From: ahk@chinet.com
Rhino wrote:
>On 2026-02-15 2:53 a.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>Rhino wrote:
>>>On 2026-02-14 9:01 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>>Rhino wrote:
>>>>>On 2026-02-14 4:30 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>>>>A lawyer commenting repeated my line that a woman who spontaneously
>>>>>>aborts in the first month or two of pregnancy can be charged with
>>>>>>murder. This has massive implications for the clinical treatment of
>>>>>>women in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances.
>>>>>>The wall of separation between church and state has been breached.
>>>>>>https://apnews.com/article/puerto-rico-923-governor-signed
law-pregnancies-9d2f1fb895a17511a920cc42d480668e
>>>>>I think you could make a case for that breach to have happened in Roe v.
>>>>>Wade. The Supremes essentially drew a dividing line saying abortion was
>>>>>fine at such-and-such a point in the gestation cycle; the Puerto Rico
>>>>>decision just moved the line.
>>>>I'm not seeing your point. Blackman was criticized at the time for both
>>>>the arbitrary time ranges, which were not based on landmarks in
>>>>gestation, and his notion of when viability might occur, which he just
>>>>made up. Viability was a moving target anyway, given advances in
>>>>technology.
>>>>Where's the religion?
>>>It seems to me that the Supreme Court justices ruled as they did at
>>>least partially out of their own beliefs about when life began, which
>>>would surely be informed by whatever religious beliefs they had.
>>Everybody agrees that the embryonic being is alive. Please distinguish
>>between life and human life.
>If a fetus in the womb is not human life, what is it then? A dog? A
>chicken?
Again we are discussing a newly-enacted amendment to the criminal
code. Please focus on that. If it's a human being at fertilization,
the motivation is to redefine what would have been ordinary medical
care as homicide in which either the medical team or mother could
be prosecuted. This is not limited to prohibiting abortions, but any
situation that is medical or traumatic in which the mother is no longer
capable of carrying a baby that will be born healthy to term without
medical or surgical intervention in which the foetus won't survive. As
unlike trimesters birth is a bright-line distinction, that is a logical
point of demarcation to make in law.
>>>You
>>>don't really believe that their decision was entirely on the basis of
>>>statute law do you? Aren't we all informed at least in part by whatever
>>>we were told when we were young by clergy, schools, and parents?
>>Well, if you want judicial activism, that's one way to get it by
>>ignoring the Constitution, statutes, common law, and precedent.
>>Big chunks of the decision was judicial activism, but human life
>>beginning with live birth was from common law.
>I think that's because until very recently - within my lifetime - it was
>almost unheard of for a premature infant to survive. It probably made
>sense to set the beginning of life as the point at which the baby
>emerged from the womb since that was the practical and readily
>measurable point at which life was visible.
Hence Blackburn's unscientific "viability" reasoning was criticized at
the time since rabid advancement in technology made imagining entirely
artificial wombs within a decade or so not extremely speculative at all.
>New medical technologies and techniques have made it possible for
>significantly premature babies to survive now so the question of where
>life begins is not so clear cut any more.
That doesn't mean change the common law definition. With the foetus
birthed through a surgical procedure separating it from it's mother, a
separate team handles incubation, if there is some possibility of
survival. There are now two patients to treat and at this point, the
mother is being helped without considering the consequences to the baby.
>We've had a comparable situation with death. Again with my lifetime,
>we've changed the definition of death from when the heart stopped to the
>point where brain activity ceases because a heart stopping is not
>necessarily the end of life any more.
Have we? I'm not sure there haven't been multiple definitions all along.
What's troubling are those circumstances in which the body goes into a
state in which it's appeared to have died as it struggles to heal and
the doctor declaring death fails to notice that the patient might
actually survive.
>>>>The arguments didn't change the centuries-old legal concept that human
>>>>life begins with a live birth. In probate law, a yet to be born child
>>>>does not inherit from the father if the father died between conception
>>>>and birth.
>>>>That human life begins at conception is a religious concept. Do you care
>>>>to comment about how women's health care could be affected generally?
>>>I have trouble with the idea that life begins at a live birth. I think
>>>life begins at conception. I don't say that from the point of view of
>>>religion - I'm not religious - it just seems obvious from the point of
>>>view of biology. That thing that comes out of a mother's womb alive at
>>>36 weeks was not dead the day before it came out. It wasn't a tumour
>>>either; tumours don't have lives of their own.
>>>There's obviously no guarantee that a baby will be born since babies can
>>>die in the womb of natural (or unnatural) causes or that it will have a
>>>good life but there is a more than reasonable chance that a conception
>>>will lead to a live birth if uninterrupted by disease or human
>>>intervention. Whether a baby was wanted is a different matter of course;
>>>people ignorant about birth control or too lazy to use it can bring
>>>unwanted children into the world. I have no problem with such children
>>>being put up for adoption. I'm not as sanguine about killing them.
>>Morning after pills, which prevent implantation, have been falsely
>>redefined as abortificants in order to try to make them illegal. They
>>absolutely are not.
>Really? They appear to have the exact same goal - ending a pregnancy -
>but simply have a different technique for accomplishing that end.
An abortion ends a pregnancy. Morning after pills prevent pregnancy.
They are not abortificants.
Remember your basic biology. With normal progression, a woman won't
become pregnant -- implantation in the womb is the point of demarcation
-- for 5 to 7 days after conception. Conception takes place hours or
possibly a day after sex.
>>Not all safe forms of birth control are readily available.
>Agreed. Some may not even be legal in some jurisdictions. I remember
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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