Congress might restrict doctors from learning abortion techniques
By Jessica GentileMay 25th, 2011, 10:45 amComments (64)
As if it weren't bad enough that Republicans want to restrict the conditions in which you can have an abortion, they now want to prevent doctors from even knowing how to perform them in the first place. Congress is set to vote today on an amendment that would stop federal funds from being used to train medical residents from learning abortion techniques. It's part of a larger bill that impacts overall funding for medical students. According to Rep. Virginia Foxx:
This amendment ensures that the grants being provided to teaching health centers are not being used to perform elective abortion, makes it crystal clear that taxpayer money is not being used to train healthcare providers to perform abortion procedures ... When the liberal Democrats rammed through their government takeover of healthcare, in an unprecedented fashion, they refused to include longstanding pro-life provisions.
Um, pro-life provisions? I get that they've existed in the past, but the last time I checked abortion is perfectly legal.
To give some perspective on how damaging this bill could be, Medical Students For Choice estimates that, "ninety-seven percent of family practice residents and thirty-six percent of Ob/Gyn residents have no experience in first-trimester abortion procedures." Do we really need even fewer doctors taught about the procedure? The bill also puts women's lives at risk in instances when a pregnancy needs to be terminated to save the mother, because the chances of finding someone who knows how to do it will be way more limited. Way to put purported morals above women's health and lives.
Commentarium (64 Comments)
Truly horrifying. And Orwellian.
Knowing how to properly perform an abortion IS pro-life. Doesn't this idiot Republican know that one reason women elect to have an abortion is because the pregnancy has become life-threatening? I'll bet this GOP Nazi is a proud Christian.
right on the money
Another misleading headline. The amendment would stop using federal funds for training, not prevent the training.
Personally, I support training in such procedures since the procedure is occassionally necessary to preserve the mother's life. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of these procedures are elective.
Stop the culture of death.
Abortion is legal. Doctors need to know how to do these safely because women do get them in order to save their lives. Stop being a fascist male prick who think he can control what women do with their bodies. You're probably pro death penalty.
Okay the title is a little misleading I agree, and you probably won't listen to james because he called you a prick but he did bring up a good point. We want our medical experts to be trained in abortions because, as history has shown, women are going to always use them anyways. I am "pro-choice" but even if I was "pro-life" I would still support the funding of medical experts in abortions because then, at least, professionals are doing it and women won't have to resort to less safe methods of aborting the fetus.
Also, women don't abort fetuses because they want to create a "culture of death," it may be the hardest decision they have to make. When people get abortions it is because they consciously weighed the options and decided that they are, at that time, unable to care for a child OR it is putting their life at risk OR it has already been determined to be a stillborn. So, "Culture of Death" is a completely bad misrepresentation of what abortion is actually about.
Oh, but don't give those newborns any health care, shelter, food. Don't build extra roads, schools, prisons, hospitals for all of the unwanted people. I can't stand how STUPID these Anti-Choice nutbags are. Hey, good job on that Judgment Day thing, BTW.
@james - I'll be a "male facist prick" if I care to be, thank you. MYOB.
@julian - I'm sure women who abort (and the men who support them) don't want to create a culture of death. Nonetheless, that's what they've created. 40% of minority preganancies end through elective termination. It's a genocide.
@Xtians_R_hypocrites - I'm sorry you don't want to provide for the powerless, weak and needy. I, on the other hand, do both through vounteer work and financially. Maybe you should look at the plank in your own eye before you criticize the mote in mine. Thanks for caring - I'm confident I'll be OK on Judgement Day.
your country is in debt, you can't afford a decent healthcare system as is, your prisons are overcrowded and your budget deficit is larger than the debt of ALL African nations combined.
