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Notes -
Abortion is in my mind due to the debate last night which has led me to this article:
https://thedispatch.com/article/claims-about-children-born-alive-after-abortion-attempts-in-minnesota-are-true/
The gist is: in Minnesota, if a baby was born you were required to care for it to keep it alive. Sometimes an abortion would result in a living baby being born, and doctors were required to give that baby supportive care (they were likely premature, so wouldn’t necessarily survive, although premature babies born wrong 23 weeks survive frequently, that said none of the cited instances of this led to a baby surviving).
In 2019 this was changed to allow doctors to let a baby sit there until it just dies on its own.
Here’s some thoughts about this:
At the point where this is even a question, you’re clearly talking about a living human being.
Simply ignoring a baby until they die is the way that infanticide (usually killing baby girls) is done all over the world
This is another instance of “conservative politician says something that gets immediately ‘fact checked’, but it turns out is at least directionally and likely just literally true.
We should be caring for living human babies whether the mother wants to kill them or not. “Oops I meant to kill it before I could see it out here in the world” is not a valid excuse.
If anything the fact that there were so many cases of this in a single state in such a small period of time moves my needle even further towards being aggressively anti abortion, up to jailing the doctors doing this and charging them with murder.
OK, maybe I'm completely out of the loop, but what exactly are they doing in Minnesota and why doesn't this article explain that at all?
Are late second trimester/third trimester abortions legal in Minnesota? Are they really doing them under conditions where the fetus is NOT suffering from a condition incompatible with life?
Because essentially, what they are performing is an emergency early term induced birth (which is done - and only done - in many places around the world when the life of the mother is in danger), right?
To an outside observer, this just sounds like "if a serious genetic/developmental defect incompatible with life is discovered late in pregnancy, abortion remains legal. In this special case, doctors are no longer forced to get an incubator contaminated for literally zero gain (since the malformed early birth baby will die under any and all circumstance anyway).
If this is the case, I personally would support all this. It would be cruel (and needlessly dangerous) to force the mother to carry a dying baby to term and birth it. It would be wasted equipment and medical labor, if doctors where forced to use an incubator for the dying baby in a case like that.
Because literally nobody is getting an elective abortion late second trimester and going “Oops I meant to kill it before I could see it out here in the world” when the fetus turns out to just keep on living, right?
The introductory conclusion is really quite shocking when translated from academeese:
"People are often too dumb to recognize they're pregnant until the 3rd trimester."
The logical follow-on to that, implicit in the author's writing, is "And you can't hold somebody accountable for being a real dumbass! Let 'em kill that baby"
This actually points to a something I've never heard a great answer on. How, in a world with ubiquitous condoms and the pill are we hitting 1 million abortions a year.
People may think this is inflammatory or vulgar, but I think certain ethnicities or cultures just have such little time preference or otherwise truly enjoy orgasming inside a woman. They have no self control to not do it. I recall overhearing a conversation a few years ago around Valentine’s Day where a group of men were high fiving each other about “nutting” in their girl as some sort of gift. This would match up well with racial stats on abortion.
I very rarely in my life used condoms. The withdrawal method works perfectly assuming you have the ability to do it. The whole myth that precum can inseminate women is another lie we were all fed as children.
It's a dilemma. If you want to avoid having kids, you have to pick between diminishing the sensation of sex overall, diminishing the moment of orgasm or relying on pharmacology that isn't 100% and does a number on your girl's hormone system.
The wife is on a copper IUD, is there a downside to that which I'm not aware of? I mean I feel it on occasion which isn't pleasant but compared to all the other options it is always seemed strange to me that this wasn't the default. edit: asked the wife last evening, it is apparently a hormonal iud and not copper, which has less bad symptoms.
Erm, this is strictly an anecdote, but my wife experienced several downsides over time from the copper (paragard) IUD. The most immediate downside was longer periods which progressed to chronic bleeding and endometriosis. The second was more frequent to chronic yeast infections. None of these were official side effects but internet wisdom said that they were in fact side effects and when she finally had it removed after a couple of especially painful episodes of dysmenorrhea the doctor acknowledged these as side effects from the copper IUD and indeed, these issues disappeared afterwards. If your wife ever starts experiencing any of these symptoms, I'd strongly encourage her to have it removed as it can and does get worse over time.
Turns out I was wrong and that it is a hormonal IUD which according to her has less of these problems. She had just referred to it as an IUD before and I incorrectly assumed copper. But I guess it has potentially serious side effects is the exact answer I was looking for so thanks for your anecdote.
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I wouldn't know. The common sources (Wikipedia) do seem to rate it as the highest-satisfaction contraception method. I admit it didn't come to my mind as I was thinking of contraception, probably because of how long-term it is.
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