Mark, I never answered your question because I simply do not know the answer. It was never my intention to imply medically necessary abortions had been denied in the past. I was simply stating my opinion that medically necessary abortions should not be denied.
The average charge for a surgical abortion at 10 weeks' gestation is $468; but since most abortions in the United States are performed at low-cost clinics, women on average paid $372 for the procedure.
Some 74% of women pay for abortions with their own money; 13% of abortions are covered by Medicaid, and 13% are billed directly to private insurance. Some women who pay for the procedure themselves may receive insurance reimbursement later.
Congress has barred the use of federal Medicaid funds to pay for abortions, except when the woman's life would be endangered by a full-term pregnancy, or in cases of rape or incest. However, as of March 2004, 17 states used their own funds to subsidize abortion for poor women.
I think you may have to consider another fact in your research.
payment.
Comparisons between insurance now and insurance 30 years ago are irrelevant--the insurance world is completely different.
Secondly,
D&C, D&E, etc., have always been covered procedures...when medically indicated...
In fact, I believe that you'd find that most 'voluntary'/ 'discretionary' procedures (such as boob jobs, nose jobs, facelifts, etc.) are not covered. Performance of a medical procedure simply to terminate a pregnancy (when there are no medical contraindications to the condition of pregnancy) is, I believe, the only 'voluntary'/ 'discretionary' procedure that is covered by most insurance.
However, you will note that a point I explicitly made in my post opening this thread was:
I am not interested in data where the woman was injured as the result of an illegal abortion. That is interesting, but not relevant to the question I have.
You've managed to sneak in the back-alley abortion and the coathanger into the argument when it doesn't belong. But as long as you did, please note the following:
Note the dramatic drop between 1941 and 1960. This drop was not due to the legalization of abortion, it was due to the introduction of antibiotics. In fact, you'll note the vast majority of the decrease all happened long before 1973. Something to consider...
Payment is not just in terms of who paid for what, the health crisis is what it is due to malpractice and the cost of "being a dr." in America.
ob/gyn is one of the very highest in our nation. Without the cooperation of major medical few would be able to afford to stay in practice .
your right tho a friend who is now 64 had an abortion over 40 years ago and it was considered a D/C on the paper work. that is what can happen if it is reversed.
Payment is not just in terms of who paid for what, the health crisis is what it is due to malpractice and the cost of "being a dr." in America.
ob/gyn is one of the very highest in our nation. Without the cooperation of major medical few would be able to afford to stay in practice .
your right tho a friend who is now 64 had an abortion over 40 years ago and it was considered a D/C on the paper work. that is what can happen if it is reversed.
Pond,
What you say about insurance premiums is, without a doubt, true.
But it has nothing to do with the legalisation of abortion...unless the legalisation of abortion has caused premiums to actually rise.
Think about it: how would you prosecute a doctor for performing a procedure that is illegal? Insurance wouldn't cover the procedure to begin with, as a doctor performing the procedure illegally would be committing malpractice by just performing it. If a woman sued a doctor for botching an illegal abortion, she would have to admit complicity in an illegal act. No insurance in the world would cover that practice at all.
Thank you for verifying what I said about the procedures being performed legally prior to Roe when deemed medically necessary.
A abortion or a D/C as it has been titled in the past would open up much thought about lawsuits and malpractice.
Abortion if made illegal would still be performed it would indeed be classified as another procedure , today a Dr. is in much more jeopardy by insurance premiums if consenting to such practice.
In times past patients did not sue as they do today , we have many more checks and balance on the medical community, the insurance on such a dr. who would take the chance would be outrageous, hence fewer being done by a professional who care about the wellness of his entire practice.
hence the procedure would only be affordable by the very wealthy or done by others, less than professional people putting the safety of mother and fetus at risk of harm.
these are huge considerations concerning abortion and the law.
I can't help but wonder if abortion is an issue whose time has come and gone. All the old feminists who consider it their blessed sacrament have gone through menopause and I would think that most younger women would be a whole lot more careful because of the risk of aids. Safe sex should prevent unwanted pregnancies.