Well done for your volunteer work but somehow I think unless both you and the rest of your countries citizens are willing to pay 80% taxes (illustrative figure here) I don't see how you can afford to look so negatively on cost cutting
Reducing population growth places less stress on your already limited resources, particularly when many aborted foetuses (as you pointed out) are in minority groups and lower socio-economic societal groups (indicating they will be relying on government help much more than they will be contributing through taxes)
Do you also really want to limit the training of your healthcare practitioners? Especially for a procedure that is performed internationally for a variety of reasons (not just to kill off unwanted babies). Through decreasing training of your practitioners you are devaluing the medical qualification obtained in america and forcing religious believes onto an apparently-secular state.... but that's a whole other rant I'm not going to go into
And just side note, I do appreciate everyones right to religion, but isn't part of your religion being accepting of others (with Jesus being friends with prostitutes and all that)
You don't seem too accepting of women who make the decision to abort?
I think religion is more valuable when it is genuinely believed, don't force onto others what you can't talk them into following...
"And just side note, I do appreciate everyones right to religion, but isn't part of your religion being accepting of others (with Jesus being friends with prostitutes and all that) You don't seem too accepting of women who make the decision to abort?"
Sure, just as Jesus accepted the Pharisees decision to use the temple as a place of business. And shouldn't Jesus accept Satan's decision to be evil?
sounds more like knee-jerk than philosophy.
People have the right to choose, but they also have the right not to murder.
Its not your body jerk. Get over it. Abortion is legal. If you care so much about life, then you should be against the death penalty and also you should be in favor of massive public funing for public schools. I hate pricks like you. Its not your body asshole. not everyone is a christian, douche bag.
Agreed, JCS. If people agree with you, they have that right as well. That's what being pro-choice means. It's not an abortion party, abortions for everyone, fuck yeah. It's the right to make your own decision based on your beliefs and your ambitions and your position in life.
Only God has the right to chose to take that baby and if the mother choses abortion then she has just murdered ger own child
So if the baby is the result of the woman getting raped, then God chose for that woman to get raped so she could have a baby? Wow, God can be such an asshole.
yep. god and republicans: assholes for life.
"pro-life" -uh huh. These idiots love the fetus until the moment it is born, then then their slogan is "I don't want to pay for schools or health care for the thing"
@james - Legal is your definition of moral? I certainly hope that you have the same reverence for the Dred Scott decision and Plessey v. Ferguson. Both were legal for years - decades even. They were both repugnant.
@Xtian - I love the way you put words in others' mouths just to slam people. You're off the serious consideration list. Buh-buh.
Your concerns would carry more weight, my son, were it not obvious that there is no humanity prior to ensoulment, and ensoulment obviously occurs not before quickening, which is before most abortions are performed, at least in countries where impediment is not placed to their performance.
so you'd rather have girls improvise with coat-hangers?!
Who said anything about being pro-life?
Quit trying to dodge the issue with semantics. Your a christian fascist who wants to control women. Period. End of story. Abortion is legal. If you are against it, then don't get one. Oh wait, you can't because you're a man. FUCK OFF.
@james
Keyboard kommando, are we?
I'm pro-choice. But I'm also not foolish enough to be a shill for a political group. Fact remains that we as a society don't consider a cluster of cells a "life." If we did, then a woman's right to choose would be trumped.
I'm also Jewish, BTW.
You're welcome.
That cluster is alive, but does it mean it should be given the same rights as a fully-developed, born human being? Why?
Because the "cluster" is a human cluster?
so you'd rather have girls improvise with coat-hangers?!
When will you idiots realize this world is overpopulated and that aborting a few cells isn't murder?
Honestly, I can't believe we are still having this argument. What is this the modern day Spanish Inquisition? You fuckin religious nut-jobs need to pull your heads out of your asses and get with the program.
This is a backdoor. If you want to try to illegalize "elective" abortion, then do it. The problem is that most Americans do not consider a fetus fully human. You can scream "murder" as long as you want, but as long as a substantial number of your fellow Americans don't see the fetus as a full-fledged human, you won't get anywhere.
