Prolife Problems

Four of the six Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa and four in Minnesota will shut down in a year, the Midwestern affiliate operating them said Friday, blaming a freeze in federal funds, budget cuts proposed in Congress and state restrictions on abortion. The clinics closing in Iowa include the only Planned Parenthood facility in the state that provides abortion procedures, in Ames, home to Iowa State University... "We have been fighting to hold together an unsustainable infrastructure as the landscape shifts around us and an onslaught of attacks continues," Ruth Richardson, the affiliate's president and CEO, said in a statement.

...the bill contains provisions that have alarmed health care advocates since they first showed up in earlier versions of the bill. Among them is a plan seeking to defund Planned Parenthood, which the organization warns will affect its ability to provide critical services, including pap smears, cancer screenings, and birth control. But on Thursday, two last-minute additions went even further: The reconciliation bill that was passed now seeks to ban Affordable Care Act health care plans from covering abortion and gender-affirming care for all Medicaid patients, including adults, after initially proposing to ban care for just minors.

So there you have it. Planned Parenthood was already on life support and if the "Big, Beautiful Bill" passes it will effectively pull the plug on their finances. More clinics will need to close whether Megan Thee Stallion likes it or not. What gets downplayed (or left out entirely) by major newspapers is that as clinics close, more babies live.

The analysis of birth data found that in the states with abortion bans, the rate of births per 1,000 women of reproductive age increased by 1.7 percent more than would be expected from previous years’ data... In states with abortion bans, that increase translated to 22,180 more births than expected, the researchers said.

You won't find anyone in the media doing follow-ups with these 22,180 children. No one will attend their 1st birthday party or ask the mothers if they regret having them. The media has decided it's just better not to say anything. Unless it's a horror story about a woman who couldn't get an abortion it's a non-story. No one in the major media outlets will admit that's how it works, of course, but that is how it works.

[ID: an X comment from a user whose name is blocked out says the following: "If I was a baby I would much rather never be born than to live a short life of disease and pain where I never even get to learn to read or speak." Secular Pro-Life replies with the following: "Deeply troubling and dehumanizing when able-bodied people imagine what it's like to be disabled, don't bother to consult any actually disabled people, and decide it's a fate worse than death. Yet continually that's the process I see when people defend abortion for fetal anomaly."]

“Since 2019 I have endured six workplace investigations because of my advocacy and research on abortion and in every investigation I have been cleared of misconduct,”

Howe stated that she had endured six separate workplace investigations since 2019 regarding her pro-life research. She was found innocent of misconduct in each case, including the most recent investigation launched at the beginning of the year, which determined she was innocent of any breach in the Australian Code for Responsible Research.

"For these types of people I always give them a hypothetical situation for them answer So if you knew your wife was going to die by giving birth to the child would you let Your wife get an abortion or would you let your wife die in the child grow up without a mother?"

What do you think?

I would answer that the choice is never actually that simple. We imagine this cinematic moment where the doctor comes out to talk to the anxious husband in the waiting room and says “Sir, we can only save one of them. Should we save your wife or your child?” and he has to make that choice.

That makes a very dramatic movie scene, but it’s not real.

There are three categories of “life of the mother” situations:

1. Very early pregnancy. Mother has a life threatening condition and cannot be kept stable until the child reaches viability (now around 22 weeks with evidence-based best practices). Even in these situations, a direct abortion isn’t the life-saving care. Usually we’re talking about the mother needing a treatment for her life-threatening condition that risks the life of the baby. Most ethical choice is to treat the mother. If the baby dies as a result of the treatment, that is a tragic loss. If the baby doesn’t die, awesome! In this category, there is no way to save the baby without saving the mother, because if the mother died, the baby would too. Ectopic pregnancies fall in this category because there is currently no way to save the baby. If we developed the ability to get ectopic embryos to successfully re-implant in the uterus, that would become the ethical option.

2. Late-term complications. I’m going out of order here for a reason. This is anything where the mother’s life-threatening health issue starts after viability, but especially when we’re talking 30 weeks and on. Baby’s chance of survival with an early delivery goes up rapidly as baby approaches full term. In these cases, if the mother needs immediate treatment for a life threatening issue, she doesn’t actually need her baby to die. There is no reason to choose between the mother and child. A C-section is actually safer than a late-term abortion, since third trimester abortions usually still involve the mother laboring and delivering a dead baby. If the concern, as posed in the original hypothetical, is that she would “die by giving birth,” then she probably just needs a C-section (or a better doctor).

3. The third category is the most complex one. This is when the life threatening issue for the other begins when the child cannot yet survive outside the womb, but may be able to in a few weeks. This is where the difficult decisions are made. This category includes women diagnosed with cancer who might decide to delay treatment to protect their child until their child can be safely delivered. However, even here we can see examples of mothers who choose to receive treatment without first killing their child, and doctors who find innovative ways to treat life-threatening illnesses without harming preborn children.

The true answer is “save them both.” We can’t always - just as any doctor knows in a triage situation they can’t always save all the patients. The decision of who to save is never based on which patient is more human, more valuable, or more worth saving. The answer is instead based on how the doctor can save the greatest number of patients. If the doctor can save everyone, they do. If the doctor knows a course of action means for sure saving one patient, while another might not make it, but the alternative is losing both, then they will choose to save at least one. We almost never see a situation where the doctor has to arbitrarily choose between two patients - the decision is always based on the condition of each patient, the resources available, how much time there is, etc. There are algorithms for this kind of thing.

Basically I refuse to let unrealistic hypotheticals dictate actual policy on saving children.

Because people believe in the “we can only save one, choose!” scenario, we get doctors telling women that they will die if they don’t get an abortion, and then they cry to the media that they had to go to Colorado or California to get their “life-saving procedure.” The reality is that either the doctor could have treated the mother without first killing the baby and given the baby a chance to survive, or they could have delivered the baby and then treated the mother.

Abortion doesn't save women. It doesn't stop or fix rape. It doesn't end poverty. It doesn't stop domestic violence. It doesn't do anything except undo women's healthy biology, kill her child, and send her right back to whatever circumstances she came from.

Sure, if she just doesn't want to be pregnant, it ends pregnancy. Why doesn't she want to be pregnant though? The replies are along the lines of, "Fuck you. It doesn't matter. It is her choice and right." Ok. Thank you for telling me you care about abortion, not women.

This is what is being offered as the savior for women? This is our freedom? This is our equality? This is the answer we are being offered for children living in poverty, abuse, or neglect? Just pre-emptively guess their fate and kill them? This is what we are being offered as a way to address maternal mortality? Don't attempt to make advancements that address complications that arise in pregnancy, just blame women's biology and kill her kid?

I do not accept that this is the best we can do for women, children, or families. I do not accept that to be free, equal, and safe women have to turn against their biology and their children.”

This obligation exists no matter how young the child is. A parent must care for their ten-year-old, two-year-old, two-month-old, one-day-old, and for the child who is still living in the womb, because the child is the same individual whether living outside or inside the womb. There is no minimum age at which the parent's obligation does not exist.