This is not really the forum to consult regarding Abortion Legislation.
With respect to you, it is like asking the average man on the street about intricate tax legislation. You should look to more serious forums with regard to this issue -- both the PRO and Con sites list much more documentatble legislation...if that is really what your after.
You cant pick apples from a pear tree....even if a few arew grafted on, its not the whole picture
This is not really the forum to consult regarding Abortion Legislation.
Why not? And besides, I was not asking about abortion legislation. I was asking about if anybody had ever heard of a woman being denied a medically needed procedure.
With respect to you, it is like asking the average man on the street about intricate tax legislation. You should look to more serious forums with regard to this issue -- both the PRO and Con sites list much more documentatble legislation...if that is really what your after.
Actually, the pro and con sites can basically be summarized in this way:
Pro-life: AARGH Murder! 47,000,000 babies killed! Look at the child! Roe v Wade is the devil's work! Abortion causes breast cancer! AARGH!!!!!
Pro-choice: AARGH! Roe v Wade most important part of constitution! Keep rosaries off ovaries! coat hangars (no documented cases mind you)! botched abortions! men want to control women! AARGH!!!!!
I would have thought that the pro-choice sites (at least one of them) would have shown cases where women, who medically NEEDED abortions, were denied them and then lost their lives (or had an illegal one) prior to Roe v Wade. That would be a very powerful case to make...but, apparently, that case doesn't exist anywhere. At least nobody has been able to show me that case (and there are a couple of very, very educated, fact-based ladies on this site that I would have thought would be able to do so).
Therefore, unless somebody can show me FACTS to illustrate the contrary, I must surmise that women had ample access to safe, legal abortions WHEN MEDICALLY NECESSARY prior to Roe v Wade.
Getting back to the original question, can anybody prove my summation wrong? Please?
THe abscence of incidnets within the small microcosm that is Greasespot cannot logically provide a defendable conclusion becasue evidence is lacking.
Your arguement lacks ethical logic.
you may find medical school libraries of more use than the cafe here.
So let me get this straight...
I puruse the web and am unable to find any incidents.
I ask for input (not just here, I assure you) and am unable to find any incidents.
I go to statistical sites and am unable to find any incidents.
And then I draw the conclusion Therefore, unless somebody can show me FACTS to illustrate the contrary, I must surmise that women had ample access to safe, legal abortions WHEN MEDICALLY NECESSARY prior to Roe v Wade. (bolding added for this post)
Then you say that my argument lacks ethical logic?
I think you have it backwards. I think the abortion proponents who cite access for medical necessity as a partial justification for upholding Roe v Wade as precedent have not substantiated their case. I think that access for medical necessity was never mentioned in the Roe v Wade arguments to begin with. And I think that the argument that Roe is necessary to protect access to medically indicated procedures is nothing but a red herring! I think they are the ones whose argument lacks ethical logic.
The medical necessity argument was one originally brought up by the pro-choice side. They never substantiated their case. Still haven't.
That is, unless you can show me some facts to demonstrate where I'm wrong. Which brings us back to the starting point.
And please, nobody get me wrong. I am not accusing anybody here of producing a faulty argument. This is an argument that has been supported in political circles, in advocacy circles, in civil rights circles, and repeated ad nauseum by the media so that it is an accepted fact...through repitition.
Sort of like a lot of Wierwille's theological arguments...if a statement is repeated long enough and loud enough, it becomes an established fact...no matter how false it, in fact, is.
I would suggest a reputable medical school library in the area of obstetrics and gynocology.
In my experience in looking for other medical issue related items, there are mountains of documentation and studies that never make the public forum in general.
At the least- if you really want to know and not just throw a bone out for argument sake...ask a Ob/Gyn - preferably one without a religious or political posture.
How about post Roe v Wade? I don't have a ton of time to put into this, Mark, but I will do what I can.
