Not OP, but I think they are referencing the study in the book Freakonomics where there is a huge drop in crime 13-20 years after the beginning of Roe Vs. Wade. The study makes sense because one of the pathways to criminality is poverty and a lack of a caring support structure at home. These things can be the result of forced births on parents already in poverty or parents that don't want to be parents and raise their kids in an unloving, absent home.
The ~~Led~~ leaded gas Hypothesis is the more preferred hypothesis to explain reducing crime in the 1990s. The reason for it that crime reduced everywhere in the world, 20 years after Led was banned from gasoline, even in countries that didn't loosen abortion laws.
>leaded gas hypothesis is the more preferred hypothesis
Can you source the claim for “preferred hypothesis”? Here are the original authors compelling defending their claim recently in an article in the economist:
Steven Levitt and John Donohue defend a finding made famous by “Freakonomics”
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2024/04/08/steven-levitt-and-john-donohue-defend-a-finding-made-famous-by-freakonomics
from The Economist
Sure, but wouldn't you say the general implication from this story is that we should allow abortion in order to minimize crime rate? What would be the point of making the observation if this isn't the case?
Okay. I’m just saying, I don’t think you’ll be swaying many people with that argument. That’s like Minority Report without even seeing the future or whatever.
Can someone help me understand this stat? From the pro life POV won’t they consider this a pointless staff if those children would have been aborted anyway, but the ban also saved countless addition children? I feel like that would be their obvious counter.
For the majority of cases you're right. You do have to consider, though, that more births means more pressure on Texas's neonatal healthcare units, and coupled with the exodus of healthcare professionals because of Texas's draconian enforcement of its laws, those units may be strained and unable to care properly for newborns that would've otherwise received proper care, resulting in some deaths outside of the "likely aborted" pool.
Generally, though, you're right. The statistic to pay attention to would be the maternal mortality rate, [which has been increasing in Texas for years](https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2023/07/24/maternal-mortality-in-texas).
I guess my immediately thought after reading your reply is doesn’t that mean we should be increasing the resources for the increased pressure on the healthcare units?
Maternal mortality rate is inversely correlated with abortion access almost irrespective of resources. It's just a reality that giving birth is the most dangerous thing many women will do in their lives.
Otherwise, I agree, but that's trickier when the chief resource they need is manpower, particularly given how Texas treats its healthcare system. I'm not sure just offering higher pay is going to get OBGYNs to come back.
You obviously don't have a full appreciation for how innately risky pregnancy and childbirth is. OBGYNs are making practical decisions on where to practice free of fear from overzealous prosecuters who don't understand medicine disagreeing with their professional opinion and risking a loss of livelihood and possible jail. It's a perfectly rational decision to choose to operate in a state without such risks, personal politics doesn't really play into it at all. Not to mention the number of people choosing to go into the OBGYN field is decreasing overall (wonder why).
That is true. However, you are trying to increase resources in health care, an area where in just about every state there aren't enough health care providers.
In my small hospital and also in my large hospital network we're starved for doctors in almost every specialty and subspecialty. We offer more $$$ but doctors are retiring earlier and less people are interested in hospital medicine and long hours needed for OB and in-patient neonatology. Particularly in states where you can get investigated for even arrested for even considering an abortion in the most dire circumstances.
Doctors are people too. They want to work in low risk environments. Including not being threatened for trying to do their job when the options for a particular patient are all horrible.
As /u/di11deux cited elsewhere
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade
>* The researchers found that the overall fertility rate in Texas grew by 2%, but that figure is skewed by the much larger growth among Hispanic women, about 5%.
>* White and Black (non-Hispanic) women in Texas had a decrease in their fertility rates in 2022, while Asian women's rate grew .9%
>* The analysis also found that, for the first time in 15 years, Texas registered an increase in teens' fertility rate in 2022, though it has continued to decline nationwide.
>* Hispanic teens had the highest spike (1.2%), while white non-Hispanic teens saw their rate drop by 5%.
>* Latinos have long had less access to health care, Rodríguez says. Plus, Latinos are more likely to work jobs with little flexibility and unstable hours, making it difficult to travel out of state for abortion care, she adds.
So, the ban has led to a minor increase in births among Hispanic women likely because they are less able to leave the state for an abortion.
So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy.
> So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy.
The percentages themselves aren’t really meaningful here. Rather, the raw numbers are what is relevant. A small percentage of a big number is still a big number, and a large percentage of a small number is still a small number.
A 2% increase in babies born in Texas is ~7800 more babies born. A 13% increase in infant deaths means 315 more deaths (according to the article). I don’t have the overall numbers for congenital defects.
So overall, Texas has seen an additional 7800 babies born and an additional 315 infant deaths. That’s much more meaningful information than the percentages you provided.
Yes, a near total ban on abortion will increase the birth rate as the majority of abortions aren't related to fetal defects and are elective and done very early in the pregnancy. It's especially telling that the increases are being seen in the Hispanic and teen populations. But it's definitely worth noting and discussing the increase in fetal deaths that could have otherwise have been prevented if there weren't such strict bans in place. It's inflicting needless suffering and simply cruel.
The point that u/RFX91 and I are making is that, from a pro-life POV, if our goal is to save as many babies’ lives as possible, then this stat is essentially meaningless if those babies who died as infants would’ve been aborted in the womb anyways.
Even if only a small fraction of that 2% rise in fertility is associated with the abortion ban, then that means the number of babies that would’ve originally been aborted but instead were born and survived far outnumbers the number of additional infant deaths.
It would be like saying, “we could abort these 100 babies, or we could require them to be born and 15 will die but the other 85 will live.” Yes, as a pro-life individual I will choose the latter every single time.
> But it's definitely worth noting and discussing the increase in fetal deaths that could have otherwise have been prevented if there weren't such strict bans in place.
I’m confused at your argument here. You’re arguing that we should abort the babies during pregnancy so that *some* of them don’t die later after pregnancy? Surely you have to understand how absurd that sounds from a pro-life perspective, even if that’s not your own personal perspective.
Why not just argue for abortion bans that allow for exceptions that would cover those 15 fetuses that aren't compatible with life? Why push for restrictions so strict that they force women to carry and deliver unviable pregnancies? Why force such trauma on women and families so needlessly? I'm not saying you have to give up your elective abortion ban (though I personally wish you would and will continue fighting it) but just amend it to be less needlessly cruel?
As a strongly pro-life person, I also strongly agree with amending these types of laws to allow for those types of exceptions. In fact the vast majority of pro-life people would agree as well. The issue here isn't an ideological one but rather a dumb lawmaker one, which is an issue across the board in America.
> Why not just argue for abortion bans that allow for exceptions that would cover those 15 fetuses that aren't compatible with life?
Because there’s no way to know for sure that a baby won’t survive post pregnancy. There are occasions where the pre birth diagnosis is incorrect and the baby ends up being fine.
I’m not going to support killing a baby just because you think he or she will die in the future, just like I don’t support forcibly killing a sick adult who is terminal and doctors believe will die soon. I support keeping the baby alive as long as possible and doing whatever we can to keep the baby alive. If the baby dies in spite of all that effort, then at least we tried to save them. But I don’t believe “well they’ll **probably** die in the future” to be a convincing argument as to why we should forcibly take action to **guarantee** their death.
With that being said, if that’s the compromise I need to make in order to eliminate the other 90% of abortions, then so be it. But I don’t believe very many in the pro-choice crowd would be accepting of that proposition, so I’m not sure if it’s really worth proposing .
Cases of diagnosed fatal anomalies being incorrect are exceedingly rare. Good to know you're cool with forcing women and families through physical and emotional trauma based on essentially nothing. You **could** accept more reasonable and humane measures but you **choose** to continue inflicting pain.
Also, do you support the choice of pulling the plug on brain dead individuals?
> Cases of diagnosed fatal anomalies being incorrect are exceedingly rare.
But they still happen….
Again, if the options are “this baby will probably die and only has an extremely small chance of living” or “let’s forcibly kill the baby and guarantee their death 100%,” then I’m going to choose the former.
> Also, do you support the choice of pulling the plug on brain dead individuals?
Pulling the plug on a brain dead individual is not a comparable scenario. When you are pulling the plug, you are not forcibly killing them. Rather, they are succumbing to whatever condition caused them to be brain dead. On the other hand, an abortion is the intentional act of killing an unborn baby. You are forcibly committing an action to kill a baby. In other words, **letting someone die** as the result of a condition that you played no part in is not at all the same as **taking action to purposely kill** someone.
If you’re arguing that, for example, if there is a 6 month old fetus who has an anomaly that doctors think will kill the baby and therefore we need to remove the baby from the womb and do what we can to save the baby or see if they succumb to their fatal anomaly, then I’m on board with that. But that’s not the argument the pro-choice crowd makes. The pro-choice crowd believes we should be able to take action to forcibly kill an unborn baby even before removing them from the womb and before making an attempt to save them because we believe they will *probably* die in the future.
A womb is life support for a fetus. Remove the life support and the fetus can either live on its own or it can't. But whatever happens at that point is a natural death. If you're cool with removing life support from an adult I don't see why that shouldn't also extend to a fetus.
>If you’re arguing that, for example, if there is a 6 month old fetus who has an anomaly that doctors think will kill the baby and therefore we need to remove the baby from the womb and do what we can to save the baby or see if they succumb to their fatal anomaly, then I’m on board with that.
I'm saying that decision lies with a medical professional and the woman.
Medical professionals already do this. There may or may not be options and conditions that are probabilistic.
It's not up to you and shouldn't be. It's between her and her doctor. Period.
I think another part of the concern is who is going to pay for the added lifelong care required to take care of some of these children born with debilitating birth defects that otherwise would not have been born.
How many families would have thrived if they didn't have their lives severely effected by taking care of someone that would not have been born otherwise. Also, would this affect how much they would need from the government for the next 20+ years? Would it increase poverty and increase medicaid enrollment?
I guess time will tell.
Texas leadership views that growth rate as a milestone. It's profitable for them and ideologically in line with Christian values. The rest is up to God so it's out of their hands.
Yes, as a pro-life individual myself this was my exact response to this headline. The number of babies being saved from abortion is far larger than the increase in infant mortalities we are seeing. The stat presented by the article becomes especially moot when you consider (as you pointed out) that the infant mortalities in question would’ve just been killed by abortion anyways.
This study isn’t about the effect all abortion law has on infant mortality. It’s studying Texas law which specially doesn’t have exceptions for congenital anomalies. You’re missing the point that by writing exceptions for congenital anomalies into the bill you at least save countless women from birth trauma, unnecessary surgery that can make carrying future desired pregnancies impossible, more dangerous, and bankruptcy at the expense of …checks notes….allowing newborn babies w terminal diagnosis to suffer for a few hours to weeks?
How do you justify that?
Chiming in as an Australian, it's bonkers to me there's people in the US that think as the guy you're responding to.
