (assuming they are facts) mean we should have abortions beyond the heart beat stage? If you do not want to have the baby, act FAST. Don't wait until it becomes a person.
OK, your complaint does apply to Alabama. But not for instance to Georgia or Ohio.
So are you going to support these two states which DO allow early abortions?
And please explain why New York allows you to wait 24 weeks to have an abortion,
4
@Ludwig
There are pregnancies where there are severe complications where the fetus can be delivered but will die 100% of the time. For example, the fetus does not develop a brain or other vital organs. You want to force the woman to have this baby knowing for months that the baby will die a few hours after birth.
I have no decent words for people who desire to force this atrocity upon women.
51
@Ludwig Many problems potentially fatal to the women, not to mention serious fetal abnormalities, cannot be discovered until late in pregnancy. At the so-called heart-beat stage there is no actual heart, nor any other fetal organs. Also, no one has to justify to you what the state of New York does.
33
@gratis Gratis I totally agree that there are pregnancies of the kind you mention. And I also agree that in such cases abortion SHOULD be permissible.
But that argument does not justify abortion ON DEMAND late in pregnancy, It only justifies a case by case exception to the rule.
Indeed that is the rule that France has. Late abortions are allowed on a case by case basis. But there is no blank check for late abortions as there is in New York.
I was only objecting to the blank check provision.
This callous sort of false equivalency myopia is not at all constructive. Dr. Hern, you couldn't be more divisive or preclusive of resolution in this debate if you tried. What is your objective here, other than becoming Exhibit A for the extremist "pro life" crowd?!
@Rocky
Abortion is much safer for w9men than childbirth. There is nothing extreme about that reality.
The law is meant to intimidate women who seek and the doctors who provide abortions. It also is meant to challenge Roe v Wade but it is not in any fashion meant to improve the health or safety of the women during pregnancy. The men who wrote the law have no understanding of women’s health/pregnancy situations. There are many circumstances where a women’s life or bodily function could be in threatened but for these not to be defined in the law leaves everyone in limbo.
19
@Dawn
The State rep who wrote Alabama's law is a woman. The Governor of Alabama is also a woman.
2
@Dawn I don't want every single condition that could require late-term abortion to be defined in law. I want to leave it up to the woman's specific condition as diagnosed by her doctor and for she and her doctor to determine what course of action is best, without legal interference.
9
@Joe Public Some women want to oppress other women to justify their own lives. In this case, the Governor of Alabama's political career. She's post-menopausal.
7
The availability of safe legal abortion also helps create lives. Let me explain. My husband and I have two children, both conceived when I was of “advanced maternal age”. I underwent amniocentesis and genetic testing at 13 weeks gestation as the risk of chromosomal abnormalities is higher in older mothers. Fortunately, both of my pregnancies were normal and I did not need to terminate but the option of a second trimester abortion was a significant factor in deciding to have a biological child rather than adopt at the time.
17
I am chilled to see what is happening in America. I know the health care system there is brutal - but with all these anti-abortion laws being put in place is the government also putting in place legislation to assure that contraceptives and health care for pregnant women is available and 100% affordable for ALL of it's citizens? Further if women are forced to continue pregnancies, I hope the govt steps up and puts measures in place to allow those in poverty the means to bring up the children they might have aborted because they couldn't afford it. Or wait, are they expected to just adopt them out to wealthy people (and we're almost back to the Handmaids Tale...)...
19
@Rachel In the 19th century, before there were safe abortions, hordes of unwanted children wound up in orphanages, workhouses, or on the streets. Because no matter how cute those children were, no one wanted to adopt most of them.
Great essay ... but I think a Russian Bot selected the title of the piece (i.e. "Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives.") Seriously NYT, you _know_ that wording is just going to enflame the "pro-lifers" and drive them away from any possibility of a thoughtful read of this excellent and thought-provoking essay.
5
@GBR
I often wonder if the person writing the headlines (and it is usually a position separate from the journalists writing the stories) hasn’t been coopted and paid off by outside parties with their own agendas.
Naaahhhh....
3
A lot of people seem to think that abortion is wrong because a fetus is a person from the moment of conception, entitled to the very same moral consideration as any other person.
I think that is a philosophical and not a scientific question, but so be it. If that's the case, then more people die from miscarriage every year than die from cancer. But where are the billions of dollars going into research to prevent miscarriage?
Just admit it. Not everything is black and white. A fetus can be genetically human without being morally a person. And however you feel about the ethics of abortion, the criminal law exists to prevent the cycle of vendetta, not police private choices that have little likelihood of rippling out and affecting the larger body politic. Sometimes it is best for the law to let people work through difficult moral issues on their own.
17
@D.A.
For the vast majority of mankind and in many many societies, infant mortality was so high a baby (real air breathing baby) was not considered a member of the group until a week, a month or even a year after the birth. Only with modern science has the perception changed. Throughout history, infant mortality, death before the first year was something like 50% or higher.
9
@D.A. Forced birthers don't seem to consider that pregnancy is a process, one that lasts approximately nine months. During nine months, a lot can happen medically to the woman and/or the fetus. And during 24 weeks, a lot can happen in the woman's life that means she can no longer care for the child.
13
Abortion defenders always find arguments to kill with legal protection.
3
@Trassens,
No, we find legal arguments to protect the lives and freedom of women.
14
Something I typically don't hear in the abortion debate is the fact that women who have trouble getting pregnant will have many of their eggs fertilized and then choose one or two of these to go forward with a pregnancy. The rest are frozen or destroyed. These embryos also have potential but will never be brought to term. The Roe vs Wade decision is correct in that this is a woman's right to privacy and should not overturned.
20
It has escaped many readers that Dr. Hern specializes in epidemiology and writes from a perspective of large-scale studies with large and representative samples of much larger populations; his data is generalizable, not personal.
The Alabama legislatures have no interest in the disparities between white and African American women because their arguments against women's health are based on religious beliefs, rather than science.
When laws are created by legislators and enforced by the state, whose governance includes forcing compliance with legislators' religious practices, we are in a theocracy.
21
The Alabama abomination sponsor, Clyde Chambliss, states that in vitro embryos may be thrown away since “its not in a woman.” Thus, the misogynistic intent behind the law becomes crystal clear. In vitro embryos are the same biologically as those in a woman, yet he has no problem with terminating the in vitro ones. So, this has nothing to do with embryos, but everything to do with controlling women.
48
Also it's very important to use a proper terminology, so the cunning anti-women opportunists couldn't mislead the uninformed public:
Guidance Reminder: On Abortion Procedures, Terminology & Rights
https://www.npr.org/sections/memmos/2019/05/15/723678750/guidance-reminder-on-abortion-procedures-terminology-rights?ft=nprml&f=
2
I don't doubt that for some anti-abortion people there is a sincere conviction that abortion involves a murder--the taking of an innocent person's life. The problem, though, is what constitutes a "person".
"Person" is fundamentally a legal term, and implies rights that stem from the fundamental evidence of human status, which involves consciousness. Those familiar with both psychology and metaphysics tend to recognize that full personhood requires evidence that the entity upon which it is conferred shows recognition of its own individual identity, which is the foundation of agency (and, in criminal justice, culpability). Before birth, it is difficult to argue that the entity possesses this. Indeed, those familiar with the "ego-organizer" research of Renee Spitz may argue that until a baby shows that it knows it is a separate entity from the environment--usually, by voluntarily responding to others with smiles after a few months--it is existentially equivalent to a fetus, and not yet a person.
This is why we don't talk of "murdering" animals. Not that we wish to be cruel to them, but murder is something only done to the existentially conscious.
So the argument should examine at what stage this living clump of cells is existentially deserving of the legal protection that a "person" would have. The problem I have with most pro-life positions is that they tend to deny this to pregnant women, who can easily demonstrate consciousness, in favor of an entity that cannot.
15
The conservative right cares no more about the welfare of a pregnant woman than a praying mantis female does about the mate that just impregnated her, who she's about to eat for sustenance.
In both cases, the purpose of the reproducing vessel has been served, and now that they've done their job and reproduced, they're disposable.
10
@kryptogal but what happens when those who are not conservative abort themselves into the minority? There’s a consequence to using abortion for birth control. India is a prime example.
@JR People do not inherit their political beliefs, conservative or liberal, from their parents. Furthermore, there is an economic advantage to single women and couples if they do not have more children than they can afford, and do not have any children at times when they cannot afford them. They can spend more time and money educating any children they do have. They and their children are more likely (though by no means guaranteed) to have upward socioeconomic mobility or at least not have long-term downward mobility. They have more spare cash to donate to political causes they believe in. What I am getting at is that not everything is about voter numbers.
4
@JR
What on earth does this mean? One cannot abort oneself, unless you consider suicide to be a post-birth abortion. Which is of course, now our leading cause of death.
2
On the CBS Eve News they noted that 67% of American favor leaving Roe as is while about 30% want to overturn it. That 30% is about the same percentage as hard core Trumpsters. What I want to know is: when are the nearly 70% of us going to stop letting a minority of right wing extremists walk all over us?
41
I just came back from the anti abortion ban protest by the pro choice side in Foley Square, downtown Manhattan. I am a pro life woman and expected to find a few like minded folks. Not one. I thought they might be holding a quiet vigil across the street but then they did not want any confrontations with the pro choice side. It would have reflected badly on us and that is not what we represent. We are quiet and dignified people.
The good news was that there were about 300 people on the pro choice side. I thought there would have been more because New York is such an extremely liberal city and abortion rights is a very popular issue.
When the pro life people held their rally on May 4 in Times Square there were thousands in attendance. When the pro life crowd attended a rally in front of Philadelphia's Planned Parenthood recently there were 1000 people who showed up in response to the harassment by the Democrat representative, Brian Simms against two teenage girls.
The pro life side has made quite an impact on people and the reason we are seeing so many join our side. We are seeing more people today than ever before see the importance of unborn lives and are determined to limit and end abortion.
2
Rep Brian Sims is a hero, walking the walk and taking a principled stand against the immoral harassment of, and interference with, innocent citizens exercising their sacred civil, human and Constitutional rights to freely access legal healthcare and to enjoy privacy in doing so. Rep Sims speaks for me, and for millions and millions of patriotic Americans, who will stand to defend the sacred rights of innocent citizens to the protections of the 14th Amendment.
17
@KMW As I understand it, the right to abortion as defined by Roe vs. Wade is now New York law. I live in California, where the right to abortion as defined by Roe. vs. Wade has been law for decades. I can understand why women in those states would feel much less anxious than those in states trying to overturn Roe vs. Wade. (BTW Roe vs. Wade already limits abortion.) But you're right, we should not forget to support women in Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, etc. I do that by donating frequently to Planned Parenthood, Emily's List, and other helpful groups, rather than marching.
12
Your “quiet and dignified” crowd has never been anything but invasive and manipulative in my experience, harassing women in front of clinics, shouting accusations and obscenities at crowds advocating at a local gun control demonstration, threatening pro-choice activists in person and on social media... the list is long and continues to grow.
12
I am a scientist, oncology physician, dealing with life and death due to "cells" proliferating. I know that a "clump" of cells that proliferate is not relevant to a "person". This ban is a totally religious concept, that these embryos are "alive" and imbued with human awareness or perception, is ridiculous. These cells are only able to survive if the mother nurtures that evolving being; essentially wants to provide that potential being with a life worth living. Please keep religious beliefs out of our Constitutional right to privacy. PLEASE
48
Then we are all a clump of cells. You seem to be conflating the nature of the organism whether human or or just a “clump” with the circumstances in which it is released from the mother’s womb. If you want to abort, abort, but don’t pretend that an actual living organism is only a “potential.” At least acknowledge what you are doing and that you are taking a human life.
any exception to prohibiting abortion makes a lie of the anti-abortionist rationale that it's murder. an exception for the health of the mother, for rape, for incest, is an admission that the prohibition is contingent on the individual circumstances. to justify prohibiting abortion requires the state to let women die, if they have ectopic pregnancies, or placenta previa, or preclampsia.
11
Does anyone seriously believe a judge would rule against a doctor for advocating in favor of and/or performing an abortion in a truly life threatening scenario? The vagueness of the law opens itself to liberal interpretation not conservative ideals. No judge will want to look foolish, even in Alabama.
@Nik Doctors want to practice to their best ability. It's easier for a doctor to just move out of state and practice in one that does not threaten him or her with a jail term.
If the doctor or patient is black... I have no doubt an Alabama judge would rule against them.
Dr. Hern, you are a HERO!
I remember when you were providing abortions in Boulder, Colorado back in the 70s when I was a scared college student, the daughter of a Mormon father I knew would have at me if he knew I was no longer a virgin, let alone pregnant and not about to marry (my partner wasn't even Mormon). Scared and alone, I sought a pregnancy test at your clinic. I still remember sitting in the waiting room and seeing the framed picture of the Oliphant op-ed cartoon that showed a bunch of fat cat Republican legislators with their halos and holier than thou stances, saying "If I were pregnant, I wouldn't have an abortion," and I knew you would treat me with respect and compassion. We women owe you thanks and our gratitude. You have mine, many times over.
37
no woman should be forced to undergo a procedure, giving birth, that poses such a significant threat to her well being and possible her life.
14
I would bet most pro-life/anti-choice people have never read the remarkably well reasoned US Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade.
They don't want to read it, because they are not interested in rational and logical positions, discourse, and information.
They believe that life begins at conception, which it most assuredly does not. They do not want to hear about viability.
These people want to force their religious and moral views on everyone else.
I do wonder what they think of miscarriages – is that GOD forcing a woman to have an abortion?
20
Roe v Wade is a good compromise between constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of (and from) religion, and the practical need to reduce suffering among people.
The radical-right political wing doesn't just want to make abortion more dangerous and difficult, it also wants to reduce access to contraception!
The radicals aren't about "like" or freedom, they're about controlling everybody in general, and women in particular.
11
Clever, those Republicans, like beaters in the forest flushing pro-abortionists out of their hiding places and out into the open, stampeding them into the guns. They've got Democrats not only looking like they want to permit abortion (they always have), but now even appearing to encourage it as a positive social good! Watch them defending that position in 2020. Democrat extreme social leftism isn't just electoral poison, it's whole-party suicide.
@Ronald B. Duke abortion is a positive social good. it saves women's lives. the right to abortion gives women control of their own health. those are social goods.
16
@slightlycrazy; What's wrong with Democrats, why do they feel a need to stake-out and defend the most extreme positions on every controversial topic--abortion, trans-gender rights, climate, race, immigration? If you get them to temporarily retreat to a sensible position on any of these they automatically jump to one of the others. It's like trying to reason with someone determined to commit suicide; they're going to do it, you won't stop them. Don't Dems realize that they're way to far to the left of most Americans and if they don't get to the center they risk handing not only the presidency, but both houses of congress to Mr. Trump in 2020? Is that what they really want, do they have to crash and burn?
1
@Ronald B. Duke Roe vs. Wade has been established law for decades. Why are the people who do not want to overturn it, or who preserve it in state law, suddenly "extreme"?
12
The right continues to proceed toward theocratic and state rule over women's bodies and health.
Dems: please start using these terms:
Compulsory pregnancy & mandatory forced childbirth.
13
I am reminded of Jesse Helms, who strongly opposed abortion and many forms of social support. We used to joke that he thought "life began at at conception and ended at birth". The idea that a woman, her family (however it is constructed), and her doctor cannot decide how to manage a pregnancy is the worst of government intrusion. And to force a woman through pregnancy to childbearing without the resources to make a healthy family hardly reflects upholding "the sanctity of life".
16
So many of these comments are from people with little to no medical experience. I have worked in medicine for decades. I agree that children are wonderful and life is precious. But life is also messy, and at times fragile. Everyone has different pre-existing conditions. Cancer pops up mid pregnancy. Fetal abnormalities. Toxemia. Diabetes. Many other rare but severe syndromes. The risk one woman might be willing to take is different than that of another. The risk a mother might take for a subsequent child might be different if she fears leaving an orphaned child or children. One physicians acceptable risk to the mothers health might be different than another’s. And yes,OB/Gyns go to Church also. So perhaps the best solution to the abortion argument might be left to the woman & her physician. Not judges, legislators and definitely not you or me.
32
@Ruth
Yes life is messy, but pro-choice has morphed from abortion being a bad thing that should nonetheless be safe, legal, and rare; to it's no big deal, no different than removing a tumor, or just a clump of cells. i.e. pro-choice is now pro-abortion. While I disagree with the current spate of heartbeat bills coming from Red States, I find the extremism coming from the Left these days to be truly macabre.
When I was a healthy pregnant 30 year old, I could not get life insurance. Despite my comfortable circumstances, my good heatlh, and access to excellent medical care, life insurance companies had decided that I was statistically not a good bet. I had to wait until I had survived the birth before they would insure my life. Tells you a lot.
51
I worked with Dr. Warren Hern at his clinic in the 1970s and 1980s. I know him to be a stalwart champion of reproductive freedom. After serving in the Peace Corps in Latin America and witnessing first hand the deaths of poor women from back alley abortions, inadequate medical care, cultural and economic barriers to birth control, Dr. Hern returned to the US to fight for and ensure access to safe, legal, compassionate, counseled, reproductive choice. He's my hero and a hero to every woman who has faced the difficult choice that an unwanted or risky pregnancy presents. Thank you, Warren.
34
I'm confused. I read this article earlier and the doctor discussed 2 specific cases where medical judgement re need for late term abortion were sited; one where the doctor called the legislator to see if performing an abortion to save a woman at risk for kidney failure would be OK and was told to use his judgement. He scorned this as who knew if that would be the case otherwise?
Something tells me there is more to this. The fact is the woman facing kidney failure needed to end that pregnancy. However, killing the fetus first is not a prerequisite for ending the pregnancy. Whether the fetus is killed first or not, the fetus must be delivered, either vaginally or by C-section. Why not give the fetus a chance to turn into a baby and see what chance it has to live?
There are some situations where killing the fetus is necessary to save the life of the woman, and I have no problem with that. But late term abortions being done for, preeclampsia say, are not necessary to deliver the child.
I believe it was the NY Times that did a profile of this doctor once before, treating him like a hero. They never mentioned the income he pulls in but did talk a lot about all of his travels.
I will believe these "heroes" when I find one who has not found great wealth becoming one.
2
@Somebody
The article with the kidney situation was by a completely different doctor. Not sure what you're implying here.
I also searched the archives of the Times and didn't find any profile of this doctor.
I'd suggest taking the time to check facts before putting things out in the world but that seems to be too much to ask these days.
16
@Sarah
Please point me to the other article by the other doctor. I could be wrong, but show me.
Second, I said I thought it was the NY Times but wasn't sure. Could have been the Atlantic. The fact is, most of the doctors I see celebrated for performing abortions, late or early, are making lots of money doing it. Makes me question their humanitarianism.
Finally, you had no argument re why it is necessary to kill the fetus via intrauterine injections in these cases - the 5 or 6 pound baby still needs to leave the uterus, why does it need to be killed first? (not talking about ectopic pregnancies - which rarely reach this point - or cases where too late for cesarean and it is necessary to crush the skull to prevent death of the woman - either of which I would support). In late term abortions, which this doctor does specialize in, delivery has to happen one way or the other - why must the fetus be killed first - if it's for the health of the mother?
2
@Somebody
1) Other article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/opinion/abortion-laws.html
2) Only profile I found about Dr. Hern: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/24/warren-hern-america-late-abortion. His life sounds decidely not fun; having to be escorted by security everywhere he goes. Only travel mentioned was to treat people in the Amazon long ago. He seems pretty consumed by his work and even if that was a facade I doubt he would allow himself to be portrayed as "living large" in any profiles. That is a figment of your imagination.
3) I don't believe that an otherwise viable/healthy infant should be killed if all things otherwise are equal, but I suspect they are often not equal. I'm not a doctor so I don't think my further speculation is helpful.