Here are a few links to stories of women who were denied medically necessary abortions POST Roe V Wade, though the issues here have to do with Medicaide Funding.
Could not find any instances where a woman was denied an abortion if her health was in question. Here are some references to it being legal in all states for that reason:
At the invitation of Samuel Goldenberg, a dozen persons -- including physicians, Catholic and Protestant clergymen, an attorney, a social worker, and a housewife -- met in early 1967 to discuss the problem of illegal abortions in Washington State. Goldenberg, a Seattle-area clinical psychologist, was troubled by the situation of two patients facing unwanted pregnancies who were denied legal abortions. Washington law allowed "therapeutic" abortions only after a committee of physicians determined that one was necessary to save the life of the mother
What I am particularly concerned with, though, is data pre-Roe, being denied the care. Not whether or not their insurance scheme paid for it (commercial insurance or government-funded insurance being sort of irrelevant to the point I'm driving at).
In the first case, the issue is medicaid (a public insurance scheme provided as a matter of government policy) funding for abortions. The state said that it would not fund abortions except to save the mother's life, or in the case of rape or incest. The plaintiffs said that this policy violated their privacy rights and that it was discriminatory. The court refused to rule on the second point because it was added to the case and not earlier decided by a lower court. They rejected the privacy claims on the following grounds: the women had a fundamental right to privacy in deciding to get pregnant and in deciding to terminate the pregnancy. The state was not involved in that decision in any way. However, the state also has no obligation under privacy to fund the result of that private decision, regardless of that decision.
To me, that makes sense. Asserting a right is one thing. Forcing another to pay for one's assertion of rights is another thing altogether.
As a concrete example: Rush Limbaugh has a right to freedom of speech, no matter how much his speech offends. If he was jailed for speaking his political views (no matter how desirable some may find that), his rights would have been violated. However, if a station cancels his show, the station has made a decision not to subsidize his speech. That is in no way a violation of his rights. Likewise, if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (a government funded entity) decides not to air his program, the government has not violated his rights...he may still make his speech, the government has made a policy decision not to fund that speech.
The situation of medicaid funding is almost completely analogous to the above.
So what to do? Is court action the correct course? IMHO, no. Legislative action is the correct action. There are several states that support and encourage poor women to abort their pregnancies through state funding of abortions (e.g., California, Marylnad). Change the legislature and then the legislature can change the policy.
The second link is a nonprofit charitable entity designed to accept contributions and make abortions available to those who cannot afford them on their own, have no insurance, and live in an area where the government has made a policy decision not to subsidize them. I have no problem with this at all and in fact think that this is the right thing to do (if you support the encouragement of abortions among poor women).
The third link is a newspaper article describing the case described in the first link (thanks for sending me to the Communist Party USA's website, Abigail...geez)
(BTW, when I say "encourage," I don't mean that they are going and saying to poor women, "Please abort your baby." I mean that the policy supports it. In social engineering, governments can encourage certain actions by the people by their policy decisions. The government wants you to buy hybrid cars: they encourage you to do so by giving a tax deduction for the purchase. Not that they are at the Toyota dealership saying "Buy that Prius!" -- but some people will decide between a Prius and a Corolla because of the tax deduction)
The case that you mentioned is irrelevant to what I'm asking for one reason:
Nobody told these women that they couldn't have an abortion. Nobnody. Doctors and hospitals often take charity cases. (speaking a little facaetiously here:) I am sure if they looked hard enough, they could have found a provider who would have been willing to take their case on a charity basis. Or they could have found a fund. The real issue is that the abortions were not being subsidized. Decisions to subsidize or not subsidize are policy issues and not constitutional ones (unless the rules for the subsidies said that they'd fund abortions for black women and not white or something else along those lines)
I do sincerely appreciate you looking though...
But honestly, if you're not aware of some compendium or don't have access to a database where a query could be done to mine the data, don't sweat it. I know there are a lot of raw data out there. Just finding the right stuff is the trick (if, in fact, it even exists)
here's the thing Mark, I would imagine that there are probably at least a few instances where a woman was denied a medically necessary abortion pre Roe v Wade. But finding it is going to be very difficult.
