re: #828 Salamantis

That’s a hard one. There are undeniably cases where women have seriously threatened to commit suicide if they are not allowed to abort healthy post-viability fetuses, fully intending to go through with it. I do not think that there are very many of them, because women who are that dead set against carrying pregnancies to term almost always avail themselves of abortion sooner. There is also the problem, however, of women who would not attempt suicide rather than carry an unwanted post-viability pregnancy to term, but who would say that they would so that they could obtain the procedure when they otherwise could not. Which were which would have to be determined, in my opinion, on a case by case basis, by qualified, certified psychiatric professionals.

The mental health justification should exist in such extreme circumstances, but it should not, in my opinion, be a late term abortion loophole wide enough to drive a truck through.

We already have those guidelines in place though, for late term abortion. I don’t see any need to change them. And I really don’t think you’d get women in their 8th month suddenly deciding they want an abortion and making shit up. That just isn’t how the reality of pregnancy works. Ask any woman who’s been pregnant. At a certain point you know your body isn’t your own any more, and the thought of abortion is literally impossible, even if you didn’t want the child, even if you’re totally pro-choice.

Can I rule out the possibility of some heartless women callously getting abortions on a whim that late? No, any more than I could rule out the possibility of mothers who abuse and kill their 2 year old children. Evil does exist.

But the current medical guidelines don’t make it possible for women to get an abortion like that anyway, and it is, as mentioned, a vanishingly small probablity anyway. Much smaller than that of women who do have children and treat them horribly, unfortunately.