So you approve of a measure that contains "an explicit provision that allows a woman to avert her eyes".

Do you not find anything wrong with a law that needs to include something like that?! That a person has to be "allowed" by law to avert their eyes from something the government requires others to show her?

"A vaginal probe ultrasound is mandated if that gives the best image, even in those instances where the unwanted pregnancy is the result of rape."

I have never understood how a baby can somehow be less human or unworthy of life just because it was not conceived voluntarily. Impregnating a woman through the act of rape is evil, but why does this automatically mean that we have to commit another act of evil by murdering the baby?

Those who insist on aborting children conceived through rape, yet oppose the use of the death penalty for adult criminals, should have to explain this obvious inconsistency. Barack "Punished With A Baby" Obama would be first on my list.

Cassy,
Looks like the liberals would rather have more abortions. So all this talk about reducing the number of abortions is simply spin as usual. If they are honest, liberals would support this bill to allow women to make an informed choice.

I am uncomfortable with legislatures, courts, religious, and others getting involved in matters that I feel should be between patient and physician(s). Abortion is one of them.

Perhaps a bit OT, but I also discount vowed celibates dictating to married couples on sexual matters, non-veterans posturing authoritatively on military matters, non-athletes on sports performance matters, women on male sexual matters, men on female sexual matters, non-parents on child-rearing, etc.

Anyone who believes in "safe, legal, and RARE" would support legislation like this.

"The complaints about these types of things really show that the "pro-choice" movement isn't about choice at all. Choice has nothing to do with it. They want all women to have abortions... "

This is bordering on raving. Meds, stat.

Personally, I've felt for some time that if one needs to have a mandatory wait period to buy a handgun (to cool off etc), then it is reasonable to have a wait period on an abortion.
A mandatory pamphlet or counseling would be nice too, to make sure that people have a chance to hear and consider the potential downsides of the procedure.

jim2,
I know vowed celibates that talk about matters of family, but I've never had one talk to me, or near me, about sex. Unless it is to say abstain from it until you're ready for the implications that go with engaging in it.
Very few of those celibates did not come from a family themselves...

I have no problem with the requirement that women be offered a free ultrasound upon request, but this bill goes way beyond reason - A $10,000 fine for failing to provide an ultrasound? A provision that allows a woman to avert her eyes? Why not just require the woman to read a 1,000 page medical text and pass an exam on it before undergoing an abortion? Abortion is the type of issue where I tend to favor the opposite of the side I last heard speak on the subject, and reading this anti-abortion bill fits right into that pattern. As with most personal decisions, the government should keep its nose out of this subject.

As with most personal decisions, the government should keep its nose out of this subject.
-------------------------------------
Good point! We need to abolish Roe vs Wade as soon as possible before we can talk about gov keeping its nose out of this subject. BTW, people like Obama can support laws denying medical care to surviving aborted babies. So this shouldn't be too much for them in any case.

A common theme I wonder about is the idea that abortion is a personal matter. It seems that hinges on what constitutes a person. Under current law a newborn must take a breath on it's own to gain full rights as a person under the law.

Some argue that before that first breath, killing "it" is a personal matter and no crime at all. After that first breath killing the child is a government matter and murder.

The first breath concept is archaic and has no basis in science as a child has been respirating for months and even breathing, just not air. It makes no sense that such an antediluvian concept has such a defining role in our laws? It's time they were updated.

Mac,
We have all types of appeal requirements for people on death penalty. I don't why people would be upset with this law. The woman can still choose abortion. This one just make it more informed. Liberals now want to impose health insurance on the young people who don't need and want to buy insurance under universal health care. Yet they don't want the women to make an informed choice.

Abortion has become a religion on the left, much like global warming now.

Global warming rage lets global hunger grow

LAI,

I oppose abortion in most cases, but I do understand why some oppose this particular law. Some, if not most, women seeking an abortion are of two minds; some part of them wants the baby, but another part of them doesn't want the baby. Maybe they are in financial hardship or feel they are too old to go thorough all the stress of raising a child (again). Many women who get an abortion subsequently suffer emotionally for it, some greatly and for the rest of their lives. This law is sure to increase that suffering, but it's not clear that it will deter any abortions. The way to stop abortion is to outlaw it accept in a few cases, not increase the suffering of women who believe it's their choice to make and then suffer for making that choice.

I know that doesn't fit the pro-life view, but we need to address the issue head on rather than dilly-dallying around the edges where we risk doing more harm than good.

Mac has a point. I'm not real sure I agree with it but if a reasonable (which in my mind is *really* early) point for the beginning of life is set and abortions limited that way I'd probably accept it as a good compromise. (Aborting downs children, etc., is something I find even more horrific than simple abortion for a variety of reasons and the arguments for late term abortions would most likely be those eugenic ones.)

I wanted to mention the sign.

"...it is "against the law for anyone, regardless of his or her relationship to you, to force you to have an abortion.""

This needs to be posted. I don't think anyone has any idea how many abortions are coerced by parents or boyfriends or husbands, even. That's NOT CHOICE and anyone who believes in choice should have no problem whatsoever requiring that this notice be posted conspicuously. If you feel pressured it's illegal and whoever it is is breaking the law to pressure you or try to make you have an abortion if you don't want it.

SCSIwuzzy -

The Catholic Church has a notorious history here.

In RC, no BC used to be allowed at all. Only in the last few score years has "the rhythm method" been tolerated. Historically, the RC even took a dim view of marital relations when the wife was pregnant, as it was then just lust not procreation. Wives were historically told to deny their sex drives when pregnant for fear of injury to the child, but to yield to their husbands if they insisted despite that "danger". How's that for guidance?