For one thing, the era we are discussing was not one where things like sexuality were openly discussed. An abortion, necessary or by choice, was even less talked about. In addition, the most likely candidate to be denied a medically necessary abortion would be a woman living in poverty.
I am not entirely clear on what point you are trying to make here, but if the point is that for the most part, medically necessary abortions have been allowed even before Roe v Wade, you would be correct.
I'm not in college, so I don't have access to the databases you seek, but, even if I did, I'd probably go about it another way.
Does anybody know of any cases pre- Roe-v-Wade where a woman, for whom an abortion was medically necessary (i.e., one done not simply to remove a pregnancy), was denied that abortion?
My father and I were talking one time, and he mentioned how amazed he is that the maternal mortality rates have fallen so dramatically during his lifetime. He had three neighbors, friends of his, whose mothers died during pregnancy or childbirth. The only person I know (and I didn't even know her, she was the sister of a friend) who died during childbirth did so because she refused to have an abortion, even though she had contracted leukemia during pregnancy.
If you want to know the answer to your question, instead of looking at case law (how can a dead woman bring legal action against her doctors anyway?), look at the maternal mortality rates. What is the trend in how many women have died during pregnancy because of uncontrolled high blood pressure? Uncontrolled diabetes? Leukemia? Organ failure? Or any other pregnancy-induced illness that could have been "cured" by an abortion? Are the rates falling? Why? Just better medical care, or is access to abortion also a factor? And somewhere in there, I would think it might be important to factor in the pre-Roe v Wade taboo against abortion under any circumstances.
Too much reading for me, Mark, but this book, When Abortion Was a Crime, might have some of the answers you seek (if you can stand to wade through the bias). Here's one excerpt from the Epilogue.
Making abortion legal improved public health: overall maternal mortality dropped dramatically. In New York City, maternal mortality fell 45 percent the year after the state legalized abortion. "In 1971," city health officials reported, "New York City experienced its lowest maternal mortality rate on record." California and North Carolina reported similar improvement.[4]Septic abortion wards closed. As a public-health measure, the legalization of abortion represented an improvement in maternal mortality that ranks with the invention of antisepsis and antibiotics.[5]
here's the thing Mark, I would imagine that there are probably at least a few instances where a woman was denied a medically necessary abortion pre Roe v Wade. But finding it is going to be very difficult.
For one thing, the era we are discussing was not one where things like sexuality were openly discussed. An abortion, necessary or by choice, was even less talked about. In addition, the most likely candidate to be denied a medically necessary abortion would be a woman living in poverty.
I am not entirely clear on what point you are trying to make here, but if the point is that for the most part, medically necessary abortions have been allowed even before Roe v Wade, you would be correct.
I think you're right that it would be difficult to find.
Abigail, I see (as we've discussed before) abortion as a very ethically difficult issue.
On one hand, a person should be secure in their own bodies. On the other hand, there are two lives (in my belief) involved in the decision and for one person to have the liberty to be secure in her own body, the right of the other person to be secure in her own body is necessarily compromised. Either way it comes down, one person loses some liberty. In one case, the person loses liberty for the sake of responsibility. In the other case, the person loses her life to allow the other to exercise that liberty. (Of course -- as we've also discussed before -- if you do not believe that there are two lives involved, then, in your belief, there is no ethical issue)
As we discussed earlier, there is the issue of self-defense that must be considered...an extremely important point where you educated me. If the second person is, even inadvertently, attacking the first person and threatening the existence of the first person, the first person should have a right to defend herself against that attack. If that defense requires actions that destroy the second person (where the motivation is not the destruction of the second person, but the preservation of the first person's life), it is a regrettable outcome of a fully licit course of action.
