Ireland compensates woman forced to travel to Britain for an abortion

[Valmy]

3)  That said, why should birth control be free?  Pretty much nothing else is, why should birth control be an exception?

To prevent abortions of course. I mean presuming reducing those is something people would be interested in.

Or what grumbles said.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Right, I think I'm one of the more conservative posters here and am definitely not on the "Free shit for x" train, generally. But stuff like publicly funding sex education, IUDs, that's like a public investment that is guaranteed to pay a huge return, it's almost stupid not to do it, from a fiscal perspective.

[merithyn]

For me the better answer is more education, IUDs for all (I feel they are the best form of birth control), and availability of the morning after pill OTC. Abortion ideally would be a very rare medical procedure for tragic situations where the fetus has a terrible defect, the pregnancy is a risk to the mother or etc. I'd much prefer that to theoretical large farms of premies in advanced incubators.

Obviously the people who oppose these common sense things for moral reasons, I take issue with.

Yep, pretty much. Though I have reservations with IUDs. When they go wrong, admittedly rarely, they go terribly wrong. I'd be all for the matchstick five-year hormonal therapy, though.

[Admiral Yi]

When you guys are talking about sex education, are you talking about "BTW, a girl can get pregnant if you don't use protection," or are you talking about convincing kids not to get pregnant?

Because I have a hard time believing there's folks out there that don't know how you make babies, and I don't think you can really convince a couple that doesn't give a damn to cover up.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think just teaching kids that a) condoms are cheap b) don't be embarrassed to go buy them, helps at least some. Obviously people would prefer not to use condoms, but at least as long as birth control pills are prescription only, it's going to be hard for the sub-18 year olds to get them, at least if they don't have really progressive parents. I wouldn't underestimate just how dumb a lot of people are, Yi, and I do think safe sex education has been shown to at least make a dent in the problem of unwanted pregnancies.

I'm not anything close to a doctor, but I just threw IUD out there as a free solution because they're both long lasting and effective, and I have "minor concerns" about any medication that dramatically alters anyone's hormonal profile (if the person is otherwise healthy.) I'm not convinced that regular BC pills long term hormonal effects haven't been downplayed a little bit, I think for example, the risk of stroke doubles in women who take hormonal BC versus those who do not. Not scare mongering, I think the pill is still very safe "all things considered", and it's doubling the risk of something that is already very low. But that was really just short hand, I'd be fine with government giving away any form of birth control that is medically accepted, and reasonably priced (i.e. not some crazy theoretical magic pill that costs $100,000/dose.)

[merithyn]

Few things:

1. Not to focus on the pedantic, but a fetus is certainly alive, by every standard definition in biology. I doubt there's a biologist in the world who would say a fetus isn't life. It isn't "viable life outside the womb" until a certain point in fetal development where modern medicine can keep a premature baby alive and get it to healthy life in the NICU. Lots of things cannot live on their own, but they're still life (various bacterias etc.)

I tried to be specific about this, but maybe I failed. I consider a fetus "life". I do not, however, consider it independent life until it is no longer alive because its mother is alive. Which is different than "viable life outside the womb", because until it is actually outside the womb, it's not an independent life.

2. Most ethicists talking about abortion focus on personhood. Depending on your beliefs, a fetus isn't a person until x time. For devout Catholics this is basically at the moment of conception. For many who take a more scientific view on it, it's some time around viability. The more hardcore pro-choicers (like you apparently) believe a fetus isn't a person until the instant it is fully outside the woman's body. I think the U.S. Supreme Court did a pretty good job in Roe, they said that in the third trimester (the time, in the era of Roe, when babies could be viable outside the womb--it's a little earlier now) since the fetus was viable outside the womb the State had a compelling interest in fetal life to step in and protect it. The Roe court acknowledge the rights of fetal life prior to that point, but held that since the fetus and the woman were inextricably linked prior to the third trimester, the privacy rights of the woman to handle her medical affairs trumped the fetus's rights, but post-viability (and the later Casey ruling shifted us off the trimester system to one of medical viability) this rights weighing, in the minds of the court, comes out differently.

You misunderstand. I actually believe that a fetus is a person the moment that it can survive outside the mother. I don't, however, believe that the fetus has the same rights as the mother until it actually *is* out of the mother.

For me, I largely agree with Roe, you largely don't. You either believe personhood starts at birth, or that personhood doesn't "matter"  before birth versus the woman's rights. I take a different view.

3. The comparisons to kidney donation and blood transfusions are materially different because those would be requirements I sacrifice something to save the life of a stranger. My argument is a mother has an intrinsic ethical responsibility to her fetus and to her child, once it is born. I fully recognize this is "unfair" in a ton of  ways, but I view it as "biology isn't fair" in various ways between men and women, and this is simply one of them.

I'm sympathetic to the desire that the abortion debate be solely about the woman, but I care about women and babies (including the unborn, past a certain point of fetal development), and while I recognize the political reasons you'd like me to just care about the woman, that isn't going to happen. I think it's not going to happen for a lot of people (including most women--your position of no restrictions on abortion at all I bet isn't supported by even 30% of American women--and this isn't just an appeal to numbers, we live in a democracy, numerical support matters.)