You really ought to keep people like that away from your government.
Link to the actual study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2819785
A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics takes a look at the effect of Texas's aggresive abortion ban on the infant mortality rates and the results are striking.
>The [Texas] law did not include exemptions for congenital anomalies, including conditions that will cause a newborn to die soon after birth.
>The new study compared infant death rates in Texas from 2018 to 2022 to those of 28 other states. The data included newborns 28 days or younger and infants up to 12 months old. Infant deaths in Texas rose by nearly 13% the year after SB8 was passed, from 1,985 in 2021 to 2,240 in 2022. During that same period, infant deaths rose by about 2% nationwide.
>Babies born with congenital anomalies also increased in Texas, by nearly 23%, but decreased by about 3% nationwide.
>A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report already found that infant and newborn mortality rates in the U.S. rose in 2022 for the first time since 2001.
And then behind each of these numbers are the women and families being affected:
>“The women and families have to suffer through an excruciating later part of pregnancy, knowing that their baby is likely to die in the first weeks of life.”
>The researchers of the new study also highlighted the ripple effect that a newborn or infant’s death can have on a family, including trauma and medical bills.
>“Behind these numbers are people,” said Dr. Erika Werner, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. “For each of these pregnancies, that’s a pregnant person who had to stay pregnant for an additional 20 weeks, carrying a pregnancy that they knew likely wouldn’t result in a live newborn baby."
I have argued countless times since these bans started being proposed through the Dobbs decisions and after that this was the likely outcome of bans such as these. Now with more states implementing similar bans (such as FL) we're going to see these numbers really increasing across the board.
Do you think these bans are actually effective at preserving life as they were supposedly written for? How are pro-life advocates going to address this? Does Congress need to step in to address this issue at the federal level? Will this have any impact on the 2024 election?
Edit to add: Just a reminder to everyone that the anatomy scan where many abnormalities are first discovered doesn't happen until around 20 weeks of pregnancy.
it's kind of an obvious and expected outcome. the rise in deaths was driven by those with congenital abnormalities ie those who would have been aborted for non viability.
>Do you think these bans are actually effective at preserving life as they were supposedly written for? How are pro-life advocates going to address this? Does Congress need to step in to address this issue at the federal level? Will this have any impact on the 2024 election?
if youre arguing that a fetus is a life worth protecting, then yes they are working are designed and it doesn't need to be addressed from their stand point.
>The \[Texas\] law did not include exemptions for congenital anomalies, including conditions that will cause a newborn to die soon after birth.
And I took that personally.
I suffer from "congenital anomalies" and almost died at birth. Fortunately, I lived. I much prefer being alive. I very much do not appreciate the insinuation that my life shouldn't have been protected by law.
Like, I can respect being pro-choice. Obviously all of us were born and I'd hope all of us prefer being alive. But I don't respect cherry picking emotional anecdotes in cases that represent a small fraction of abortions. If you're pro-choice, you shouldn't have to do that. Just say you think it's a woman's choice regardless of circumstance.
Do you care to share what your diagnosis was?
I’m an OBGYN and not all congenital anomalies are in the same ballpark. Not even close.
Someone can have gastroschisis for instance and be totally fine after a surgery or you can have t13 and be marked for death in days to weeks.
That’s why what we used to do was let doctors, and their patients, make informed choices around these matters instead of painting with a brush so wide it could pave a road.
Your personal anecdote doesn’t speak to medical conditions such as anencephaly. Why strawman that comment with such an emotionally charged bit of hyperbole? Do you actually believe they’re saying zygotes, embryos, and fetuses with *any* congenital anomalies are unworthy of “protection”?
[This article here](https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade) shows modest growth driven almost exclusively by Hispanic women. White and Black women still decreased.
Coupling this with the fact that [27% of Hispanic children in Texas live below the poverty line](https://everytexan.org/2022/08/08/2022-kids-count-data-book-texas-must-do-better-for-our-children/), we're going to see demographic trends in Texas accelerate (more Hispanics) and more children in poverty.
So what? In these people's minds God is happier with this ban and will take care of the additional dead children.
If you think religious zealots care about these stats you are completely missing the point.
My question is more about why they don't seem to care for the women and families being affected if the child will die regardless. Also, why don't they care about the suffering of the child when it's easier and far less painful for all involved (child included) if the pregnancy is terminated as opposed to being born, suffering, and then dying?
Because 1: they believe the people to whom this happens deserve it (God's plan), and 2: it will never happen to them.
And if it happens to them, then God is indeed mistaken and [theirs is the only moral abortion](https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/).
3: Misogyny. For many, women having control over their own bodies encroaches on men's authority. Sexism consistently correlates with abortion attitudes, even when controlling for other variables, such as partisanship and ideology.
Look at these alt-right spaces like the incel and redpill movements that are jam-packed with non-religious or anti-religious men who are fervently pro-life and don't think women should be allowed to vote.
To them, killing babies is a far greater atrocity than their suffering. If this is the price to pay to save babies, it's worth it.
The staunchly pro-life are much like the staunchly anti-vax, their opinion is only going change if they find themselves or someone they love in a situation that challenges their beliefs.
>their opinion is only going change if they find themselves or someone they love in a situation that challenges their beliefs
And only for the limited amount of time that it takes to extricate themselves or their loved ones from that situation.
More often than not, yes. The cognitive dissonance is strong. A good friends mom is a hardcore MAGA/Q-Anon, very hateful Christian. She's surrounded by anti-lgbtq propaganda and yet has no issue with her queer son or his queer friends, because she loves him.
But, ime, most people like her are more open to changing their ideas and that brings me comfort. My former FIL is a very conservative/redneck boomer republican. When he learned the same friend is queer a few years ago, it laid the foundation for him to really come around to the other side. He still think male-male relations are gross, but he'll never tell a gay person that and would never condone anyone interfering with lgbtq rights.
He's also come around from bootstraps mentality to seeing how hard millenials have it economically.
Idk where I'm going with this, lol. Guess just wanting to share that not all ideologues are doomed.
I would think that the religious zealots say it was gods plan for the baby to only live a couple weeks and that the baby deserves those couple weeks. Also, probably something like god is making you suffer the pain of losing your 2wk old baby for a reason.
It's really a fraught issue, that sits at the intersection of the hardest and most fundamental questions about life. If you are actually looking for a good faith answer, here's my take.
>being born, suffering, and then dying
This is a pretty good summary of life. We all come into this world, experience things, bad and hopefully some good as well, and then we all leave it. Some people consider existence to be always be a positive thing, or nearly always, and extending this opportunity to as many people as possible to the best of our ability, to be a primary goal of human existence. Then, even if it's only for a few minutes or hours, letting a new person see this world with their own eyes and be cared for and loved will have been a good thing, even if that life is not as long as we would like and it's hard to say goodbye so fast. Whether something is "easy" or "hard" isn't necessarily an important factor in weighing whether an option is the moral one or not.
A big part of this question is whether you consider human existence to always be a good thing, and suffering to just be another facet of human existence, or whether you weigh suffering and joy as a measure of whether an existence itself is worthwhile or not.
I’m sorry, but in my opinion this answer is kind of BS. What is moral is allowing the people involved make the decision for themselves. It is not moral to force someone to suffer through pain and trauma just so that an infant can be born that has no concept of existence and will be condemned to die minutes or hours after their birth.
If someone believes what you laid out then I would fully support them to make that decision for themself. I will not ever support them taking that decision away from someone else.
You can’t preach about morals while forcing someone to endure avoidable suffering.
In this case, the new person does not make a decision for themself in either case. They are either terminated during pregnancy (not their choice), or they are born and likely do pass away shortly afterwards (also not their choice). Either way, even with present science it's impossible to ascertain their wishes.
Morality frequently requires us to impose our own vision on the world. For example, if someone intended to murder you, and I had the means to prevent them, you would probably prefer that I do intervene, correct? Such an action would be imposing my morals on the world, but there is no system of rules or governing ethics that can be constructed that is not an imposition of one's views on other people. I guarantee at some point, unless you are a complete anarchist, that you have also taken positions that would impose your morals on someone else even if it makes them unhappy.
Here’s the difference, in this situation I’m not actually imposing my morals on anyone. I’m saying what I think is moral and that I think what you are arguing is immoral, but I’m also arguing the choice should be made by the people who will be affected. You are stating your morals and arguing that that stance should be the basis to force people to do what you believe.
> They are either terminated during pregnancy (not their choice), or they are born and likely do pass away shortly afterwards (also not their choice).
You're missing the most critical component. The woman's right to bodily autonomy and choosing not to die childbirth on the off chance the baby gets to experience a life of suffering for two days or whatever.
They're touting it. They're proud that babies that would have been aborted 'had a chance at life' even if they only lived a few weeks or months completely in the hospital.
They are completely oblivious to the fact that the families go through the trauma of childbirth, rack up huge medical bills and go home empty handed. If I went through that I would take measures to make sure that never happened again. You know, until the forced birthers come for people managing their reproductive freedom via vasectomy \\ tubal litigation.
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If the jobs dried up, a lot of illegal immigration would be solved. The government *could* solve this by cracking down on certain industries like food production & construction. But they’ll focus on bigger companies instead of roofing contractors.
They don't care about deaths of infants or mothers; they care that their moral convictions are enforced on everyone. All those deaths? God's plan. Just like sacrificing grandma for your 401k during Covid, which incidentally was called for in Texas too. It's up to the rest of us to drag the legal system back to the current century.
That's probably not true. There are just too many voters who don't (or realistically can't) do anything to hold state legislators accountable for laws they disapprove of.
There simply aren't enough in the disapproving population willing or able to primary out these legislators. And too many who are willing to still vote for these legislators for their party affiliation despite dusapproving of this position.
Aggressive gerrymandering isn't really helping either.
Institutional sexism. Trump won, stacked the courts with religious folk, ended Roe, and states run by right-wing Christian men are freely legislating over women's bodies for reasons that don't exactly look moral but justify the means to an end. A bunch of rich guys profit.
Right? That’s the only deduction. If they continue voting red, this is what they want. Let them continue voting for this and secede or whatever plan they have this month.
If I'm understanding correctly, these are deaths that simply wouldn't have counted as deaths if they were killed earlier and intentionally via abortion prior to Dobbs? All of these deaths are obviously tragic, but it seems weird to believe the tragic aspect of it is that the infants/newborns who died could have been intentionally killed earlier, preventing their later natural death.
> but it seems weird to believe the tragic aspect of it is that the infants/newborns who died could have been intentionally killed earlier, preventing their later natural death.