This is an important part of the talking points of the pro-choice advocacy groups. They state that women's lives will be endangered if Roe v Wade is reversed. However, as Stayed Too Long rightly pointed out, there was always the exception for the mother's life and health (the "and health" was essentially universal since the 1960s). So the question becomes: is that, in practice, what happened? Thus this question. Is it based on fact? Or is it hyperbole?
I think that Laleo has a simply brilliant idea when she suggests that I look at maternal mortality rates as an indicator. If Roe v Wade increased the availability of medically necessary terminations, I should see a steep decline in maternal mortality rates. I'll see if I can find that statistic.
Anyway, I do appreciate everybody's inputs on the subject.
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Abigail
To clarify something . . .
Mark, I never answered your question because I simply do not know the answer. It was never my intention to imply medically necessary abortions had been denied in the past. I was simply stating my opinion that medically necessary abortions should not be denied.
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markomalley
Abgigail,
I never took it that way at all. I am just genuinely trying to find out an answer to that question...
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pond
Mark
I think you may have to consider another fact in your research.
payment.
abortion is a legal procedure now and can and often is paid for by the Dept of Social Services(medicaid) , or private insurance.
abortions are not cheap.
without the endorsement of insurance, many providers will opt out.
The horror storys of botched procedures and "back alley" abortionists are a direct result of this fact.
A "good" Dr. will not take a chance on losing his license , without the support of the insurance he/she carrys.
malpractice given what it is for ob/gyn (the highest rate ) is why many very good drs have left or will not carry the field of practice.
Who would take cash payment today? this isnt the thirties when Drs could and did get away with God like performance with little or no accoutability.
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Belle
mj, you need to get your facts straight:
The average charge for a surgical abortion at 10 weeks' gestation is $468; but since most abortions in the United States are performed at low-cost clinics, women on average paid $372 for the procedure.
Some 74% of women pay for abortions with their own money; 13% of abortions are covered by Medicaid, and 13% are billed directly to private insurance. Some women who pay for the procedure themselves may receive insurance reimbursement later.
Congress has barred the use of federal Medicaid funds to pay for abortions, except when the woman's life would be endangered by a full-term pregnancy, or in cases of rape or incest. However, as of March 2004, 17 states used their own funds to subsidize abortion for poor women.
Guttmacher Institute
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Sushi
"mj, you need to get your facts straight"
Belle, I am truly shocked you would even suggest a hint of discrepancy between mj's reality and the reality the rest of us live with.
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markomalley
Pond,
You said,
Comparisons between insurance now and insurance 30 years ago are irrelevant--the insurance world is completely different.Secondly,
D&C, D&E, etc., have always been covered procedures...when medically indicated...
In fact, I believe that you'd find that most 'voluntary'/ 'discretionary' procedures (such as boob jobs, nose jobs, facelifts, etc.) are not covered. Performance of a medical procedure simply to terminate a pregnancy (when there are no medical contraindications to the condition of pregnancy) is, I believe, the only 'voluntary'/ 'discretionary' procedure that is covered by most insurance.
However, you will note that a point I explicitly made in my post opening this thread was:
You've managed to sneak in the back-alley abortion and the coathanger into the argument when it doesn't belong. But as long as you did, please note the following:
Note the dramatic drop between 1941 and 1960. This drop was not due to the legalization of abortion, it was due to the introduction of antibiotics. In fact, you'll note the vast majority of the decrease all happened long before 1973. Something to consider...
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pond
Mark
malpractice insurance premiums .
Payment is not just in terms of who paid for what, the health crisis is what it is due to malpractice and the cost of "being a dr." in America.
ob/gyn is one of the very highest in our nation. Without the cooperation of major medical few would be able to afford to stay in practice .
your right tho a friend who is now 64 had an abortion over 40 years ago and it was considered a D/C on the paper work. that is what can happen if it is reversed.
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markomalley
Pond,
What you say about insurance premiums is, without a doubt, true.
But it has nothing to do with the legalisation of abortion...unless the legalisation of abortion has caused premiums to actually rise.
