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an Ohio bill [would] ban abortions in cases where a pregnant woman has had a positive test result or prenatal diagnosis indicating Down syndrome. Physicians convicted of performing an abortion under such circumstances could be charged with a fourth-degree felony, stripped of their medical license and held liable for legal damages. The pregnant woman would face no criminal liability.
Several other states have considered similar measures, triggering emotional debate over women's rights, parental love, and the trust between doctor and patient.
The Ohio bill's chief Senate sponsor, Republican Sen. Frank LaRose, said Republican lawmakers accelerated the measure after hearing a mid-August CBS News report on Iceland's high rate of abortions in cases involving Down syndrome. The report asserted Iceland had come close to "eradicating" such births.
[...] Doctors and medical students are fighting the measure.
Parvaneh Nouri, a third-year medical student at Wright State University, told lawmakers it would do little to stop abortions but could stop information-sharing between patients and their doctors.
“It destroys the trust of our patients, for which we have worked tirelessly over generations of physicians to cultivate,” she said.
Indiana's version of the law has been blocked by a federal judge while North Dakota's law has gone unchallenged due to the state's only abortion clinic not performing abortions after 16 weeks. An Oklahoma bill that would prohibit abortions based on any genetic abnormalities did not reach the state Senate.
Previously: Down Syndrome Births Nearly Eliminated in Iceland
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday September 26 2017, @01:11PM (6 children)
Most notably, the religious “freedom” here seems to be the freedom of men to presume they may control women's bodies.
Though of course we can't ignore that womyn-born-womyn also vote for these men to make such decisions about their bodies.
At least in this instance, I can trust that feminism will sort of do something close to the right thing, but it'll devolve into holding all assigned males accountable, collectively and severally, for the arrogance of these men.
It's disgusting. Nobody has the right to control another person's body. If the baby can survive outside of the womb, and if Ohio has loads of cash just burning a hole in its pocket, let it pay to have the baby removed and provided for the rest of its life if a woman does not consent to assuming that responsibility. Consent can only happen in the presence of information, which the Down syndrome test provides. It's the woman's right to withdraw consent for providing life support with her own body.
If men really want to exercise this religious freedom of theirs, let them exercise their freedom to innovate artificial wombs. Then they will have the capability to exercise the freedom they claim to have: supposedly saving a life. Instead, they claim that their freedom doesn't end where the woman's nose begins, but that their freedom pervades her body and is inherently privileged over her own freedom.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by lgsoynews on Tuesday September 26 2017, @01:26PM (3 children)
Not just men, plenty of women support that type of B.S.
And plenty of men & women don't...
Let's not be too hasty to generalize.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday September 26 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
I was considering suggesting that 'men' be replaced with 'US Catholic men' to let most of my gender off the hook.
Considering he's a politician, and I'm with Billy Connolly on who should be excluded from that profession, I could further tighten that to 'US Catholic control freaks'. Sure, there are control freaks in all countries, and other views on who will be recipients of sky-fairy vengeance will also be represented. But for this story, this issue, the mere concept of withdrawing the right to selective informed abortions based on medical information about the foetus, the US Catholic control freaks have probably got the rest of the world beat.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday September 26 2017, @05:04PM
Sorry, but it's not limited in the way you suppose. I'd also prefer rephrasing, but I would have said "people" rather than "men". People in power generally seem to get off telling other people what to do. This isn't to claim that some "telling people what to do" isn't necessary, but they tend to go *way* beyond that, and they particularly like telling people who differ from them what to do, with or without justifiable reason.
The problem with Catholics is that they form a powerful unified block of people who get off telling people who differ (from official Catholic beliefs) what to do. This doesn't make them unique.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 26 2017, @06:30PM
If we're going to use stereotypes I think "Christian" is a way better predictor than men, or women.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday September 26 2017, @03:31PM (1 child)
Sounds remarkably similar to an antebellum argument that Nebraska not allowing slavery, plus any enslaved person entering the state would be automatically freed, would infringe on the right of a slave owner to bring his slaves with him into Nebraska. Slavery is of course extreme control of another's body. The US Civil War was won decisively by the forces on the side of freedom. It was won through force of arms, and through superior reasoning and logic, and the large imbalance in industrial might that in no small part arose from the inefficiencies of a slave economy as compared to a free one.
Yet today, 150 years later, there are still fools who romanticize the slave owning side. I wonder if the day will ever come that the slavers are so completely discredited that no one will bother singing their praises. Could be centuries, seeing as how some would even start up the Crusades again, and that's been over 500 years ago. The Confederates were on the wrong side of everything-- the wrong side of decency and morality, wrong side of the Bible (despite there being mention of slavery without condemning it), wrong side of all scientific evidence which showed the Africans were not an inferior race in contradiction to Confederate propaganda that used that notion of inferiority to justify slavery, wrong side of economics with their notion that a slave economy could be more productive than a free one, and on the wrong side of the contest of strength, and in the wrong in being the ones to start the violence. But somehow none of that matters to neo-Confederates. What does matter to them is conformity. If they see they are out of step with everyone else, most will quietly shift. The few remaining noisy ones should not be given megaphones and be allowed to pretend that they have much more support than is actually the case. But on that one, the media can't say no to dramatizing situations as much as possible.
The fight over abortion is much newer. Seems to be rooted in Christian fantasies of how life should work, and not grounded in the harsh reality that pregnancy is risky. It is in a way a backhanded acknowledgement that pregnancy is hard. It's also a very male, militaristic vision. We must produce more Christian Soldiers, every one is needed for ultimate victory over all opposition! Outlawing abortion provides more human cannon fodder for the wars, as if there's no doubt that those children will share their views and be willing to march off to fight and kill heretics. It'd be great if Down Syndrome could be prevented, as well as all kinds of other birth defects and complications. But even if such a happy day comes, we should still allow abortion for many other reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 26 2017, @07:50PM
Just in case anyone forgot Trump's nonsense on this issue, in the fog of all his other nonsense.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/30/donald-trump-women-abortions-punishment [theguardian.com]