I think there are many thinking people in the middle, who recognize that a fetus is something more than a lump of tissue, and that it is something less than a full human. I don't like the idea of people using abortion as a form of birth control, but I also know many women who become pregnant without planning to, and who face the devastating choice of giving birth to a child no one wants, or terminating the pregnancy.
It seems ridiculous to me for people to say that they know, with certainty, the exact moment humans become human. Moreover, they know this with such certainty that they are willing to put a woman in prison because--for example--she has decided not to give birth to a baby who will be born addicted, suffer for a few months, and then die.
That sort of certainty (and in most cases that certainty is a matter of "faith"--that is, believing in something despite a lack of evidence) does not make rational sense to me. It seems that if you want to reduce "elective" abortions, one way of doing that effectively would be to increase the funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that inform and provide women's health. If more women have access to birth control, if we can reduce the amount of sexual assaults on women and increase their self-worth, the need for abortions will also be diminished.
Agreed! An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Sadly, this entire issue has the American public thinking the lawmakers are actually DOING something while we pay their increasing salaries and none of the REAL issues get fixed.
I agree with you BAC except that I think the amount of people who "use abortion as birth control" is highly fabricated. There may be a few people, maybe, but using abortion as birth control would be terribly economicly unfeasible. I think it is just rhetoric pro-life supporters made up to push their agenda but doesn't actually happen often at all.
And if most Americans consider, for instance, Down's Syndrome sufferers as not quite human then, what, terminate them too?
Now you are pulling a strawman, philosopher. That is a separate debate and doesn't at all refute BAC's, Darkraven's or my opinion.
A straw man would be to say that if you don't support killing Down's sufferers then your logic is flawed. My question was a natural extension of aborting due to being not quite human.
ADOPTION! Every human being throughout history has had a unique, individual genetic code stamped on every cell in his or her tiny body. Both mother and fetus she carries have a genetic code stamped on their genes and chromosomes. Are they the same? NO! the fetus's genetic code is is different from the mother's. To say a women can do whatever she wants with her own body may be true. But it is not true that a fetus is merely part of the Mother's body
You are a prime example of someone who shouldn't be able to reproduce. I am pro-everything except this bullshit called pro-life. I'm even for sterilization and screening of the adults before they reproduce. YA JUST REPRODUCE ALL YOU WANT NO ABORTIONS! LETS JUST EAT THIS WORLD UNTIL OUR RESOURCES BECOME SO SCARCE THAT ALL OF US BECOME EXTINCT! I'm about 1000 times more pro-life than you because I think about the long-run survival of our species. Your short sighted brainwashed beliefs are beyond ridiculous. They are cataclysmic.
Hey, 'pro-life'! Who's going to pay all the medical bills for the prenatal checkups? Who's going to pay to feed an clothe that little bundle when it's born? Who's going to educate the little hellion when the mom has to work and the dad's in prison, if we continue to cut State funding to the schools? I'll bet the last time a levee came up on your ballot to increase the funding for your local schools, you voted it down, right? The so-called pro-life agenda is being pursued by the GOP, who also want to cut government funding to the very programs that care for the poor, the sick, the downtrodden. What do you think unwanted pregnancies become? If you don't care what happens to them after they are born, you don't have the right to call yourself pro-life. You're just pro-birth.
Adoption is not an alternative to pregnancy.
No use arguing with these Anti-Choice nutbags. If they could be reasoned with they wouldn't be Anti-Choice to begin with. Good job on that Judgment Day thing, LOL.
@ams - I beg to differ, knowing a beautiful young lady whose mother faced the abort or adopt question.
My point is that in many cases it is pregnancy itself that is untenable for whatever reason. It is not simply a minor inconvenience even when everything goes well; many people can't afford the medical bills or the time off work that comes along with pregnancy and giving birth, even if they give the child up for adoption. Some women have medical conditions that can make pregnancy life-threatening. Some girls/women may be disowned or even killed by their families for getting pregnant. It's great if you can carry a child to give it away, but adoption does not solve the problems brought about by the pregnancy itself.
pro-life says that twins don't deserve to live! News at 11.
