In response to Randy’s post: The sickening murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett is pretty despicable. So was the brutal murder of Lacy Peterson. Both of these cases raise important questions, however, that can and should be discussed. It doesn’t disrespect these women’s lives by talking about the issues involved here.
As for the legal information on abortion laws you gave -- most of it is correct, but there’s always some information that is left out, so I’ll fill in the gaps. Yes, Roe v. Wade made abortions past six months illegal, except in cases where the mother’s life or health is at stake. A ruling made that same day defined “health” in a very loose way -- the health exception has been used to give late-term and partial-birth abortions to women who are pregnant in their third trimester because of minor health threats or even psychological reasons.
I support the life exception, but the health exception (which is not banned in most states) allows abortions at any time in a pregnancy, though partial-birth abortions make up less than half of 1 percent of abortions.
The second issue: when is a fetus a “baby” with human rights? If viability is our standard -- when a baby can survive outside the womb then it’s human -- then this is not only an ethically loose definition for when human life begins but it should, by definition, preclude most third-trimester abortions.
I did an article this summer about a woman who had a baby 24 weeks into her pregnancy (three months early). The baby, Conner McCloud, is now 1 1/2 years old and is a normal child, though about three months behind his peers, developmentally-wise.
Thanks to constantly improving technology, fetuses can survive outside the womb after only 22 weeks of gestation. Under the viability argument, as technology improves, the definition of when a human is human changes -- that’s a scary ethical place to be.
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