This article seems to have revealed a surprising callousness about the risks women take while being pregnant. One may have thought women would be respected for taking those risks, even brave perhaps. After all, babies are so important. But no, yet again here were are being dismissed with "Well, driving is dangerous. Getting out of bed is dangerous".
Can anyone deny at this point the deep misogyny within those who consider themselves "pro life".
32
@Sarah
You said it. The same men awarding each other Purple Hearts for a bit of shrapnel in their leg have nothing but contempt for women who endure permanent injury, life-altering changes, risk of death, and a level of pain that the vast majority of men will NEVER face.
1
This is why I suggest mandatory vasectomy for every boy as he reaches puberty. It's a simple operations and can generally be reversed. If there's concern about sperm count after reversal, freezing sperm would be routine.
Surely every anti-abortion male will race to be first in line. After all, sperm cause *every* unwanted pregnancy. No sperm = no abortions.
Once a man and woman co-sign legal documents agreeing that she wishes to be impregnated by him, the medical reversal happens; the vasectomy will not be reinstated until a live child is born. If he impregnates another woman in the meantime, off to prison he goes, and she gets a free abortion if she wants one.
18
Re: "...Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives. Every pregnancy poses a “serious health risk” to the mother..."
In then course of 22 years on the ambulance...I chanced upon 1 case, each of 'Placenta-Previa', (placenta, ahead of fetus), and abruptio_placenta, (premature placenta-womb-wall detachment). My, (healthcare-provider's) experience was something like treating a G.S.W.P., ('Gun Shot Wound Patient'), minus the actual gun play...
While common in 3rd world settings...these 2 conditions remain, (for now), uncommon in America...despite Republican efforts to devastate the provision of medical care in America!
It's time for Republicans leave the 'medical_provider, w/o M.D.' profession!
4
Ridiculous! Sexual diseases kill far more people.
Sex without pregnancies kills many too; especially, if you get caught in the act, men and women.
1
You know what? Just DO NOT have any (more) kids. This planet is infested enough with Homo Sapiens. Spare us your propaganda. 'Nuff said.
4
Good headline to show abortion foes how truly demented you have to be to perform late term abortions.
1
@Steve - Late term abortions aren't performed unless a wanted pregnancy has gone very wrong. Usually the fetus has been discovered to have severe anomalies incompatible with life, such as no brain, or internal organs developed outside the body. Those anomalies aren't generally discovered until very late in the pregnancy.
7
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.
Sad days at the NYT.
The following nuggets of wisdom from republican politicians:
Dan Flynn TX - believes abortion requires "cutting into" the uterus
Vito Barbieri ID - believes women can have a "remote" gynecological exam by swallowing a tiny camera
John Becker OH - believes in an ectopic pregnancy, the egg can be removed from the fallopian tube and "inserted in the uterus"
Clyde Chambliss AL - say a woman can have still have an abortion "Yes, until she knows she's pregnant". When asked how/why someone would have an abortion before she knows she's pregnant, his answer " It takes time for all the chromosomes to come together"
Todd Akin MO on "legitimate rape" "(women) won't get pregnant" because their bodies "shut the whole thing down", because during a legitimate rape "the juices don't flow".
These examples are too numerous to list.
All of them, completely ignorant of anatomy, biology, medicine, science, etc.
Not a word about how that egg gets fertilized. Do they even know how their own parts work?
Morons writing life or death laws for all women. In 2019.
28
@Deb
Hi Deb. Is it ok to intentionally kill a baby 5 minutes after she's born?
How about 10 minutes earlier. Would it be ok to kill her then?
Let's put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say that the government were dominated by elderly women, and that said elderly women decided what men over the age of thirteen could or could not do. Let us say that these elderly women decided that men were not allowed to get toupees, hair plugs, tattoos or piercings. Or have "Gender confirmation" surgery, or cross-dress. Let us say that these elderly women decided that rapists and child molesters would have their genitalia removed and that wife-beaters would be castrated because they suffered from an excess of insecurity and testosterone. Let us say that they decided that the use of ED medication was outlawed, that masturbation was outlawed, that sex before marriage was outlawed, and that widowers were not allowed to have sex. Let us say that they decided that all adult men were required to father two children and pay child support from the moment of conception in order to cover all medical costs, and that failure to produce at least one child would result in fees, penalties and possibly jail time? That any man who fathered more than two children (replacement value) would be legally required to have a vasectomy. Too much governmental interference with your human rights and male autonomy? Especially coming from a bunch of man-hating vindictive old women who don't know much about male anatomy? Would that make you feel like your only value was tied to your virility, and that was limited? Gee, I can't imagine how that feels! /s/
16
Imagine what a horrible person you must be to "specialize in late-abortion services"
2
@Jock Watkins
Well given that late term abortions are nearly always tragic and medially dangerous situations I regard doctors who provide that care to be heroes, especially because at best they suffer the hatred of people like you and at worst they risk being killed by a zealot.
36
@Sarah I agree. They do brave, courageous and heart wrenching work. Thank goodness for them.
18
@Jock Watkins a person who cares about the lives of women who are suffering from horrible health crises.
This doctor makes his living performing late term abortions, so naturally he would defend the practice, but if pregnancy is so dangerous a condition why wait till the third term to abort?
1
Women don’t just wake up in the last trimester and think , “ gee, I don’t want to have a baby”. Reasons why women have abortion in the second or third trimester can be because of genetic abnormalities, many which are not found until later in the pregnancy. Unfortunately, I know some women this has happened to, and the babies were very wanted. Other reasons women have abortion in the second or third trimester are because of difficulty obtaining abortion earlier. Many states have fewer and fewer abortion clinics. If a woman lives in a rural area they may have to travel and stay overnight , save the money they need for an abortion ( hundreds of dollars in the first trimester, thousands in the third trimester). They may have to find childcare. In Missouri there is one abortion clinic. There is a 72 hour waiting period. So a patient has to get to the clinic, have counseling, wait 72 hours and then have the abortion. So please know the facts.
19
@Edward I know of a woman who received a tentative diagnosis of lissencephaly of the fetus at her 20 week anatomy scan in a very wanted pregnancy. It took several weeks and further testing to confirm the diagnosis, which takes time because it doesn’t manifest enough until the brain continues to grow and show its severe abnormalities more clearly. Then she had to travel for the procedure. At this point it was early third trimester.
21
Which abortion saved the fetus' life?
2
Fetus fetishists are liars and murderers. They murdered Dr. George Tiller while was ushering parishioners in his church.
Guess what, fetus fethishists, you didn't end abortions by murdering Dr. Tiller.
As for the lies, I had read about "fetal heartbeat" bills, that try to stop any abortion after 8 weeks, when they claim the "baby's heart is beating".....so, being a former journalist, wondered about that and after doing some reading, discovered that a fetus's heart, four chambers and all, isn't fully formed until 20 weeks.
There is no "baby with a beating heart 8 weeks after conception" it's a lie, and yet states have passed bills tied to false "fetal heartbeats" - what doctors can hear early on are pulsing cells, not a heartbeat.
I am so sick and tired of bad faith and outright lies from republicans. If their position is so morally superior, why can't they convince the rest of us without lying. And they all claim that their motives are driven by Christ, when actually, I have a feeling they make Jesus weep.
30
Pregnancy creates life. Abortion destroys life.
2
Pregnancy may be a risk to the mother, but abortion is 100 per cent bad ending for the unborn child.
5
The biggest threats to America and the world?...ALL religious zealots no matter what faith.
17
Abortion kills life...period. What an obscene title for this article.
4
The odds of dying in pregnancy is 0.00028% for the mother.
1
This is the most disgusting vile piece of evil I have ever laid my eyes on. People like this is why the pro-life movement is becoming more mainstream. Shame on this "doctor".
1
What about the lives that have zero chance of living due to an abortion? Most women do not die during pregnancy. Every aborted baby dies
2
@Tom Zero babies are aborted. Ever.
3
So dumb. All agree if the health or life of the mom is at risk, we must do an abortion.
The issue is elective abortion, especially when done late. And do want to call anxiety or depression a health risk enough to kill an unborn baby?
This debate has become a specious farce. I cant stand it.
I am pro choice for first 2 months. After that, the fetus just looks too human to throw away in the garbage just because it’s inconvenient or the mom is freaking out.
That has to be the most tone deaf headline ever in the Times.
2
Crossing the street can pose danger. You never know when a reckless driver will run you down. You never know if you will be killed by a mass murderer. There is one thing that is certain. Abortion will take the life of an innocent baby. You can count on that.
2
@KMW What does innocence have to do with anything? The woman actually has life experience so she deserves to die?
15
@KMW
Maybe abortion takes the life of a guilty baby. You are familiar with original sin, aren’t you?
13
Pardon the religious metaphor, but this is the sort of 'preaching to the choir' argument that the NYT excels at.
Alabama men want black women/all women to die from
pregnancy issues, period.
5
Amen.
Who are these legislators that exhibit such religious hubris to play God with the lives pregnant women? They deny the existence of the very real dangers that come with a pregnancy in the name of their God.
For shame! It is the purist form of hypocrisy and misogyny.
7
The white males in the Alabama government just wanted to make headlines and really did not consider what they were really doing.
9
Personally, as a biracial lesbian whose mother clearly did not want me, I wish abortion had been safe, cheap, and legal in 1951 and that my mother had had the temerity to partake.
3
@C. Spearman - I'm so sorry you grew up in those circumstances. When my mother was pregnant with me, there was no abortion so she had me and then killed herself. She left two motherless children and a husband who couldn't care for them. We were split up and parceled out to reluctant relatives. If I'd been aborted I'd never have known the difference and four people's lives wouldn't have been ruined.
With the push to restrict or ban abortion in many States, it seems to me that the Legislators are missing a central issue. For example, consider Monty Python’s satirical song (in The meaning of life): Every sperm is sacred, Every sperm is great, If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate”. If the Legislators (mostly male) are so serious about the sanctity of life, maybe they should consider outlawing male masturbation in order to protect the “sacred” sperm. Punishment would be solitary confinement in a Monastery until the man’s sperm is considered to be no long viable because of age or health. What do you think about the likelihood of this passing?
6
This person cannot be a real doctor. Oh wait, I see it says "Dr. Hern is a physician and epidemiologist who specializes in late-abortion services." So another Gosnell? This is like Orwellian-speak. Up is down, good is bad, etc. Every single abortion ends a life, there is no disputing that. So even if it saves the life of the mother, we are simply at net zero. This "doctor" is neither good at medicine or math.
2
@MrReasonable: Nope, he's not another Gosnell. Late abortions are done due to danger to the life of, or serious health consequences for, the mother, a deceased fetus or a fetus with a condition incompatible with life after birth. These are pregnancies in which the child was very much wanted, and they are tragic to the parents involved.
10
How about forcing fathers to assume custody of every baby born to a woman who was refused an abortion, be the father a perpetrator of rape, incest, or irresponsibility. Imagine the outcomes for those children, anti choicers
10
Circular logic, cherry picked statistics, over-generalized statements, non sequiturs...this sounds like a southern slaveholder from 200 years ago defending his "rights"
1
Wait:
"Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives.
That Wasn't a "typo?"
The Supreme Court has said in Roe v. Wade and in the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey that states cannot ban abortion prior to viability, when a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Humans are rather unique in that they aren't born fully developed. How many animals can you name that take a year after birth before they're able to walk? Babies are born when they are for the purely physical reason of getting the head out of the birth canal. Babies aren't viable on their own; a baby will NOT survive if left in the wild at birth. Other animals may -- they can move around and feed themselves. Once upon a time, abortion wasn't a thing, as surgery wasn't really a thing either. If a woman had an unwanted pregnancy, the standard practice was to wait for the child to be born, then to leave it in the wild to die of exposure. That was abortion, circa 2500 BC.
Now, consider 2500 AD. At some point, it's reasonable to think that we'd be medically advanced enough that a fetus could be brought to term completely outside of a woman's womb. The point of viability, per the Supreme Court reference above, has been steadily moving farther back; preemies have a real chance at survival now far earlier than 100 years ago. In such a setting, the resolution to an unwanted pregnancy might well be to have the fetus raised externally, and then put up for adoption.
Imagine how people in this 2500 AD scenario will look back at our time and consider the state of abortion today.
@David,
Medical science does not know how to grow body parts for a fetus that has not fully developed.
Thus, despite advances in science, there is still virtually no viability before 24 weeks.
The few births that have happened before — that is, those that beat the odds against survival of 99 to 1 — have had severe deformities.
4
You assume women will choose to carry when they can't find a doc? Make abortion illegal and you'll have thousands of back room coat hanger assisted operations - talk about putting a women's health at risk - what could possibly do more damage?
9
Dr. Hern is an hero and one of the few brave physicians providing late-term abortion services. I'll be donating money to his clinic and I hope others will too.
14
Ok, let’s resolve this once and for all: our country is hopeless divided. So let’s divide the country - all those MAGA types get the entire South. And good luck to ya’ll. The rest of us can continue on with Democracy. Cheers,
13
May Mother Nature have mercy on us, we pitiful human beings.
So why is it that the only Democrat candidates to support a Congressional measure to protect females and their right to reproductive choice are: Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Kristin Gillibrand?
And yet, the frontrunner is long time anti-female/anti-abortion Joe Biden. That speaks volumes.
And why are Democrats not talking about the Democrat governor of Louisiana set to sign another anti-abortion bill similar to that of Republicans in Alabama?
The reality today is the reality of yesterday and yesteryear: U.S. girls and women are on their own and ought not trust a political party or men to guard these laws.
Vote in 2020 for a female president who can to draw a line in the sand with respect to Catholic lifetime SCOTUS appointments and to pass legislation to halt the erosion of female rights by misogynist males (and their little women folk) over their ancient crackpot religions.
https://medium.com/@teamwarren/congressional-action-to-protect-choice-aaf94ed25fb5
9
This is complete and total fantasy, with absolutely no basis in fact. Per the Centers for Disease Control and prevention:
“…about 700 women die each year in the United States as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications.”
Also per the CDC: in 2017, there were 3,855,500 births last year. That means you have a 0.00018% chance of dying during pregnancy and childbirth. Is that a reasonable justification for 879,000annual abortions?
Of course not. It’s an absolutely ludicrous assertion.
4
@Mike - This doesn't cover the thousands of women a day who suffer complications that leave them with lifelong health problems or disabilities. My friend pushed so hard during delivery that she went blind. that's an unusual complication, but there are many other complications that are fairly common, and that women like me, in their 70s still deal with.
7
@Mike,
How callous to dismiss the deaths of all those preganant woemn, as if their lives mean nothing.
The US has the highest maternal death rate of any Western nation.
That should make anti-choicers hang their heads in shame.
@Jerry Engelbach "The US has the highest maternal death rate of any Western nation."
Post hoc, ergo proprter hoc.
Women are individuals. As an individual, it is her right to decide if she wants to share her body. Her body. Her risks. Her choice. It IS that simple. If it isn't your body then mind your own business. Again, it IS that simple.
20
Wake up. You are missing the GOP strategy here. They want to keep winning elections. Voter suppression is one tool.
Making young adults want to leave Red states is a top priority.
3
@William
Interesting. I've often wondered what would happen if say the Bernie Sanders crowd set out to colonize some low-population red states. Of course that would involve actually inconveniencing themselves vs. shouting angrily into the void.
What about the woman who is refused an abortion after a rape. Every time that fetus/baby kicks, it is a trigger to recall the terror and long term trauma of the rape. Those stress hormones are not good for her or the developing baby. Also, the rapist may choose to exercise his parental rights and she could be court mandated to show up at the prison so he can see his child, and to exercise his control over her yet again. Women need to be able to make decisions over their own bodies.
15
The US is the only Western nation that does not provide an unconditional cash benefit to families for each child. The only country without mandatory parental leave. The only developed Western nation without free high quality health care for all pregnant women and children. I cannot help but see this overwhelming concern about abortion and the utter lack of concern for women and children, once born, as shameful hypocrisy.
11
With all these arguments about baby vs. fetus vs. embryo; I make it easy for anti-choice bunch; there is a reason why a pregnant woman is referred to as "mom-to-be". Because there is no baby there yet, hence there is no mom yet.
10
These laws are all so incompetently written, so disingenuous, so cynical, so devoid of serious debate, so unconstitutional, that the supreme court should strike down all of them, unanimously. That is, if we had a supreme court worth such a high and mighty title.
7
I find this all very disturbing, kind of like The Handmaid's Tale." I notice, though, that it's only happening in the self.
I remember there was a suggestion some years ago that Canada and the northern States form a country and let the South have their own.
Together we could create the most progressive country ever in North America although the name might prove a problem. Any suggestions? Canamer?
7
@Ambrose
You've not considered the anti-abortion loons legislating from the church here, as well: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and then there are the Dakotas, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa...
2
@Ambrose
I meant "it's only happening in the South." The Times doesn't give us an edit mode.
@Maggie
There are anti-abortionists in Canada, but they are a puny force unlike in your South.
3
I think we need a change of framing on this issue. Rights, separation of church/state, pointing out inconsistencies in "pro-life" positions don't seem to be cutting it.
Since the right insists that women be infantilized let's just say we're putting them at the mercy of their doctors.
Better than at the mercy of legislators who write poorly conceived laws with little regard for the medial realities of pregnancy, and who create an environment of fear among doctors about whether or not they can legally justify the procedures they determine are necessary.
Let's just say it's up to doctors, not the women, and be done with it.
2
@Sarah Actually, before I have any serious medical procedure, I carefully research it beforehand. That includes my tubal ligation. I do not believe everything every doctor (or dentist) tells me. I consider the evidence and make my own *decisions* about my care. If I do not think the doctor or dentist is acting in my best interests, or if he/she refuses to inform me, I find another medical care provider. Women have agency and intelligence; they can make their own decisions.
3
@Frances Grimble
Actually, I do the same. I am merely talking about the framing of this to the know-nothings who seek to keep women down. I would expect in reality women to continue to advocate to for their own care to their doctors.
1
Many of the 19th and early 20th century’s blended families came about from the death of the mother often in childbirth related situations. I have relatives and near relatives on both sides of my family who are from blended or double families that came about because of this. There always would be small children who needed someone to care for them.
7
@Joan In California
When those young mothers died in childbirth or disease, they often already had 5+ offspring. The fathers didn't always want them, abandoned them, gave them way, sold them to work houses or business owners, turned them out into the streets. Skyrocketing 1 million per year immigration in the 1800s by poor but highly religious European resulted in the explosion of orphanages.
This was a component that resulted in the early 1900s U.S. birth control movement. Margaret Sanger's mother died from cervical cancer and TB after 18 pregnancies in 22 years.
14
@Joan In California - One side of my family has a genealogy that goes back to 1653. In the early days the family was Catholic. The genealogy is full of families with 13 or more children, and three mothers, sequentially, because the first two and sometimes the third died in childbirth.
4
Thank you for this lucid article. Without going into the details, had it not been for the availability of and access to (25 years ago in NYC) a safe legal termination at 5 months, we would not now have the children we do. What is happening in the red states must be opposed.
7
Why is the maternal death rate in the US almost x3 the rate in the U.K. ??. Doctors /politicians /concerned citizens in the US must address a maternal death rate that is one of the highest in the developed world. To then use this poor practice ( how else can one describe it ) to argue that abortion is safer than pregnancy beggars belief. Disingenuous concern re abortion rights by the blogger demonstrates complacency re maternal deaths that would be unacceptable by the medical fraternity in any other country.
No mention of a push for readily available contraception for men and women to avoid unplanned/unwanted pregnancy by the blogger. Abortion alone is the answer.
Abortion may be the only solution for some women in rape .incest ,the sexual abuse of vulnerable women and failed contraception . Women deserve better than the opinion of the blogger.
Get the maternity death rate sorted. Promote contraception. Legal abortion rates will fall and pregnancy will be safer.