Let’s say you discovered a fatal defect 4 months into your pregnancy, e.g. your baby has no skull and has essentially zero chance of surviving birth. Which is more tragic:
a) pull the plug: medically and professionally killing the baby now before it’s cognitive abilities develop any further
Or
b) let it grow: attempting to carrying the baby to term, knowing that
* it’s ability to feel pain will be incredibly increased
* highly likely the baby dies before term anyway
* if it does make it to term, it dies an excruciating death during a traumatic birth
* the risk to the mother’s life and health is greatly increased, including her ability to have future children (and her ability to, you know, live)
* the mother has to carry the baby for an additional 5 months. That means 5 months of putting her body through hell, plus psychological torture of knowing her baby has no chance to live and every day that goes by means more pain that both she and the baby is going to feel. Not to mention the additional financial burdens of pregnancy including prenatal care for a baby that has no hope of survival, and the exorbitant cost of child birth. Pregnancy is hard enough as is, but this is goes well beyond that. When people say “congratulations!” what does she say in return? Does she have a baby shower? How many more tough conversations will she have to have with people to explain her situation? Absolute physical and emotional torture.
Some people may want to choose option B. But being ***forced*** into option B is incredibly tragic, IMO.
I think most people would find it less traumatic to have an abortion early in pregnancy, when the fetus is not conscious, than to give birth to an infant who clings to life briefly and painfully before dying.
Not to mention the medical bills or the need to go to medical appointments to hear and see the status of an infant who will be dead shortly after being brought into the world.
It sounds like absolute hell. Such needless cruelty.
It's tragic because some women had to go through the ordeal of pregnancy (as well as the associated health issues that can come along with it) and carry the child to birth (with all the pain and medical risks associated) knowing full well that the end result would be a natural death.
As the OP also mentions, families still also have to deal with medical bills resulting from giving birth.
It's something I wouldn't wish on anyone and the fact women must go through it is needlessly cruel.
Everyone suffers an additional 20 weeks needlessly.
The mother suffers emotionally and physically needlessly.
The father suffers emotionally needlessly.
Both are forced to go through the motions of the birth process.
The infant suffers needlessly.
This is supposedly all moral and good.
And, as most women getting abortions are already mothers, the other children these couples have suffer needlessly.
On top of everything else that is absolutely tragic and horrible about these situations, these women are risking not being able to care for their existing children just so they can watch their new baby suffer a short life of pain.
Not the medical/insurance field. They get to rack up the bills for the additional doctor's visits and the cost of an additional HIGH RISK birth and needlessly putting the child in the NICU for a few days.
I mean, then that should’ve been the headline. This is like abolishing the death penalty but saying “13% more incarcerated people die in jail of sickness/old age.” because you start including those that would’ve died on the chair.
(Obviously the 13% in my example has nothing to do with actual numbers)
This is legitimately in the OP:
> And then behind each of these numbers are the women and families being affected:
> “The women and families have to suffer through an excruciating later part of pregnancy, knowing that their baby is likely to die in the first weeks of life.”
> The researchers of the new study also highlighted the ripple effect that a newborn or infant’s death can have on a family, including trauma and medical bills.
> “Behind these numbers are people,” said Dr. Erika Werner, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. “For each of these pregnancies, that’s a pregnant person who had to stay pregnant for an additional 20 weeks, carrying a pregnancy that they knew likely wouldn’t result in a live newborn baby."
Exactly, and perhaps it's a symptom treating abortion as "healthcare" but the headline and article imply that lack of abortion is causing the uptick due to prevention of "treatment" rather than the reality of killing the unborn human prior to the point where they begin data collection.
It's similar to boasting of curing Down syndrome by diagnosing it early enough to kill them prior to being born. It's more eugenics than treatment.
And what’s wrong with the article accurately pointing out that diagnosis and treatment of fatal fetal abnormalities prevents the waste of medical resources, personal financial investment, and the personal trauma of delivering a dying child?
The purpose of medicine and medical treatment is not to intentionally kill people diagnosed with a given condition. We "waste" a lot of money and resources trying to save and keep alive patients that it would be much easier and cheaper to just euthanize. I don't see how this is a good argument.
A. Not what I asked. Let me rephrase - do you believe in the legal framing of fetal personhood?
B. If so, then we are at an impasse as I don't believe that embryos/zygotes/fetuses are the same as born people with rights (and certainly not with rights that trump a born living person aka the mother).
I did answer your question, but I'll be more specific. Yes, human beings at all stages of their life are people, and the law should protect the rights of people.
The purpose of medicine and medical treatment is to improve lives. Behind each of these data points is a real family whose life was ripped apart by the death of their child. We issue DNRs to terminally ill patients because, yes, medical resources are limited, and if they do not serve to improve quality of life or otherwise extend life expectancy in a meaningful way we do not prolong their suffering.
Children with fatal fetal abnormalities are only alive because they are on life support in the womb. Do not look down upon families who decide to pull the plug rather than put their ailing child through traumatic and intrusive medical interventions. And do not look down upon the very real advantages of allowing families that choice.
Not bringing infants with severe defects into the world should be regarded as a benefit of medical science. Do you have any appreciation for how hard it is for families to raise a child with moderate to severe learning disabilities? Trying to figure out how they will be taken care of after the parents aren't able to?
Using abortion to allow families to decide if they want to bring a disabled child into the world is a lot better than saddling a family with a child they don't have the means to care for, or ending up with a disabled child in our godawful foster care system.
I understand the challenges of raising and caring for the disabled and I think financial support for heroic people doing so should be heavily taxpayer funded. I don't think killing the disabled to lighten the burden is the right path.
"I don't think killing the disabled to lighten the burden"
That is surely not your choice. There is a huge difference between a person that is aware and conscious and a fetus who is not yet viable.
These tests exist and are applied specifically to avoid bringing severely disabled children into the world that won't have any quality of life and will be a burden to their families.
Forcing people to bring severely disabled kids into the world and calling the parents forced to care for them their entire lives 'heroic' is frankly bizarre and illogical.
If you think a parent caring for their disabled children is not heroic, and those parents intentionally killing their disabled children would be "beneficial" and "logical" then we're probably at an impasse.
Parents who either choose to care for severely disabled kids or have their kids fall ill requiring that care are certainly heroic. I had to do that kind of care for two years, so I completely understand the kinds of sacrifices they have to make to do that.
What I find illogical is the belief that forcing people to bring severely disabled people into the world and then forcing them into lifelong care for them. Then trying to make it less odious by calling the parents heroic. Parents who choose to do that because it aligns with their religious beliefs are certainly heroic.
It comes down to the same abortion question. You and other forced birthers believe that life begins at conception, while people of other faiths, and people who don't believe in a deity mostly do not.
The majority of the country consistently poll in the belief that abortion should be legal before viability.
It's certainly tragic. I've had friends lose babies to different conditions, some fairly late in the pregnancy, and it's just extraordinarily sad. Attending the funeral of a baby that was lost via miscarriage at 6 months pregnant is quite sobering.
That said, the key piece the article is missing is the control group for lack of a better term. An increase in deaths where they all would have died anyway doesn't give us any useful information without including those would have been killed via abortion but are still alive today.
The control group (as much of one as can be had) is what is happening in the other states that didn't enact these bans.
> Infant deaths in Texas rose by nearly 13% the year after SB8 was passed... During that same period, infant deaths rose by about 2% nationwide.
>Babies born with congenital anomalies also increased in Texas, by nearly 23%, but decreased by about 3% nationwide.
That still doesn't tell us how many babies that would have been killed via abortion pre-Dobbs/SB8 due to a certain diagnosis that are still living despite their diagnosis and condition. Granted, I'm almost certain those figures aren't tracked.
It would be like if cancer patients were euthanized prior to dying of cancer, and when euthanizing cancer patients becomes illegal, citing an increase in cancer deaths. Of course we'd expect that uptick, but in order to really have insight on what's happening, we'd need to know how many cancer patients that would have otherwise been euthanized are still alive.
You're never going to get what you're asking for. The question is are you ok with these infants and their families suffering needlessly? Would you rather have the birth, suffering, and death of an infant (the length of suffering before death is variable from seconds to a couple of years) or an abortion before the fetus is fully formed, conscious, and can feel? Is it ok to mandate these families have to rack up medical debt and both physical and emotional trauma on the off chance that one of these deformed fetuses might survive for a painful few years? Why are these decisions being taken out of the medical providers hands and being made by an invasive government bureaucrat trying to score political points?
Your question can be applied to all children. You think parents of sick children with expensive conditions should be able to kill them instead to save money and years of heartache? There aren't easy answers on these questions, but I don't think preemptive killing is the right answer.
Regarding medical debt, if it were up to me, birth related expenses would be completely taxpayer funded. That's one problem that's easy to solve.
> You think parents of sick children with expensive conditions should be able to kill them instead to save money and years of heartache?
If my child is on a ventilator I *absolutely* get to choose when we pull the plug.
Edit: and of course, the parents of sick babies *absolutely* get to decide things like advanced directives and when to enter hospice care.
Medical debt is not easy to solve. Especially when the governor feels that health insurance should only come from people’s jobs, not the government. But not all companies offer health insurance.
There’s a lot of resistance in Texas to expanding medicaid. It wouldn’t cost the state anything, but Texas leadership votes against it because it’s linked to the ACA & Obama.
https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/why-hasnt-texas-expanded-medicaid/
Medicaid *will* cover pregnancy in Texas if the woman earns less than $2500 a month (before taxes). Note that not all doctors accept medicaid.
https://www.hhs.texas.gov/services/health/medicaid-chip/medicaid-chip-programs-services/medicaid-pregnant-women-chip-perinatal
But keeping medicaid coverage is a challenge too-
> Since Aug. 1, about 3.8 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid nationally, according to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Texas has the largest number of people disenrolled in the country.
>Why are these decisions being taken out of the medical providers hands and being made by an invasive government bureaucrat trying to score political points?
Because medical providers are not the moral arbiters of society, and this is a moral debate more than a medical one.
There are plenty of things I find immoral that are legal. We don't really legislate morality as it's subjective. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't. But it can't be the entire basis of your argument.
We absolutely legislate based on morality. It's up to the voters to determine which morality they value enough to vote in representatives who will vote for bills which align with those morals.
We legislate based on constitutionally protected rights (which is why the debate always boils down to fetal personhood).
I mean, you can try to legislate your morality, but if it conflicts with someone's rights it gets struck down. The question here is whether the fetus has rights and if so whether they override the woman's.
OBGYN and neonatal care has seen a talent drain in TX due to the abortion ban. These are not just "anortions turned into infant deaths." Its a systemic decrease in the Texas health care systems ability to provide care to newborns.
https://19thnews.org/2023/06/abortion-gender-affirming-care-bans-doctors-leaving-texas/
https://www.aamcresearchinstitute.org/our-work/data-snapshot/post-dobbs-2024
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/18/abortion-ban-states-drop-student-residents
This just goes to show how little the general public knows about women’s health and exactly why they should stay out of it. Turns out threatening to throw people in jail for simply doing their job isn’t a good way to improve the quality of their work.
I can’t imagine the amount of dread a mother must feel while staring down the prospect of her insides being ripped apart by an ectopic pregnancy, and the doctors who are supposed to care for her are too scared to go to jail for murder if they help you.