Even now, the RC will not sanction remarriage by even an innocent person without the sophistry the RC calls "annulment" which essentially states that the previous marriage did not exist, even if that leaves 10 children somehow unaccounted for. (Are they then bastards?)

On abortions, historically the RC allowed many women to perish from tubal pregnancies. Their view of God's will then was eerily similar to those currently who pray as their children die from curable conditions.

Avowed celibates ....

Mac,
You have a reasonable point. In order to address your concern, we should have an opt-out option for the woman. By law, we should have a waiting period for abortion and we should require the physician to show the ultrasound to the woman considering abortion. But we should have a waiver option for the woman to sign not to view the ultrasound. Just like the new 401K plus with opt-in as the default. You have to choose to opt-out of the plan.

I also think that the outrage now should be directed at the abortion extremists like Planned-Parenthood. They use "pro-choice" rhetoric as a smokesreen for their abortion-for-profit operation. There are documented case of women dying because of their unsafe practice. Also there are documented cases of even covering up for sexual abuse of underage girls.

This law is a much needed regulation of this dangerous practice of the notorious abortion industry.

So I guess what's being said here, is that *this* band of extremists doesn't like or approve of *that* band of extremists -- absent the the sordid details, the stale frames, the stock arguments of the American political dichotomy, as conceived by the DNC and RNC. "I often think it comical/How nature always does contrive/That every gal and every boy/That's born into the world alive/Is either a little liberal/Or else a bit conservative." Iolanthe II, WS Gilbert.

I guess the mainstream on the left is to deny medical care to surviving aborted babies. Obama got a 100% rating from the notorious Planned Parenthood and got the strong support the most liberal wing of the Dem party.

BTW, Mac has a good point. "Killing babies or children" should be a private decision between a woman and her physician. Whatever logic applicable to abortion should be directly applicabale to killing handicapped babies/children.

jim2...

What I can't stand are those damn ignorant people who talk about politics and aren't even political scientists! OMFG......How dare they!!!!!!!!!!

CampionRules -

I vote but do not bear babies.

Also, one can run for office and be elected w/o that degree, but one cannot face the abortion decision w/o being pregnant.

Sure one can. It takes two people to make a baby or create a pregnancy or whatever one wishes to call it.

You can, without being pregnant, face having an abortion decision be made about your child.

And you can, without being pregnant, face the knowledge that you might have had a child, an individual that was either a girl or boy, had dark hair or light, blue eyes or brown, was tall or short, who's genetic information was determined... and now you don't.

It is true that one cannot have babies or children without being pregnant first. It is sad that people can go to the extreme to justify denying medical care to surviving aborted babies. It is even sadder that a person with such an extreme view can run for presidency with the enthusiastic support of a significant majority in the Dem party.

Using the same logic, a man can say that he can vote but cannot bear babies, esp handicapped babies. So the decision to kill or terminate a handicapped baby or even a handicapped child is a private decision between the mother and the physician.

You can, without being pregnant, face having an abortion decision be made about your child.
-------------------------------------
I guess we can vote to make it easy for a man to abandon a woman and let abortion take care of the inconvenient pregnancy.

I don't understand this "Abortion is a matter between a woman and a doctor." saying. It's not as if the doctor usually talks to the woman about the parenting, adoption, OR abortion options. That's the job of a counselor, however fairly or unfairly they may present the options. The doctor is simply there to abort.
P.S. Is abortion the only issue that some liberals cry and scream over government creating rules for? They seem to be just fine with it in various other situations, such as the education of "already born" children.

"I guess we can vote to make it easy for a man to abandon a woman and let abortion take care of the inconvenient pregnancy."

That would be fair. Horrible in some ways, but fair. It would give both parties involved (though not the third party) an equal post-conception right to chose.

I'd rather both parties had equal pre-conception rights to chose.

Synova -

I disagree (your #23) in that it is like the unequal contributions by the pig and the chicken to a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved but the pig was committed. So, too, is the man involved, but it is the woman who must commit to bearing or aborting.

It's her call, and so should it be.

I disagree strongly.

Your analogy only fits the tiniest bit. Because bearing does not involve anything like the involvement of the pig. And the "breakfast" is not consumed, it is your child.

We simply can *not* continue to pretend that men are not every bit as invested in their offspring as women are. It's YOUR CHILD.

Synova -

We'll just have to disagree then.

Keep in mind, though, that any attempt to impose your view of morality or religion upon another makes one akin in principle to jihadists.

Jim, you're seeing it 180 degrees from reality. I agree with you that abortion does essentially remove the burden from the father and place it entirely on the mother, but what you don't see is that that is so very wrong on so many levels. That aspect of abortion is as least as bad as the young life that is terminated.

It's no wonder that by far the largest support for abortion in this country is among young men. Legal abortion has made it a lot easier to get laid without consequences for the male.

And the who knows how many adult men (hundreds of thousands at least) who rape young children reeeeeeaaaaly apreciate your support. They get to destroy the evidence and the Democrats make money off of it. Another marxist trifecta.

"Keep in mind, though, that any attempt to impose your view of morality or religion upon another makes one akin in principle to jihadists."

Roe v. Wade is imposing YOUR veiw of morality on US not the other way around.

180 degrees from reality.

"Keep in mind, though, that any attempt to impose your view of morality or religion upon another makes one akin in principle to jihadists."

Yeah, being against killing people is just like being a jihadists.

Sheesh.

Good point from P.Bunyan.

Men used to leave it on the woman to use birth control or not.

We figured that was pretty vile and worked for years to insist that men take responsibility.

Now men leave it on the woman to go have a doctor rip the fetus from her womb. Or not.

Not an improvement.

Jim2,
Are you Catholic? I am guessing that you are not.
Your understanding of annulment, or at least your portrayal, is ignorant at best.