Vasectomies are a far safer procedure than abortions, in fact the two can hardly be compared in terms of health risks, complications and mortality. I would suggest that men who are against a woman's right to choose and are sexually active have one. Should those without children yet, wish to start a family one day, they can adopt several of the unwanted children that will result when abortion is severely restricted or made illegal. The state orphanages will be bursting at the seams and to not step forward and personally provide for as many of these children as possible, seems the height of hypocrisy.
23
@RK; a fantastic idea indeed. Count me in if you're collecting signatures to create a bill for this.
I also have another suggestion: let's legislate that men HAVE to donate one kidney to a person on the kidney list to save their lives. It's far safer than a pregnancy, doesn't take 9 months and is not a life time commitment but it's a start.
12
I called Dr. Hern recently to thank him for providing essential reproductive health services to women. It was an emotional conversation as this man is literally risking his life to provide a difficult and distasteful but necessary service for desperate women. And I wanted him to know that he was appreciated. His clinic is located in Boulder, CO and he has a link to donate to help his clinic stay in business if you are so inclined.
Since the cold-blooded murder of Dr. Tiller in Kansas while he was worshipping in his church, Dr. Hern is one of the only physicians who performs late term abortions in the US.
We can all agree that abortion is a complicated topic and the fewer of them the better. I’m thankful I’ve never had to have one but I am grateful that I had the choice and I respect women to make this complicated and nuanced decision privately. I am certain that whether you are aware of it, you know women or are related to women who have had an abortion.
Let’s remember that it’s pregnancy that women die from not legal abortion. And it’s about time that we support and value women unequivocally and require that men take ownership of their part of the pregnancy equation.
The insidious tactics taken by the anti-abortion movement such as personhood put women at risk and prioritize the developing fetus over a living, breathing woman and the legal strategy becomes potentially dangerous when you take into account miscarriage and when a mother’s life is at risk.
21
My mother told me that when she found out she was pregnant with me, she sat down at the kitchen table and cried her eyes out. She already endured 10 pregnancies and each one was worse than the last. She didn't know how she would cope with yet another pregnancy, another baby. The primary reason why she continued with the pregnancy was her strong Catholic faith, not to mention abortion was equal to murder in the eyes of the Church and was against the law.
When the time came when I was only 7 months in her womb, she ended up in the hospital because of various health issue complications. When the 9th month came around, I wanted to meet the world. My mother once again experienced health issues & a lot of bleeding. The doctor raced to talk with my dad & said he could only save one - wife or baby - which one should he try and save. My old man said, "why my wife, she can always have another kid". And yet, we both survived the delivery.
I might not have made it if abortion was legal or if my mother's doctor wasn't such a skilled baby doctor. I believe I am here today because I was meant to be. The odds were against me on some level, but I made it.
I think things happen for a reason. I haven't discovered a cure for cancer or created the greatest dessert the world has ever known, but I have saved many a cat and dog life. My husband is glad I'm in his life. I matter, not to a lot of folks, but the ones that mean the most to me which are my husband and my many pets.
49
@Marge Keller - My mother felt she was too old to have another child, and my father, at age 50, was even older. There was no abortion then, so she had me and then killed herself. She left two motherless children and a husband who couldn't care for them. We were split up and parceled out to reluctant relatives. If I'd been aborted I'd never have known the difference and four people's lives wouldn't have been ruined.
That's why decisions must be made by the family involved, with input from the doctor. Because it's a certainty that the legislators and the forced birther contingent don't spend a single second thinking about the fate of the mother, any more than they think about the fate of that unwanted, possibly unaffordable child.
147
@Marge Keller
"I think things happen for a reason" is often code for I believe that God (or fate, destiny, some supernatural force) determines why and how life unfolds as it does, with all its twists and turns. Perhaps that's true - none of us (in this life) will ever know! I'm happy for you and those that matter to you. However, your belief that "things happen for a reason" (or any belief, i.e. suppositions not based on verifiable evidence) should not be the basis on which laws are passed (or court decisions rendered) that restrict others' control of their own bodies or lives. Period.
103
@Midwest Moderate Yes yes.. When we found out that my wife was pregnant with our 3rd one, both of us were somewhat less than happy. We were struggling with keeping 2 toddlers out of trouble and 2 full time jobs. A third one to make 3 kids under 5 would break our savings. Daycare itself was $5000 per month. That was 2 years ago. We have 3 healthy kids. Wife stays home probably for 1 more year. We made it work so far.
6
So because there is, at worst a 0.0276% risk of maternal death from pregnancy, we must allow abortion on demand until birth.
By this logic we should outlaw cars since car accidents kill more women than pregnancy.
A young woman died from a heart attack this week from running a marathon. Should we not have marathons?
A woman could die from being struck by lighting from being outside, should women never go outside.
6
@Joe Public, the issue here is choice, obviously. No one is forcing a woman to ride in a car or run a marathon. Likewise, no one has the right to force a woman to give birth.
20
No, by your logic people should be able to opt out of driving, running marathons and going outside during lightening storms...oh,wait - they can!
19
@Rebecca
Opting out of traveling by car is not a realistic choice in anyway.
1
Being Conceived leads to Death.
Not Being Conceived leads to not Dying.
Has it come to this, that doctors,
know better, treat the fetus as if it were just an object ?
Soon we will read that due to "Climate Change"
the "Excess Population" in the world must be Euthanised
so that the "Best and Brightest" do not have face
any serious risks.
Yes, if there is a medical emergency, then abortion
may be the tragic but better choice.
But given 90 % of Pregnancies do not lead to major
medical complications but are a form of Post-Coital
Contraceptives, we should know better than to kill
the youngest humans/persons and we should provide
the parents and the babes in the womb all the help
they need before and after birth.
2
@ John Brown - you are a man, correct? Therefore, you have NO RIGHT to tell any woman what she can and cannot do with her OWN body.
26
@Colorado Woman
When people cannot win an argument, they inevitably resort to identity.
2
@AACNY I believe that NO ONE has a right to tell me what to do with my body. Not identity, but no one is requiring men to take any action in this issue.
7
and yet life is the leading cause of death.
5
Unintended pregnancy rates are dropping, and adolescent pregnancy rates are at historic lows. The US abortion rate is the lowest since Roe in 1973, driven by women's increased use of highly effective, long-acting contraceptive methods such as IUDs and hormonal implants.
Thanks to the work of Planned Parenthood, the ACA (which requires private health insurance to offer all FDA-approved contraceptive methods without co-pays), and daily efforts by providers and advocates, the trends for women's reproductive health and well-being are moving in the right direction.
Why would we want to go backwards? No contraceptive method is 100% effective, low-income and minority women especially still face obstacles to care, and too many adolescents lack information and decision-making skills.
Accessible contraception, safe, legal abortion care and comprehensive education are the best hopes for our future. Women have the fundamental human right to make their own choices about their own health, their lives, and their futures.
22
The New York Times is preaching to the choir. They will never convince those of us who are against abortion that the procedure is just. Very few of the responders to these abortion articles are pro life. We are sadly in the minority.
2
@KMW
The good news is that most pro-choicers also believe there should be restrictions on abortion. If that regard you are in the majority.
1
@KMW; No one is trying to convince you of anything. That's the whole point. You are the one who is insisting on pushing your beliefs on others!!! If you are against abortion by all means don't get one. But you don't get to decide for others. You are in the minority? boo hoo ... why are you then insisting on ruling over the majority?
14
@KMW
You have every right to your beliefs on abortion. If you are a woman, you have every right not to have one. What you do not have a right to do is shove your beliefs down other peoples' throats.
14
"A woman’s life and health are at risk from the moment that a pregnancy exists in her body." So just to be clear, when Pro-Life activists insisted that the New York law would allow abortions up to the moment of birth for any reason due to a clause permitting abortions at any stage if the life and health of a mother were at risk, they were absolutely right. Thanks for the vindication, Dr. Hern!
1
@Jonathan Stensberg Um, that is not actually what the New York Reproduction Rights Act says. Have you read it yourself? BTW, the same provisions as in Roe vs. Wade have been California state law for decades.
7
I would welcome more articles on the health risks of pregnancy as well as on the types of serious fetal defects that can only be detected at 20 weeks or later.
10
My body, my choice.
If men’s appendage were a law issue trust me there would be a major uproar.
Forcing pregnancy on women, forcing a pregnancy with dire health consequences, is a sentence a woman should not endure.
14
Questions for everyone who supports abortion rights on the grounds that the government should not regulate women's bodies.
Do you support mandatory vaccinations?
Do you think heroin should be legal?
Do you think people should be required to wear a seat belt when riding in a car?
Should motorcyclists be required to wear a helmet?
Should prostitution be legal?
If you answered NO to any of those, I suggest you rethink your position on abortion.
@Joe Public: I support public policy that contributes to public health. Banning abortion and contraception is antithetical to that.
16
@Joe Public; which of these regulates only men's body? Somehow I missed that part. I am also for mandatory vasectomy for all anti-choice men.
8
@Steve Bolger
Nobody is advocating that contraception be banned.
Dead babies are antithetical to public health.
Dr. Hern's points are all right on. I would add to the risks involved with pregnancy and postpartum (perinatal health - because they are all intertwined) is depression resulting in death by suicide. This is actually the single most common cause of maternal mortality - more than any one of the causes listed by Dr. Hern. The CDC and the public health community is more and more aware of this complication of pregnancy (depression is the single most common complication of pregnancy) and pointing out that for a mother who is not ready to parent a particular child an unintended pregnancy is a huge source of stress that contributes to poor mental health.
9
Important point...also research shows that a child whose mother has untreated depression does not receive the eye contact, vocalization, holding, smiles and all those things that babies need to develop well. Why force a mother to bear an unwanted child, which event may trigger depression in the mother and harm them both?
9
If, as the author states, pregnancy is a life-threatening condition...
AND
...danger to the "life of the mother" is one of the agreed-upon exceptions that makes abortion acceptable...
THEN
...it stands to reason that ALL pregnancies should - in fact, MUST! - be ended by abortion, before such time as the mother is put in any *imminent* danger.
So, all fetuses MUST be killed before they reach, what?, six to eight weeks?
No, that's clearly too late...
Morning-after pills for everybody!
Does the author stop to think what the logical result of this argument would be?
The end of the human race. Period. Do not pass "Go!", do not collect $200. We - those alive today - would literally be the last generations of humans to live on this planet.
Of course, that would probably be a good thing in the eyes of this author.
Positions as extreme as that presented here are EXACTLY why the pro-life movement continues to pick up steam. Good job, Dr. Hern -- Keep up the good work!
7
The logical conclusion is that no woman should be FORCED to undergo the risks of pregnancy.
31
@Elfego
Pro-choicers need to ask themselves why their arguments are so ineffective now. Could it be that they are re-fighting last century's battles?
4
@Elfego
How is forcing a woman to have an abortion against her will any more pro-choice than forcing her to be pregnant against her will? Both are anti-choice positions.
Linking abortion to population control is disingenuous. Many, if not most, women who have abortions either already have children, or go on to have children at a later date under more favourable circumstances; children who may not have been born had their mothers not been allowed to make their own family planning choices.
8
Pregnancy kills?! How low will we go in our logic?
9
@1515732 - 2-3 women die a day in childbirth in the US, a maternal mortality rate that ranks us down among and sometimes below developing countries. And the maternal mortality rate in the US is rising, not falling. There are also thousands of women a day who suffer complications that leave them with lifelong health problems or disabilities. If a woman is going to run these risks, it should be solely through her own choice, not forced on her by government.
34
@MegWright Please; 100% of fetus' die in an abortion. Please make a better argument than that. Abortion is a tough decision for anyone involved please don't try and justify what is going on here with illogical arguments about and abortion is better than a pregnancy...why would anyone have children if so concerned about the risks?
1
@1515732 - PRO CHOICE MEANS CHOICE to carry a pregnancy to term or not.
Meaning it is the INDIVIDUAL WOMAN'S CHOICE to decide what she wants to do.
NOT :
the government's
not other women
not men
not your church
not the husband
not the boyfriend
not your parents.
Pro Life means the forcible act of imprisoning a women for 9 months for the gestating of a pregnancy even if her father, brother, next door neighbor or any man for ANY REASON raped her and a pregnancy was the result of the VIOLATION OF HER BODY!!
12
Despicable op-ed with a reviling headline.
10
DR,
We in the pro life movement have been responsible for the changes in the mindset of people in the pro life/pro abortion debate. Why do you think there have been so many pro life bills passed recently. It is the hard work and dedication of pro lifers who have made a difference in changing people's minds that abortion takes the life of the unborn.
By the way, I volunteer with babies and mothers who have decided to have their babies. They decided not to abort. They do not regret their decision. Neither does their babies.
5
@KMW There have been so many bills passed because they are introduced in anti-woman, anti-family backwater states like Alabama and Georgia, where conservative, anti-science, anti-fact evangelical Republicans rely on the bible-based ignorance of the electorate to support them.
Good for the women who have chosen to take their pregnancies to term. That's called choice. Who are you to deny choice to my daughter, my sister or my many female friends?
26
@KMW - Nope. You haven't saved or helped anyone.
All you've done is make yourself feel superior to people who actually have to live in the real world and by voting for Republicans you're partially responsible for deaths due to war, gun violence, environmental hazards and a lack of affordable health care.
27
@KMW
The pro-life movement is definitely gaining momentum. I credit it with providing information to young women on the details of abortion and the fetus' development. Ultrasounds forever changed the debate, as did NICU advancements.
Meanwhile pro-choicers studiously avoid discussing the abortion procedure. When the Gosnell trial was underway, all the media's rows of seats remained empty. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, are not afraid to discuss what's actually involved in an abortion without the cover of euphemisms.
All young women should be told the details of the abortion procedure as soon as they are provided with birth control.
4
The outrage this editorial has provoked is very telling. How dare someone actually speak the truth about the huge toll pregnancy takes on women. Doesn’t this doctor know that we’re supposed to pretend that pregnancy and motherhood are all rainbows and unicorns?
389
@Molly just because many women choose to get pregnant or continue a pregnancy despite possible risks doesn't mean every woman must be forced to do so, nor were our bodies designed only for pregnancy. And the old line "just use birth control", doesn't help when it fails, when one is raped or coerced or if mental or physical health risks develop does it? It can certainly help reduce women being faced with an unwanted pregnancy however so I'm so glad "pro-life" people are working hard to expand it's availability, I say with sarcasm.
37
@Molly
Before modern obstetrics childbirth was the number one killer of women and it still is in many parts of the world. There is much discussion among scientists as to why childbirth is so much more dangerous for human females than for other species. One of the popular hypotheses is that our brains evolved to be just barely big enough to fit through the birth canal and our high intelligence gives enough evolutionary value that is compensates for the loss of so many women in childbirth.
20
@Hk
If men had more vasectomy's and if the religious right and their lapdog politicians didn't make birth control so difficult to obtain for so many women I would say you have a point, but you don't. And what about the 13 year old girl raped by her father or some other monster? What could she do to prevent a pregnancy? You sound like a man but if you are a women you are very cruel.
16
If men became pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
10
The entire anti-abortion movement has been predicated on the religiously based belief that a fetus has rights that are equal to that of the pregnant woman. This is a violation of the Constitution in that it 1) “establishes” by government one religious belief over that of others. Not all religions believe that life begins at conception or even if it did that such life is equal to or more valuable than that of the woman who carries it, or that it has any rights at all before it exits the womb!
The laws being promulgated now are also anti-Constitutional in that they 2) essentially put one human being into the “service” of “another” thus violating the Fourteenth Amendment against slavery. These laws also violate Constitutional guarantees of 3) freedom for the woman, namely that of her own bodily functioning. The entire movement against providing women with the freedom to choose their own medical care is nothing more than a sham power play to disempower women and put them at the service of both men and government.
Any SC Justice who can’t understand this most basic kind of religious vs secular law isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit. This idea was fundamental to the establishment of the Nation and the Constitution in the first place.
The Republicans are intent on creating a fascist Court and we have seen the result in Venezuela, Hungary, Turkey and other nations where “strong men” subvert democracy. Don’t think it can’t happen here’s because IT IS HAPPENING HERE!
15
10 to 20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage before the 20th week. God is the biggest abortion provider. When a doctor performs an abortion, they are simply trying to be more like Jesus.
8
@ErikH
Even in the 1980, the number of fertilizations that fail to implant or do and then miscarry was assessed to be 25%, Then, a decade later, the New England Journal of Medicine estimated it to be *at least8 30%. It's now believed to be @ 60%. Some of these same numbers hold for other mammals, as well.
5
@Erik You make the atheist believe in evil.
1
A fetus is not an innocent child. It is a dangerous parasite that can kill or do permanent damage to its host. If you want to take the risk, you are more than welcome to as far as I’m concerned. You do not, however, have that right to force another to take that risk.
How is it you think your rights extend away from you; over to, up under and into my wife a daughter?
8
Just want to add clarification to the ratio numbers provided. A ratio can be expressed as a fraction (1/2), with a colon (1:2), as a number (.5), or as a percentage (50%).
In this article the ratios could be expressed more accurately.
Maternal Mortality Ratios:
11.9/100,000 = .000119 = .0119%
5.6/100,000 = .000056 = .0056%
27.6/100,000 = .00027.6 = .0276%
20.7/100,000 = .000207 = .0207%
Abortion Mortality Ratios:
0.7/100,000 = .000007 = .0007%
0.3/100,000 = .000003 = .0003%
@Me Actually, the abortion mortality rate is 100 percent. 100:100
1
@William
True, the author leaves out the fetal mortality rate or maybe chooses not to recognize fetus mortality at all.
The abortion mortality rates he refers are the deaths of the mothers.
2
@William,
That statement has been made over and over. You aren't the first person to use it, and I'm sure you won't be the last.
But it is not an argument. It only implies that you believe that a fetus at any stage is a person.
That belief is not shared by a majority of the population, nor by the decision in Roe v. Wade.
And its single-mindedness also implies that you have no feelings at all for the welfare of the woman.
When you try to reduce a complex issue to a catchy newspaper headline, you reduce the gravity of your argument. What does late term abortion mean? I have a friend whose wife gave premature birth to her baby girl at 20 weeks. That child is now 11 years old. To me, a 20 week old fetus is a viable child capable of surviving outside the mother. A pregnancy should be evident in 7-10 weeks especially to the woman carrying the child. She would get another 4-5 weeks to mull over if she wants to carry the child, after which the window for abortions should close. Third trimester abortions, partial birth abortions should all be illegal. You may be a Doctor but you are not god. You cannot take lives based on some specious argument that you have made up and society does not agree with.
2
@Rahul Third trimester abortions are performed to save the life of a pregnant woman, or if the fetus is found to be dead or gravely deformed. It's not like women are 8 months pregnant and then have an abortion on a whim.
9
@Rahul
Neither are you god, nor do you have a uterus. Nor is any of what you contend medical fact, certainly not some anecdote.
Thus, keep your hands and laws off what half the population has to contend with because males are so careless and reckless with their penis and with the lives of young reproductive females.
Use condoms, get a vasectomy and leave females to determine what is correct for their health and well-being.
6
@Rahul
Really? That would be front page news, a medical miracle! There are no, repeat, no living children born at 20 weeks gestation. Your friend must be using a different aging method. The youngest living child to survive extreme premature birth was born at 21 weeks and 5 days - so almost 22 weeks. Half-truths like yours simply weaken your anti-abortion arguments.
7
The title of this article reads like some quote from George Orwell's novel.
1
There are two separate questions:
* when does an individual have a moral responsibility to avoid harming a new life she is carrying
* does society have a right let alone an obligation to impose one answer to that question on all its members
The first is of course more complicated if one holds that there is an increasing scale of responsibility with the passage of time - but the second is the more relevant question today: why should the views of one group be imposed on all.