"Ignorance." The new "Knowledge."
Hooray for anti-education legislators who want our country's medical competency to regress back to mercury and the four humors.
If you think abortions should be illegal you must be willing to do three things:
1) Adopting children of mothers who were not allowed to have an abortion and are incapable of caring for the child whether it be neglect, financial instability, drug use, or whatever the case may be which makes the mother incapable from raising the child.
2) Being held personally liable if the mother who could have had an abortion dies during childbirth, as was predicted. Or, at the very least, be financially responsible for the child.
3) Being held financially responsible for a stillborn birth which still costs the woman to pay gratuitous hospital bills, an expense that could have been avoided if there were an abortion.
If you can't say you will do ALL 3 of those things, then I am sorry, you can't be someone who would take away someone's right to have an abortion.
1 - I'll take that deal.
2 - Abortion to save the life of the mother has always been legal. Self defense has always been recognized.
3 - I'll take that deal.
It's easy to say yes just to try to prove someone wrong.
It was a rhetorical question. The purpose of asking it was to phrase the implications of banning abortions in a way so people who are pro-life understand them. Maybe it was my fault for not making it look like it was a rhetorical question or maybe it is the English language's fault for not having a plural "you."
But anyways, I'm going to assume that you aren't saying that somehow you are going to totally absolve all legal and financial responsibility for every case in which an abortion would otherwise be chosen and that you mean that you are willing to adopt a child or pay for a stillborn delivery for a parents so that they don't have an abortion. Which, for your part, is a really noble choice.
Now, I won't get into the fact that if you haven't already willingly done those things then you really have no right to complain but I don't know you so I will give you the benefit of the doubt. However, I will say that just because you may have helped one case doesn't refute the concept of having abortions. Unless you convince every "pro-lifer" to adopt all unintended pregnancy cases.
And the reason I include the second one is because while most people would say the second reason is enough for people to have abortions, I have met some people who say even in that case a woman still shouldn't have an abortion.
"You" might have been plural but I can only answer for myself. Suffice it to say that a sizable portion of my income goes to charitable causes, including support for children who have entered the world by mothers unwilling or unable to support them. Interestingly, the backlog of couples will to adopt is huge so the "problem" of supporting such children is not intractable.
I'm not sure what the point is about the second question. There are people who would refuse to commit violence in self-defense even if they had the choice. Still it's legal to do so.
NO one is PRO-abortion. NO one LIKES doing abortions. Many abortions are done when the fetus is going to die anyway and puts the mother's life in danger. So now, by preventing funding towards medical education, which is already vastly underfunded, you limit the ability of those future doctors to save a human life. The government interfering with my medical education and the ability of my colleges to provide life SAVING procedures goes against everything "republicans" stand for. Thats big government telling me what I can and cannot learn - we might as well start burning books.
The objection is that with more than 50% of Americans being opposed to abortion, we don't want our taxes being used to fund this training.
Why don't you find an alternate source for funding this training?
50% my ass you totally just made that up, and in many cases there is no other source.
Do you have any idea how expensive and time consuming medical school is?
"Do you have any idea how expensive and time consuming medical school is?"
Do you have any idea how to form a coherent thought?
"grants being provided to teaching health centers are not being used to perform elective abortion,"
Elective. That is the operative word. Under "immediate and life threatening" conditions in which a mother and child cannot survive together but the mother can, the procedure to save the mothers life must in good conscience be performed. The primary intent is not to kill the child, but to save the mother. All other reasons are elective, no matter how painful the choice may be it is still on the conscience of the mother the same way its on a person that commits any murder no matter that reason.
Furthermore, given that a fair number of citizens personally believe abortion is an abomination of medical science, it is also fair that they have a say in what is done with grant money taxed from their pockets and if need be vote in support of preventing that money from being used to learn how to perform what they believe to be a nightmarish crime.