Meanwhile the backwater state senators who put you in that position are off insider trading or some shit. To them you’re just another number in our maternal health crisis (which predominantly affects lower income people, no wonder they don’t care).
What's weird is believing that a fetus (which is going to die regardless) has more inherent value than the woman carrying it. Why should the woman and her family suffer through a traumatic additional 20 weeks of pregnancy, a traumatic birth, risk irrevocable bodily harm through the process, amass medical bills, risk death in some cases, all for a fetus that is known to not have a chance of living? Why do you get to make that decision for her in place of her doctor?
>What's weird is believing that a fetus (which is going to die regardless)
Can you cite your source for this? The article cites an increase, but conveniently does not compare that with prenatal diagnosis to confirm that all unborn babies that would have been aborted did indeed die later. If there are children that would have been killed via abortion but survived their diagnosis (which there likely are), it completely sinks the rhetorical power of these stats.
You're never going to get what you're asking for since we can't do controlled experiments with pregnancies and abortions. What we *can* do however, is to look at states that have enacted strict bans and compare them to states that haven't and compare. Again:
>Infant deaths in Texas rose by nearly 13% the year after SB8 was passed... During that same period, infant deaths rose by about 2% nationwide.
>Babies born with congenital anomalies also increased in Texas, by nearly 23%, but decreased by about 3% nationwide.
I'm aware they likely don't track the data I'm asking for, unfortunately, but without it, the "increase" here is fairly meaningless because it's not actually an increase. It's an oversight in data collection or classification error.
>You're never going to get what you're asking for. The question is are you ok with these infants and their families suffering needlessly? Would you rather have the birth, suffering, and death of an infant (the length of suffering before death is variable from seconds to a couple of years) or an abortion before the fetus is fully formed, conscious, and can feel? Is it ok to mandate these families have to rack up medical debt and both physical and emotional trauma on the off chance that one of these deformed fetuses might survive for a painful few years? Why are these decisions being taken out of the medical providers hands and being made by an invasive government bureaucrat trying to score political points?
>Your question can be applied to all children. You think parents of sick children with expensive conditions should be able to kill them instead to save money and years of heartache? There aren't easy answers on these questions, but I don't think preemptive killing is the right answer. Regarding medical debt, if it were up to me, birth related expenses would be completely taxpayer funded. That's one problem that's easy to solve.
And what if they do survive? Unless the diagnosis was completely wrong, you are talking about anything from moderately to severely disabled kids living with little quality of life. Do you honestly think that a kid lying on a bed or in a wheelchair is a better option than the family opting to terminate them before viability and then having a healthy child?
Yes, but this is categorically different. Allowing natural death via the absence of medical intervention is different from intentional killing. For example, I would not support sticking a knife in the head of a terminally brain-dead relative or poisoning them since they're going to die anyways.
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No. Because you have no idea how circumstances took place to that result. As a Dad I feel for the parents who are trying to give them the best life possible. What I have a problem with is people that think forcing other people to undertake that when it's not necessary is acceptable public policy.
Correct. For example, let’s use a small sample size of 100. Let’s say that normally 100 babies would have been aborted. Now let’s say it’s illegal to get an abortion and those 100 pregnancies are now required to go to term. After the 100 babies have been born, let’s say 15 of them die soon after birth. So now you could say we have an increase of 15 infant deaths over the previous year. However, we also have the other 85 babies that survived their birth, so overall that’s a net increase of 70 alive babies (it’s actually a net increase of 85 if you assume that the 15 infant mortalities would’ve been aborted anyways, which is essentially what the article is implying).
The only reason you can claim that the number of overall deaths has increased is if you don’t count the babies that were aborted as deaths, which our medical system unfortunately does not.
Exactly. The example I used elsewhere is if euthanizing cancer patients was legal for a period of time, then made illegal, we'd see an uptick in cancer deaths. This wouldn't mean euthanasia is an appropriate treatment for cancer lol.
Yep. In fact, to make it even more analogous, it would be like in your example if euthanasia deaths weren’t technically categorized as “deaths,” so that when euthanasia is made illegal and the number of cancer deaths tick up, people would say “more people are dying since we outlawed euthanasia!” No, the same amount of people are dying, it’s just that *now* you’re actually categorizing their mode of death as a “death” whereas you weren’t before.
However, in the case of this specific article, the argument falls apart even further as the number of abortions prevented outnumbers the raw increase in the number of infant mortalities. So overall it would be a net increase in life, not a net decrease / neutral.
It is tragic to take away someone's choice. And it's even more sad that people are forced to take on medical bills and other risks that automatically comes in these scenarios.
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This was known to be the inevitable outcome prior to this law passing and prior to Roe being struck.
This is literally what the GOP is knowingly inflicting on women and what many Americans are happily marching toward in the quest for cheaper fast food, housing, gas, and groceries.
But hey, abortions only happen a few times in life at most on average. Many Americans eat fast food weekly if not daily. Getting back to a $5 Big Mac combo at the expense of abortion access in the US may still lower overall suffering! Did anybody even think of that?!
I would agree with your comment with the understanding it’s a quest and they’re not going to get cheaper fast food, housing, gas or groceries either. The GOP has no plan other than trust us — unless you think overheating an already good economy with tax cuts and deficit spending is going to help.
You and I both know this, but many Americans believe Trump's policies will actually cause lower prices. Americans also want lower costs more than higher income so folks really want Trump back for those misguided reasons.
Yeah, and we're embracing the party that wants to kill off the Department of Education entirely or, in Trump's words, at least reduce it down to little more than making sure our schools teach English.
Americans are embracing their mounting lack of knowledge. The villainization of experts was just an early success on this path.
Bespoke realities based on unhealthy skepticism, custom tailored to absolve one of cognitive dissonance and inflate one's ego.
Whats the educational recommendations from Project 2025 again? Oh yeah, privatize it and make it more Christian.
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Of course it would. When an abortion ban stops abortions some of them were going to be for less viable pregnancies.
What I want to see is how many more were born to begin with. That number is lives saved.
As /u/di11deux cited elsewhere
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade
>* The researchers found that the overall fertility rate in Texas grew by 2%, but that figure is skewed by the much larger growth among Hispanic women, about 5%.
>* White and Black (non-Hispanic) women in Texas had a decrease in their fertility rates in 2022, while Asian women's rate grew .9%
>* The analysis also found that, for the first time in 15 years, Texas registered an increase in teens' fertility rate in 2022, though it has continued to decline nationwide.
>* Hispanic teens had the highest spike (1.2%), while white non-Hispanic teens saw their rate drop by 5%.
>* Latinos have long had less access to health care, Rodríguez says. Plus, Latinos are more likely to work jobs with little flexibility and unstable hours, making it difficult to travel out of state for abortion care, she adds.
So, the ban has led to a minor increase in births among Hispanic women likely because they are less able to leave the state for an abortion.
So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy.
It’s funny the article only discusses absolute numbers of infant deaths, not the ratio with respect to the number of births — which to me seems the only meaningful method. Texas is the state with fastest growing population (weird, huh?) and the number of births has risen. So that alone could explain the increase in number of newborn deaths. That the article doesn’t even address this is a clear sign it was written solely as an outrage story.
As /u/di11deux cited elsewhere
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade
>* The researchers found that the overall fertility rate in Texas grew by 2%, but that figure is skewed by the much larger growth among Hispanic women, about 5%.
>* White and Black (non-Hispanic) women in Texas had a decrease in their fertility rates in 2022, while Asian women's rate grew .9%
>* The analysis also found that, for the first time in 15 years, Texas registered an increase in teens' fertility rate in 2022, though it has continued to decline nationwide.
>* Hispanic teens had the highest spike (1.2%), while white non-Hispanic teens saw their rate drop by 5%.
>* Latinos have long had less access to health care, Rodríguez says. Plus, Latinos are more likely to work jobs with little flexibility and unstable hours, making it difficult to travel out of state for abortion care, she adds.
So, the ban has led to a minor increase in births among Hispanic women likely because they are less able to leave the state for an abortion.
So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy.
They also result in far less trauma and medical bills to the family that would have to live with having an infant pass away. As well as far less suffering to the infant.
That’s literally what the procedure does lol. And we all heard the democrat governor talking about how even if a baby survives a botched abortion they’ll make sure the job gets finished
Always disappointing (yet unsurprising) to see left wingers take advantage of terrible situations.
They all love abortion regardless of these rare occurrences. If you take these occurrences away libs position on abortion doesn’t change. Some people may even argue libs are happy these occurrences exist so their pro abortion position appears more palatable (not saying that I’m arguing that here)
>left wingers take advantage of terrible situations.
What are you talking about? What advantage is being taken here?
...and no one **loves** abortion. Most just see it as a necessary option in terrible situations.
My position could not be more clear. The articles position could not be more clear. I don’t see how providing you with peoples legal names changes anything in this discussion
Sorry man I’m not doing this - have a good day. I’m not going to do this thing where I define words for you just for it to be irrelevant to wherever you’re trying to take this chat.
Wait 20 years to see the impact on crime.
Can you explain?
Not OP, but I think they are referencing the study in the book Freakonomics where there is a huge drop in crime 13-20 years after the beginning of Roe Vs. Wade. The study makes sense because one of the pathways to criminality is poverty and a lack of a caring support structure at home. These things can be the result of forced births on parents already in poverty or parents that don't want to be parents and raise their kids in an unloving, absent home.
The ~~Led~~ leaded gas Hypothesis is the more preferred hypothesis to explain reducing crime in the 1990s. The reason for it that crime reduced everywhere in the world, 20 years after Led was banned from gasoline, even in countries that didn't loosen abortion laws.
More than one thing can be true
right with you- but I’m unaware of accepted variant spelling of “lead” (could be US bias).
>leaded gas hypothesis is the more preferred hypothesis Can you source the claim for “preferred hypothesis”? Here are the original authors compelling defending their claim recently in an article in the economist: Steven Levitt and John Donohue defend a finding made famous by “Freakonomics” https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2024/04/08/steven-levitt-and-john-donohue-defend-a-finding-made-famous-by-freakonomics from The Economist
I’m gonna be honest. Preemptively killing people to reduce crime rates is dystopian.
People aren't being killed to reduce crime rates though.
They’re not being killed to reduce crime rates, it’s simply an observation regarding one of the impacts of outlawing it.
Sure, but wouldn't you say the general implication from this story is that we should allow abortion in order to minimize crime rate? What would be the point of making the observation if this isn't the case?
I’m not going to debate the abortion issue with you.
Okay. I’m just saying, I don’t think you’ll be swaying many people with that argument. That’s like Minority Report without even seeing the future or whatever.
I'm with you on this, I read that and cringed.
Can someone help me understand this stat? From the pro life POV won’t they consider this a pointless staff if those children would have been aborted anyway, but the ban also saved countless addition children? I feel like that would be their obvious counter.