6
Fetus equals Person.
Woman equals Livestock.
So sayeth the Christian Taliban
23
We seriously need to stop calling anti-choice people "pro-life". It's not like pro-choice people are not pro life. We just absolutely don't agree with this health issue being legislated by whole bunch of politicians and criminalized based on some people's beliefs. Again, no one is forcing anyone to get an abortion. Don't get one if you're opposed to it but don't impose your beliefs on others. Simple.
22
This argument is as bad as claiming a fetus isn't a "life". The pro-choice movement really needs to step up its game. Ultrasounds and NICU advancements have made their arguments outdated. The coat hanger threats are so outdated given the availability of abortifacients.
Pregnancy kills just begs so many questions. Try again.
3
@AACNY There is a vast difference between life and sentient life. An adult cow is far more sentient than a fetus. Are you a vegetarian?
7
@AACNY: You have no right to impose your religious beliefs on others. Stay out of my uterus! Try again.
7
The arguments in this article are absurd. It seems to presume that anything involving a risk justifies any risk prevention measures without considering at all the consequences of those measures. Also, the part about tyranny based on the minutiae of the law seemed far fetched.
1
Let's consider this equivalent case for a man.
Let's say that it is discovered that you are a perfect match for a person dying of liver disease. So, all that is needed is a quick little surgery, a lobe of your liver is donated, and that person will live - otherwise they will die.
What would you think of a law that mandated you MUST donate? The surgery is pretty safe, low chance of death, some chance of complications that could hurt you in the future - but mostly safe. And hey, you'll only be a selected donor one or two times on average during your life, not too much risk to take.
Is it then OK to take over your body, force you to the hospital, against your will? And just for a nice bonus, add in the male equivalent of an episiotomy done about 50% of the time.
Anti-abortion laws are only and entirely about taking away control of a person's own body.
20
@SusanStoHelit: And add to that the donor does not have to go through nine months of pregnancy with all its physical and dietary restrictions, the messy and painful process of giving birth, postpartum recovery, irreversible physical and psychological changes, and eighteen years of being responsible for the emotional, financial and physical wellbeing of a dependent recipient.
5
@Anna
Even without that, the vast majority of men would ever consider this oK, to force them to endure unwilling surgery and risk, even to save a life.
4
Respectfully good doctor, but your article is so limited in scope as to be practically meaningless in the overall scheme of the Pro-Choice, Pro-Life debate.
2
Pregnancy kills. Abortion kills. War kills. Police kill. Guns kill. Pollution kills. Extreme weather events due to climate change kill. Which of these ways of killing is a big, big moral, religious and legal issue? Only one.
4
@Abigail 49 - seriously? Only one of these is an important issue? Perhaps you should rethink this.
2
@Colorado Woman Oops. I didn't make my point clear. Point being, abortion seems to be the only life-and-death issue that a certain segment of the population gets passionate about and that Republicans are so responsive to their constituents about.
4
@abigail49 I got it.
If the creation of regulations geared toward the reduction of deaths of “living human-beings” is the logic behind the pro-life movement, then why is it that they aren’t fighting/getting incredibly worked-up about gun control, i.e., background checks and other regulatory measures that could heavily reduce the number of killings of human beings whose “personhood” cannot even be debated?... This is one of the big questions at the core of what makes the movement so incredibly flawed. People are entitled to their position, but everyone should call things what they are. The “pro-life” movement is not what it calls itself to be.
11
@CG
Abortion always kills the innocent.
Sometimes guns defend the innocent. Most gun deaths are suicides. There are far more abortions than gun deaths in the USA.
1
@Joe Public What does innocence have to do with anything?
3
@Joe Public
Innocent is an irrelevant adjective to apply to a fetus. A fetus has no capacity for either guilt or innocence, as it has no self awareness, no autonomy, nor has it any agency. It is simply an emotion laden word you use to increase the pathos of your statement.
4
Thank you for your service, Dr. Hern, in providing late-term abortions to women in desperate need, and thank you for this article. Men forget that pregnancy and childbirth are the most dangerous things most women ever do.
17
Bravo Dr. Hern. Thank you for your courage to speak out about this health issue that legislators have no business regulating.
11
This is not how you win people over. The statistics given don't even support the statement that pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. For some women, it CAN be.
I personally and unequivocally support a woman's right to choose, especially in these times of male domination and sexism.
The pro-choice movement has made so many mistakes in this area, chiefly by participating in the argument of when a fertilized egg or a fetus is a person, and this has ceded the ground to repressive forces who manipulate emotions with the goal of dividing people and controlling women - not the goal of caring for human life. While I support the right to choose, I also believe that the marvel of the creation of a human life must be honored, from its very inception.
The problems of male domination, sexism, racism, economic inequality and the lack of real support for children once born is where the focus should be. Until those problems disappear, in my opinion, abortion must be supported.
I am optimistic that eventually these problems will be solved, though certainly not tomorrow. When that happens I firmly believe women will be able to choose when and how we have sex in a way that will result in primarily wanted pregnancies, and pregnancies that are wanted by both parties.
Until then, and believe me, I hate the very thought of it, I support abortions for women who choose it. But please don't characterize pregnancy as dangerous or dismiss the wondrous little life that has been created.
6
Perhaps this is too obvious to be stated, but when considering questions of abortion, it is helpful to remember that there are two lives at stake: the unborn child's and the mother's. The focus on the unborn child is undeniably important medically, morally, and ethically. But let's not forget about the mother either.
1
Everyone wants to ignore the real fact of pregnancy: at some point, a healthy fetus becomes viable and feeling and thinking and is a reasonably independent human being. We give human beings rights. The very difficult issue is when does that occur.
A zygote (single cell fertilized egg) does not have a brain, does not think, has no feelings, is not viable. It is not yet a human "being", no matter what some zealot says. Nor is a blastula (gob of cells) nor a fetus with a trivial "heart" but not a thinking, feeling brain a human being. "God" (or nature) kills these off by the millions all the time (miscarriage).
A 36 week fetus about to be born has a well developed brain, thinks and dreams, has feelings, and is viable outside the mother. It is a human being, no matter what some zealot says. And it has been for some time before that.
So somewhere between day 1 and day 270, a healthy fetus becomes a human being. When, I don't know. Obviously, the earlier an abortion (or miscarriage) the better; the later, the worse.
Who gets to decide - the government, some religious person, the mother? Previous law generally said third trimester abortions only for mother's health (the fetus is viable). Before that, let the mother decide. Seems not too far off to me.
But even when the fetus has become a human being, that doesn't eliminate the mother's right to her own health. Declaring abortion for medical reasons unlawful is unconstitutional - taking away the mother's right to life herself.
10
@Shawn How on earth do you know that a fetus thinks and dreams?
2
@Frances Grimble First point would be to define what "thinking" is, of course. Ability to feel and react to pain is one reasonable definition.
By that definition (and some others), the later prenatal brain is quite aware of its surroundings, reacting to all sorts of things in the womb. How do I know? Because I research AI and have read up on pre-natal and early childhood neurology. Fascinating how early human brains develop.
Do you think that - poof - when the offspring first pops out of the womb that its brain is magically transformed? Because nobody (reasonable) questions that a newborn baby has the rights of a human being.
Thank you, Dr. Hern, for this well written column re an important issue about women's health. Many people are "against" pro-choice; they avoid speaking to or listening to experts in the field of medicine OR they prefer to make decisions for all women OR they haven't experienced a circumstance themselves or that of a loved one that would require such a tragic decision. One is prolife when one cares for all life and all aspects of caring for lives - babies, children, moms, dads - through larger issues of mental health, conditions, illnesses, employment, gun control, nuclear weapons, war, and other social justice issues especially affecting those in poverty, etc.
4
Are there any cases in the US where a doctor has been prosecuted for homicide (failing to prevent the death of a pregnant woman), where her life would have been saved by terminating the pregnancy and the doctor refused to perform an abortion requested by the woman? If not why not?
Are there any cases in the US where a man who paid for the abortion has been prosecuted as complicit in homicide, where a woman has died from an unsafe abortion performed outside the health system? If not why not?
Did the men who passed the anti-abortion law in Alabama consider how they will feel if a daughter of theirs dies from an unsafe abortion, after finding herself pregnant from date rape?
Did the men who passed the anti-abortion law in Alabama consider how they will feel if a daughter of theirs dies from an unsafe abortion, after finding herself pregnant from unplanned sex during an alcohol-fuelled episode of poor decision-making?
Are they aware of the statistics showing it is not uncommon for young women to experience both date rape and poor decision-making under the influence of alcohol?
Does a man who sexually assaults a woman in Alabama now have an incentive to get her pregnant, knowing that she will have to commit a serious crime herself in having an abortion, and thereby be unlikely to report the rape to police (out of fear of her own crime being investigated)?
Asking as a criminal lawyer thinking about unintended consequences of expanding the reach of criminal law.
7
Thank you, Dr. Hern, and bless you for writing this essay.
In 1920s “Downton Abbey”, Dr. Clarkson describes Sibyl Branson as "a healthy young woman going through a very normal and natural process.” Days later, she dies post-birth of eclampsia, which even now can be fatal.
Nothing is normal -- meaning safe -- about pregnancy.
Nothing is natural – meaning safe – about pregnancy.
The pregnant person runs incredible risks, including those who act as surrogates, and no one can accurately predict who will develop life-threatening conditions, not even physicians.
Certainly not male legislators.
15
@Pdianek
Not sure how you came to the conclusion that nothing is normal/natural about pregnancy?
1
@Pdianek If nothing about pregnancy can be considered normal or natural, do you know of anyone alive today that was not the product of this unnormal unnatural process of pregnancy and eventual childbirth? Most things in life, carry some level of risk. I would agree that a woman's pregnancy carry's a higher risk than not being pregnant. But to consider pregnancy not normal or not natural ignores the cycle of life itself.
1
I heard Rick Santorum argue that having life sentences for abortion doctors and much lighter sentences for rapists makes perfect sense because, in the former circumstance, there is a death, while in the latter situation, there is not. The argument that every pregnancy poses severe health risks to the woman and, therefore, abortion should be legal, is the rational equivalent. Like most Americans, I believe Roe v. Wade should not be overturned, but one doesn't advance that position with silly arguments like the ones made by Dr. Hern in this article. Someone who "specializes in late-abortion services" is probably not the most effective advocate for the middle ground approach taken in Roe v. Wade that, thus far, has stood the test of time.
1
@Didier
Maybe you don't know that no woman who wants an abortion waits until late pregnancy and then waltzes blithely into an abortion clinic demanding to have a healthy fetus ripped out of her womb. It doesn't happen. A late-term abortion is ALWAYS a tragedy, never a 'choice'. Keeping abortion legal in all trimesters ensures that no doctor risks his license, or prison, on a judgement call--and no woman dies waiting for a court order permitting a doctor to save her life. Dr. Hern is a HERO.
11
The intent of the legislature in Alabama is to exert control over women.
For some reason, Republicans who decried end-of-life medical planning as government death panels seem to ignore their own government death panel: forcing a woman to maintain her pregnancy even on pain of death.
If they were truly pro-life, they would fund proper pre-natal care, proper healthcare during delivery, and baseline healthy minimums for food, shelter, clothing and education. Those points are typically part of the agenda of their political foes.
The irony is not lost on me, but I do wonder if it is lost on them.
331
@Jacob Sommer. Jacob, I couldn't agree more. It seems like for "Pro-Lifers" life ends at birth.
20
As has been said, these legislators are “anti-abortion not pro-life”
5
@Jacob Sommer you could add, when or if I have a child, you swear to never take him in the army and at war.
3
And what is the man's responsibility in all of this? Remember, there are always two people involved in creating a baby, but only one must carry the child and give birth. Will you demand that every man be held to account and sign a contract with every woman he ever sleeps with? He can walk away and disappear after having sex, but she cannot avoid the possible consequences. If she becomes pregnant, she is the one who must decide what to do. What is society's responsibility to the mother and the child you are so keen for her to have? Will the government ensure she gets adequate health care throughout her pregnancy and the birth of the child? Will we make sure she can afford to house, feed and educate this child? We don't now, so that doesn't seem to fit in with how concerned these legislators purport to be about the lives of children. It seems to me that this new (awful) legislation is solely for the purpose of men controlling women as if their rights are not equal to a man's. All pregnancies are dangerous, expensive, and represent a LIFETIME COMMITMENT. Every women must be able to decide if she will risk her life and make the commitment to bring a child into the world. When men can give birth, then they can make that decision for themselves. Stop trying to legislate women's health care decisions. We will not go backward.
27
@maryb; Agreed.
@maryb
Perhaps it would be more sensible to stop degrading the rights of females and female health and instead for the GOP bible banger states to pass legislation mandating vasectomy for every male who creates an unwanted pregnancy, as well as where any girl or woman suffers permanent health complications or dies in childbirth.
4
By comparison, the mortality rate for police officers is about 17 per 100,000; it's safer to be a cop in America than it is to be a pregnant woman.
27
Who's going to decide if the woman's life is in danger? Will the anti-science, anti-doctor radicals allow the woman's co-conspirator to be the go-to authority for that determination? Not likely, since they're willing to kill or imprison both the woman and her doctor for terminating her pregnancy. Look for government-appointed, anti-abortion doctors or panels to be the deciders, probably with input from evangelical extremists.
Also, black women will not only be dying in greater numbers, they will also be the ones who will fill the new abortion prisons that are surely on the drafting tables by now in backwaters like Alabama and Georgia, waiting for Roe to fall.
A whole, new for-profit industry will need to be created to administer and facilitate the draconian laws allowing for the surveillance, control and punishment of women of child-bearing age who make their own choices. This may even include new courts just for abortion crime. Nothing's off the table.
8
This is an absurd argument. By far the majority of unwanted pregnancies occur as the result of VOLUNTARY activities. Some are due to errors, some are due to simple carelessness. The innocent life in that woman’s womb rests there entirely blameless. Is it too much to ask that the mother acknowledge the voluntary role she played and carry the child to term to be placed for adoption? If not, the counter-argument comes down to one of convenience – which seems to me to be worth debate.
Finally, the “rape and incest” argument needs to be seen from two sides. 1. These occurrences are extremely rare. 2. The “life” in the woman’s womb is entirely an innocent one and should, perhaps, be accorded 9 months of duress followed by adoption as an act of charity by the unfortunate woman. True, it would be a monumental demonstration of dedication and courage – but there are women who have (and would) undertake it.
7
@Roberta Consoli; tell you what Roberta, if that's what you want to do, then do it. You don't get to decide for others.
8
@Roberta Consoli: Babies who result from incest, rape, and opportunistic relationships generally come with a slew of congenital issues affecting health for life.
3
@Roberta Consoli
Why do you think it's up to you to pass judgement? It's not your body, your life, or your body. Nationalizing women's wombs for the benefit of 'society' is slavery.
7
If you’re opposed to women’s freedom of choice, don’t have sex with them. Problem solved.
289
@Nancy It is 2019. We have things called contraceptives. They have been around for decades. Are you saying women don't understand how pregnancy happens? This seems very misogynist.
1
@MrReasonable
Are you saying that contraceptives are solely the responsibility of the woman? Talk about not knowing it's 2019.
46
@Nancy
In a perfect world!!
3
Isn’t the abortion mortality rate 100 percent?
5
@William Only around 99% unfortunately; ask Northam.
1
@William; no, it isn't. That's why the woman is a "mom to be". There is no child yet hence there is no "mom".
6
Thank you for writing this article. I nearly died from a hydatidiform mole and subsequent choriocarcinoma. These new laws in Georgia and Alabama would have obstructed my access to emergency lifesaving healthcare: specifically, an emergency d&c and chemotherapy.
16
No uterus, no opinion. Sorry, Warren.
10
@Andrew I think it's extremely cowardly for a man to say that. Take some responsibility for the life you help create.
Guns take more lives. Not enough people fighting that battle.
3
Thank you Doctor Hern,
I am concerned that abortion wasn't on the Democratic platform yet was brought up by Southern Republicans just to change the subject from our revolting, corrupt president.This is a private issue for women and I resent the GOP using it as a divisive wedge.It's nobody's business but a woman's.We have been made responsible for birth control, we carry a zygote to a full term[10 mos.]baby that we breast feed and care for all too often as a single mother.Given all this that we are entrusted with, one would think men would give us credit for knowing what is right for us.But
nooooo.We are treated as 3rd class citizens and until equal, men can try and at least respect our privacy and sod off.
12
The conditions Dr. Hern presents account for a small percentage of annual abortions:
https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2005/reasons-us-women-have-abortions-quantitative-and-qualitative-perspectives
Dr Hern could tell the anti-immigration crowd a thing or two about fear-mongering.
1
So, in protection of life, liberty and property a good-old-boy can pull out his gun and blow an entire human away, but a woman cannot do the same by terminating a small batch of unthinking cells.
28
@Sam Osborne - Maybe we need to argue that the woman is simply "standing her ground" in protecting herself from that unwanted intruder.
18
@MegWright It's amazing to me that many women have been convinced that their own offspring is the enemy. Talk about misogynist and antiwoman.
All this talk of what women must do. Why dont men quit getting women pregnant who dont want a child.
10
I believe in most circumstances women have the ability to say “no.”
@JK That is not true more than you want to believe, and according to this law it won't matter if she said "no".
2
100% of unwanted pregnancies are caused by men.
19
It's true that one can go to incredible lengths to salve one's conscience. Yes, doctor, abortion saves lives. Whatever helps you sleep at night.
4
Maybe the best solution is for all women of childbearing age to move out of states like Alabama so they can be free of this paternalism. The men will have to fend for themselves or go out of state if they want to have sex. But wait, the men in Alabama only have sex to procreate so they’ll be fine.
14
Who is surprised that Alabama's ruling class of racist misogynists considers women to be expendable? These people simply don't care what the maternal mortality rate is because they do not believe women are fully human, thus, they are not as worthy of life as a potential male infant. Forced birthing is an intellectually consistent outcome of Alabama's slave owning past.
14
Women being fertile and pregnancy are a natural condition and natural process for human beings to reproduce. Abortion is the deliberate destruction of unborn life.
Seeking to invert these two to make abortion more important and valuable than pregnancy and child birth is malevolent.
4
@Rob
Why does God abort so many unborn lives?
8
@Rob - Yeah, when your body can go through that natural process you can weigh in on the topic. Until then it's none of your business.
5
If men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be as numerous as convenience stores. Look at how men behave when they get a cold. The annoyance and pain of monthly periods, the inconvenience of carrying a child and the agony of childbirth would put an end to the human species if men had to carry children.
Most of these bumpkin legislators in Alabama have no idea how human biology works. Their stupidity is breathtaking.
20
The whole juxtaposition of life vs. death in this article is insulting to people who think about these things. It sounds like doublespeak to me. I am very disappointed in the New York Times.
2
Interesting way to use Ingsoc Newspeak.
Abortion is Life.
Maybe it will catch on...
4
Double speak at its finest.
Life eventually kills us all.
Using the author's rationale, we should all just end it now.
You guys can go first.
3
May all the Goddesses Who reign in Heaven, on Earth, and in the Chthonic Realms bless you, Dr. Warren M. Hern. You are a friend to women and an opponent of tyranny.
I thank you from the bottom of my polytheistic heart.
My religious rights, my rights to bodily integrity, are being violated by Christian Forced Birth Extremists determined to enshrine their religious beliefs in the laws of our republic, despite our secular Constitution.
Apparently the more politically conservative states are trying to achieve Theocratic Rule by Fundamentalist Christians.
Let's not follow the edicts of the Christian Taliban, please. Women won't go back to the coat hanger days, and that's flat.
To the GOP: You want social upheaval? You want floods of people marching in the streets? You want to risk violence? Just keep legislating women's rights out of existence, and that's what you'll get.