Think about it: how would you prosecute a doctor for performing a procedure that is illegal? Insurance wouldn't cover the procedure to begin with, as a doctor performing the procedure illegally would be committing malpractice by just performing it. If a woman sued a doctor for botching an illegal abortion, she would have to admit complicity in an illegal act. No insurance in the world would cover that practice at all.
Thank you for verifying what I said about the procedures being performed legally prior to Roe when deemed medically necessary.
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pond
A abortion or a D/C as it has been titled in the past would open up much thought about lawsuits and malpractice.
Abortion if made illegal would still be performed it would indeed be classified as another procedure , today a Dr. is in much more jeopardy by insurance premiums if consenting to such practice.
In times past patients did not sue as they do today , we have many more checks and balance on the medical community, the insurance on such a dr. who would take the chance would be outrageous, hence fewer being done by a professional who care about the wellness of his entire practice.
hence the procedure would only be affordable by the very wealthy or done by others, less than professional people putting the safety of mother and fetus at risk of harm.
these are huge considerations concerning abortion and the law.
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TOMMYZ
I can't help but wonder if abortion is an issue whose time has come and gone. All the old feminists who consider it their blessed sacrament have gone through menopause and I would think that most younger women would be a whole lot more careful because of the risk of aids. Safe sex should prevent unwanted pregnancies.
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karmicdebt
You're joking, right?
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Belle
Hey, Tommy, where can I get a pair of those rose-colored glasses? :D
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DaddyHoundog
Mark,
This is not really the forum to consult regarding Abortion Legislation.
With respect to you, it is like asking the average man on the street about intricate tax legislation. You should look to more serious forums with regard to this issue -- both the PRO and Con sites list much more documentatble legislation...if that is really what your after.
You cant pick apples from a pear tree....even if a few arew grafted on, its not the whole picture
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markomalley
Why not? And besides, I was not asking about abortion legislation. I was asking about if anybody had ever heard of a woman being denied a medically needed procedure.
Actually, the pro and con sites can basically be summarized in this way:
Pro-life: AARGH Murder! 47,000,000 babies killed! Look at the child! Roe v Wade is the devil's work! Abortion causes breast cancer! AARGH!!!!!
Pro-choice: AARGH! Roe v Wade most important part of constitution! Keep rosaries off ovaries! coat hangars (no documented cases mind you)! botched abortions! men want to control women! AARGH!!!!!
I would have thought that the pro-choice sites (at least one of them) would have shown cases where women, who medically NEEDED abortions, were denied them and then lost their lives (or had an illegal one) prior to Roe v Wade. That would be a very powerful case to make...but, apparently, that case doesn't exist anywhere. At least nobody has been able to show me that case (and there are a couple of very, very educated, fact-based ladies on this site that I would have thought would be able to do so).
Therefore, unless somebody can show me FACTS to illustrate the contrary, I must surmise that women had ample access to safe, legal abortions WHEN MEDICALLY NECESSARY prior to Roe v Wade.
Getting back to the original question, can anybody prove my summation wrong? Please?
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DaddyHoundog
I cannot agree.
THe abscence of incidnets within the small microcosm that is Greasespot cannot logically provide a defendable conclusion becasue evidence is lacking.
Your arguement lacks ethical logic.
you may find medical school libraries of more use than the cafe here.
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markomalley
So let me get this straight...
I puruse the web and am unable to find any incidents.
I ask for input (not just here, I assure you) and am unable to find any incidents.
I go to statistical sites and am unable to find any incidents.
And then I draw the conclusion Therefore, unless somebody can show me FACTS to illustrate the contrary, I must surmise that women had ample access to safe, legal abortions WHEN MEDICALLY NECESSARY prior to Roe v Wade. (bolding added for this post)
Then you say that my argument lacks ethical logic?
I think you have it backwards. I think the abortion proponents who cite access for medical necessity as a partial justification for upholding Roe v Wade as precedent have not substantiated their case. I think that access for medical necessity was never mentioned in the Roe v Wade arguments to begin with. And I think that the argument that Roe is necessary to protect access to medically indicated procedures is nothing but a red herring! I think they are the ones whose argument lacks ethical logic.