I would not personally support this idea, but if you want to pay for doctors to learn this murder technique in a safe and secure environment, fund it yourself. If you believe in it so much give your own money to support it. But don't cry when many, many other Americans don't want to pay for it on such deeply personal reasons.
First I'd like to say that I'm not a medical professional so I don't know if there is actually a difference between elective abortion techniques and emergency abortion techniques. To me it's all the same. And I think schools may treat it the same way. And given the fact that most schools use federal funding through loans, grants and scholarships for doctors to get their education. I think this turns into an unnecessary witch hunt.
I used to think along the same lines. What changed my opinion? I was raped in college by a "good christian boy." I was ostracized, because I dared to bring charges against him. He didn't used protection and I wasn't on birth control because I was a virgin and wanted to wait until marriage. People told me it wasn't rape because I didn't scream for help. I wanted to scream, but it wouldn't come out, all that came out was sobs and tears. I did file charges but later dropped them because it was my word against his.
After that my cycle was late, I didn't know what to do. You say it isn't the child's fault, and ideologically I agree, but from a woman who has been in that position considering what she should do, you do blame the child, because you are hurt, angry, and above all scared. I considered it and I didn't take it likely. For me, the idea that the man who hurt me so badly had left me with a child from this "abomination" of love twisted me up inside. I thought I would need to drop out of college if I kept the baby. Even if I were to adopt the baby out, what if that child were to come find me later, how do I tell that child that its father was a rapist. The very thought that the man who did what he did to me was free of responsibility while whenever I looked at my stomach I wondered and feared what to do. I struggled with that decision for weeks, and I was afraid to tell my parents for fear they would blame me or try to make the decision for me, and it's easy to avoid your parents while you are away at college. I went to Planned Parenthood and a local crisis pregnancy center. In Planned Parenthood they gave me information and assured me it was my decision. In the crisis center, they treated me with respect as well. They both offered me comfort in my time of need when I felt completely abandoned by the legal system, my religious network and scared to approach my family. I wasn't ready to be pregnant, to have and raise a baby alone, or to give up that baby. The choice of "taking care of the problem" felt wrong because of my beliefs as well. Reality is not as easy as ideology. It is something most women do actually think long and hard about. I am a daughter. I am sister. I am a niece. I am a grandchild. I am a friend. I am a neighbor. I do still go to church. You may see me sometime and never know what I have gone through because of personal privacy.
Too many groups are focused on the idea that babies are being killed by heartless, irresponsible, and immoral women. I don't believe that is the case. Too many group say that women should just have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. I'm don't believe that is the case either. It's a sensitive subject and one close to me. The man was never convicted, and the charges were eventually dropped.
All that said my opinion changed. This man would have forced my to bear the consequences for his actions. Under this possible law, I would have had limited medical recourse. But I can say what else I would have considered. In my state, I honestly would have considered suicide more strongly than I already had at that point. I didn't think I had anywhere else to go. Do you consider that immediate and life threatening? I am not trying mock, I just want you to think about it.
In the end, I did have an abortion at 7 weeks. It was not doctor-performed. My body made the decision for me.
There it is, Augustin. It always comes down to money. I'd respect the Pro-Life position if they said, "We institute a draft because we view the public safety, when it is threatened, as so important that we will take away people's freedoms and require service of them to protect it. And we're doing the same with pregnant women who do not want to carry a healthy pregnancy to term. Here the public safety in the form of the fetus/unborn child is threatened, and we require a service of these women to carry the pregnancy to term. But in return for that service, as with military service, we will pay for all their living and medical costs during that period. It's the least that we as a grateful nation can do for those we impress into service." But, no. The mother has to bear all the costs. Why should I respect the financial concerns of those who decide abortion is murder when they don't consider the financial concerns of the mothers in question?
To this point I do agree. And in fact there are numerous organizations that would be perfectly willing to take care of a mother "pressed into" service for the sake of allowing an innocent human life to remain alive. Numerous religious organizations and some secular ones are perfectly willing to take care of a woman who is pregnant, whether that woman wishes to keep the child or not (via adoption).
