Nicaragua Shows What Could Be if Abortion Outlawed in US
Since July 2008, abortion in all circumstances has been banned in Nicaragua. The new law makes no exceptions for terminating pregnancies that endanger the health or life of the woman, or that result from rape or incest. Girls or women seeking or obtaining abortions are subject to imprisonment. Health care professionals providing abortions — or even unintentionally injuring a fetus — face jail time and being barred from practice.
A new Amnesty International report, The Total Abortion Ban in Nicaragua, details the effects of the new measures. Medical professionals are put in an impossible situation: they’re prevented, on pain of criminal prosecution, from providing essential medical services — in direct contradiction of best-practice guidelines from the Ministry of Health. Women who need abortions to preserve their health — or lives — have to find doctors willing to risk prosecution and suspension of their license, or seek out dangerous back-alley terminations.
The ban has a chilling effect, too, on women suffering obstetric complications: one woman admitted to a hospital following a miscarriage was so frightened that she would be charged with having an abortion that she asked doctors not to intervene. The rate of maternal deaths in Nicaragua has increased: Official figures show that 33 girls and women have died in pregnancy or childbirth so far this year, up from 20 in the same period a year ago.
Finally, girls and women who become pregnant as a result of sexual violence must either carry the pregnancy to term, or look for risky, clandestine abortions. Our researchers spoke with women, raped by relatives, who were forced to give birth — sometimes to their own brothers or sisters. In every case, it’s low-income women who are hit hardest — richer Nicaraguans are able to travel abroad to escape the ban.
Now, all of this was shockingly, appallingly predictable — but the full litany of violations makes terrible reading. That the Nicaraguan health minister is dismissing the report just shows how hard human rights supporters will have to push to overturn the ban.
Read the whole report (or the digest), o en Español (digest).
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This is supposed to be drastic and some kind of emergency?
Says Amnesty international:
Quick!! Take action!!*
*(Please ignore the 1.2 million whimsically aborted children every year.)
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
"whimsically aborted" is a personal opinion Solar, not a statistical fact.
If you have something you want to say, just come out and say it. No need to be passive-aggressive on the internet .
I stand by my statement. Aborting 1 life on whimsy is a bad choice.
Ignoring 1,200,000 abortions a year is Liberalism.
Perhaps /I/ am not the one who needs to get out of the sun, erm?
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
This controversy is so screwy. If life is material enough to keep score - shouldn't we use criteria better than potential-to-get-own name-some-day to count it? Why use mass, or age, or physical attractiveness? Capacity to suffer and utilitarian usefulness sound like more valid things to measure quantity of life than just having managed to complete a few cell division.
And your categorization of Liberalism is hardly fair for the body of modern thought that established democratic values, inalienable human rights, equality, and the notion of individual quality of life having universal value.
It does not surprise me that you would take the right of the mother to choose to be one from her if you so "whimisically abort" the establishment of modern liberalism that gives, among other things, you the right to say something, no matter how savagely ignorant it is.
Your first paragraph is nonsensical.
You last paragraph, especially the line: "the establishment of modern liberalism that gives, among other things, you the right to say something" makes me think you aren't exactly a student of history.
It is the middle one that seems to string together a couple thoughts together, though.
Do you really think that liberalism established inalienable human rights, equality, and the notion of individual quality of life having universal value?
First of all, ironically in an ABORTION debate, I think you are very brave to even bring up inalienable human rights seeing as HOW THE FIRST INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT IS THE RIGHT TO LIFE!
Secondly, how is equality promoted when one life is snuffed out so another can keep her social schedule/career path?!
Finally, how would you describe the quality of life of an aborted fetus lying in a trash receptacle?
Sheesh.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
"Secondly, how is equality promoted when one life is snuffed out so another can keep her social schedule/career path?!"
The article wasn't about ELECTIVE abortion solar, the article was about women/girls DYING because abortion is now illegal in Nicaragua.