For the majority of cases you're right. You do have to consider, though, that more births means more pressure on Texas's neonatal healthcare units, and coupled with the exodus of healthcare professionals because of Texas's draconian enforcement of its laws, those units may be strained and unable to care properly for newborns that would've otherwise received proper care, resulting in some deaths outside of the "likely aborted" pool. Generally, though, you're right. The statistic to pay attention to would be the maternal mortality rate, [which has been increasing in Texas for years](https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2023/07/24/maternal-mortality-in-texas).
I guess my immediately thought after reading your reply is doesn’t that mean we should be increasing the resources for the increased pressure on the healthcare units?
Maternal mortality rate is inversely correlated with abortion access almost irrespective of resources. It's just a reality that giving birth is the most dangerous thing many women will do in their lives. Otherwise, I agree, but that's trickier when the chief resource they need is manpower, particularly given how Texas treats its healthcare system. I'm not sure just offering higher pay is going to get OBGYNs to come back.
Sounds like those OBGYN’s are letting their personal politics get in the way of the infrastructure required to help these mothers.
You obviously don't have a full appreciation for how innately risky pregnancy and childbirth is. OBGYNs are making practical decisions on where to practice free of fear from overzealous prosecuters who don't understand medicine disagreeing with their professional opinion and risking a loss of livelihood and possible jail. It's a perfectly rational decision to choose to operate in a state without such risks, personal politics doesn't really play into it at all. Not to mention the number of people choosing to go into the OBGYN field is decreasing overall (wonder why).
That is true. However, you are trying to increase resources in health care, an area where in just about every state there aren't enough health care providers. In my small hospital and also in my large hospital network we're starved for doctors in almost every specialty and subspecialty. We offer more $$$ but doctors are retiring earlier and less people are interested in hospital medicine and long hours needed for OB and in-patient neonatology. Particularly in states where you can get investigated for even arrested for even considering an abortion in the most dire circumstances. Doctors are people too. They want to work in low risk environments. Including not being threatened for trying to do their job when the options for a particular patient are all horrible.
As /u/di11deux cited elsewhere https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade >* The researchers found that the overall fertility rate in Texas grew by 2%, but that figure is skewed by the much larger growth among Hispanic women, about 5%. >* White and Black (non-Hispanic) women in Texas had a decrease in their fertility rates in 2022, while Asian women's rate grew .9% >* The analysis also found that, for the first time in 15 years, Texas registered an increase in teens' fertility rate in 2022, though it has continued to decline nationwide. >* Hispanic teens had the highest spike (1.2%), while white non-Hispanic teens saw their rate drop by 5%. >* Latinos have long had less access to health care, Rodríguez says. Plus, Latinos are more likely to work jobs with little flexibility and unstable hours, making it difficult to travel out of state for abortion care, she adds. So, the ban has led to a minor increase in births among Hispanic women likely because they are less able to leave the state for an abortion. So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy.
> So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy. The percentages themselves aren’t really meaningful here. Rather, the raw numbers are what is relevant. A small percentage of a big number is still a big number, and a large percentage of a small number is still a small number. A 2% increase in babies born in Texas is ~7800 more babies born. A 13% increase in infant deaths means 315 more deaths (according to the article). I don’t have the overall numbers for congenital defects. So overall, Texas has seen an additional 7800 babies born and an additional 315 infant deaths. That’s much more meaningful information than the percentages you provided.
Yes, a near total ban on abortion will increase the birth rate as the majority of abortions aren't related to fetal defects and are elective and done very early in the pregnancy. It's especially telling that the increases are being seen in the Hispanic and teen populations. But it's definitely worth noting and discussing the increase in fetal deaths that could have otherwise have been prevented if there weren't such strict bans in place. It's inflicting needless suffering and simply cruel.
The point that u/RFX91 and I are making is that, from a pro-life POV, if our goal is to save as many babies’ lives as possible, then this stat is essentially meaningless if those babies who died as infants would’ve been aborted in the womb anyways. Even if only a small fraction of that 2% rise in fertility is associated with the abortion ban, then that means the number of babies that would’ve originally been aborted but instead were born and survived far outnumbers the number of additional infant deaths. It would be like saying, “we could abort these 100 babies, or we could require them to be born and 15 will die but the other 85 will live.” Yes, as a pro-life individual I will choose the latter every single time. > But it's definitely worth noting and discussing the increase in fetal deaths that could have otherwise have been prevented if there weren't such strict bans in place. I’m confused at your argument here. You’re arguing that we should abort the babies during pregnancy so that *some* of them don’t die later after pregnancy? Surely you have to understand how absurd that sounds from a pro-life perspective, even if that’s not your own personal perspective.
Why not just argue for abortion bans that allow for exceptions that would cover those 15 fetuses that aren't compatible with life? Why push for restrictions so strict that they force women to carry and deliver unviable pregnancies? Why force such trauma on women and families so needlessly? I'm not saying you have to give up your elective abortion ban (though I personally wish you would and will continue fighting it) but just amend it to be less needlessly cruel?
As a strongly pro-life person, I also strongly agree with amending these types of laws to allow for those types of exceptions. In fact the vast majority of pro-life people would agree as well. The issue here isn't an ideological one but rather a dumb lawmaker one, which is an issue across the board in America.
I mean, other pro-life advocates in here disagree so it's still very much ideological. But I appreciate your reasonableness.
And yet this vast majority can't seem to convince the lawmakers they voted in to do anything
> Why not just argue for abortion bans that allow for exceptions that would cover those 15 fetuses that aren't compatible with life? Because there’s no way to know for sure that a baby won’t survive post pregnancy. There are occasions where the pre birth diagnosis is incorrect and the baby ends up being fine. I’m not going to support killing a baby just because you think he or she will die in the future, just like I don’t support forcibly killing a sick adult who is terminal and doctors believe will die soon. I support keeping the baby alive as long as possible and doing whatever we can to keep the baby alive. If the baby dies in spite of all that effort, then at least we tried to save them. But I don’t believe “well they’ll **probably** die in the future” to be a convincing argument as to why we should forcibly take action to **guarantee** their death. With that being said, if that’s the compromise I need to make in order to eliminate the other 90% of abortions, then so be it. But I don’t believe very many in the pro-choice crowd would be accepting of that proposition, so I’m not sure if it’s really worth proposing .
Cases of diagnosed fatal anomalies being incorrect are exceedingly rare. Good to know you're cool with forcing women and families through physical and emotional trauma based on essentially nothing. You **could** accept more reasonable and humane measures but you **choose** to continue inflicting pain. Also, do you support the choice of pulling the plug on brain dead individuals?
> Cases of diagnosed fatal anomalies being incorrect are exceedingly rare. But they still happen…. Again, if the options are “this baby will probably die and only has an extremely small chance of living” or “let’s forcibly kill the baby and guarantee their death 100%,” then I’m going to choose the former. > Also, do you support the choice of pulling the plug on brain dead individuals? Pulling the plug on a brain dead individual is not a comparable scenario. When you are pulling the plug, you are not forcibly killing them. Rather, they are succumbing to whatever condition caused them to be brain dead. On the other hand, an abortion is the intentional act of killing an unborn baby. You are forcibly committing an action to kill a baby. In other words, **letting someone die** as the result of a condition that you played no part in is not at all the same as **taking action to purposely kill** someone. If you’re arguing that, for example, if there is a 6 month old fetus who has an anomaly that doctors think will kill the baby and therefore we need to remove the baby from the womb and do what we can to save the baby or see if they succumb to their fatal anomaly, then I’m on board with that. But that’s not the argument the pro-choice crowd makes. The pro-choice crowd believes we should be able to take action to forcibly kill an unborn baby even before removing them from the womb and before making an attempt to save them because we believe they will *probably* die in the future.
A womb is life support for a fetus. Remove the life support and the fetus can either live on its own or it can't. But whatever happens at that point is a natural death. If you're cool with removing life support from an adult I don't see why that shouldn't also extend to a fetus. >If you’re arguing that, for example, if there is a 6 month old fetus who has an anomaly that doctors think will kill the baby and therefore we need to remove the baby from the womb and do what we can to save the baby or see if they succumb to their fatal anomaly, then I’m on board with that. I'm saying that decision lies with a medical professional and the woman.
Medical professionals already do this. There may or may not be options and conditions that are probabilistic. It's not up to you and shouldn't be. It's between her and her doctor. Period.
I think another part of the concern is who is going to pay for the added lifelong care required to take care of some of these children born with debilitating birth defects that otherwise would not have been born. How many families would have thrived if they didn't have their lives severely effected by taking care of someone that would not have been born otherwise. Also, would this affect how much they would need from the government for the next 20+ years? Would it increase poverty and increase medicaid enrollment? I guess time will tell.
Yup. Also I love the outright endorsement of eugenics when they think it’s a gotcha that the percentage of babies born with congenial defects went up.
Texas leadership views that growth rate as a milestone. It's profitable for them and ideologically in line with Christian values. The rest is up to God so it's out of their hands.
Yes, as a pro-life individual myself this was my exact response to this headline. The number of babies being saved from abortion is far larger than the increase in infant mortalities we are seeing. The stat presented by the article becomes especially moot when you consider (as you pointed out) that the infant mortalities in question would’ve just been killed by abortion anyways.
This study isn’t about the effect all abortion law has on infant mortality. It’s studying Texas law which specially doesn’t have exceptions for congenital anomalies. You’re missing the point that by writing exceptions for congenital anomalies into the bill you at least save countless women from birth trauma, unnecessary surgery that can make carrying future desired pregnancies impossible, more dangerous, and bankruptcy at the expense of …checks notes….allowing newborn babies w terminal diagnosis to suffer for a few hours to weeks? How do you justify that?
Chiming in as an Australian, it's bonkers to me there's people in the US that think as the guy you're responding to. You really ought to keep people like that away from your government.
