Dr Tiller performed late-term abortions for women whose babies were either already dead or going to live only hours outside the womb. That is why women have late-term abortions.

The notion that even a small percentage of Dr Tiller’s patients – who paid a lot of money and travelled huge distances and underwent traumatic medical procedures – did so just because they were shallow tarts who wanted to wear miniskirts again is incorrect.

I would invite you to provide any kind of evidence for your assertions, but you won’t.

Good analogy. However, Dr. Tiller purposefully specialised in late-term abortion because it was an untapped niche market (read: nobody else in their right mind would touch it). He was then hailed as a saviour by the women’s rights movement and seized on that opportunity to lobby for further liberalisation of late-term abortion laws. This is despite the simple fact that there are very few medical reasons beyond severe foetal abnormality to use this. Beyond 24 weeks the foetus can be delivered normally and is likely to survive with medical management. Women gain nothing at all terminating their foetus at this stage.

Hmm… I think there’s a cause and effect problem here.

Let’s imagine I believe passionately in ethical vegetarianism, for example, and lobby hard for it and also invest my own money in vegetarian food products because it’s the way I can best act to make them happen. If vegetarianism takes off and becomes the next big thing and my investment becomes incredibly valuable, would that reduce my passion or ethical commitment to vegetarianism?

P.S. Sorry for misattributing :)

Dr Tiller performed late-term abortions for women whose foetuses were not going to survive more than a few hours outside the womb. Dr Tiller saved the lives of women whose foetuses were already dead but who still could not find another medical practitioner or facility willing to extract the rotting corpse of their planned, wanted child because that is the atmosphere created by medically illiterate rubbish like the “partial-birth abortion” ban.

There have been dozens of stories told by patients in the wake of Dr Tiller’s assassination. How he was a comfort to them in a time when everything was going horribly wrong. How he saved the lives of living adult women who had nowhere else to go because the anti-choice movement thinks controlling women’s reproduction is more important than medically necessary procedures.

What a monster Dr Tiller was, right, Tanya?

No worries about the threadjack (although you might want to post your comment as a post, it’s a goodie! :).

I won’t break your model, but I do want to add a complicating factor. I think that a foetus has some rights, and considerably more than an unfertilised egg or a free swimming sperm (but considerably less than a baby). On that basis I think that we have a moral responsibility to, where possible, prevent conception rather than creating a foetus which will be aborted.

I believe that argument is morally consistent with allowing women the right to abort a non-viable foetus. It leads us to providing good sex education and free an appropriate birth control and advice to all New Zealanders no matter their age or gender.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/06/dr-george-tiller.html

In the intro she refers to the terrorism that Dr Tiller had to put up with. If you think she is being extreme, read this post first:

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/06/operation-rescue.html

This post, by sara at orcinus, talks more about this as terrorism, and notes that Dr Tiller’s killing took place on the sixth anniversary of Eric Rudolph’s capture. Doubtfull that that is an accident. It is the second right wing act of terror to take place in a liberal church this year. Which is not to say that there is a large organised component, but merely that
individuals are sending similar messages.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2009/05/jesuss-jihadis.html

A short while back US right wingers got all in a tizz because the DHS issued a report, (asked for by GWB) that said right wing extremists were and are a serious threat.

Are Anti abortionists all complicit? No, of course not. But the use of rhetoric like ‘baby killer’ and ‘Murderer’ are not without risk. That risk needs to be borne in mind by people using that rhetoric. Not everyone sees it as metaphor, even those that use it. If it is not a metaphor, acts like this killing become justifiable. It really is that simple.

Words have consequences.

Now you are misquoting me! I’m simply saying that if you are making a large amount of money out of one particular issue then your judgement on an issue will be partisan, regardless of your moral or ethical system. It is exactly the same situation if a person has a bridge-building company and lobbies the government to build more bridges “for the good of the people”. It’s a definite Tui moment.

Lew: 24 weeks is considered viable at present, although a number of 22-week-olds have been known to survive.

Essentially I see the issue of unwanted, dangerous or otherwise inappropriate pregnancy, and the consequent question of abortion as an old-fashioned moral hazard; that is, nobody other than the person required to bear the full consequences of the decision really has standing to insist on its outcome, since it won’t affect them one way or the other – or at least, it will affect the person whose decision it is to a much greater degree. I may (in the future) disapprove most deeply of my daughter’s (possible) decision to abort a baby, but unless I can put my actions where my remonstrations are and take the baby from her and care for it myself, those remonstrations are irrelevant at a basic biological level. They may have value at a social or familial level (that is, she may decide to keep the baby because she doesn’t want to alienate her Papa), but ultimately there’s nothing I can actually do to rear the child if the mother isn’t willing to do so. Essentially, by this logic, the only question any woman considering an abortion need ask those who would force her to keep it is “will you carry it, then?” In almost all cases, they can’t.

On these grounds, my reasoning is that only the mother can without moral hazard decide the baby’s fate until such time as the baby can survive without her. Not without any surrogate, but without that specific woman in whose womb the baby resides. I’m not a doctor, but I think 26 weeks is the accepted viable term, and on this basis I think this is the time beyond which abortion should generally be circumscribed in favour of other methods such as pre-term caesarean section delivery and subsequent adoption, or whatever. Maybe they’ll develop a means of transferring pre-term babies from womb to womb in such cases, I don’t know.

Basically, I think that once the baby has a realistic prospect of life regardless of whether its mother wants to help it live or not, it ought to be given a shot at that life. But before that time the fact of it being wholly and completely dependent on its mother renders the choice moot: until the point of independent viability, the baby is morally and ethically (if not medically) a part of its mother – it cannot survive but for its mother’s consent. If she doesn’t want to give the baby life, I don’t believe society is justified in forcing her to do so. On the other hand, once the baby is viable on its own it must be protected and its life safeguarded as any other person would be.

Break away.

L

I’m not sure that “x is an absolute wrong especially under condition y” is a logical statement, either it’s an absolute wrong or is variably wrong.

Like many on the left I consider that foetuses do have rights, they just don’t have the same rights as a human being. Like most of the left I am used to navigating a sea of grey, to balancing competing rights, to recognising that there is often no good answer, just a less bad one.

If an 11 year old girl got pregnant when raped by her father, would you insist on her carrying the pregnancy to term?

If a 27 year old woman with two children under four is pregnant, and doctors know with certainty that continuing the pregnancy will kill her long before the foetus becomes viable, would you insist that she continue the pregnancy until it kills her knowing that the foetus has no chance of life?

BTW I suggest reading this if you haven’t already, perhaps you’ll read a cynical doctor selling a service to make a profit. I read a man talking about where his ethical and moral framework comes from.

Are you saying it is impossible for a doctor to do do medicine because they care? Or only as long as they have a financial interest? Or only if the medicine in question is abortion?

Would you argue that all midwives only do it for the money? Or will you allow that they may do it, at least in part, because they care about the babies and families they work with?

I am too old and too cynical to think that this could possibly be true.

No, I haven’t fudged these figures, Anita. I can’t get access to Tiller’s site but the cost of a similar late-term abortion in New Mexico is $2995 (found here). The cost of the actual care, including salaries should be no more than 1/3 of the total, considering Tiller owns his building. I therefore estimate he should have been getting about $2000 per procedure personally.

Bear in mind also that Tiller specialised in very late abortions, 27 weeks plus, for which he most certainly would have been charging extra.

Are you fudging the numbers a little? Presumably the $2000 includes the costs of all staff (not just Tiller), equipment, pharmaceuticals, facilities, overheads etc etc.