Saving a woman's life is a far cry from "snuffing out" a life for the sake of a woman's social schedule and/or career path.
So "sheesh" right back at you.
An aborted fetus has no life to qualify. It likely had little to speak of before the procedure, further. And in most cases it had less of a life to look forward to than had it been conceived by a consenting adult interested in being a parent.
Modern Liberalism is the body of thought that brought the Dark Ages into the modern (and post modern) world of egalitarianism, rule of law , and individualism. Here's a fair treatment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
See, not a student, but a teacher.
First paragraph in simple terminology: "By what criteria do you quantify life? How did you choose? Why not choose something else?"
Life is not a pile of cells. Not even a large old pile of cells. Even the dynamic life is not held in much esteem by most. Human chauvinism is rampant in regards to what life is "special". What makes life special is a different matter, and it is difficult in the extreme, if not impoosible, to determine objectively what is the value of life. If it must be subjective, then the carrying mother is the power of life for any organism that depends oh her. So who are you to judge? No- freaking-body, that's who; at least without your imaginary friends or the rule of law, which currently allows for the power of life we are talking about.
Even your loaded language and prejudicial tone do not explain what makes you think anyone should tell a woman what to do with part of her anatomy, besides herself.
So what criteria? I suppose you freak out when someone passes a tape worm, too? Maybe you are easily impressed, but I do not think it is necessarilly brave to challenge vitriolic miscategorizations based on tired dogma's fueled on self-righteous hypocracricy. Just a passing duty...
Modern Liberalism is effectivly just a bunch of people who agree in a few basic tenets:
1- Victim Mentality.
Modern Liberals are victims and think everyone else either owes them something or that they are entitled to something.
2- Selfishness above all.
Personal freedoms which encroah upon the freedoms of others are the most sought after. (Especially if that means that the other can be killed and thrown away.)
3- Fairness.
Everything must be fair. The caveat? Only the Liberal's idea of fair is considered.
All that other blather about ushering in a great new era or whatever is hogwash.
Who am I?
I am a member of this society . I am a single father, without whom a precious child would be in stuck in 18 years of foster "care". I am a voter. I am a compassionate human who is sure that a child is not a parasite. It might surprise you to learn that as half of "Parents" a father, like me, actually DOES have a say in these matters.
But hold on a second...
Why are you making this about me? Even if you wish to hang this around my neck to allow your petty insults to resonate, I reject it completely and point out that your insults are just that: Insults.
Criteria.
The only criteria /should/ be whether or not the baby is viable.
The haughty attitude and insults speak volumes, however. They tell me that you do not want this argument to continue, so, I'll let you off the hook. So, you can advocate killing otherwise viable babies, and I'll work to save them from folks like you.
Good day.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
So I think I've figured this out Solar...you're former wife didn't want the baby, especially after finding out the baby would be a " special needs " baby?? I suppose she didn't want to be inconvenienced, give up her social schedule and her career path?? So you somehow convinced her to carry to term with the agreement to a divorce in which you'd raise your child by yourself.....is that pretty much your story? If so, I can see why you're bitter towards abortion . However, not every women who chooses to have an abortion is doing it for selfish reasons (as you too have acknowledged earlier in the thread).
...That you are a really curious, deductive person to even give it a shot.
She beat my one-year old son when I was busy being an Army soldier. It was impossible to take him out of his environment and Child Welfare was all to happy to put him in foster "care". After getting back to my home, it took a year, almost to the day, to get him out of that system. What this taught me was how to be grateful for having my child, I mean truely grateful, not Hallmark thanksgiving card grateful.
Now, when I discuss people wanting to abort their child because it will interfere with their social life, or their bff don't want a baby, I think it is such a waste of life.
That's me.
For the record, I do not object to abortions when the mother is pregenant due to rape or incest, or if her physical health is in bona-fide danger. This is not me taking a new position, I have made this very claim in other discussions. Thre record is in my profile, free to be seen by all.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.