The current GOP approach is designed to unite the forces allied to support women's private healthcare concerns and the LGBTQ civil rights movements, under the banner of Sexual Freedom for All Americans.
8
Alabama's law is religion based. Church and state are separate by law. So how did this happen? Ask the white male bible thumpers who weasled it into being.
14
The day one of these hypocritical men goes to prison for paying for an abortion will be some day.
9
Bravo Dr. Hern! You are a hero in my book.
5
Dr. Hern is a medical doctor and very correctly speaks to medical complications that can arise when a woman is pregnant. But as a woman with no medical training, I'd make the point that abortions save women's lives in a multitude of ways. My life as I know it only exists because I had an abortion, when I learned my very wanted baby would be born with lifelong disabilities and would require extensive medical care my husband and I knew we were not equipped--materially or emotionally--to provide.
Over the years, as I've watched sustained attacks on the ACA and on our country's social assistance programs, and as I've watched the very fabric of our society fray, I've wondered about that alternate reality, where I and my family would be constantly scrambling to make sure our child was provided for and had the resources to thrive. And I'm sorry to say there has not been a day where I've regretted the decision.
We eventually had another child. He is loved and happy and everything his father and I do is in the service of his bright future. This life only exists because years ago, I was able to go see Dr. Hern for an abortion.
He saved my life, and I would like to thank him.
32
There is no situation where the state would order a man to undergo a highly risky medical procedure without his consent. As such, Alabama is in violation of the 14th Amendment.
16
The term "Pro-Life" as a means of describing one who opposes abortion is a misnomer. Just look at the other views many of them hold. Are they opposed to war and the various forms of belligerence that lead to war? Are they opposed to gun control? What strong measures have they proposed to address domestic violence? Child abuse? Bullying in schools? And, finally, why are they bullying women into carrying a pregnancy to term?
12
@Johnny - If men didn't sow their seed indiscriminately with women they don't know well enough to know what they'd decide about an unintended pregnancy, they wouldn't have that worry. Meanwhile, the man's contribution is a few moments of pleasure. The woman risks her life and health, sometimes her education and her job, plus lifelong financial demands. Few women collect all the child support that's ordered. No one is going to fell sorry for the man. Make better decisions about who you have sex with and you won't have a problem.
2
@Johnny - You have the right to a vasectomy if you don't want to become a parent. Or do what right wingers are always telling women to do, abstain from sex.
5
The term "Pro-Life" as a means of describing one who opposes abortion is a misnomer. Just look at the other views many of them hold. Are they opposed to war and the various forms of belligerence that lead to war? Are they opposed to gun control? What strong measures have they proposed to address domestic violence? Child abuse? Bullying in schools? And, finally, why are they bullying women into carrying a pregnancy to term?
2
And that's why Alabama law allows abortions where the life of the mother or child are at risk by continuing the pregnancy.
No allowance for 'mental health' but for real documented physical health and welfare, as it should be.
1
Thank you Dr. Hern! Women's real lives get lost in this debate.
6
A very conservative, far-right Christian teacher of business ethics taught us in his class that nothing is free in this world. He specifically spoke of abortion, which his religion was against. He said you're trading lives. If you ban abortion, you kill women. If you allow abortion, you save women's lives.
I personally hate abortion. It is awful. But most woman faced with the decision to abort or not doesn't have any "good" choices. She's trying to pick the less-awful choice. This is a completely unique decision that the government has no right sticking its nose into. Let the woman and her doctor and her support group make this decision. Be kind and don't make her life more difficult than it already is at this point. If you really want to prevent abortions, then put your energy into working on solutions, not prohibitions and angry punishments.
14
@Dana Actually, for many women, abortion is a perfectly "good" choice. It's a reasonable solution to a problematic situation. Why it's problematic is really nobody's business. But it's not always the wrenching, difficult decision that the narrative insists upon.
5
@Dana - I share your personal hatred of abortion.
It took me too long to realize that the best way to decrease the number of abortions is to provide sex education, affordable health care and contraception.
This is one of many reasons I left the Republican party and became a Democrat.
4
I was a medical student in Romania at the time when abortions became legal. In the years that followed, I would routinely encounter female patients that had had five or more terminations of pregnancy. The combination of poverty, scarcity of reliable contraception and ignorance made abortions the main modality of birth control. We should not trivialize an abortion. It's important that each generation in America reviews and rethinks their position on abortions. The debate is polarizing and highly personal, but necessary. The only thing more gut wrenching than terminating a pregnancy is bringing into the world a human being at a time when one is not able/ ready to care for that baby. Please keep abortions legal!!!
12
Finally a thorough statement of the facts about tyranny.
5
This is an interesting way to look at the issue but the fact is that the anti-abortion folks have it all backwards. First things first: Universal health insurance, mandatory sex education, easy, inexpensive access to birth control, universal parental leave, subsidized day care, effective child support laws and enforcement for men. When all of these are working well we can talk reasonable restrictions to abortion - which by the way have existed since Roe v Wade. Always available in the first trimester and maybe longer in the case of rape and incest. Always available to preserve the life and health of the mother.
6
If I were a physician I would absolutely not consider practicing medicine in Alabama. If I were a doctor practicing in Alabama I would MOVE to another state!
8
@Honora
No, it's valid.
Many doctors will feel the same way. Not older established ones...too hard to move. But people finishing med school and residency will leave to practice elsewhere. And especially OBs. I predict a severe OB shortage in AL in 10 years.
It’s difficult for any man to comprehend the state-sponsored tyranny that confronts any woman forced to bear her rapists child. If she then has to confront execution for the first degree murder charge of an abortion, let’s acknowledge the surreal dystopian choice being presented to her for getting confronted by the very same murder charge if she first decides to kill her rapist. Folks, this is the stuff of Orwell and Hitchcock as well as of 2019 Alabama.
12
Who are these men to deny the freedom to reach the same position on abortion to women?
Not only that. It's pure economics. Supply and demand. As long as there are women who demand abortions, they will find the supply at any cost. By applying this absolutist position to public policy, more women WILL die. Their blood is on your hands. It's the same thing with the war on drugs. You can't stop people from getting drugs, you're only going to make it less safe to do so and therefore cause more harm to society.
We should be about harm reduction in all things. Support access to birth control. Support the women who choose to have these babies, provide them with subsidized child care and other services. Improve the adoption system. And provide open, free access to abortion services. A holistic, harm reducing approach is the only thing that will save the lives these people bray on about wanting to protect.
3
I feel this article is unbalanced in its analysis. Pregnancy IS a death risk, especially in the USA, which has the highest rate of maternal deaths in all of the "first world" countries on the planet (by comparison, in Japan, only 5 of each 100,000 mothers die, vs about 20 in the USA (almost 60, if you are unfortunate enough to be living in Louisana), but the overall health risks associated with pregnancy and giving birth are at least a thousand times higher than this: for example, an estimated 50,000 women sufferer "serious" health problems as a result of giving birth in the USA, and that's not even counting the numerous health consequences of even a relatively normal pregnancy!! The author should have mentioned these: on the whole, being pregnant and giving birth are indeed substantial health risks, and forcing nearly all women who become pregnant to endure these risks, just because of some religious-based notion that a fetus is a full-fledged human being who deserves the same (or even greater!) protection under the law of the land as adults, is "cruel and unusual" in the extreme. I personally think that the matter of abortion should be viewed in the much broader context of the constitutionally mandated separation of "church and state": there ARE non-religious people who also think fetuses deserve all the legal rights and protections that normal humans do, but the VAST majority of people with this opinion are in fact Christian or Muslim.
8
As an obstetrician, I fully support this editorial.
For those who are still fuzzy on the math, this is a 1/5000 risk of death per pregnancy versus a 1/142,857 risk of death per abortion, with a 1/333,333 risk of death per early abortion.
How many of the men who passed these laws are willing to face a 1/5000 risk of death every time they vote for them? Or a 1/5000 risk of death each time they become a father? If every man who got a woman pregnant faced a 1/5000 risk of execution, we would have very different legal approaches to human fertility. We would have a very different emphasis on which party’s life has sanctity.
40
I have no idea why I, as a man, should have any say whatsoever in what a woman does with her body. The so called pro-life movement is not pro-life. It's anti-woman.
40
@Honora - Failure to pay child support doesn't even impact a person's credit score.
No amount of money can adequately pay a woman for what her body goes through during pregnancy and birth or adequately compensate her for a job that requires 24/7 care.
If you don't want to become a parent get a vasectomy or be very careful who you choose to have sex with.
7
@RT This is a cowardly position and I think you should take some responsibility for the life you help create.
Can someone please explain to me why those who are anti-choice are also against requiring insurance companies to pay for birth control? I don't understand, unless it's really all about controlling women's sexual activity, and not about fetuses at all?
20
@Karolyn, I am confused by your post. Insurance does cover birth control although the coverage is often poor and doesn’t include all methods. Even way before the ACA, my insurance covered north control pills (it’s been a long time since I needed birth control). So are you talking about far-right mutters being against it in principle? They are against a lot of things in principle. There is no explanation.
1
When one looks closely at the other views of the conservatives who are the largest group opposing choice, the perfect picture of shortsightedness and hypocrisy emerges. They also oppose gun control. They are not nearly as vehement about opposing wars, if at all. And schoolyard bullying? Boys will be boys. Boxing for "sport"? Huh? Care for the mother and child during and after pregnancy? No, no. It's all about controlling women.
5
@Passion for Peaches - Not always. Read up on the Hobby Lobby case.
4
Anyone who has ever been pregnant knows that it is a life-threatening condition. In case I'm not being clear: it's life threatening for the MOTHER.
17
Pregnancy is a life-threatening condition. Women die from being pregnant.
Driving is a life-threatening condition. People die from being a driver.
1
Good thing we don’t force people to drive.
3
@Deb,
Who does force you to get pregnant?
So what is your point - are you going to take away pregnant women's ability to drive? You better get them out of polluted air too. And no high heels, they could fall and put the "baby" at risk. In fact all pregnant women should taken off all their medications, and be sent to a pollution free, healthy, stressless island in the tropics to protect the unborn babies. Followed by a guaranteed lifetime basic living income, along with full coverage health and dental. That's how we protect the unborn. Not by outlawing a necessary medical procedure.
1
A very popular among pro-choice persons statement “A fetus is part of a woman’s body” is totally wrong. Fetus is a different organism living in the woman’s body. It has different genetics and even can have different sex. It urinates into woman’s body. Not anything located in human body is its part – think about a worm.
Discussion of term “person” has nothing to do with the problem. The problem is difference not between “fetus” and “person”, but between “fetus” and “human being”. Human being is not necessarily a person, for example people in coma.
Poverty by itself has nothing to do with abortion: the newborn can be adopted by other people, and there is a huge line of them. The problem is reaction of the society. Unfortunately, modern society accepts abortion much easier than transfer for adoption.
In Europe abortion is allowed up to 20-24 weeks of pregnancy exactly because by this age fetus transforms into human being – feels pain, reacts to sounds and light, has a formed body and sex.
It follows from the presented facts that late abortion is a murder of a human being. They are absolutely unacceptable. It is difficult to understand how a country, where this kind of murder is legitimate, can be considered as a civilized one.
5
You clearly aren’t familiar with the reasoning behind the vast majority of late-term abortions, being the health risks to the mother, stillbirth and non-viability (read: profound suffering) of the fetus when born. These are wanted pregnancies that cannot come to full term safely, and abortion provides the most humane option for mother and child.
8
@Italian grandma Until it can live without the women's body is is part of the woman's body - and the state does not have the right to control a woman's body.
I am no doctor and I am a proud father and I was alone in the hospital when my wife was giving birth.
I had gone through those tense moments when she was being given epidural .
Yes pregnancy as anything can be risky but I totally cannot comprehend the "Pregnancy Kills" title!
Walking in South side of Chicago kills too! Trump has made it world famous by now !
So why is no government or Court trying to make it illegal to live in "South Side of Chicago" as a federal policy and why is not all progressives running to live there !
No questions women should have "right to choose" but not with gimmick titles like this.
Funny the people on all sides Right and Left try to make its a policy matter and not a "human right!"
Why would no one fight for this basic human right beyond is me !
1
Your analogy about Chicago doesn’t make any sense. Nobody is talking about outlawing pregnancy.
4
The infant and maternal mortality rates before medical science came along prove beyond a reasonable doubt that "God" has no interest in any particular fetus's "life."
If it is "God's Plan" that every fetus be born, God would have done something about infant mortality some time over the millennia before 20th century medicine.
10
I am constantly surprised at the number of responders who seem to think men, in particular conservative men, somehow oppose birth control. Nothing could be further from the truth. Men enjoy sex and the advent of reasonably reliable birth control make it far more likely women will have sex with them. If there are more than 1% of men who somehow are opposed to ready access to birth control it would amaze me.
3
@Thomas Smith - Take a look at the number of Republicans who vote in favor of politicians and laws that restrict access to birth control or make it less affordable.
7
I guess you’re not familiar with Bunwell vs Hobby Lobby Stores. There are plenty of conservative men who oppose birth control. A couple of them sit on the Supreme Court.
7
Dr Hern claims that the death rate for abortions is 0.7 per 100,000. This is, of course, incorrect. The real death rate is 100,000.7 per 100,000 procedures. The refusal of abortion supporters to admit to the facts is telling. They simply can’t acknowledge the horror of what they advocate
3
It seems ironic that I'm old enough to remember the horror stories told from people who had relatives who died getting back-ally abortions, and now we're back to seeing women trying to perform their own abortions in states like Alabama.
I also find it ironic that the same Republican Senators refused Medicaid Expansion in Alabama and didn't even bat an eyelash when they know full well their refusal resulted in a rise in that state's infant mortality rate.
Same ones.
REal human beings die? No problem.
But heaven forbid a blob of cells smaller than a 12th of an inch get removed from a woman's body.
That is what constitutes a "fetal heartbeat" - a blob of cells no bigger than flake of dandruff on a suit that Donald Trump is wearing from one of his sweatshops made overseas.
The hypocrisy of the Republican party is pretty obvious, especially when it comes to how brutal they are to real human beings - particularly ACTUAL women and ACTUAL infants.
We now have another migrant child who just dies while in custody. Again, not an eyelash.
Despicable creeps.
12
I’m pro-choice, but this line of argument is going too far. The fact that it’s written by a physician who “specializes in late abortion services” is so over the top that I question the motivation of the Times editorial board. Stirring up the pot is not the way to protect women’s rights. There’s a reason that the far right always steers any discussion on abortion to late-term procedures. It’s a reliable red herring.
1
@Passion for Peaches Of course, because the lives of women are not important. What a red herring.
1
@Passion for Peach It’s not stirring up the pot, it’s a fact that doesn’t get stated nearly enough. Dr. Hern’s history of saving women in tragic situations is a testament to his knowledge.
2
"the 2018 maternal mortality ratio was 5.6; among black women, it was 27.6, making black women in Alabama almost five times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy than white women".
And if abortion becomes illegal, we could be certain that more black women will die from botched abortions than white women. The percentage will even be a lot higher than pregnancies. As another part of the equation, it strengthens the argument that this can be in some way or another, voter suppression. Yes, more black babies may be born, but their ability to vote will not be for another 18 years; not part of these politicians future. That's plenty of time to make them indentured minimum wage servants or criminals that can't vote. (but that may change) After all, the white plantation owners would rape black women to make more slaves. Isn't that a part of this is all about? Servitude for white and black women and also low income "slaves" who have to abandon their education? I do not want to falsely see a deliberate maneuver when there isn't one, but with everything else that has been done in this country, from human atomic testing in the Marshall Islands, to small pox infected blankets, I cannot sit around and innocently think nahhhh"....
1
I can't think of any situation where the state would order a man to undergo a highly risky medical procedure.
9
Sadly women's lives (and for that matter, the lives of children) are not valued as they should be. Too often our existences are a means to someone else's ends-- as mothers, as wives, and as less-highly paid workers. Additionally, almost all organized religions fail to empower women, and instead support the various "moral" teachings that strip women of control of their own lives and from developing their own independent beliefs. It's no wonder that the men who write laws criminalizing abortion are followers of religious laws concocted by men. For thousands of years men have used "holy" beliefs to control women, and today is no different.
1
“A woman’s life and health are at risk from the moment that a pregnancy exists in her body, whether she wants to be pregnant or not.”
Enough is enough. Modest proposal: We render infertile all human beings at birth. Only then can we begin to live safely.
@Chuck
That would solve the problem of unwanted pregnancies - but wanted ones that then have medical complications will still remain.
This entire debate, a woman's right to choose, seems frankly so backwards from here in Canada. We will not force our women to risk their health and lives to bear children they do not want to give birth to. I mean what century is this?
Abortion in Canada is not only legal in all stages of pregnancy, it is paid for by our government though our universal health insurance and covers all Canadian women; citizens as well as permanent residents. The abortion pill Mifegymiso is also free by prescription and available in our pharmacies. We respect women's rights and women's bodies up here. American women seem far behind us. Canadian women have a significantly longer life span than American women and perhaps our right to free abortion on demand is one of the reasons.
35
How do America and Canada compare in regard to the average lifespan of an unborn infant?
Its very likely that Canada has lower abortion rates than countries who bann abortion - the best way to reduce abortions is to provide reliable affordable birth control, universal health care, and comprehensive sex education, as Canada does.
Why we insist on public discourse about what should be a private decision for a woman, is beyond me. It is a difficult, often heartbreaking choice for women, and having people comment ad nauseam about something that is NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS is just beyond my comprehension. Men would not tolerate for one minute the kinds of comments about any male-relevant procedure that women have been subjected to regarding termination of a pregnancy.
16
"Pregnancy poses a risk of death." So does getting up in the morning.
15
@Upton
Could you supply the statistics for death occurring as a result of getting out of bed, please?
I would like to compare.
23
@Upton Now here is a particularly cogent remark that illustrates the error of false equivalences.
11
@Upton
You are most likely a man.
And the risk of dying because of "getting up in the morning" is not at the same level as the risk of dying from pregnancy.
I don't think any man should have a say in this.
5
I think it is the decision to have a child that is fraught with moral liability, not the decision to terminate a pregnancy. The idea that a Zygote is a human being is simply irrational. I know that it is fashionable to affirm the pedestrian moral scruples of the 'pro-life' crowd, but few of them are sincere. For most it's little more than a cultural identity marker and moral pretentiousness.
I cannot imagine the circumstances under which abortion would not be a right decision, with the exception of a late term elective procedure which happens only in the grotesque imagination of Catholic prelates. A person who doesn't want to have a child should probably get one. There are plenty of humans in the world - no risk of running low anytime soon.
10
To every single commenter who has posted anything along the lines of "abortion kills every time", I ask you this:
--How many children given up at birth have you adopted?
--How many children damaged by parental abuse and neglect have you fostered?
--How many indigent pregnant women have you taken into your home?
--How many unwanted babies have you agreed to support financially until age 18?
--Do you support access to birth control?
--Do you support the social safety net?
As a former social worker who dealt with the rise of the religious right locally decades ago, I know all too well that the virulently anti-abortion crowd seems to completely lose their commitment to "life" once it's outside the womb.
724
@Paul P But then your espoused point of view is not "pro life" -- it is pro choice.
13
@Paul P The 'responsibility' is to living humankind. If you're pro-life, then be willing to step up to the plate and help people in need, such as adoption of children without parents or fostering a child in need. The problem Country Girl is referring to is an issue for poorer women, without access to enough money to raise their children or to take care of themselves adequately while raising a family. The pro-life stance presumes all women are created equally -- financially, socially, and personally -- ignoring that every woman lives her own life and circumstance. Your one-size-fits-all solution to pregnancy doesn't work in a modern world where Republican leaders slash healthcare, medicare, and education benefits simply doesn't work. Women need to choose their own destiny. It's a right afforded by Row vs. Wade that has no business being undone.