I am of the firm belief that government should be involved as little as possible in fact. However because, in America and the rest of the western world, population control is the entree on the menu, and the government rarely if ever supports maternity support and adoption methods over contraception and abortion.
Also, I have very little respect for someone that would end a human life so they can remain comfortable. We should do what we must because it is right. It is always easier to kill those that would hinder your own view of your success. Why is it easier to kill a child that has absolutely no defense without even the cute factor because it is hidden inside flesh?
@ A Different View
That would not be immediate and life threatening in my opinion. Their are plenty of counseling options available to women in today's age ( I don't know exactly when this occured).
That these "Christians" you encountered would treat you in such a way is monstrous. They did themselves and the God they are supposed to strive to be like a terrible disservice. Trust they will be held to account for these actions in ways we can scarcely imagine.
That being said, given all the endless possibilities of love and joy and triumph, would knowing that your natural father being a rapist, if only a one time rapist, really devastate you so much? Would a good person that this child could have become not taken that negative and turned it into a positive and worked hard to ensure that He or She would not make the same mistake.
If this child did find you and ask those hard questions, you could be honest and informative and either the child was mature enough to understand or not. If they are not then you keep moving on with your life and hopefully he or she matures enough to understand. If he or she did understand your choice of adoption then you would be free to then create a relationship with YOUR child even if the situation is not ideally perfect.
You miscarried I assume. A natural end to a terrible thing and likely caused be the stresses of college, family, and the situation. Most importantly it had no moral bearing on you as you did not make the most horrible choice a woman can ever make (to kill a child).
I sincerely hope you have sought some counseling or found some refuge in a confidant you trust to aid you in this lifelong fight.
Pro-Choice does not mean Pro-Abortion. That is all.
Actually by nature it does. A person that believes abortion is a preferable alternative to allowing a child to remain alive is Pro-Abortion.
Perhaps Pro-Choice does not support abortion being the primary method of ending a pregnancy but in that ideology it is a possible end and therefore a likely one to be taken as it is one that leaves no new mouth to feed, no lifestyle changes and no perceptible long term impact on the pocketbook.
In a materialistic world, a newborn is the ultimate enemy as he or she would take away material goods from the person responsible for bearing and caring for him or her. That, since it was legalized, 60 million Americans are missing from history is proof of that.
The fight against abortion, contraception, welfare state government, capital punishment, overcrowded prisons and worthless money is a fight against borrowing from the future to inflate the present.
It has been going on since the 50s and this moral bankruptcy has sealed our fate as a culture. America is filled with lazy, selfish, unloving, uncaring people that want to be comfortable all the time, entertained constantly and are never willing to suffer for another persons happiness.
There is no love without sacrifice and no sacrifice without self-control.
Actually by name, it doesn't. A person who believes in the right of a woman to have an abortion, should her decision have to be made, is Pro-Choice. For example: Personally I don't believe I could ever make that gut-wrenching decision. But it is not MY place to tell a stranger, of whose life and circumstances I know nothing, whether she can or not. Hence the 'Choice" part of my comment.
Thanks for playing.
That is tantamount to saying I might not think its right for a person who feels strongly he or she needs to kill a person... but I don't think its my place to intervene because I don't know the circumstances.
You could just as easily be that person that was going to be murdered... or that child that is going to be aborted. I am the strongest proponent of freedom of choice but that doesn't mean that I believe every person should be able to everything they want with no consequence according to the law.
If a mother has chosen to kill her child, that is her choice but I disagree that because she feels the right to have that choice that it should be law.
The Law is meant to protect the rights of every individual and that the preborn are discriminated against will eventually be recognized as the greatest crime in human history.
I would be happier and more satisfied if everyone who held that a human being is present from the zygote onward took the trouble to swerve to avoid crashing their cars into acorns.
Acorns haven't the faintest natural possibility of becoming human.
Now you say something