The medical necessity argument was one originally brought up by the pro-choice side. They never substantiated their case. Still haven't.
That is, unless you can show me some facts to demonstrate where I'm wrong. Which brings us back to the starting point.
And please, nobody get me wrong. I am not accusing anybody here of producing a faulty argument. This is an argument that has been supported in political circles, in advocacy circles, in civil rights circles, and repeated ad nauseum by the media so that it is an accepted fact...through repitition.
Sort of like a lot of Wierwille's theological arguments...if a statement is repeated long enough and loud enough, it becomes an established fact...no matter how false it, in fact, is.
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DaddyHoundog
I would suggest a reputable medical school library in the area of obstetrics and gynocology.
In my experience in looking for other medical issue related items, there are mountains of documentation and studies that never make the public forum in general.
At the least- if you really want to know and not just throw a bone out for argument sake...ask a Ob/Gyn - preferably one without a religious or political posture.
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Abigail
How about post Roe v Wade? I don't have a ton of time to put into this, Mark, but I will do what I can.
Here are a few links to stories of women who were denied medically necessary abortions POST Roe V Wade, though the issues here have to do with Medicaide Funding.
here
here
here
I will do more looking but you are talking about hundreds of thousands of websites
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Stayed Too Long
Could not find any instances where a woman was denied an abortion if her health was in question. Here are some references to it being legal in all states for that reason:
Abortion Legal In Washington for therapeutic reasons prior to Roe v Wade
Abortion Legal for Mother's Health.All Abortion Legal in 4 States in 1970
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markomalley
Abigail, thanks for those links.
What I am particularly concerned with, though, is data pre-Roe, being denied the care. Not whether or not their insurance scheme paid for it (commercial insurance or government-funded insurance being sort of irrelevant to the point I'm driving at).
In the first case, the issue is medicaid (a public insurance scheme provided as a matter of government policy) funding for abortions. The state said that it would not fund abortions except to save the mother's life, or in the case of rape or incest. The plaintiffs said that this policy violated their privacy rights and that it was discriminatory. The court refused to rule on the second point because it was added to the case and not earlier decided by a lower court. They rejected the privacy claims on the following grounds: the women had a fundamental right to privacy in deciding to get pregnant and in deciding to terminate the pregnancy. The state was not involved in that decision in any way. However, the state also has no obligation under privacy to fund the result of that private decision, regardless of that decision.
To me, that makes sense. Asserting a right is one thing. Forcing another to pay for one's assertion of rights is another thing altogether.
As a concrete example: Rush Limbaugh has a right to freedom of speech, no matter how much his speech offends. If he was jailed for speaking his political views (no matter how desirable some may find that), his rights would have been violated. However, if a station cancels his show, the station has made a decision not to subsidize his speech. That is in no way a violation of his rights. Likewise, if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (a government funded entity) decides not to air his program, the government has not violated his rights...he may still make his speech, the government has made a policy decision not to fund that speech.
The situation of medicaid funding is almost completely analogous to the above.
So what to do? Is court action the correct course? IMHO, no. Legislative action is the correct action. There are several states that support and encourage poor women to abort their pregnancies through state funding of abortions (e.g., California, Marylnad). Change the legislature and then the legislature can change the policy.
The second link is a nonprofit charitable entity designed to accept contributions and make abortions available to those who cannot afford them on their own, have no insurance, and live in an area where the government has made a policy decision not to subsidize them. I have no problem with this at all and in fact think that this is the right thing to do (if you support the encouragement of abortions among poor women).
The third link is a newspaper article describing the case described in the first link (thanks for sending me to the Communist Party USA's website, Abigail...geez)
The case that you mentioned is irrelevant to what I'm asking for one reason:
Nobody told these women that they couldn't have an abortion. Nobnody. Doctors and hospitals often take charity cases. (speaking a little facaetiously here:) I am sure if they looked hard enough, they could have found a provider who would have been willing to take their case on a charity basis. Or they could have found a fund. The real issue is that the abortions were not being subsidized. Decisions to subsidize or not subsidize are policy issues and not constitutional ones (unless the rules for the subsidies said that they'd fund abortions for black women and not white or something else along those lines)
I do sincerely appreciate you looking though...