27
@Paul P
Well Paul, the things Country Girl is asking you would take some sacrifice and maturity to do. You aren't willing to do those things.
In addition, I don’t see you offering to pay for a woman who has to go on bedrest from a pregnancy and can’t work. I also don’t see you advocating for affordable healthcare so that women can afford their baby's medical bills, or paid maternity leave, or children’s healthcare, or child care assistance or any of the number of policies that would help a struggling family add one more member.
I don't see you advocating for sex education, contraception access or family planning assistance which is especially puzzling to me because these measures are known to significantly lower the rate of abortion.
So we see you unwilling to help with the children or their costs.
It almost is enough to make one wonder if preventing abortions is really the point.
40
"The intent of the Alabama legislature and its new law is clearly to prohibit and prevent abortions from being performed. But does it?"
Ha ha ha ha. As Republicans are wont to say about guns - "there is no point in outlawing them because people who want them will always be able to get them". Too bad that they don't apply that logic anywhere else.
Outlawing abortions won't stop them. The only thing that will do away with is access to safe, doctor-assisted and -supervised abortions. If a woman has no access to safe, legal abortions and is desperate enough, she will find a way to try to self-abort.
Look at European countries. Look at the history of this own country. The only things that are proven to lower abortion rates are:
1 - Comprehensive sex education starting from an early age. (NOT "abstinence-only" sex ed, which is a joke.)
2 - Comprehensive and widespread access to affordable contraception. Everything from condoms, to IUDs, to implants, all of the way up to sterilization should be available on request.
Know what doesn't prevent abortions? Laws that prohibit abortions.
11
Wealthy women will get their healthcare, including abortion. It is the poor and middle class women who will pay the consequences. There are states with few PP clinics to provide health services including birth control, the best solution to prevent pregnancy. Shameful.
4
Society in general, and religion, in particular, idolizes pregnancy, child bearing, marriage, etc. because they don't understand how tedious, difficult, it is, and few do it very well. That said, not going back to the days of self abortion, back alley abortions that made females sterile, and claimed lives, is where we should be at. Of course, the fact that the talk about all things sex, is still back in the dark ages, is where we are at, otherwise, we would all agree to have free birth control for both females, and males, family planning, and yearly gynecological exams for females at the age of puberty. America has one of the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the world. That shows, that we are still a very primitive, and shallow group of human animals.
2
What right does any religious or political group have to dictate morality or reproduction? A woman's body is her own. The right to choose means that one can choose abortion OR choose not to abort.
I would have thought this was obvious. But I guess knee jerk reactions from the religious or political right preclude rational thought.
4
Finally, a medical colleague who writes a cogent, clear, direct, easily digested, and medically accurate article about this subject!
Sadly, however, even this very well written, reasoned, and scientifically correct cri de coeur will not dissuade nor silence the many zealots who pursue their odious and lunatic desire to ban abortions in the USA.
The looming horrific scenario for millions of women in my country is sad and scary to this MD of 50 years.
5
“ When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more or less “ - Humpty Dumpy.
Also, every single republican, ever.
3
I wish some of these Republicans who have refused Medicaid Expansion in their states - which raised the infant mortality rates in those states - would please exp;ain something to me since they are also the same Republicans reciting blithering nonsense about how they believe a "fetal heartbeat" is the equivalent of an infant.
Tell me, please. Tell your constituents. Please tell us all. Where it this so-called heart located inside a blob of cells no larger than a dandruff flake.
And why didn't you eve bat an eyelash when you caused the infant mortality rate to go up - as in ACTUAL infants - in your state.
9
'Every pregnancy poses a “serious health risk” to the mother.'
So let's end all pregnancies, just in case.
Are you serious?
How about let women make the decision of whether she wants to undertake the risk?
4
It's a wonder the world reached 7.53 billion people, considering how "dangerous" it is. I think the author might be overstating the case.
Crossing the road kills.
Destroy cars
2
Is there any stage in the gestational process at which pro choice advocates will concede that the state has a legitimate interest in barring the termination of the life of the fetus? In Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William Shirer recounts incidents in which wailing puking newborns were cast out the windows of speeding trains to silence them on the way to concentration camps. Absent a serious threat to the mother’s life, how does such behavior differ from scalpel/forceps dismemberment of a late term child? And why shouldn’t the state have an interest in setting such rules. Pro-life people, contrary to their interests, foolishly weaken their moral case and political position in pushing for total bans of the abortion procedure at all stages of pregnancy. Richard Hofstadter was right when he wrote anti-intellectualism would stifle real debate and cede the field to extremes.
@Robert Clarke
Most pro-choice people, like me, support the original decision that was quite well researched. Abortion for any reason at all early in pregnancy, with more restrictions as viability is reached.
But look at the anti-abortion sharia laws. They are advocating to prevent all abortion, never mind rape, fuzzy wording that will kill people about medically necessary abortions. That's the reality there.
3
Women do not go through six months of pregnancy and then suddenly just change their minds about having a child. Women have late-term abortions when something goes terribly wrong.
5
@Robert Clarke Since you bring up the Nazi dog whistle, I will reply that the Nazis did, in fact outlaw elective abortions. They forced abortions on women they deemed "subhuman", but German women could not choose an abortion. It was all about control - get it?
1
This article is just another lame excuse trying to convince the benefits of abortion. The life of the mother must be preserved! Nobody is arguing that . What we can't have is people getting pregnant and aborting just because they don't feel life having a baby. Pregnancy should be a moment of joy in a family. Nobody in our society is forced to get pregnant . Those who recklessly/ carelessly behave must be prosecuted accordingly . They are also a vector for several types of STD .
Women who get pregnant as a result of rape did NOT choose to get pregnant.
7
@Wendel
Wrong on every count.
Republicans have often scoffed at abortions for the life of the mother - they reject the idea as being just an excuse that doctors will abuse.
And why can we not have people aborting just because they don't want a baby? That's a very good reason. And some are forced to get pregnant, many others get pregnant while using birth control (more than 50% of abortions). But when it's early in pregnancy, your callous decision that pregnancy is a punishment for a woman (not the man) having sex is reprehensible - to force woman to carry a pregnancy, to push a baby at an unwilling mother and father, harms all of them.
3
@Wendel Uh-yes, these laws force women to be pregnant.
1
Abortion does not save the life of the baby. It ends this innocent human being.
1
@KMW - it's not a baby.
7
"Pregnancy Kills. Abortion Saves Lives". Abortion saves lives expect for the child in the womb which it kills 100% of the time.
7
@RJ what is your opinion on frozen embryos? IVF clinics dispose of those all the time. Doesn’t that make you angry? Shouldn’t they be jailed? It’s murder.
3
One minute I was chatting with a friend, grocery shopping, and an hour or so later I was having emergency surgery for a cerclage stitch to close my suddenly incompetent cervix. I was shocked to wake from surgery in intensive care. My 24 week twin boys' potential for life was in danger, and my life was certainly in critical condition due to a number of infection factors, and a premature labor that would not remit. I wish life did begin at conception then my twin boys would be alive today. Instead, I lost them at 26 weeks. The physical and mental anguish is besides the point. The fact of the matter is life does not begin at conception.
103
Sorry for your loss
6
@Great news
Thank you so much. It happened in 1992, but they're still missed.
5
@Kerry Garesche
thank you for sharing your terrible ordeal and for providing an eye opening view of real biological facts
6
The 14th Amendment states "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Women are being deprived of liberty - and in some cases life - because their fetus has more rights than they do; indeed, a corpse has more rights in many states than a pregnant woman, as body parts of a corpse cannot be donated without the consent of either the deceased (via donor cards or other prior decision) or the family. Likewise, a person who is a match for a life-saving donation cannot be compelled, legally, to donate blood, other tissues, or organ(s), even if the recipient is a child - even a child just born. And yet, pregnant women are being told that they have no such bodily autonomy, based on the beliefs of other people - people who, as a group, will not in any way provide for the child once it is born, or even health care for the pregnant mother.
If you don't agree with abortion, don't have one - but the decision to have a baby or an abortion is very personal. If you are not the woman considering an abortion, the woman's significant other or other family member or friend the woman chooses to consult, or a medical professional involved in the woman's pregnancy, then it is none of your business.
22
The U.S. is currently the only country among 41 industrialized nations that does not offer mandatory paid parental leave. Pro-Lifer's should address the financial reasons women seek to end a pregnancy, because lack of money and resources are significant contributing factors in the decision making process. When I say address, I mean really look at what it costs to house, feed, clothe, nurture, educate (effectively carry to term and rear) a healthy child, and then be prepared to offer that sum, on the spot to every woman "in-trouble". If Pro-Lifer's are unwilling to take on the actual financial responsibility, then they have no say whatever. Pro-Lifer's should not be allowed to harass individuals, and private clinics with impunity.
390
@Julie
Yes, they should do all those things, but even if they did, it would still not give them the right to impose their religious beliefs on pregnant women and force them to risk their lives. We are in the land of the Handmaid's Tale.
30
@Julie Please stop calling them pro-lifers. They are not pro-life in any way. They are merely anti-abortioners, with not much concern at all for life after birth.
29
@Julie
Almost every industrialized nation only allows abortions until 10-12 weeks. Look at Sweden, France, UK, etc. The NY Times didn't even publish this, but the recent Irish election also stipulated abortions are legal up until 12 weeks. That is a humane and reasonable amount of time.
Unfortunately, in the U.S., each side takes extreme positions, either 8 weeks or anytime well after a preemie is viable. Both positions are immoral and unreasonable. A shame.
4
I have lost patience with folks who are not dealing honestly and respectfully with the actual difficulty of the topic of abortion. Just to say, I myself am and have always been fully pro-choice. However, the issue is that some people truly believe that abortion is murder of a baby. There is nothing about this point of view that is less valid than mine or Mr. Warren's. While I have always supported pro-choice at the ballot box, arguments that frame the conflict as merely being about what is safe for the woman or, much worse, merely being about who has control of a woman's body, are narrow-minded and disrespectful. Such folks, and there are many, many pf them, are obstacles to honest discussion and they fuel the divisiveness that has taken over our country.
2
@MHW
Let's consider this equivalent case for you, as a man. Let's say that it is discovered that you are a perfect match for a person dying of liver disease. So, all that is needed is a quick little surgery, a lobe of your liver is donated, and that person will live - otherwise they will die.
What would you think of a law that mandated you MUST donate? The surgery is pretty safe, some chance of death, some chance of complications that could hurt you in the future - but mostly safe. And hey, it only happens one or two times on average during your life, not too much risk to take.
Is it then OK to take over your body, force you to the hospital?
This is only and entirely about control of my own body.
Not about religious and non-scientifically based beliefs that an embryo with less brain activity than an entirely brain dead human is somehow equivalent to me because it will someday grow into a baby.
4
All women have the "right to life" first over their bodies. When the government seizes control of your body which is what those mandating extreme anti-American laws are doing , they are engaging in slavery. It's sexual slavery, but it violates our Constitution in three ways: freedom of religion meaning the government cannot legislate religious view which is what the anti-abortion laws are: freedom from slavery as in the 14th amendment; and, of course, the prime target--Roe v. Wade which guarantees a woman's right to choose.
10
@Paul Wortmanp
1) Slavery is prohibited by the 13th amendment, not the 14th.
2) Most people's opposition to abortion is not based in religion, it is based on scientific evidence.
3) Roe V Wade has no basis in the Constitution, it was simply the policy preference of 7 men whom hadn't had the opportunity to see an ultrasound.
1
What scientific evidence? Evidence of what exactly?
1
@Karolyn
A fetus has unique human DNA. It has a heartbeat by 6 weeks. It can be a different sex than the mother.
As a woman I have to conclude that the point of this law is to inflict harm and suffering on women. Period. The assumption behind these terrible laws is that we as women can't make good choices for ourselves and that someone else knows better. And that we are promiscuous and deserve punishment if we should get pregnant. This ignores the fact that no contraceptive is 100%
If we provided across the broad preventive and reproductive healthcare to all our citizens we could lessen the instance of unwanted pregnancies but that has also been thwarted in some of these states.
My solution: if you want laws like these then the male who also took part in the pregnancy should be made by law to be proportionately financially responsible for the child until age 21. No exception for health or circumstances of the male's life. Fair is fair. Until that time I will appose all restraints on a woman to make her own decisions for her own body.
502
Harm and suffering on women is 'collateral damage' in my opinion. The real point is political posturing towards a political base. That's the sad, ugly truth.
44
@sec
Not all babies are born with the capacity to support themselves at eighteen.
Men need to be prepared to support these less able children for their entire lives, if that is what it takes.
Single mothers routinely face that possibility. Fathers need to do so as well.
67
@sec
Not good enough. They already are financially responsible - no amount of money repays me for the damage pregnancy does to my body, no amount of money is enough for me to be forced to unwillingly risk my life and health.
I had two pregnancies, complications in both of them that were not pre-existing. No amount of money could have paid me for that.
72
Thank you doctor. However, what this boils down to is that you see women as valuable, fully autonomous beings who have the right to determine the course and outcome of their lives by controlling their reproduction Forced birth supporters do not.
639
@ROK Except these autonomous beings failed to stop reproducing. They have reproduced, but then decided after the fact that they don't wish they had. No man has the right to end a pregnancy he didn't wish to create, and must pay for 18+ years to support the reproduced person he helped create.
3
@David Is that seriously your argument - that men are suffering for having to pay child support and so should have a say in aborting a fetus? Ergo, abortion should be legal and widely available - so more women would get abortions and relieve men of this burden. But you don't mention anything about the risk to women's health, which is what the column is about. Certainly, men face no health risk when a woman is pregnant. So, I guess the risk to a woman's health and life are immaterial. Hmm.
61
@ROK
Agreed. Pregnancy is a private medical concern of the woman. It is solely up to her to decide what happens. When she consults with a physician it is a medically protected conversation.
22
In my small circle of acquaintances, I know of two women who died of complications from pregnancy and childbirth. They both had the best of medical care, unlike poor women. They both very much wanted the babies they nurtured in their wombs so they willingly accepted any risk to their own lives to give birth. Imagine if they had NOT wanted to be mothers and died because a government forced them to. I don't understand the women of the anti-abortion movement who inflict the death penalty on their sisters to prove how "pro-life" they are.
558
@abigail49, well said.
24
@abigail49--Especially those, and they are a significant number, who've had abortions and later repented.
18
@Susan
And many have had children and later regretted that decision. Not to mention the far larger numbers who had an abortion and are glad they did so.
33
From the state that delivered Roy Moore as the 27th and 31st Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, what else would you expect?
3
Although pregnancy has its dangers to the mother, that is not a good argument for abortion. It is a great argument to not get pregnant. Abortion is sometimes necessary for a variety of reasons. It should be a safe, legal medical procedure. The concept of bestowing person-hood on a fetus is bizarre and untenable, following only from mystical religious ideas which, while popular are not commensurate with logical thinking.
7
Of course pregnancy kills! It’s fraught with risk under the best of circumstances. There is a reason why births are done in hospitals with rare exceptions.
My wife had a Caesarian section because of a delivery that was going nowhere. Her checking out from the hospital was delayed to an alarming increase in blood pressure. Our first few weeks of baby raising were complicated by a devastating post partum depression. If that’s not enough, your socio-economic background could be the deciding factor in whether you get to go home alive. For obvious reasons, anyone who dares to face these kinds of risks should be able to do so with their own free will, without the intrusion of the state.
11
Some pregnancies kill while all abortions kill. Back to square one.
6
@Tom Pregnancies can and often do kill the mother, abortions do not kill the mother and that is the point.
5
@Tom An embryo is life, but it is not a person. The two are not equivalent.
5
Huh? You got it backwards, Bro.
2
The BIG story of today is that millions of Socially Conscious Women and men are hitting the streets today across America for #StoptheBans!
Planned Parenthood, Naral, the Women's March, Emily's List, ACLU, Indivisable, Move on and hundreds of other Socially Cosncious Organizations have joined forces to demonstrate across America and probably around the world.
This shoudl be headline news. Why isn't it NY Times? Shame on you.
15
Niglea,
I plan to counter protest the pro abortion folks in downtown Manhattan today. I wonder how many pro choice folks will actually show up? It is a beautiful day for a protest and there will probably be a fair amount. I may be in the minority but it is important for me to show my pro life support.
On May 4, there was a pro life rally in Times Square. There were 10,000 pro lifers who appeared for this very important cause vs. about 100 pro abortion folks. This was a spectacular turnout for the pro life crowd in a liberal city such as New York. It gave us hope and confidence that the pro lifers are making a huge difference. We will never give up this extremely important cause which has been gaining momentum.
1
a better use of your time would be to head to the local hospital that houses border babies and volunteer to hold them all day long.
Or lobby for maternal care or anything that helps parents and children after they are born.
4
@Mary, bravo (or, shall I saw, brava!) for your call to ACTUAL action for anti-choicers, that would actually provide real help to actual born, living people. As Methodist pastor Dave Barnhart stated so well:
"'The unborn' are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."
4
These bans are a huge waste of time and resources by those who call themselves anti-abortion. Their time--all of our time--would be infinitely better spent solving the issues which contribute to a woman seeking abortion healthcare in the first place. Instead of wasting their time picketing health care facilities, why don't they mentor a young person, open up their home to children in foster care, support organizations that teach safety and self-confidence, speak up the next time they see a man bullying his partner, advocate for a living wage? There are so many opportunities to help our fellow human beings, but shaming them and shutting off access to healthcare can't be classified as a helping opportunity. It's easy to criticize, but anti-abortion advocates should turn their attention to the harder work of actually offering and bringing to reality meaningful solutions that will improve the quality of life of those already here and those yet to come.
24
@Lindsey. You nailed it. It boggles my mind why the focus in the US is not on offering mothers a real choice by providing support in form of housing, helping them finishing high school (GED), offering job training, counseling, access to affordable child-care etc.
If the choice is between homelessness, poverty, serious health risks etc. or having the child, how can women choose? By focusing only on the unborn and completely ignoring the welfare of the born child and its mother, and the circumstances in which it will grow up, it runs down to a judgement on the morals of the mother (respectively the implied lack of), and to "who has the power here".
Pro-life is per definitionem for, or in favor of, life. Life doesn’t end at birth. Period.
There are many ways to support (pregnant) women so that they are able to make a fully educated decision (making child-care more accessible and a lot more cheaper, obligatory paid maternity leave, and birth control that is covered by health insurance would be a good start).
Give women a real choice and support them during pregnancy AND motherhood. Pregnancy is “just” 40 weeks. Being a mother is “for life”.
2
Any woman who has been through pregnancy and childbirth and can condemn another woman to it regardless of the circumstances is a poor excuse for a human being.
And no man on this earth can get pregnant and carry a child. If that ever happens, then and ONLY then will they have the right to talk about this subject. Though I'd guess if it were possible abortion would suddenly become sacred right up there with the right to carry a gun.
35
@Elizabeth
So I guess that women should have no say in any rules or regulations that affect only men. Right?
This is stupid and anti-democratic.
@MHW Give us a good example of a law that takes away only men's control over their own body.
1
Women have been known to go literally insane because they were forced to go through with unplanned pregnancies (at times complemented by shotgun marriages - although less common these days).
This issue is not only about the physical health of the woman, but also her mental health.
16
I am thoroughly pro choice but also completely antiabortion. Don’t imagine that abortion is without consequences to the mental health of the mother. I believe firmly that women are being used by men. Really this abortion thing? Cheap sex when he wants it without consequences? We are to believe this is what most women by nature want? Since when?
It’s all nutty. Everybody is being used—- women protest so men have the opportunity to have consequence free sex. Pro lifers protest with the consequence that “good people” sign up to support Trump. Nutty, all of it.
Without abortion as an issue the GOP is dead in the water. The Alabama laws are not in the best interest of the GOP. And that’s good.
1
@JK
I got pregnant in my early 20s. Some women at that stage of life are living stable lives and are eager for a baby.
