Disinformation, lies, and plain stupidity are the currency of politics in a world of alternative facts, faux umbrage at fake “fake news,” along with the tribalization and, by extension, the politicization of every subject matter one cares to talk about.
There was a time when some things were private. When what took place between a doctor and their patient was sacred. Now, however, we have created a world of 24/7 all-access news. We expect to peek behind the curtain of every celebrity home whenever we wish—privacy is no longer respected.
Also, in an absurdist case of FOMO, we have generated through social media a toxic environment and a world in which absolute nonsense and unlettered fuckwittery have replaced intelligent, opinionated dialogue based on a set of shared facts and objective reality.
And, somewhere along the line, we gave up our right to privacy too.
There are no innocent parties in this debate. The right has its anti-vaxxers and loonies, and so do the left. As always, if you wish to meet your enemies on the political racetrack, keep running. Left or right, it doesn’t matter. They’re coming the other way.
However, when it comes to abortion, the vast majority of extremists are on the far right and religious in flavor. And, unlike almost every other special interest group, their self-righteousness bothers me more than the rest.
When listening to blissfully ignorant and idiotic politicians speak, I am amazed that we allow these people to represent themselves as they go into the world, let alone us as civilians. So, I will clear up a couple of misconceptions for those who get their medical information from middlemen for pillow salesmen.
Life doesn’t really begin at conception, does it?
Humanity knows for an absolute fact that approaching 70% of all so-called human life (if counting from conception) will naturally abort itself before most women know they have conceived. And, about this, there is no argument.
When adding known miscarriages to the mix, that means 70-75% of these “lives” are naturally aborting after conception and not reaching the second trimester.
No one serious who understands the medicine will dispute this fact either.
So, due to some awful design in the cell division department, the human fetus was created either by a monster or an eejit who’s absolutely fine with throwing up to three in four of these precious “lives” away.
Or, far more likely, humans were created by absolutely nothing at all.
We bear all the hallmarks of a creature anatomically bootstrapped by natural selection and evolution. What is one to do?
The heartbeat is an arbitrary sign of life
In the bills being pushed in Texas and other states, what makes the heart so special?
Heartbeat Bills? That seems like mysticism rather than science to me.
The heart is a pump that pushes blood around one’s body. It is an important organ, and we couldn’t live without it. However, we also couldn’t live if we randomly didn’t have our lungs, our kidneys, our liver, or many other squishy red parts either.
So, why don’t we say the fetus is alive when its stomach starts to produce acid and enzymes for food digestion? It makes about as much sense as a heartbeat.
Just pick an organ at random and run with it. Why not go hog wild? We can have a law for every organ. A spleen law sounds so statesmanlike.
Here’s the main point; we can live without a heart if the blood is pumped by something else. But we cannot live without a brain.
We are our brain, our memories, our experience, and our personalities are tempered by life itself. We all reside within our heads. We cannot even form a sense of self until we are out of the womb, experiencing the world and learning the language we need to understand ourselves.
Ultimately, heartbeat laws are just arbitrary romantic twaddle selling the fact that many humans feel the center of themselves, their spirit, their love, etc., as contained in their heart. It resonates emotionally as a concept among those who are not minded to thinking about it too much.
Six weeks is not enough time to know a woman is pregnant
From the top, let’s be clear, this is not a drill: The clock does not start to tick when a woman last had sex—the clock starts on the last day of her last menstrual period [LMP].
So, right there, that gives a couple of days wiggle room depending on what one counts as the last day. Second, not all women have regular periods. According to the government’s Office on Women’s Health, an irregular cycle can be shorter than 21 days and longer than 35 days, while a regular cycle is typically between 26 to 35 days.
As should be plainly obvious, a woman on an irregular cycle or a regular but long cycle could easily always be in jeopardy at six weeks. Imagine if a woman is on a 35-day cycle and she realizes she’s two days late. Still, she is often two to five days late, which gives her at most five days and as low as two days, to figure out if she’s actually pregnant, see one of the ever fewer and even busier doctors available to her, make a decision, and take action.
That’s an impossible situation. And it’s also a cruel thing to do to a person.
Abortions have been steadily decreasing for decades
We need to get a grip on the reality of abortion in the United States rather than becoming caught up in the hysteria of made-up and nonsensical numbers.