But honestly, if you're not aware of some compendium or don't have access to a database where a query could be done to mine the data, don't sweat it. I know there are a lot of raw data out there. Just finding the right stuff is the trick (if, in fact, it even exists)
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Abigail
here's the thing Mark, I would imagine that there are probably at least a few instances where a woman was denied a medically necessary abortion pre Roe v Wade. But finding it is going to be very difficult.
For one thing, the era we are discussing was not one where things like sexuality were openly discussed. An abortion, necessary or by choice, was even less talked about. In addition, the most likely candidate to be denied a medically necessary abortion would be a woman living in poverty.
I am not entirely clear on what point you are trying to make here, but if the point is that for the most part, medically necessary abortions have been allowed even before Roe v Wade, you would be correct.
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laleo
I'm not in college, so I don't have access to the databases you seek, but, even if I did, I'd probably go about it another way.
My father and I were talking one time, and he mentioned how amazed he is that the maternal mortality rates have fallen so dramatically during his lifetime. He had three neighbors, friends of his, whose mothers died during pregnancy or childbirth. The only person I know (and I didn't even know her, she was the sister of a friend) who died during childbirth did so because she refused to have an abortion, even though she had contracted leukemia during pregnancy.
If you want to know the answer to your question, instead of looking at case law (how can a dead woman bring legal action against her doctors anyway?), look at the maternal mortality rates. What is the trend in how many women have died during pregnancy because of uncontrolled high blood pressure? Uncontrolled diabetes? Leukemia? Organ failure? Or any other pregnancy-induced illness that could have been "cured" by an abortion? Are the rates falling? Why? Just better medical care, or is access to abortion also a factor? And somewhere in there, I would think it might be important to factor in the pre-Roe v Wade taboo against abortion under any circumstances.
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laleo
Too much reading for me, Mark, but this book, When Abortion Was a Crime, might have some of the answers you seek (if you can stand to wade through the bias). Here's one excerpt from the Epilogue.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft967nb5z5/
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markomalley
I think you're right that it would be difficult to find.
Abigail, I see (as we've discussed before) abortion as a very ethically difficult issue.
On one hand, a person should be secure in their own bodies. On the other hand, there are two lives (in my belief) involved in the decision and for one person to have the liberty to be secure in her own body, the right of the other person to be secure in her own body is necessarily compromised. Either way it comes down, one person loses some liberty. In one case, the person loses liberty for the sake of responsibility. In the other case, the person loses her life to allow the other to exercise that liberty. (Of course -- as we've also discussed before -- if you do not believe that there are two lives involved, then, in your belief, there is no ethical issue)
As we discussed earlier, there is the issue of self-defense that must be considered...an extremely important point where you educated me. If the second person is, even inadvertently, attacking the first person and threatening the existence of the first person, the first person should have a right to defend herself against that attack. If that defense requires actions that destroy the second person (where the motivation is not the destruction of the second person, but the preservation of the first person's life), it is a regrettable outcome of a fully licit course of action.
This is an important part of the talking points of the pro-choice advocacy groups. They state that women's lives will be endangered if Roe v Wade is reversed. However, as Stayed Too Long rightly pointed out, there was always the exception for the mother's life and health (the "and health" was essentially universal since the 1960s). So the question becomes: is that, in practice, what happened? Thus this question. Is it based on fact? Or is it hyperbole?
I think that Laleo has a simply brilliant idea when she suggests that I look at maternal mortality rates as an indicator. If Roe v Wade increased the availability of medically necessary terminations, I should see a steep decline in maternal mortality rates. I'll see if I can find that statistic.
Anyway, I do appreciate everybody's inputs on the subject.
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