I most definitely was not one of those women.
I was profoundly grateful and relieved to have access to a safe abortion in a Canadian (Ontario) hospital. Now in my late 50s, I'm still grateful.
My physical health was not in jeopardy, but the compassionate doctors I dealt with just knew the proper course of action to take with me.
To reiterate, I am grateful! grateful!! grateful!!!!
1
Absolute no-brainer. The USA needs to move beyond this even being negotiable.
This editorial evades choice. It is thus intellectually and morally destructive, nihilist. Pregnancy and abortion are valuable relative to the woman’s life as judged by her mind. Beyond that, there is no value. As Ayn Rand said, a beautiful painting has value only to a person with eyes.
My son has just told me of what seems to be the perfect answer to the abortion question:
Let every male be required to undergo a vasectomy before he matures sexually. Then, once he and his partner want a child and are ready to be responsible parents, the vasectomy can be reversed.
No more need for abortions, (except when it risks the mother's life), no more unwanted babies, problem solved!
Let's get the men onboard now.
25
@woodswoman
And as soon as the male and his partner have conceived their desired child, the male must report for re-sterilization.
1
Excellent article; thank you!
1
Most European countries allow for women to get abortions, which I think is great.
However the max term is only 12 weeks which I think is also great. As a society we need to let women choose but at some point there is a life in that belly and if we as a society want to kill it then shame on us.
If we're okay with killing babies, we should expand the to also killing the old, homeless, drug addicted, and anyone who stars in a realty show.
2
@Dude
You're short on information.
It is 14 weeks in most of the U.S.
Second trimester abortions are limited in the US to medical indications. If anything, they are easier to get in most of Europe.
4
@Dude - Abortion Laws vary greatly across the EU’s 28 member states: a complete ban, allowing it only under certain conditions, putting legal restrictions on it, or allowing women free rein to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
Partial or severe ban: Ireland.
Complete ban: Malta
Extreme condition rape or incest: Poland and Cyprus.
UK and Finland: need official medical permission before proceeding.
The other 22 countries: timeframe varies from first 10 weeks of pregnancy(Portugal), -24 weeks (UK, Netherlands), when an abortion can be performed.
Germany requires a reflection period of a few days before getting one.
1
As a fellow physician, albeit retired, I would like to thank Dr. Hern for the must needed services he provides to women in desperate situations.
I am old enough to have seen the consequences of unprofessional abortions, old enough to know that women with social status could always find a physician to perform an abortion while poor women could not and in reading the older medical literature to write a paper on causes of renal failure from sepsis saw case report after case report of women with renal failure from septic abortions.
In reality it is not trying to save babies that motivates the anti choice zealots but it is fear of women's sexuality and fear of women's autonomy.
61
@Edward B. Blau
Doctor, write your experiences down and publish them in an op-ed essay.
3
@Edward B. Blau A retired doctor ,I trained in Scotland in the 60s and remember seeing the complications of illegal abortions. The 1967 UK law preceded the Roe v Wade opinion. Advocates for such legislation did not envisage abortion on demand.
I was troubled by the complacency in the article to the US maternal death rate which is almost x3 the rate in the U.K. Why is this as the US rates would not be tolerated by the medical fraternity in any other civilised county.
Abortion rates in young Scots is falling as young men and women are heeding /responding to education re contraception and the readily available morning after pill.(a prescription Is not required for the MAP). Easy access to contraception is mandatory and doctors in the US should promote this.
Most doctors would welcome reductions in abortion rates .Education ,education is the answer not unregulated abortion. For some ( rape incest etc )abortion may be the solution.
Get busy Promote contraception and the MAP. Reduce the maternal death rates.
Hope you're enjoying your retirement.
130 years ago, my great-grandmother kept having miscarriages and early deaths of her babies.
The male priests implied to her that she had done something immoral which was the origin of her miscarriages.
In the 1940's, our family learned of our Rh- tendency, and that the 5 deaths of our great-grandmother's infants were hemolytic disease.
Never in our family since then have the uneducated, non-medical opinions of men counted for much with regards to pregnancy and miscarriage in our family. A common comment is: why are these men allowed to vote on anything pregnancy-related?
78
Seriously, Dr. Hern? "Pregnancy always comes with some irreducible risk of death." Ring the alarm bell some more, and tell us more about stuff we already know.
3
@Hugh MacDonald
Spoken like a guy who has never had to consider these risks in terms of his own mortality.
77
@Hugh MacDonald And how did you become so knowledgeable in the statistics of maternal mortality based on race, location and social class that you had no need of Dr. Hern's numbers?
12
Do you know about the complications listed in the article? Some of them are rare but dangerous. Do you know what placenta previa is, what an hydatidiform mole is and how dangerous it is? Do you know how debilitating pre-and postpartum depression is for women with major depressive disorder who birth control failed? Do you have a vasectomy or take responsibility for birth control?
14
Thank you! My mom and sister both nearly died as a result of complications from pregnancy and childbirth. The risks are real. The changes to the body are profound. Birth can also result in severe depression.
These are serious and private - PRIVATE matters - medical matters - and neither church nor state let alone some unholy alliance such as we're seeing unfold today has any business whatsoever interfering.
Exceptions for rape and incest are beside the point. The point is women's lives which are at risk via pregnancy full stop; and women's rights which are inviolable human and civil rights, which shall not be abridged.
39
There are so many unintended consequences of prohibiting and severely limiting a woman’s ability to determine her own fate in matters of reproduction. When we give government the power to tell us that a woman may not have an abortion, we give it the right to tell us that she must. Reproduction in a free society must be up to the individual.
According to Planned Parenthood, 6 out of 10 women seeking an abortion already have a family and want to provide for them as best they can.
When women unable to care for their offspring are forced to carry their baby full term, anything can happen to that child. It can be neglected, abused, starved, smothered, or sold on the black market for child pornography or sex slavery. Or the child may be horribly deformed inside or out giving him or her a life of illness, misery, blindness and a host of other birth defects that would tax our medical capabilities. Health insurance rates would rise. The uninsured are at the mercy of taxpayers. These issues should not be left to state legislatures. Men and women must unite to take back our right to a personal choice.
20
@Kathy Kennedy
Our entire democracy is at stake right now. This authoritarian movement seeks to undermine women's rights via abortion control but it will extend itself to the rights of free speech, freedom of religion - already under attack by the far right - it will undermine the free press and civil rights throughout the land.
17
Yes, every power reserved by the people at stake now, because these monsters say none exists because the Constitution does not enumerate them. It is propagandistic psychopathology of the most pernicious nature.
1
In the United States of America social safety net is sketchy and unevenly distributed , more comprehensive in the blue States and quite limited in the red ones .
America has the highest maternal and perinatal death rate in the industrialized world , so shameful for such a rich country .
Maternity doesn’t have adequate protective laws , in a country where social issues have been put on the back burner by the present administration , it is now important to elect politicians who will put people first and corporations last .
Use your vote to change such a shameful situation, make America really Great , it’s about time !
24
@inter nos Agreed. However, it'd be interesting to see mortality rates by income. I'd bet that it'd be much lower for higher income women / families. They don't have to work and they can afford good care as many times as they need. So as long as there is a plutocracy, the rich don't care about mortality rates, they don't apply to them most of the time.
1
@JG
Actually, mortality rates are still much higher for Black women, and other women of color, when factors including income, education, etc. are factored in.
Racism continues to play a role in maternal care even for those with access to excellent care.
https://www.npr.org/2017/12/07/568948782/black-mothers-keep-dying-after-giving-birth-shalon-irvings-story-explains-why
5
@inter nos >people first and corporations last
No corporations in daily near-starvation hunting-gathering and subsistence farm economies. The function of corporations is people. The function of the anti-corporation hysterics is anti-people.
Living is the one activity that has 100% mortality. And yet most people would not choose not to be alive. Pregnancy, when it's wanted, as dangerous as it can be to the woman, is not an anxiety fraught experience. The problems come when we have people who claim to be pro life deciding that they can sit in judgement on women who do not want to be pregnant for whatever the reason may be. What to them or to me may seem an invalid reason is not so to the woman requesting it. The hullaballoo over late term abortions is ridiculous. Those abortions are rare, can be dangerous for the woman because they are like giving birth, and are done for medical reasons only.
An embryo cannot survive outside the uterus. A fetus, unless the pregnancy is in the late 7th month, cannot survive without extraordinary interventions. To continue to tell people otherwise is perpetuating a lie as is the lie that women are inevitably damaged and depressed after having an abortion.
If people are so concerned about eliminating abortion, which they cannot do anyway, start to set aside monies and create programs to teach children and teens about their bodies including sexuality. Demand that our government provide better support for families and children. Demand better care for handicapped people. But don't force women to get illegal abortions when they need them.
5/21/2019 1:21pm
57
"Pregnancy, when it's wanted [...] is not an anxiety fraught experience." As a currently pregnant woman with a very much wanted second child, I whole heartedly disagree with this statement. Every pregnancy is incredibly different, even for the same woman. Even if ithe pregnancy is uncomplicated, it can still be extraordinarily stressful and frightening. Endless decisions to make, fear of doing something that will cause accidental harm, pain... All kinds of pain, financial stress, fear of giving birth, stress over eating and exercise habits, stress about your own health during pregnancy, especially blood pressure and glucose levels for the average woman, fear of actually having to care for a newborn... I could go on and on, but my point is that even when it's "easy", pregnancy is HARD.
29
@Abby what I meant was something different. You want the child. You aren't doubting that the way a woman who truly doesn't want a child or can't afford it is. The women I feel bad for are the ones who have to end the pregnancy when it's one that's been desired. That must be an incredibly difficult decision to make.
5
@Abby Pregnancy is very easy for most of the men, though, relatively-speaking. So are labor, delivery, and post-natal care. Unless they suffer from couvade, and even that is not life-threatening. In fact, I don't know of a single man who has ever died in childbirth, unless the mother, in the process of being in hard labor, had the foresight to bring a gun. Probably just another good reason why guns are not allowed in hospitals.
1
If you want to know how much Alabama cares about the unborn, look no further than how little pre-natal care the state provides and which then leads to the state’s high maternal mortality rate, particularly for black women. Once the baby is delivered accessing help for lactation advice, mental health services, nutrition counseling and other vital help is woefully inadequate. Anti-abortion States like Alabama and Missouri want to be sure they get women into the “delivery room,” but after that they and their babies are on their own.
123
Democrats are missing a bet. They need to create a TV commercial that starts: “To all the women in America. Trump has a message for you.” Then insert the video of Trump stating to Chris Matthews of MSNBC: “there has to be some form of punishment for women who have an abortion”
Then run it everywhere as often and as long as possible.
183
@Alex Vine
Alex, I hate to tell you this, but I know right to lifers that would say it is about time we punished women for murdering their unborn. It is difficult, if not impossible, to fight a belief with facts.
6
That would make for a very affecting political message.
2
@Alex Vine I think it is such cowardice that states like Alabama don't include punishment for women choosing abortion, but only for their doctors. If they think it is so wrong, why protect the women from the consequences? The answer, of course, is political expedience. It also further infantilizes women and furthers the idea that they are not capable of making choices and so should be protected from consequences.
(Of course no one should actually face punishment for choosing abortion - neither the woman or the doctor - just to clarify where I am coming from, lest I be misunderstood).
1
"Vagueness and confusion are the tools of tyranny". Truer words were never said.
I appreciate your op-ed, it is truthful and important. But your last line is the most important. Today abortion becomes illegal, tomorrow it will be contraception.
The point of the oppressor is to oppress. The Republicans make fine oppressors. And they want to oppress all but white males who support them.
Women Republicans? Nothing much worse in my book. Susan Collins, I'm looking straight at you.
198
@sophia
One point: Contraception was declare a federal offense in the U.S. thanks to the Comstock Act of 1873. It remained on the books well into the 20th Century. It was through the efforts of Margaret Sanger that ultimately the law was revoked.
21
"Surely the Alabama legislature has carefully considered all of the above [the serious health risk inherent in pregnancy, which is five times greater in Alabama for black women than for white women] ... Perhaps the vagueness of the law and the confusion is the point."
This is textbook fascism and a textbook example of the gaslighting and misogyny that typically accompany fascism.
Fascism: an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
Gaslighting: psychological manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own observations, memory, perception, scientific conclusions, and sanity.
The Rev. Bonhoeffer warned us about such things in 1933, when he told the Germans they were falling for an idolatrous personality cult.
They are the worst of the worst: these people who are using a fascist demagogue to foist their own brutal, unscientific, anti-woman religious views on the rest of us.
19
Strange, when citing overall maternal mortality ratio it's quoted as 11.9 per 100,000, which is approximately 0.01%. But when citing deaths of viable fetuses after births it's given as "a small number of just about 1%", without the number.
2
@areader One is the death of the mother, the second is death of the child, and it is not 'fetus after birth', fetus is an unformed, unborn child dependent on the mother for everything, technically our form or giving birth is an inherent form of parasitism, where the child is a literal parasite for 9 months, then an invalid needing care for at least the next 2-3 yrs very intensively. It used to be in Britain and the Colonies and anywhere else 'Civilized', the children generally were not truly given a name (it may have been chosen, but not given) until their 5th birthday, after which it was more likely that they would survive to breeding age. Before that most children died of disease, starvation, injury or abuse before reaching 5, so there was little point in naming them.
That was for later, when there was a higher degree of survival and women were able to make choices for themselves, having Wide access to a variety of plants that were natural abortifacients or pregnancy preventatives,very naturally, and too often it was the Village medical Old Wise Woman were attacked because of her ability with herbs to not only treat wounds and illnesses, but to prevent pregnancies.
With the Biblical Edict to Multiply and fill the land, which was a survival edict from surviving Great Flood, it was seen as evil to stop pregnancies. But even then they knew some are too young, or raped/abused or the mother's health may be not up for a pregnancy. Men and especially priests felt threatened!
1
@B. Honest -- you think children didn't get names until they were 5 years old in Britain and the Colonies? I've never heard of such a thing. Do you have a source for that?
1
@B. Honest it was not five years that an infant went unnamed. There was a delay as becoming a person in society was seen as a process, and many infant who died days, or weeks or a few months were unnamed. But not for years. This is interesting research:
https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=jpps
There are many reasons why a pregnant woman might want to stop her pregnancy through abortion.
As this article states, pregnancy presents a real physical risk. And pregnancy changes a woman's body, some of the changes permanent. But even more profound is the impact giving birth to a child has on a woman's life. If the woman gives the child up for adoption, she is required to entrust an infant containing her unique genetic material to people she does not know, simply hoping for the best, but often never knowing. If she keeps the child to raise, there is a life-transforming 18-year+ price tag. Either choice may shut future doors to the woman, and will unquestionably change the trajectory of her life. To bring a child into the world is to take on an enormous responsibility, no matter how it is handled. The world is full of children for whom that responsibility is not fulfilled and they suffer for it.
This is why large numbers of women (including many who profess to oppose abortion) make the ultimate decision that it is MORE responsible, MORE humane, MORE ethical to terminate the developing life inside their body. Yes, life. Not a person, but budding life. Throughout long history, and still today, when the moment comes, some women make the decision to abort. This decision should be honored, not criminalized.
54
This argument is false. All surgical procedures pose some risk of complications including infection, uterus perforation and bleeding.
Its fair to say that birth and pregnancy have adverse results in far greater numbers than an abortion.
6
Please do not doubt the facts. Other seldom discussed facts include the concept of fetal wastage. These are episodes where an early pregnancy is not viable and undergoes spontaneous abortion. This is the source of many, but not all, miscarriages. Therefore many early abortions might have gone on to miscarry had the abortion not occurred. In other words this is a complex situation for which there are no easy answers. Demagogues do not do well with nuance. So when they write bad laws, chaos ensues. And someone, whether embryo, fetus, or mother will die.
13
What I can't understand how this argument ever became law in the first place. This has nothing to do with rights. This a clear case of a "Church" trying to make a theology law. Something the Founding Fathers clearly never wanted to see happen.
45
The “Church” also inspired the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr —among many others leaders of faith —to lead the Civil Rights movement and win full legal rights for African Americans and put an end legal racial discrimination such as segregation. The “Church” also inspired the same Rev. Dr. Martin Luther and many others leaders of faith to speak out against the Vietnam War.
2
@Stephen Kelly
Look to the Republicans and their Evangelical overseers.
1
@Garry MLK was trying to expand human rights, not take them away.
1
First, since so many people are likely to read this, is it possible for the pro-choice supporters to stop using the term "pro-life" to describe the other side? If you post here or elsewhere, or tweet, we need to use the term "forced birth advocates." They do not support "life;" they prove it daily in their views, actions and behavior on related issues.
Second, there needs to be a "male" aspect to these laws. The males involved need to be held responsible for the pregnancy and accountable to the women, in very specific ways, (financial and otherwise) until the child reaches adulthood.
106
@luckygal . In fact if pro-birth states are going to pass personhood laws then child support payments should begin at conception for all the men who are not financially committed to the partners forced to have their babies.
25
@luckygal: Someone a few days ago wrote a comment that I think is very smart. There should be a law that makes all boys have a vasectomy at age 14. They can freeze sperm if they so choose.
That would take care of unwanted pregnancies now wouldn't it?
15
Excellent argument. Hold men accountable and enforce child support laws. In addition, strongly support single mothers and single fathers with the help they need to gain the prerequisite training and skills for good paying jobs with affordable child care. Train and hire mature men and women who can mentor your parents in raising their healthy children.
8
One can be young and healthy and have a normal easy delivery of a healthy child.The next pregnancy can be one diagnosed as a one of multiples.That was a shock to me over 50 years ago! A complicated pregnancy ended well but this is just one more condition of pregnancy that women cannot plan for(unless they undergo in vitro fertilization) .There are so many complications from pregnancy that a woman and her doctor should have maximum leeway to take care that both mother and child are healthy.That is a tall order.Obstetricians face the highest charges for malpractice insurance for any specialty.If the states decide to meddle in medicine , many specialists will simply choose another specialty, like dermatology or pathology or any of many that are not regulated by state legislatures.
18
Currently, Mississippi is experiencing a brain drain. I graduated from Millsaps College and my daughter from the University of Mississippi. She and her husband chose to leave the state for jobs. The recent abortion legislation will contribute to the brain drain.
42
It just seems that we, as a society, can't have a reasonable conversation about guns or abortion because of the extremists on both sides.
10
@Daskracken If I hear this "on both sides" argument one more time I am going to scream. When one side seeks to politicize my body and expose me to gun violence, NO, we cannot have a nice, civilized conversation. Folks would do well to make this distinction because it is a real, and important, one.
33
@Daskracken Who are the extremists on the left? They are pro-choice, not pro-abortion.
21
@Daskracken
Extremists on both sides? On one side a bunch of people who want to run around with lethal weapons, on the other a bunch of people who don't want to die, or for their children to die. If the latter are 'extreme', then it looks like we're all extreme.
17
This is not about pregancy or abortion, it’s about exploiting moral superiority to get votes. Having said that, women are the only ones connected to abortion, they are the ones who get pregnant, and they simply don’t support that freedom of choice in numbers that would mute the Republicans. If, every woman supported abortion rights the issue would go the way of the passenger pigeon. Let’s be honest, women are the cause of this whole argument. It’s an emotional argument, and women vote emotionally, not in their best interests, or that of their sisters. These supporters of pro-life are santimonious, and at the same time hypocritical knowing that if a mistake is made, there is a legal service available somewhere for them. If Roe, were overthrown, only then, would we start to hear some genuine push back. No one wants abortion until they want one.
17
Funny how women are the cause of the argument yet men are the ones legislating this.
Additionally, study after study has shown that EVERYONE votes emotionally rather than based on policy, not just women.
12
The last line of your comment sums it up perfectly. Well said.