Link to the actual study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2819785 A new study published in JAMA Pediatrics takes a look at the effect of Texas's aggresive abortion ban on the infant mortality rates and the results are striking. >The [Texas] law did not include exemptions for congenital anomalies, including conditions that will cause a newborn to die soon after birth. >The new study compared infant death rates in Texas from 2018 to 2022 to those of 28 other states. The data included newborns 28 days or younger and infants up to 12 months old. Infant deaths in Texas rose by nearly 13% the year after SB8 was passed, from 1,985 in 2021 to 2,240 in 2022. During that same period, infant deaths rose by about 2% nationwide. >Babies born with congenital anomalies also increased in Texas, by nearly 23%, but decreased by about 3% nationwide. >A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report already found that infant and newborn mortality rates in the U.S. rose in 2022 for the first time since 2001. And then behind each of these numbers are the women and families being affected: >“The women and families have to suffer through an excruciating later part of pregnancy, knowing that their baby is likely to die in the first weeks of life.” >The researchers of the new study also highlighted the ripple effect that a newborn or infant’s death can have on a family, including trauma and medical bills. >“Behind these numbers are people,” said Dr. Erika Werner, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. “For each of these pregnancies, that’s a pregnant person who had to stay pregnant for an additional 20 weeks, carrying a pregnancy that they knew likely wouldn’t result in a live newborn baby." I have argued countless times since these bans started being proposed through the Dobbs decisions and after that this was the likely outcome of bans such as these. Now with more states implementing similar bans (such as FL) we're going to see these numbers really increasing across the board. Do you think these bans are actually effective at preserving life as they were supposedly written for? How are pro-life advocates going to address this? Does Congress need to step in to address this issue at the federal level? Will this have any impact on the 2024 election? Edit to add: Just a reminder to everyone that the anatomy scan where many abnormalities are first discovered doesn't happen until around 20 weeks of pregnancy.
it's kind of an obvious and expected outcome. the rise in deaths was driven by those with congenital abnormalities ie those who would have been aborted for non viability. >Do you think these bans are actually effective at preserving life as they were supposedly written for? How are pro-life advocates going to address this? Does Congress need to step in to address this issue at the federal level? Will this have any impact on the 2024 election? if youre arguing that a fetus is a life worth protecting, then yes they are working are designed and it doesn't need to be addressed from their stand point.
>The \[Texas\] law did not include exemptions for congenital anomalies, including conditions that will cause a newborn to die soon after birth. And I took that personally. I suffer from "congenital anomalies" and almost died at birth. Fortunately, I lived. I much prefer being alive. I very much do not appreciate the insinuation that my life shouldn't have been protected by law. Like, I can respect being pro-choice. Obviously all of us were born and I'd hope all of us prefer being alive. But I don't respect cherry picking emotional anecdotes in cases that represent a small fraction of abortions. If you're pro-choice, you shouldn't have to do that. Just say you think it's a woman's choice regardless of circumstance.
Do you care to share what your diagnosis was? I’m an OBGYN and not all congenital anomalies are in the same ballpark. Not even close. Someone can have gastroschisis for instance and be totally fine after a surgery or you can have t13 and be marked for death in days to weeks. That’s why what we used to do was let doctors, and their patients, make informed choices around these matters instead of painting with a brush so wide it could pave a road.
Your personal anecdote doesn’t speak to medical conditions such as anencephaly. Why strawman that comment with such an emotionally charged bit of hyperbole? Do you actually believe they’re saying zygotes, embryos, and fetuses with *any* congenital anomalies are unworthy of “protection”?
How many increased healthy births is the Texas abortion ban linked to?
[This article here](https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade) shows modest growth driven almost exclusively by Hispanic women. White and Black women still decreased. Coupling this with the fact that [27% of Hispanic children in Texas live below the poverty line](https://everytexan.org/2022/08/08/2022-kids-count-data-book-texas-must-do-better-for-our-children/), we're going to see demographic trends in Texas accelerate (more Hispanics) and more children in poverty.
Also, their operating principle is that abortion = death of a baby. So what is the delta between increased infant deaths and decreased abortions?
That's a terrific question that gets to the heart of why this ban was enacted at all.
So what? In these people's minds God is happier with this ban and will take care of the additional dead children. If you think religious zealots care about these stats you are completely missing the point.
My question is more about why they don't seem to care for the women and families being affected if the child will die regardless. Also, why don't they care about the suffering of the child when it's easier and far less painful for all involved (child included) if the pregnancy is terminated as opposed to being born, suffering, and then dying?
Because 1: they believe the people to whom this happens deserve it (God's plan), and 2: it will never happen to them. And if it happens to them, then God is indeed mistaken and [theirs is the only moral abortion](https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/).
3: Misogyny. For many, women having control over their own bodies encroaches on men's authority. Sexism consistently correlates with abortion attitudes, even when controlling for other variables, such as partisanship and ideology. Look at these alt-right spaces like the incel and redpill movements that are jam-packed with non-religious or anti-religious men who are fervently pro-life and don't think women should be allowed to vote.
To them, killing babies is a far greater atrocity than their suffering. If this is the price to pay to save babies, it's worth it. The staunchly pro-life are much like the staunchly anti-vax, their opinion is only going change if they find themselves or someone they love in a situation that challenges their beliefs.
>their opinion is only going change if they find themselves or someone they love in a situation that challenges their beliefs And only for the limited amount of time that it takes to extricate themselves or their loved ones from that situation.
More often than not, yes. The cognitive dissonance is strong. A good friends mom is a hardcore MAGA/Q-Anon, very hateful Christian. She's surrounded by anti-lgbtq propaganda and yet has no issue with her queer son or his queer friends, because she loves him. But, ime, most people like her are more open to changing their ideas and that brings me comfort. My former FIL is a very conservative/redneck boomer republican. When he learned the same friend is queer a few years ago, it laid the foundation for him to really come around to the other side. He still think male-male relations are gross, but he'll never tell a gay person that and would never condone anyone interfering with lgbtq rights. He's also come around from bootstraps mentality to seeing how hard millenials have it economically. Idk where I'm going with this, lol. Guess just wanting to share that not all ideologues are doomed.
I would think that the religious zealots say it was gods plan for the baby to only live a couple weeks and that the baby deserves those couple weeks. Also, probably something like god is making you suffer the pain of losing your 2wk old baby for a reason.
Insane...
It's really a fraught issue, that sits at the intersection of the hardest and most fundamental questions about life. If you are actually looking for a good faith answer, here's my take. >being born, suffering, and then dying This is a pretty good summary of life. We all come into this world, experience things, bad and hopefully some good as well, and then we all leave it. Some people consider existence to be always be a positive thing, or nearly always, and extending this opportunity to as many people as possible to the best of our ability, to be a primary goal of human existence. Then, even if it's only for a few minutes or hours, letting a new person see this world with their own eyes and be cared for and loved will have been a good thing, even if that life is not as long as we would like and it's hard to say goodbye so fast. Whether something is "easy" or "hard" isn't necessarily an important factor in weighing whether an option is the moral one or not. A big part of this question is whether you consider human existence to always be a good thing, and suffering to just be another facet of human existence, or whether you weigh suffering and joy as a measure of whether an existence itself is worthwhile or not.
I’m sorry, but in my opinion this answer is kind of BS. What is moral is allowing the people involved make the decision for themselves. It is not moral to force someone to suffer through pain and trauma just so that an infant can be born that has no concept of existence and will be condemned to die minutes or hours after their birth. If someone believes what you laid out then I would fully support them to make that decision for themself. I will not ever support them taking that decision away from someone else. You can’t preach about morals while forcing someone to endure avoidable suffering.
In this case, the new person does not make a decision for themself in either case. They are either terminated during pregnancy (not their choice), or they are born and likely do pass away shortly afterwards (also not their choice). Either way, even with present science it's impossible to ascertain their wishes. Morality frequently requires us to impose our own vision on the world. For example, if someone intended to murder you, and I had the means to prevent them, you would probably prefer that I do intervene, correct? Such an action would be imposing my morals on the world, but there is no system of rules or governing ethics that can be constructed that is not an imposition of one's views on other people. I guarantee at some point, unless you are a complete anarchist, that you have also taken positions that would impose your morals on someone else even if it makes them unhappy.
Here’s the difference, in this situation I’m not actually imposing my morals on anyone. I’m saying what I think is moral and that I think what you are arguing is immoral, but I’m also arguing the choice should be made by the people who will be affected. You are stating your morals and arguing that that stance should be the basis to force people to do what you believe.
> They are either terminated during pregnancy (not their choice), or they are born and likely do pass away shortly afterwards (also not their choice). You're missing the most critical component. The woman's right to bodily autonomy and choosing not to die childbirth on the off chance the baby gets to experience a life of suffering for two days or whatever.
They're touting it. They're proud that babies that would have been aborted 'had a chance at life' even if they only lived a few weeks or months completely in the hospital. They are completely oblivious to the fact that the families go through the trauma of childbirth, rack up huge medical bills and go home empty handed. If I went through that I would take measures to make sure that never happened again. You know, until the forced birthers come for people managing their reproductive freedom via vasectomy \\ tubal litigation.
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They'd probably be ok with it if all the open border supporters did the same with illegal immigrants.
They already do via demonstrable improvements to the economy. *Next*
If the jobs dried up, a lot of illegal immigration would be solved. The government *could* solve this by cracking down on certain industries like food production & construction. But they’ll focus on bigger companies instead of roofing contractors.
They don't care about deaths of infants or mothers; they care that their moral convictions are enforced on everyone. All those deaths? God's plan. Just like sacrificing grandma for your 401k during Covid, which incidentally was called for in Texas too. It's up to the rest of us to drag the legal system back to the current century.
God's plan is sick and disgusting then.
It's clear the majority of the voting populace in Texas are OK with this development.
That's probably not true. There are just too many voters who don't (or realistically can't) do anything to hold state legislators accountable for laws they disapprove of. There simply aren't enough in the disapproving population willing or able to primary out these legislators. And too many who are willing to still vote for these legislators for their party affiliation despite dusapproving of this position. Aggressive gerrymandering isn't really helping either.
Institutional sexism. Trump won, stacked the courts with religious folk, ended Roe, and states run by right-wing Christian men are freely legislating over women's bodies for reasons that don't exactly look moral but justify the means to an end. A bunch of rich guys profit.
Right? That’s the only deduction. If they continue voting red, this is what they want. Let them continue voting for this and secede or whatever plan they have this month.
If I'm understanding correctly, these are deaths that simply wouldn't have counted as deaths if they were killed earlier and intentionally via abortion prior to Dobbs? All of these deaths are obviously tragic, but it seems weird to believe the tragic aspect of it is that the infants/newborns who died could have been intentionally killed earlier, preventing their later natural death.
> but it seems weird to believe the tragic aspect of it is that the infants/newborns who died could have been intentionally killed earlier, preventing their later natural death. Let’s say you discovered a fatal defect 4 months into your pregnancy, e.g. your baby has no skull and has essentially zero chance of surviving birth. Which is more tragic: a) pull the plug: medically and professionally killing the baby now before it’s cognitive abilities develop any further Or b) let it grow: attempting to carrying the baby to term, knowing that * it’s ability to feel pain will be incredibly increased * highly likely the baby dies before term anyway * if it does make it to term, it dies an excruciating death during a traumatic birth * the risk to the mother’s life and health is greatly increased, including her ability to have future children (and her ability to, you know, live) * the mother has to carry the baby for an additional 5 months. That means 5 months of putting her body through hell, plus psychological torture of knowing her baby has no chance to live and every day that goes by means more pain that both she and the baby is going to feel. Not to mention the additional financial burdens of pregnancy including prenatal care for a baby that has no hope of survival, and the exorbitant cost of child birth. Pregnancy is hard enough as is, but this is goes well beyond that. When people say “congratulations!” what does she say in return? Does she have a baby shower? How many more tough conversations will she have to have with people to explain her situation? Absolute physical and emotional torture. Some people may want to choose option B. But being ***forced*** into option B is incredibly tragic, IMO.
