[lotsofpulp]

What issue? What are the numbers on non medical necessity abortions post 20 weeks?

Why 20 weeks? Are the voting populace or politicians knowledgeable enough about pregnancy to be able to legislate these things without exposing doctors and women to unnecessary legal risk? And again, back to the numbers, does the is even need legislating? Are women or doctors haphazardly running around killing perfectly viable fetuses for fun?

[jonhohle]

There are over a million abortions performed every year in the US. If your belief is that these are humans with all the rights of any other human, that’s a staggering human rights issue.

The concept of viability is legal fiction. Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development and likewise, until about age 3 or so, no child will live without external support. Culturally, we celebrate “birth”, but that event has nothing to do with life.

On the other end is the necessity to support the life of a mother. While unfortunate, I think that’s a rare time that terminating a pregnancy is appropriate. That doesn’t mean lifestyle or convenience, though. That’s situations where only one or fewer people will make it alive if nothing is done. This represents a fraction of one percent of abortions. Other abuses may fall into this category.

[lotsofpulp]

> Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development

This cannot be true, and just because a fetus could live does not mean the quality of life is worth living. Not to mention the staggering costs of NICU healthcare.

The numbers I was asking about were specifically post 20 week, as a reply to parkingrift’s concerns.

[jonhohle]

Babies survive outside the womb prior to 20 weeks. That will continue to go down as technology progresses. What does cost have to do with whether someone is a person?

[lotsofpulp]

Sorry, I misread “given the technology” as today’s technology. But then I do not see how the concept of viability is legal fiction. Medical science can keep fetuses born after x weeks alive with y probability, and that y is near 0 or 0 before x weeks.

Cost had to do with practicality. It does not seem reasonable to expect a society to invest $10M into raising a 1 week old fetus that will need 24/7 support to live. Point being that there are limits real life and a purely philosophical exercise is not useful.

[jonhohle]

It’s legal fiction in that the concept was created in a court to justify why a person at a certain developmental stage wasn’t really a person. It’s not a scientific definition, a “law” of nature, or previous cultural definition. The idea was created to advance a legal argument. It’s fiction in that the value chosen was arbitrary then, is not a discrete event or time period, and by the same standard, is earlier than when defined and will continue to be earlier as technology advances.

The practicality of saving a life is certainly different than the legal justification to end a life. The point of technology being able to support development outside of a womb is evidence, imo, of the organism being independent from the mother. If that organism is individual and human, (s)he should have the full rights of all persons.

To me that means finding options that don’t involve terminating lives when the mother decides they are not prepared to parent. Right now the options outside abortion place significant strain on mothers, but as a society, 50 years have been spent not investigating alternatives and going all in on abortion. It’s already possible to transfer embryos fertilized in a lab successfully into an unrelated host.

Ultimately it is a philosophical argument. I can’t find any argument that has convinced me that a human is a human regardless of the stage of development or capabilities of the person. I’ve argued that “viability” will continue to be earlier for the past 20 years and haven’t been wrong about that yet. It’s currently limited by technology, but that shouldn’t impact the rights of individuals (in this case the unborn).

[pseudalopex]

> There are over a million abortions performed every year in the US.

More embryos don't implant.

> The concept of viability is legal fiction. Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development

We could live forever given the technology. Is mortality legal fiction?

[gruez]

> And again, back to the numbers, does the is even need legislating? Are women or doctors haphazardly running around killing perfectly viable fetuses for fun?

You realize that there are limits to voluntary abortions basically everywhere? Not having a limit is largely an american phenomenon. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abortion_Laws.svg

[lotsofpulp]

The vast majority of the US had and has limits on abortion.

What portion of the world has limits or not has no bearing on the reasoning for exposing doctors and patients to legal liabilities for no reason.

[ako]

Some numbers here: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/24/what-the-da...

1% of the abortions occur in week 21 or later, of a total of 625.000-930.000 abortion per year. So about 6250-9300 abortion per year in week 21 or later. Assuming a number of these are health related, "livestyle" abortions is probably less than 9300 per year.

To compare, US had about 19384 gun related homicides in 2020, so that problem is larger than the abortion one. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081)

[parkingrift]

You're trying to make a scientific or analytical response to what I've just said is a moral issue. You can surely disagree, but many people find late term abortions repugnant. Some people find any abortion at any term repugnant. You can have these feelings without associating them with religious views. I'm not religious, as I've said. However, my broader point here is that people are making a mistake directly associating views on abortion with religiosity or conservative political views. It's not that black and white.

I live in New York. Abortion is legal for any reason up to 24 weeks, and then legal for any medical reason beyond 24 weeks.

Nationally, about 1.3% of all abortions are after 20 weeks. I don't have further data as to what percentage of that 1.3% were due to medical reasons. Big round numbers here 1.3% is roughly 8,500 20+ week abortions in the US per year.

> Why 20 weeks?

With current technology it is roughly where viability starts to climb from 0%. Possibility of feeling pain and/or terminating a living, viable, being. At 24 weeks the viability can be as high as 70%. It is okay that you do not find this disturbing, but I do find it disturbing. It's disturbing to me to think about voluntarily terminating a pregnancy after 20 weeks with no medical issues for the child or mother.

If given an option this is how I would vote. Unfortunately, there is no nuance in most American political issues. I don't have a choice to vote on allowing abortions for any reason up to 20 weeks, or for any medical reason afterward. I typically get to choose between "ban all abortions" and "allow almost all abortions."