re: #166 ElCapitanAmerica

It should be illegal because that is a viable living human being, as defined by the law today and it is wrong to kill it.

I’m not sure why you keep putting in stuff like ‘as defined by the law today’ when I’m asking for your opinion. If we’re talking about realistically viable fetuses, we’re talking about a tiny percentage of all abortions. Sure, viability is a moving target, but it can be said to be common sense that if we need to go to extraordinary measures to save the fetus, it’s not ‘viable’ in an ordinary sense of the word. So we’re talking about a really, really tiny percentage of abortions.

My goal is for the number of these abortions to be as low as possible. This is achieved mainly by increasing access to abortion earlier and increasing health education and knowledge. This is also, I think, achieved by putting a woman in a position of trust with her doctor, and continuing strong ethics in the medical field.

I think that criminalizing it is going to have the opposite effect. I think that criminalizing late-term abortions on any level, even with exceptions carved out, will cause more women to seek out illegal abortions, as they did before. A woman who wants an abortion at seven and a half months isn’t likely to be dissuaded by illegality, especially if she has the resources to travel somewhere where it isn’t illegal. And then what if a woman goes away pregnant and comes back not? Will you launch an inquiry?