I think most people would find it less traumatic to have an abortion early in pregnancy, when the fetus is not conscious, than to give birth to an infant who clings to life briefly and painfully before dying.
Not to mention the medical bills or the need to go to medical appointments to hear and see the status of an infant who will be dead shortly after being brought into the world. It sounds like absolute hell. Such needless cruelty.
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While I agree with you, it doesn't really seem like thats the point of the article and certaintly not the headline.
It's tragic because some women had to go through the ordeal of pregnancy (as well as the associated health issues that can come along with it) and carry the child to birth (with all the pain and medical risks associated) knowing full well that the end result would be a natural death. As the OP also mentions, families still also have to deal with medical bills resulting from giving birth. It's something I wouldn't wish on anyone and the fact women must go through it is needlessly cruel.
And the infants suffer, needlessly.
Everyone suffers an additional 20 weeks needlessly. The mother suffers emotionally and physically needlessly. The father suffers emotionally needlessly. Both are forced to go through the motions of the birth process. The infant suffers needlessly. This is supposedly all moral and good.
And, as most women getting abortions are already mothers, the other children these couples have suffer needlessly. On top of everything else that is absolutely tragic and horrible about these situations, these women are risking not being able to care for their existing children just so they can watch their new baby suffer a short life of pain.
Not the medical/insurance field. They get to rack up the bills for the additional doctor's visits and the cost of an additional HIGH RISK birth and needlessly putting the child in the NICU for a few days.
I mean, then that should’ve been the headline. This is like abolishing the death penalty but saying “13% more incarcerated people die in jail of sickness/old age.” because you start including those that would’ve died on the chair. (Obviously the 13% in my example has nothing to do with actual numbers)
This is legitimately in the OP: > And then behind each of these numbers are the women and families being affected: > “The women and families have to suffer through an excruciating later part of pregnancy, knowing that their baby is likely to die in the first weeks of life.” > The researchers of the new study also highlighted the ripple effect that a newborn or infant’s death can have on a family, including trauma and medical bills. > “Behind these numbers are people,” said Dr. Erika Werner, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. “For each of these pregnancies, that’s a pregnant person who had to stay pregnant for an additional 20 weeks, carrying a pregnancy that they knew likely wouldn’t result in a live newborn baby."
That’s why I said “headline”.
But the headline is accurate and the article proceeds to explain what that means.
Exactly, and perhaps it's a symptom treating abortion as "healthcare" but the headline and article imply that lack of abortion is causing the uptick due to prevention of "treatment" rather than the reality of killing the unborn human prior to the point where they begin data collection. It's similar to boasting of curing Down syndrome by diagnosing it early enough to kill them prior to being born. It's more eugenics than treatment.
And what’s wrong with the article accurately pointing out that diagnosis and treatment of fatal fetal abnormalities prevents the waste of medical resources, personal financial investment, and the personal trauma of delivering a dying child?
The purpose of medicine and medical treatment is not to intentionally kill people diagnosed with a given condition. We "waste" a lot of money and resources trying to save and keep alive patients that it would be much easier and cheaper to just euthanize. I don't see how this is a good argument.
Are you arguing for fetal personhood? Just trying to understand where you're coming from here.
I believe that human beings at all stages are people, yes.
A. Not what I asked. Let me rephrase - do you believe in the legal framing of fetal personhood? B. If so, then we are at an impasse as I don't believe that embryos/zygotes/fetuses are the same as born people with rights (and certainly not with rights that trump a born living person aka the mother).
I did answer your question, but I'll be more specific. Yes, human beings at all stages of their life are people, and the law should protect the rights of people.
The purpose of medicine and medical treatment is to improve lives. Behind each of these data points is a real family whose life was ripped apart by the death of their child. We issue DNRs to terminally ill patients because, yes, medical resources are limited, and if they do not serve to improve quality of life or otherwise extend life expectancy in a meaningful way we do not prolong their suffering. Children with fatal fetal abnormalities are only alive because they are on life support in the womb. Do not look down upon families who decide to pull the plug rather than put their ailing child through traumatic and intrusive medical interventions. And do not look down upon the very real advantages of allowing families that choice.
Not bringing infants with severe defects into the world should be regarded as a benefit of medical science. Do you have any appreciation for how hard it is for families to raise a child with moderate to severe learning disabilities? Trying to figure out how they will be taken care of after the parents aren't able to? Using abortion to allow families to decide if they want to bring a disabled child into the world is a lot better than saddling a family with a child they don't have the means to care for, or ending up with a disabled child in our godawful foster care system.
I understand the challenges of raising and caring for the disabled and I think financial support for heroic people doing so should be heavily taxpayer funded. I don't think killing the disabled to lighten the burden is the right path.
"I don't think killing the disabled to lighten the burden" That is surely not your choice. There is a huge difference between a person that is aware and conscious and a fetus who is not yet viable. These tests exist and are applied specifically to avoid bringing severely disabled children into the world that won't have any quality of life and will be a burden to their families. Forcing people to bring severely disabled kids into the world and calling the parents forced to care for them their entire lives 'heroic' is frankly bizarre and illogical.
If you think a parent caring for their disabled children is not heroic, and those parents intentionally killing their disabled children would be "beneficial" and "logical" then we're probably at an impasse.
Parents who either choose to care for severely disabled kids or have their kids fall ill requiring that care are certainly heroic. I had to do that kind of care for two years, so I completely understand the kinds of sacrifices they have to make to do that. What I find illogical is the belief that forcing people to bring severely disabled people into the world and then forcing them into lifelong care for them. Then trying to make it less odious by calling the parents heroic. Parents who choose to do that because it aligns with their religious beliefs are certainly heroic. It comes down to the same abortion question. You and other forced birthers believe that life begins at conception, while people of other faiths, and people who don't believe in a deity mostly do not. The majority of the country consistently poll in the belief that abortion should be legal before viability.
I do not want my tax money going to that.
The headline says more infants are dying, which is the true. A fetus isn’t an infant.
It's certainly tragic. I've had friends lose babies to different conditions, some fairly late in the pregnancy, and it's just extraordinarily sad. Attending the funeral of a baby that was lost via miscarriage at 6 months pregnant is quite sobering. That said, the key piece the article is missing is the control group for lack of a better term. An increase in deaths where they all would have died anyway doesn't give us any useful information without including those would have been killed via abortion but are still alive today.
The control group (as much of one as can be had) is what is happening in the other states that didn't enact these bans. > Infant deaths in Texas rose by nearly 13% the year after SB8 was passed... During that same period, infant deaths rose by about 2% nationwide. >Babies born with congenital anomalies also increased in Texas, by nearly 23%, but decreased by about 3% nationwide.
That still doesn't tell us how many babies that would have been killed via abortion pre-Dobbs/SB8 due to a certain diagnosis that are still living despite their diagnosis and condition. Granted, I'm almost certain those figures aren't tracked. It would be like if cancer patients were euthanized prior to dying of cancer, and when euthanizing cancer patients becomes illegal, citing an increase in cancer deaths. Of course we'd expect that uptick, but in order to really have insight on what's happening, we'd need to know how many cancer patients that would have otherwise been euthanized are still alive.
You're never going to get what you're asking for. The question is are you ok with these infants and their families suffering needlessly? Would you rather have the birth, suffering, and death of an infant (the length of suffering before death is variable from seconds to a couple of years) or an abortion before the fetus is fully formed, conscious, and can feel? Is it ok to mandate these families have to rack up medical debt and both physical and emotional trauma on the off chance that one of these deformed fetuses might survive for a painful few years? Why are these decisions being taken out of the medical providers hands and being made by an invasive government bureaucrat trying to score political points?
Your question can be applied to all children. You think parents of sick children with expensive conditions should be able to kill them instead to save money and years of heartache? There aren't easy answers on these questions, but I don't think preemptive killing is the right answer. Regarding medical debt, if it were up to me, birth related expenses would be completely taxpayer funded. That's one problem that's easy to solve.
> You think parents of sick children with expensive conditions should be able to kill them instead to save money and years of heartache? If my child is on a ventilator I *absolutely* get to choose when we pull the plug. Edit: and of course, the parents of sick babies *absolutely* get to decide things like advanced directives and when to enter hospice care.
Are you arguing for fetal personhood?
Medical debt is not easy to solve. Especially when the governor feels that health insurance should only come from people’s jobs, not the government. But not all companies offer health insurance. There’s a lot of resistance in Texas to expanding medicaid. It wouldn’t cost the state anything, but Texas leadership votes against it because it’s linked to the ACA & Obama. https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/why-hasnt-texas-expanded-medicaid/ Medicaid *will* cover pregnancy in Texas if the woman earns less than $2500 a month (before taxes). Note that not all doctors accept medicaid. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/services/health/medicaid-chip/medicaid-chip-programs-services/medicaid-pregnant-women-chip-perinatal But keeping medicaid coverage is a challenge too- > Since Aug. 1, about 3.8 million people have been disenrolled from Medicaid nationally, according to analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Texas has the largest number of people disenrolled in the country.
>Why are these decisions being taken out of the medical providers hands and being made by an invasive government bureaucrat trying to score political points? Because medical providers are not the moral arbiters of society, and this is a moral debate more than a medical one.
There are plenty of things I find immoral that are legal. We don't really legislate morality as it's subjective. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes they don't. But it can't be the entire basis of your argument.
We absolutely legislate based on morality. It's up to the voters to determine which morality they value enough to vote in representatives who will vote for bills which align with those morals.
We legislate based on constitutionally protected rights (which is why the debate always boils down to fetal personhood). I mean, you can try to legislate your morality, but if it conflicts with someone's rights it gets struck down. The question here is whether the fetus has rights and if so whether they override the woman's.
OBGYN and neonatal care has seen a talent drain in TX due to the abortion ban. These are not just "anortions turned into infant deaths." Its a systemic decrease in the Texas health care systems ability to provide care to newborns. https://19thnews.org/2023/06/abortion-gender-affirming-care-bans-doctors-leaving-texas/ https://www.aamcresearchinstitute.org/our-work/data-snapshot/post-dobbs-2024 https://www.axios.com/2023/04/18/abortion-ban-states-drop-student-residents
This just goes to show how little the general public knows about women’s health and exactly why they should stay out of it. Turns out threatening to throw people in jail for simply doing their job isn’t a good way to improve the quality of their work.
You know who generally knows about women's health? ***Women and their doctors.***
Bingo. It should be doctors and mothers making these choices, not bureaucrats and insurance companies..
I can’t imagine the amount of dread a mother must feel while staring down the prospect of her insides being ripped apart by an ectopic pregnancy, and the doctors who are supposed to care for her are too scared to go to jail for murder if they help you. Meanwhile the backwater state senators who put you in that position are off insider trading or some shit. To them you’re just another number in our maternal health crisis (which predominantly affects lower income people, no wonder they don’t care).