In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the landmark case of Roe v. Wade that women had the right to terminate a pregnancy in the state of Texas. Based on privacy rights, the SCOTUS ruled the state could do nothing about it in the first trimester, regulate it in the second, and outlaw it in the third as long as the woman’s health was not at risk.
During 1973 the rate of abortions of the 70 million childbearing women (15-44 years old) in the USA was 1%. By 1981, the rate crept up to its all-time maximum of 2.13% out of the 75 million women in the same category. *
For the past forty years, there has been a steady year-on-year decrease in the percentage of women getting abortions in the USA. For the last complete year of data, i.e., 2017, the number was down to 0.85% out of 106 million women of childbearing age.
Since Roe v. Wade passed, we have seen the number of women of childbearing age in the USA grow from 70 million to 106 million—an increase of 51%.
During that same period, however, we have seen the number of abortions start at 1%, reached as high as 2.13%, then steadily go back down to 0.85%—a decrease of 60% from the peak and a 15% decrease since Roe v. Wade was decided.
There is no way to justify the anti-choice stance by way of the numbers, as they are consistently going down anyway.
The Paternal Loophole
It has become obvious to me while reading the comments across social media that one of the most unfair parts of the Texas abortion laws is the lack of responsibility given to the father in these cases. As a matter of fact, one could argue that the state has created a paternal responsibility loophole to the law by making the abortion limit six weeks.
DNA allows a paternity test at seven weeks and a positive paternal identification through non-invasive testing within eight weeks. It works like this:
1. DNA is collected from the mother from a blood draw.
2. The potential father is given a cheek swab.
3. Samples are sent for analysis.
4. The test compares the free-floating fetal DNA from the mother’s plasma with the mother’s DNA profile.
5. From this, the fetus’ DNA profile is determined, which is then compared to the father’s DNA for paternity confirmation.
6. Results take one week. Results are 100% accurate in determining non-paternity and are more than 99% positive at accurately determining paternity by the end of the eighth week since LMP.
So, why not incorporate this into the law?
Well, for the sake of pretending that six or eight weeks or even twelve would make the slightest difference in the real world, lawmakers have, once again, made only women responsible for what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.
By not allowing exceptions nor a push back to a reasonable time, the Lonestar State has created an entirely unfair law that punishes women for something a man is equally, if not more, responsible for.
If every time paternity had to be established before action could be taken, I’d bet big you’d hear fewer men whining about wearing condoms.
Could it Work?
The problem is with men not giving up their samples within a reasonable time.
For the sake of the thought experiment something would have to be written into the law along the lines of; if a prospective father does not give a DNA sample in a reasonable time, or the suspect cannot be found, they lose all rights to visitation or custody. They will still be up for paternity pay though. That would be fun.
With all medical and life-saving emergencies accounted for during any unwanted pregnancy, what is the shortest amount of time to get an abortion that pro-lifers are ever likely to successfully get passed into Federal Law? My guess is 12 weeks?
Up to 11 weeks (77 days) is about how long medical abortifacient pharmaceuticals are effective, and it’s the timeframe during which 80% of terminations are currently performed.
After seven weeks (49 days) from the woman’s LMP a DNA test is carried out to determine the paternity of the fetus. There would have to be a law to be able to Check DNA against records if unknown. And a subpoena is issued if the person is known and uncooperative.
If the states insist on moving forward, then men should be charged with the same crime as the woman, along with the crimes of rape, incest, assault, illegal restraint, and the whole book thrown upside the head as necessary.
If they are found guilty of any of the above, then personally, I think they should also be required to be chemically castrated.
Remember, in the vast majority of cases; we can 99.9% know the paternity of a fetus within eight weeks if the man is known to the woman or if a suspect has been identified and captured or has previously been through the system.
Just a few more weeks allowed for women to make decisions and this bill goes from an unamerican hate crime against half the population to a chance at preparing predator men to pay, or for two to take responsibility for their actions.
Nothing along those lines will ever be passed of course. Not anywhere. Not by this nor any future congress while we the people continually put ourselves into easily distinguishable boxes to not like each other for no good reason. Molloy
*Statistics obtained from Christian Life Resources rather than the CDC are the higher figures and are likely more accurate because not all states report to the CDC.