Re: Devils advocateapplegoddessJune 22 2007, 06:55:51 UTC
Pro choice really means choice, and I'm not really debating choice right now. I'm not saying that people should have forced the couple into aborting half of the fetuses or that people shouldn't be able to decide what to do for themselves.
I am just not comprehending what they failed to understand about the limits of medical science today, viability of extremely premature babies...It's just that if it wasn't bad enough that they could have aborted some of the fetuses in order to give the rest a clearly better chance at a (possibly better) life, they were all born at the edge of the limit of viability and each one has enormous odds to beat. Somehow beliefs about abortion being murder overruled everything else.
It's also that abortion may be baby murder to them, but they knew they were going to have to deal with the inevitable death of an unknown number of of their babies (one...two...maybe unfortunately (and hopefully not) even possibly as much as all six) because they were all born too premature. So if the chance of death was as high as it was for preemies born at 22 weeks (like I said, the 2-3% is being rather optimistic, some of them mentioned none at all...), what's wrong about abortion so death wouldn't be as inevitable for some of them? It's definitely heartwrenching, agonizing and something I wouldn't really know what to do about until I was in the situation, but looking at the facts, selective reduction is something that would have higher odds of ending up better for the babies than doing nothing at all.
I sincerely hope the three remaining babies survive, but again, given the huge odds of death occurring because they are so damn premature (even one week would have dramatically increased the odds)...
Re: This is why I'm a big fan of math and scienceapplegoddessJune 22 2007, 18:53:44 UTC
I understand where they are coming from, but like I've said for the millionth time, death is still death.
Had they chosen to abort three, the remaining three would have a better chance of surviving. But no, they didn't, and three are dead and the remaining three..whether or not they survive is questionable.
I am just not comprehending what they failed to understand about the limits of medical science today, viability of extremely premature babies...It's just that if it wasn't bad enough that they could have aborted some of the fetuses in order to give the rest a clearly better chance at a (possibly better) life, they were all born at the edge of the limit of viability and each one has enormous odds to beat. Somehow beliefs about abortion being murder overruled everything else.
It's also that abortion may be baby murder to them, but they knew they were going to have to deal with the inevitable death of an unknown number of of their babies (one...two...maybe unfortunately (and hopefully not) even possibly as much as all six) because they were all born too premature. So if the chance of death was as high as it was for preemies born at 22 weeks (like I said, the 2-3% is being rather optimistic, some of them mentioned none at all...), what's wrong about abortion so death wouldn't be as inevitable for some of them? It's definitely heartwrenching, agonizing and something I wouldn't really know what to do about until I was in the situation, but looking at the facts, selective reduction is something that would have higher odds of ending up better for the babies than doing nothing at all.
I sincerely hope the three remaining babies survive, but again, given the huge odds of death occurring because they are so damn premature (even one week would have dramatically increased the odds)...
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Had they chosen to abort three, the remaining three would have a better chance of surviving. But no, they didn't, and three are dead and the remaining three..whether or not they survive is questionable.
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