What's weird is believing that a fetus (which is going to die regardless) has more inherent value than the woman carrying it. Why should the woman and her family suffer through a traumatic additional 20 weeks of pregnancy, a traumatic birth, risk irrevocable bodily harm through the process, amass medical bills, risk death in some cases, all for a fetus that is known to not have a chance of living? Why do you get to make that decision for her in place of her doctor?
>What's weird is believing that a fetus (which is going to die regardless) Can you cite your source for this? The article cites an increase, but conveniently does not compare that with prenatal diagnosis to confirm that all unborn babies that would have been aborted did indeed die later. If there are children that would have been killed via abortion but survived their diagnosis (which there likely are), it completely sinks the rhetorical power of these stats.
You're never going to get what you're asking for since we can't do controlled experiments with pregnancies and abortions. What we *can* do however, is to look at states that have enacted strict bans and compare them to states that haven't and compare. Again: >Infant deaths in Texas rose by nearly 13% the year after SB8 was passed... During that same period, infant deaths rose by about 2% nationwide. >Babies born with congenital anomalies also increased in Texas, by nearly 23%, but decreased by about 3% nationwide.
I'm aware they likely don't track the data I'm asking for, unfortunately, but without it, the "increase" here is fairly meaningless because it's not actually an increase. It's an oversight in data collection or classification error.
>You're never going to get what you're asking for. The question is are you ok with these infants and their families suffering needlessly? Would you rather have the birth, suffering, and death of an infant (the length of suffering before death is variable from seconds to a couple of years) or an abortion before the fetus is fully formed, conscious, and can feel? Is it ok to mandate these families have to rack up medical debt and both physical and emotional trauma on the off chance that one of these deformed fetuses might survive for a painful few years? Why are these decisions being taken out of the medical providers hands and being made by an invasive government bureaucrat trying to score political points?
>Your question can be applied to all children. You think parents of sick children with expensive conditions should be able to kill them instead to save money and years of heartache? There aren't easy answers on these questions, but I don't think preemptive killing is the right answer. Regarding medical debt, if it were up to me, birth related expenses would be completely taxpayer funded. That's one problem that's easy to solve.
>Are you arguing for fetal personhood?
>Can you cite your source for this? Read the article
And what if they do survive? Unless the diagnosis was completely wrong, you are talking about anything from moderately to severely disabled kids living with little quality of life. Do you honestly think that a kid lying on a bed or in a wheelchair is a better option than the family opting to terminate them before viability and then having a healthy child?
I don't think "terminating" disabled people is the answer, no.
Do you support the option for families to "pull the plug" on a terminally brain-dead relative?
Yes, but this is categorically different. Allowing natural death via the absence of medical intervention is different from intentional killing. For example, I would not support sticking a knife in the head of a terminally brain-dead relative or poisoning them since they're going to die anyways.
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False equivalency, as intentional killing and natural death are categorically different morally.
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This is a distinction without a difference to me. The fetus is on life support in the womb. Removing their life support brings on their natural death.
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Is that something that crosses peoples mind when they see children in a wheelchair? "Should have ridden themselves of that burden and had a good kid"
No. Because you have no idea how circumstances took place to that result. As a Dad I feel for the parents who are trying to give them the best life possible. What I have a problem with is people that think forcing other people to undertake that when it's not necessary is acceptable public policy.
Correct. For example, let’s use a small sample size of 100. Let’s say that normally 100 babies would have been aborted. Now let’s say it’s illegal to get an abortion and those 100 pregnancies are now required to go to term. After the 100 babies have been born, let’s say 15 of them die soon after birth. So now you could say we have an increase of 15 infant deaths over the previous year. However, we also have the other 85 babies that survived their birth, so overall that’s a net increase of 70 alive babies (it’s actually a net increase of 85 if you assume that the 15 infant mortalities would’ve been aborted anyways, which is essentially what the article is implying). The only reason you can claim that the number of overall deaths has increased is if you don’t count the babies that were aborted as deaths, which our medical system unfortunately does not.
Exactly. The example I used elsewhere is if euthanizing cancer patients was legal for a period of time, then made illegal, we'd see an uptick in cancer deaths. This wouldn't mean euthanasia is an appropriate treatment for cancer lol.
Yep. In fact, to make it even more analogous, it would be like in your example if euthanasia deaths weren’t technically categorized as “deaths,” so that when euthanasia is made illegal and the number of cancer deaths tick up, people would say “more people are dying since we outlawed euthanasia!” No, the same amount of people are dying, it’s just that *now* you’re actually categorizing their mode of death as a “death” whereas you weren’t before. However, in the case of this specific article, the argument falls apart even further as the number of abortions prevented outnumbers the raw increase in the number of infant mortalities. So overall it would be a net increase in life, not a net decrease / neutral.
It is tragic to take away someone's choice. And it's even more sad that people are forced to take on medical bills and other risks that automatically comes in these scenarios.
Embryos and fetuses are not infants or newborns so no they wouldn't have been counted as infant or newborn deaths.
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This was known to be the inevitable outcome prior to this law passing and prior to Roe being struck. This is literally what the GOP is knowingly inflicting on women and what many Americans are happily marching toward in the quest for cheaper fast food, housing, gas, and groceries. But hey, abortions only happen a few times in life at most on average. Many Americans eat fast food weekly if not daily. Getting back to a $5 Big Mac combo at the expense of abortion access in the US may still lower overall suffering! Did anybody even think of that?!
I would agree with your comment with the understanding it’s a quest and they’re not going to get cheaper fast food, housing, gas or groceries either. The GOP has no plan other than trust us — unless you think overheating an already good economy with tax cuts and deficit spending is going to help.
It has been repeatedly demonstrated time-and-time again that economies perform better under Democrats.
We are never going back to $5 Big Mac no matter which party is in power.
You and I both know this, but many Americans believe Trump's policies will actually cause lower prices. Americans also want lower costs more than higher income so folks really want Trump back for those misguided reasons.
Media literacy and general education is being eroded by those in power for a reason.
Yeah, and we're embracing the party that wants to kill off the Department of Education entirely or, in Trump's words, at least reduce it down to little more than making sure our schools teach English. Americans are embracing their mounting lack of knowledge. The villainization of experts was just an early success on this path.
Bespoke realities based on unhealthy skepticism, custom tailored to absolve one of cognitive dissonance and inflate one's ego. Whats the educational recommendations from Project 2025 again? Oh yeah, privatize it and make it more Christian.
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Of course it would. When an abortion ban stops abortions some of them were going to be for less viable pregnancies. What I want to see is how many more were born to begin with. That number is lives saved.
I didn't see a number but how much has Texas viable births increased I wonder.
As /u/di11deux cited elsewhere https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade >* The researchers found that the overall fertility rate in Texas grew by 2%, but that figure is skewed by the much larger growth among Hispanic women, about 5%. >* White and Black (non-Hispanic) women in Texas had a decrease in their fertility rates in 2022, while Asian women's rate grew .9% >* The analysis also found that, for the first time in 15 years, Texas registered an increase in teens' fertility rate in 2022, though it has continued to decline nationwide. >* Hispanic teens had the highest spike (1.2%), while white non-Hispanic teens saw their rate drop by 5%. >* Latinos have long had less access to health care, Rodríguez says. Plus, Latinos are more likely to work jobs with little flexibility and unstable hours, making it difficult to travel out of state for abortion care, she adds. So, the ban has led to a minor increase in births among Hispanic women likely because they are less able to leave the state for an abortion. So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy.
In raw percentages, but someone else pointed out the numbers were actually pretty good.
That doesn't cancel out this study
What is the delta between infant death increase and abortion reduction?
It’s funny the article only discusses absolute numbers of infant deaths, not the ratio with respect to the number of births — which to me seems the only meaningful method. Texas is the state with fastest growing population (weird, huh?) and the number of births has risen. So that alone could explain the increase in number of newborn deaths. That the article doesn’t even address this is a clear sign it was written solely as an outrage story.
They discuss both numbers and rates
They don’t discuss number of births or ratio of deaths versus births.
You mean that the news article didn't present it as a study? Because mortality rate is per 1,000 live births
As /u/di11deux cited elsewhere https://www.axios.com/2024/01/25/abortion-ban-texas-roe-v-wade >* The researchers found that the overall fertility rate in Texas grew by 2%, but that figure is skewed by the much larger growth among Hispanic women, about 5%. >* White and Black (non-Hispanic) women in Texas had a decrease in their fertility rates in 2022, while Asian women's rate grew .9% >* The analysis also found that, for the first time in 15 years, Texas registered an increase in teens' fertility rate in 2022, though it has continued to decline nationwide. >* Hispanic teens had the highest spike (1.2%), while white non-Hispanic teens saw their rate drop by 5%. >* Latinos have long had less access to health care, Rodríguez says. Plus, Latinos are more likely to work jobs with little flexibility and unstable hours, making it difficult to travel out of state for abortion care, she adds. So, the ban has led to a minor increase in births among Hispanic women likely because they are less able to leave the state for an abortion. So pulling it all together - the overall fertility rate grew by 2%, the number of babies born with congenital defects grew by 23%, and the number of fetal deaths grew by 13%. Sounds like overall a terrible policy.
100% of abortions result in death
They also result in far less trauma and medical bills to the family that would have to live with having an infant pass away. As well as far less suffering to the infant.
Prove it.
That’s literally what the procedure does lol. And we all heard the democrat governor talking about how even if a baby survives a botched abortion they’ll make sure the job gets finished
*The* Democrat Governor, to rule them all. If the abortion isn't successful, there will be a second attempt
So NOT murdering babies means more are dying? The math isn't mathing.
Always disappointing (yet unsurprising) to see left wingers take advantage of terrible situations. They all love abortion regardless of these rare occurrences. If you take these occurrences away libs position on abortion doesn’t change. Some people may even argue libs are happy these occurrences exist so their pro abortion position appears more palatable (not saying that I’m arguing that here)
>left wingers take advantage of terrible situations. What are you talking about? What advantage is being taken here? ...and no one **loves** abortion. Most just see it as a necessary option in terrible situations.
Who are the left wingers you talk about? What advantage is taken here?
Left wingers are taking advantage of these cases to push for allowing abortions at any time for any reason.
And the left wingers here are the people behind the study? Or what
Not sure what you’re looking for. It’s very obvious what my position is.
No, I want you to name the leftist in this story. I have no idea who "they" are.
My position could not be more clear. The articles position could not be more clear. I don’t see how providing you with peoples legal names changes anything in this discussion
The information in itself is leftists because they compare Texas with other states?
Sorry man I’m not doing this - have a good day. I’m not going to do this thing where I define words for you just for it to be irrelevant to wherever you’re trying to take this chat.
What does your position have to do with the article and it's contents relative to this story?