@Prant a majority of women and men want legal access to safe abortion. A slightly larger majority of women want it than men. Just do an internet search for "public opinion on abortion" and find the Pew research.
3
Thank you. This is what needs to be said front and center. Over and over. And it is not just the risk of death but also disability and major lifelong health problems. (Serena Williams.)
In what other cases do we force a person to take such risks in order to save the life of another person? In what other cases do we force people to give over the use of their body to save another person? Anti-abortion laws contradict many well established legal precedents.
42
@Audaz
Yes. Except that a fetus isn't a person
3
Dr. Hern is a hero. Full stop.
67
@MJ Yes, he is. As an MD, I have respect for what he does, especially as MDs who provide abortions have unfortunately been harassed, assaulted, and even murdered in the past by anti-choice protesters. I once trained in a small town where the only doctor willing to provide abortions had to stop doing them because his family was being threatened. He only escaped further harassment I believe because the rural area where he practiced would have had no family doctor in a 100-mile radius if he had up and left.
As Dr Hern succinctly writes, "Who decides what a “reasonable medical judgment” is or what a “major bodily function” is? What are the criteria for these judgments?"
Indeed, who? The Alabama law that was signed by the governor a few days does not stipulate the "who." Indeed, I cannot imagine what efficient, timely, rational such judge or panel would be convened to render these decisions. When? After the elective termination of pregnancy, or before?
I envision a considerable amount of medical deliberation would be involved for such a panel. A lot of grey area and possible inconsistency. Would high-risk obstetricians risk their own careers and livelihoods because of such uncertainty? If such highly-qualified obstetricians were forced from Alabama (because either by prosecution or voluntarily leaving the profession), who will remain to manage highly complicated pregnancies?
This law is not well thought out, unwieldy, and vague. Ultimately, the management of a woman's pregnancy (and possibly its elective termination) must remain solely between her and her physician.
21
Thank you for writing this. My perfectly healthy 28 year old sister with an uncomplicated, normal pregnancy had a serious hemorrhage and would have died without the quick intervention of her doctor. Pregnancy is always a risk. I should have the right to decide whether to take that risk.
154
@E, That isn't the point. It's a baby, not a game show.
5
@Jay Orchard
You do know that contraception is not 100% effective, right? And that the most reliable long-term methods (IUD's and implants) can cost $1,000 upfront?
I know several women who got pregnant while carefully taking the pill because they weren't told that common antibiotics render the pill ineffective.
But thank you for explaining to us women that there's something called contraception.
16
@Jay Orchard do you know what the failure rates of the various forms of birth control are? According to the CDC, with "typical use" the failure rate of the birth control pill is 7% (in 1 year of use). Also according to the CDC, there are 10.6 million women in the US using oral contraceptives. You do the math. That's a LOT of unintended pregnancies. The numbers for IUDs and other long-acting methods are significantly better, but there is still a failure rate. As long as fertile men and women are having sex, no matter how careful they are, there will be unintended pregnancies amongst women (and men) who already recognized they weren't ready to be parents and were using contraception.
8
Dr. Hern answers his own question towards the end.
The Alabama law (and others) are not a result of 'pro-life' principles. If their legislatures had any they would have pushed to end the death-penalty, to provide neo-natal care, to provide child-care, to provide aid to a lousy education system, to... The list of life-affirming alternatives to an anti-abortion law is endless.
Anti-abortion laws are about forcing an entire population to adhere to the legislators' own minority views of morals. That a version of Sharia law is derived from a perversion of "christian" values does not make it any less dictatorial.
78
Vasectomy and male reproductive responsibility are the answer, have always been. Instead, the world's females endure constant threats of physical danger, ignorance, misogyny and superstitious religious fervor. The last thing the planet needs is more of that, as well as more unwanted humans.
35
I have seen it both personally and as a hospital RN working labor and delivery. This article mentions pre-existing and pregnancy-related conditions. I have seen a schizophrenic woman giving birth and leaving the infant in the hospital "until she was stable." I have seen both placenta previa and eclampsia...not a pretty picture. I have seen an anencephalic born only to die hours later after exiting the womb. I have seen a woman with lupus have seizures during labor. She almost died, and her baby did die upon birth. The most amoral and cruelest of stances is when men and fanatically religious women interfere with my, my daughters', my "sisters" at large, God-given right to be our own person, to rightfully claim our individuality and identity as human beings. Pro-lifers are hypocrites both within the religion which they wear on their shirt sleeves and as decent, compassionate, loving people. They are incapable of truly caring for the already living and breathing. They tweak that old adage by proclaiming, "In sight, out of mind."
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@Kathy Lollock I appreciate reading your comments in NYT. From now on please use the correct term for those who would impose their religious sharia beliefs on everyone: they are forced-birthers, not "pro-life." Anyone who is pro-life supports sex education, social safety nets and all the things that help mother and child once the delivery is completed.
5
@Kathy Lollock
"God-given right". So, at what stage of pregnancy does the fetus develop into a human that also has God-given rights?
@Blue Girl in Boise Thanks for the tip. You are so right!
3
Say it again, and say it louder.
Abortion saves lives. It should be safe and on-demand. No apologies.
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@Ryan
Exactly as it is in Canada and100% paid by their free healthcare. See Carol -Victoria BC post.
4
While it may be true that pregnancy in and of itself poses dangers to the mother, I think this was a very poor choice of headline (esp. the 'pregnancy kills' bit) and since the goal was to show why access to abortion is important. I think this totally missed the mark and will in fact have the opposite effect on anyone you were trying to 'convince'....that abortion is an important option for all women to have access to.
By using the shocking headline of 'pregnancy kills', it's almost implying that no women should ever try or want to become pregnant....which of course is utterly ridiculous.
5
@Lisa the editors make the headlines, not the author of the article.
Why is it that when climate change comes up, the Republican Politicians say, "I'm not a scientist"; but when women's health is being discussed, THEY'RE ALL GYNECOLOGISTS?
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@Bayshore Progressive Because too many of our elected officials don't have any really good ideas about how to improve our nation. So, instead of developing innovative ideas and trying to help all Americans, they focus on abortion, a hot button issue that distracts and divides our nation, when, in fact, it shouldn't be an issue between anyone but a woman and her physician. That's why they pretend they're gynecologists.
22
@Bayshore Progressive Preach!
7
The author seems to making the case that black women should have unfettered access to abortion services in Alabama since they are higher risk of death from pregnancy than other women.
1
@SSS
No, the author is making the case that all women should have unfettered access to abortion services in Alabama and all other states. Black women already suffer higher pregnancy mortality rates, and this law will exacerbate that situation, but the author does not suggest that black and white women should have different levels of access.
11
The intent of the Alabama legislature is to prevent and prohibit abortions being performed. Maybe. Maybe trying to be politically correct. But the real intent is to target Black women who already have 4 times the mortality rate. Not only are their lives in grave danger, they also disrupt and bankrupt their lives irrevocably. The OB-GYNs will flee the state. So will the other women go to other states to get abortions. But the Black women already at the bottom of the totem pole will have no recourse but to stay. The South has not changed. Abraham Lincoln must turn in his grave.
22
The US Supreme Court may or may not uphold Roe vs Wade. Striking down “Roe vs Wade” in all or in part will bring the abortion issue home to each state. We shall see how much support their really is for abortion laws either like Alabama or like New York.
3
Didn't read the article, but (because) the title seems absurd. It seems like species including our own have been dealing with this problem since the dawn of mammalian life. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
1
@david
Except for those women, such as Thomas Jefferson's wife and daughter, who died in childbirth maybe?
Mere collateral damage? The unfit being weeded out, maybe?
12
This attitude toward pregnancy explains why birthrates are so low in America.
7
Why do some women so strongly emphasize that all pregnancy and childbirth is a serious medical condition that kills women while other women emphasize pregnancy and childbirth as a gift? This split holds true even among women who are high risk for medical complications even death in childbirth.
1
@Garry, many who oppose access to abortion believe everything is God's will. Most patients have no idea about the risks of any medical condition, but when a woman has a successful pregnancy, the religious claim God did it, and when the outcome is bad, they claim "God called her home." Those, like Dr. Hern, who support right to choose tend to look at the facts and statistics, which are quantifiable. If you don't believe pregnancy is risky, look at the stats.
7
We can see it both as a gift and as a risk, because it is both of those things. Whether you want to take the risk depends on how much you see it as a gift.
3
Spot on, except for a common error:
"Among white women, the 2018 maternal mortality ratio was 5.6; among black women, it was 27.6, making black women in Alabama almost five times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy than white women." Nope; five times *as* likely, not five times more likely; it is four times *more* likely.
Also to be emphasized: education and effective contraception save lives and reduce abortions (both induced and spontaneous), while ignorance and the lack of medical care cost lives. And, heck: fertility clinics wind up killing lots of fertilized eggs, and the Catholic Church, by endorsing the rhythm method, dooms a boatload of eggs fertilized past their "sell-by" date.
8
Why there such a large difference in serious birth complications and childbirth death among African American women in Alabama?
@Garry
The statistics are similar on a national level. Childbirth is far more dangerous for African-American women throughout the country, even in states like California who have much better overall results.
1
If women had “personhood” their welfare and health would be the primary concern when they become pregnant.
But those on the radical right have informed us that the fetus inside a woman’s body has more rights to her body than the woman, that a fetus is more a person than the woman who carries it.
When will women become full citizens under the law?
62
Doctors and nurses will look to other states to practice medicine.
The doctors that remain in Alabama and other states that have extreme abortion bans will just stop delivering health care to pregnant women as they have in many rural areas across America. Some woman are now driving 100 miles to deliver their babies due to doctors and hospitals no longer providing that service.
12
When you add in the odds of a major injury or disorder, pregnancy becomes far more risky. Gestational diabetes is pretty common - and 20% of those who get gestational diabetes will go on to develop lifelong diabetes, with all the mortality from that. Cracked tailbones, injuries to joints, and no doubt 100 more complications I didn't personally know about.
The pretense that concern about abortion is to protect the poor young woman from risk of complications has always been a lie, and a callous one.
27
My health (and life) was most certainly threatened by my pregnancy. Besides high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and severe sciatica, I had to have an emergency C-section which required major abdominal surgery and a long recovery. I was terrified that both I and my baby wouldn't make it, and even though both of us survived the ordeal, the trauma remains with me to this day.
Pregnancy indeed puts intense pressure on a woman's body, and there is never any guarantee of an easy or healthy pregnancy or outcome. This is why all options for women must be on the table, and the decision must lie with a woman and her healthcare provider.
110
Excellent article which further illustrates that legislators have no business sticking their untrained noses in medical issues that belong to women and their consultants.
71
"Could a doctor who determines that a woman is pregnant also determine, as a consequence of that pregnancy, that a “serious health risk” exists?" This argument makes no sense. The woman's health would have to be at risk in her particular case, not in a general statistical sense. It would also be interesting to know, statistically, how "dangerous" pregnancy really is, as opposed to the pre-existing conditions which the author includes in the statistics, like high-blood pressure and obesity, which are dangerous whether or not you are pregnant. Finally, the argument that the true "goal" of the law is to prevent doctors from practicing at all in Alabama, is bizarre; what percentage of doctors even perform abortions? Maybe the people who passed the law have an honest belief in preventing abortions and the author just has a different opinion. The author's statistical case is certainly shoddy work.
3
@R.P.
"Maybe the people who passed the law have an honest belief in preventing abortions and the author just has a different opinion."
I don't think that anyone is arguing this. The argument is that why are we restricting a women's right to reproductive healthcare? Pro-Choice is for women being able to make their own healthcare decisions, not the Government.
10
This is a well written article based on medical facts. Pregnancy associated hypertension is much more dangerous than typical essential hypertension, and can lead to life threatening events for the mother. His statistics are sound. I’m very grateful to this medical professional who is serving all women every day
26
@R.P. Here is some 101 on women's health: pregnancy causes a number of conditions that are not "pre-existing," including all of the conditions that the doctor cites. It is extremely common for women to develop high blood pressure due to pregnancy, gestational diabetes (with no history of diabetes), blood clots, etc. Even if none of those occurs, childbirth itself comes with its own risks of fatal blood loss and other risks. Women with every intention of becoming a mother can die. If you did not attend medical school and have no medical background, you have absolutely no business opining on when an abortion is medically necessary or not. This is not just a "difference of opinion."
49
Or like how some use midwives for birth, they can use non-doctors to perform the procedure. Or better yet, continue to work on a pill or similarly easier procedure that doesn't require a doctor at all.
3
The data are shocking! If 20 women, on average, die per 100,000 births, that means that the risk of dying is 1 out 5,000. That is staggering. And, that's in 21st century America!
Plus, the risk goes up, way up, for certain groups of women, depending on their age, socio-economic status, diet, health care, medical condition, personal history, etc.
If these data were more widely known, including those for groups at higher risk, far more people would use contraception, far fewer women would want to become pregnant, more men would think twice before risking the life of their partner or spouse, more women (if they could afford it) would seek out better medical care during pregnancy, and more would weigh their serious risks in deciding whether they should have an abortion.
A thoughtful, valuable contribution to the discussion. It's one more reason that such decisions should be the province of women and not rightwing male legislators!
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@Marsha Pembroke America is really behind most first world countries when it comes to medical care for the average person. Yes, it's great if you're a billionaire maybe but not for most of us.
(The "maybe" is because there are actually studies that show famous people, celebrities, the rich, etc. are counterintuitively given poor care by star-struck or syncophantic doctors, nurses, etc. who would rather give them what they want vs. what they need (e.g. high doses of pain meds vs. an honest talk about substance abuse). I also knew someone who took care of celebrities who was well-regarded because he was upfront with them about their health issues.)
Let us be clear: pregnancy always puts a woman's life at risk. Pregnancy changes our bodies in ways that are different for everyone, but my body and health have never been quite as good as beofre I had my children.
I had a relatively uneventful twin pregnancy but still required a c-section (major surgery) since my son was stuck under my ribs. If he was under my ribs and his sister below him, where was my stomach? Where were my lungs? Where was my bladder? They were all moved aside and have never really gone back to where they exactly belong. My joints are now looser, my back has problems and my abdominal muscles are pushed off to the side. I chose to have my wonderful children and having them is worth all of the physical issues. I have no doubt that having them will shorten my lifespan.
When we look at the maternal mortaility rate in the United States, death is always a possibility when giving birth. When we say that the health and life of the woman matters, then abortion must be legal in all cases because our health is always impacted. It should only be the woman's choice if she wants to put her body and health through the impact and risk of gestating and birthing a child.
143
@Kate "Should be" is always tricky. Ask anybody drafted into war, or incarcerated or shot by police by "mistake." Or a soldier, police or firefighter being ordered to move into harm's way. Or being forced to buy health insurance, or pay ever more taxes each year while deficits continue to climb.
2
@David
Nobody forces you to become a cop or firefighter--or a soldier either, since we no longer have a draft. As for being shot by a cop by "mistake"--seems like that mostly happens to people of color, and I (a white person) am totally sick of the racism and the cops' impunity. The first abortion I ever heard of was on a 13-year-old raped by her grandfather. She didn't have a choice about being raped--should she not have a choice about bearing a child? As for being forced to buy health insurance--that is another discussion.
11
@David If you don't like paying higher taxes to fund deficits, stop voting for Republicans.
4
This is a wedge issue, and is being exploited (via propaganda) as such. Both sides of the political aisle are complicit in driving the wedge, though thanks to a more cohesive messaging and propaganda machine, Republicans tend to be a bit more cohesive and effective, whereas Democrats tend to be more reactive (at least, over couple of decades).
2
@Tom You're absolutely right. The framing of the debate is such that it can go on forever without effecting any serious change or prompting any substantial action. The pro-lifers almost never stop to consider the rights of women, the pro-choicers almost never stop to consider the life of the child. With pre-set conclusions and well-tred talking points, this 'debate' is little more than a way to shore up votes on both sides of the aisle.
The New York Times can do better this, but I'm afraid it's an equal/opposite Trump. The Times has committed to belligerent, degrading discourse that makes its readers feel validated and its foes look evil.
3
@Tom Cohesive? Screaming nonsense like women are aborting their pregnancies after delivering them is hardly cohesive.
1
Nothing will prevent abortions to be performed. The only question is whether it should be legal and safer or illegal and not as safe. If the actual overturn of abortion rights happens then they will simply be performed either in a different state/country where it is legal or illegally. Many woman will not need a surgical abortion but simply obtain the needed pills on the internet (having little pills send anonymously to them from who knows where). The only problem is that those rare cases where the pill abortions need medical attention the woman will either not get it or get it later than she should. The collateral damage will be that the much larger number of woman who suffer a miscarriage will be subjected to criminal investigations to figure out if they caused it themselves.
51
@Ivan: The bland assurance that women who want abortions will always be able to get them is maddening. Back before Roe v. Wade, I had several friends and acquaintances who wanted abortions for their unplanned, unwelcome, life-disrupting pregnancies but were unable to get them. When a trip to a foreign country is the one way, many women, especially young ones who were students and who would have to forfeit their futures, lack the money to do that. Abortionists sometimes were forced not to take on any new cases because of pressure from the authorities or whatever. So please stop spouting the lie that abortions will be available to those who need them even if they are banned.
5
This doesn't seem like a productive argument path where you're comparing a risk of death (to mother) with a guaranteed procedure for death (to embryo/fetus). It can only backfire in my opinion. As with some of the comments below, a more effective argument seems to be the right of an autonomous being to control their reproductive path. I don't think those who dispute this latter viewpoint would be any more convinced by Hern's argument.
9
@s.s.c.
The day you can be forced to donate your liver, kidney, or bone marrow against your will, to save the life of another person - that is the day you can force me to donate my entire body and risk my life to bring an embryo to term.
10
@s.s.c. It certainly counters to ridiculous, non-science based arguments about abortion bans being about women's health.
3
@s.s.c. Men get no say in their reproduction AFTER they've reproduced. Maybe women need to use their autonomy and control their reproductive path BEFORE they get pregnant and carry another life within them.
1
"Every pregnancy poses a 'serious health risk' to the mother" Sure. Maybe any woman who wants to become pregnant should require a prescription from a doctor and be required to sign a waiver form. It's ridiculous arguments like these that spur the pro-life movement and enable the passage of extreme anti-abortion legislation. Keep up the good work Dr. Hern.
14
@Jay Orchard I was pregnant twice. I almost died twice. I have only one living child. And I'm a middle class, educated white woman from the greatest state in the Union. Dr Hern is correct, the minute one becomes pregnant, one is facing death.
279
Are you saying she's wrong? She's absolutely correct. Just because women get pregnant every day doesn't mean it's not a serious health risk. Physicians do evaluate their patients of child bearing age if they intend to get pregnant to look for potential complications. Even a perfectly healthy pregnancy is a major physical undertaking. It's not just wearing a larger trouser size for a few months, you know.
40
@Dixie Lee
Sorry about that Dixie. But if people took Dr. Hern seriously, he likely wouldn't be here today to make his ridiculous argument.
2
Thank you for your excellent article. I hope those who need to read it, do. It is their willful ignorance that needs to be challenged and corrected.
64
A great piece, Dr. Hern. I'm especially glad that you pointed out the racial implications of Alabama's new statute, which I'm sure were not lost on the Alabama legislature.
I suggest, however, that you not go to Alabama. As we know from multiple incidents, some of the so-called pro-life folk (including, perhaps, some Alabama legislators) are such worshipers of every human life that they will kill to prevent abortions.
155
Google abortion in the US. We need to educate ourselves on the facts.
2
@Joe Public No one is forcing women, black, white, or green, to have abortions. Therefore, your argument doesn't make sense. Instead we have legislators forcing women to give birth. How would you like it if there was a law forcing all men to have vasectomies after age 50, because their children are at higher risk of autism? Practically no one likes someone else making medical decisions for them when they are able to do it themselves.
1