I don't think that my view will ever be the majority view in the United States. Nor do I think that it's my job to convince people that I'm right. What I want is for people to consider women to be more important than as simply an incubator. I'll consider that a win right now.

[merithyn]

3)  That said, why should birth control be free?  Pretty much nothing else is, why should birth control be an exception?

Because making it free saves an enormous amount of public money.  It is like needle exchanges; yeah, they cost public money, but they save a fuckton more public money.  You don't even need the rationale that you want to reduce abortions to justify free birth control.

Right, I think I'm one of the more conservative posters here and am definitely not on the "Free shit for x" train, generally. But stuff like publicly funding sex education, IUDs, that's like a public investment that is guaranteed to pay a huge return, it's almost stupid not to do it, from a fiscal perspective.

Yep. Make it free, easy to get, and safe. Educate, educate, and educate. All of these have a proven track record in lowering abortion rates, as well as a number of other issues like STDs, general health, etc. Why wouldn't you make this free?

[merithyn]

When you guys are talking about sex education, are you talking about "BTW, a girl can get pregnant if you don't use protection," or are you talking about convincing kids not to get pregnant?

Because I have a hard time believing there's folks out there that don't know how you make babies, and I don't think you can really convince a couple that doesn't give a damn to cover up.

Good sex education teaches about a lot more than "insert peg B into hole A". It goes into how to talk about sex with your partner, what do you personally believe is acceptable and what isn't, how do you use a condom, what types of birth control types are there and what are the pros and cons of each, alternative sexual partners (LGBTQ), and that saying no is a valid option. And there are plenty of studies that show that kids who've had good sex ed classes are not only less likely to end up pregnant, but are also less likely to be raped, taken advantage of by someone, or to get STDs.

My kids' church spends an entire year teaching 7th and 8th graders about what it means to be a sexually active person. They go through the emotional, physical, and mental changes that happen, the repercussions, the positive aspects, and basically all of the things that kids that age need to learn but rarely do. It's adult led, but the kids have a lot of leeway to talk about things that they want to bring up, too.

Basically? It's the kinds of conversations that parents should be having with their kids but rarely feel comfortable doing so

[grumbler]

When you guys are talking about sex education, are you talking about "BTW, a girl can get pregnant if you don't use protection," or are you talking about convincing kids not to get pregnant?

Because I have a hard time believing there's folks out there that don't know how you make babies, and I don't think you can really convince a couple that doesn't give a damn to cover up.

I think proper sex education certainly would cover the issues associated with pregnancy and sex in general (hetero sex as well as homo sex) for both sexes.  After all, the proper purpose of sex education isn't just to teach students how to avoid pregnancy, but how to deal with sex throughout their lives.

I think that properly educated individuals will understand that you have to treat sex and sexual relations something like you regard cars or motorcycles:  useful in their proper place, but nothing to be treated lightly or taken for granted.

Edit:  in other words, what Meri said.

[CountDeMoney]

Yep. Make it free, easy to get, and safe. Educate, educate, and educate. All of these have a proven track record in lowering abortion rates, as well as a number of other issues like STDs, general health, etc. Why wouldn't you make this free?

Because unplanned pregnancy is the single most consistent means--across all demographics regardless of race, geography, religion--of perpetuating and maintaining poverty.

[merithyn]

Yep. Make it free, easy to get, and safe. Educate, educate, and educate. All of these have a proven track record in lowering abortion rates, as well as a number of other issues like STDs, general health, etc. Why wouldn't you make this free?

Because unplanned pregnancy is the single most consistent means--across all demographics regardless of race, geography, religion--of perpetuating and maintaining poverty.

Yeah... *sigh* It does a damn fine job of keeping people in their place, doesn't it?

[Barrister]

Oh for fucks' sake.... 

I knew you'd like that one.

How old is that law? My understanding is that infanticide and exposure/abandonment used to be absolutely epidemic. I would understand why they would have a special category just for that.

Criminal law in the UK exists almost entirely in the common law.

In Canada in the late 19th century it was decided that we should write down the criminal law - to codify it if you will.  That led to the Criminal Code.  I believe the provisions on infanticide remain essentially unchanged since then.

[CountDeMoney]

That led to the Criminal Code.  I believe the provisions on infanticide remain essentially unchanged since then.

That's not correct.  Infanticide released their album a full two years before they started their side project, Criminal Code.

[Razgovory]

Yep. Make it free, easy to get, and safe. Educate, educate, and educate. All of these have a proven track record in lowering abortion rates, as well as a number of other issues like STDs, general health, etc. Why wouldn't you make this free?

Because unplanned pregnancy is the single most consistent means--across all demographics regardless of race, geography, religion--of perpetuating and maintaining poverty.

Yeah... *sigh* It does a damn fine job of keeping people in their place, doesn't it?

Pregnancy was actually invented in the 1920's for the express purpose of suppressing women.  Before that, children were just found under leaves of cabbage or delivered via shorebirds.

[merithyn]

Pregnancy was actually invented in the 1920's for the express purpose of suppressing women.  Before that, children were just found under leaves of cabbage or delivered via shorebirds.

Don't you have somewhere to be?