I don't normally go straight to thinking this, but what horrible, horrible people.
What was that about the Tea Party being just about public finance? Good times.
I don't understand the part where life begins before conception. What are the penalties in the law tied to this definition? E.g., can a woman be prosecuted for child endangerment for using drugs before conception, or something like that? Also:
It's unclear where in the U.S. constitution it states that the states "have an obligation to hold those on public assistance accountable for their actions."
OMG shut up. You are the reason people hate liberals.
I mean, the only thing I see is: "She said the law defines pregnancy in a way that bans abortion two weeks before the other seven states with similar laws, because it calculates gestational age starting with the first day of the last menstrual period rather than the date of conception." So you can't get an abortion before you're pregnant? That's stupid, but obviously not an actual problem.
5: No, you can't get an abortion *after* you're 22 weeks pregnant, where "pregnant" is defined from the date of your last period, rather than two weeks later, when you would have ovulated.
Or rather, where the length of pregnancy is so defined.
We'll soon (ie, early 2013?) see what the Ninth Circuit says about it.
That makes a lot more sense! Why don't they just say that? The law chisels away at the definition of the first trimester. The "women are pregnant before they're pregnant" language is just confusing.
8: Yeah, let's take it to the courts.
9: I thought it did say that. You have to admit that in a roundabout way it accepts the proposition that a woman could be pregnant 3 days after her last period, however. As far as the law is concerned, it says that the woman became pregnant as of the date of her last period.
And yes, Arizona's law puts it at 20 weeks, not 22.
CC's link in 8 is worth a read for anyone who's not up to date on the basics about whether this is bound for the US Supreme Court.
The law chisels away at the definition of the first trimester
That's a feature, not a bug.
I am surprised by this only because I had already assumed it to be the case. This is how OBs time pregnancies.
(Although I'm not sure how this works in practice. One goes to a clinic and says "I am x weeks pregnant." Unless the doctor deems this wildly off base due to ultrasound or whatever, how would they know?)
This is how OBs time pregnancies.
I know they always ask the date of your last period, but would they think that you became pregnant on that day? They'd do ultrasounds and stuff to more accurately determine the age (number of weeks) of the fetus, right? The Arizona law in question bypasses the medical establishment's judgment.
Wikipedia says oudemia is talking about the gestational age (which is what the only OB I've ever had indirect contact with used) as opposed to the alternatives using the date of fertilization or the date of implantation.
Right, OBs say that you are at "ten weeks" when it is ten weeks after your last period. They know you didn't get pregnant then, it's just how the official timing nomenclature works. It is confusing, because it means it turns out that (for example) normative full-term pregnancies aren't 40 weeks long after all, they're 38 weeks long.
Ah. I didn't know that, and I'm not sure of the point of making the distinction, since the fetus is not actually 2 weeks older than it is. Not everyone is on a 28-day cycle, but still, it seems kind of weird.
The OB certainly doesn't want to hear a long story about the possible details of various times when you think conception could have happened. Especially if you ask them to give you the specific day so you know which tv show was on so you can use the star's name for the kid.
The OB certainly doesn't want to hear a long story about the possible details of various times when you think conception could have happened.
Wait, they don't? I'd have thought learning those details was the main reason people became OBs.
All the doctors interested in sex go into podiatry. No idea why.
Maybe you just have exceptionally attractive feet.
I think I have plantar fasciitis but I'm afraid to get it treated because of the perv factor.
Wait, they don't? I'd have thought learning those details was the main reason people became OBs.
This is decidedly not the case, I have learned from experience. If you have reason to believe you ovulated sometime other than day 14, you'd best lie to the OB about the start of your last menstrual period.
16
Right, OBs say that you are at "ten weeks" when it is ten weeks after your last period. They know you didn't get pregnant then, it's just how the official timing nomenclature works. It is confusing, because it means it turns out that (for example) normative full-term pregnancies aren't 40 weeks long after all, they're 38 weeks long.
Wait, so are you telling me the Arizona law is actually using the standard nomenclature and this pregnant two weeks before conception bit is just an idiotic talking point?
A dystopic pregnancy sounds like a serious condition.
24- It depends if the reference to viability uses the same scale. If viability is 22 weeks post-conception, but they define the limit for abortions as 22 weeks post-menstruation, then they just moved the abortion restriction to 2 weeks pre-viability.
My wife use to have very long cycles, sometimes 2-3 months, which means that according to this law she gave birth 8 weeks overdue. Ouch!
I lied about the date of my last period with kid D. Thought she would probably be 41 or so weeks, and didn't want my last week ever of being pregnant to be spoilt by conversations about induction.
If other states are counting pregnancy from conception that's a bit weird? They must be the only ones. I can see the anti abortion argument here - abortion is legal up to 24 weeks. Babies have been known to survive before 24 weeks. Therefore you are KILLING A PERSON!!!
Bringing it down to 20 weeks is fucking shit though if it means women can't get an anomaly scan first. This is the issue surely?
I know OBs count from your last period. But I also have a paranoia that the radical wing nuts will edge towards making "pre-pregnant" a thing that all women are, at all times.
If you follow the links in that article, you get back to the Huffington Post which has updated its original article to make it clear that everyone else uses LMP except apparently state legislators. It still talks about 18 weeks though, which is misleading, I think. I am having trouble finding a clear summary of the bill, but I've got to go swimming now.
Possibly pwned elsewhere (as I'm behind on comments), but the fact that both abortion and rape have come up in this election cycle has boggled my mind. All the loony wing of the GOP had to do was keep mum for a bit longer, and they had a credible shot at a White House they could work with.
29: Or it's going to work just fine, because precarity and disappointment are giving kyriarchy strength.
This "2 weeks before you're pregnant" thing to get outraged over annoys me, because it makes liberals look stupid (for once). Arizona is, as others pointed out, following the standard OB practice for determining pregnancy, not something weird or special (as others have pointed out), nor are they chiseling away at the first trimester, since it's always started two weeks before conception. Of course, the problem is that most OBs adjust the date based on fetal size if they think the original calculation was pretty off, and Arizona law apparently doesn't allow for this. I think this is the problem--that lawmakers who know nothing about human biology are legislating what OBs can do rather than allowing them to do their job based on their own training. It's like the trans-vaginal ultrasound--most OBs would do it anyways since it's the only accurate way to ultrasound an early pregnancy, but being forced to do it to women by politicians totally changes the dynamic and ties up the hands of doctors. (I mean, what is terrible aside from restricting women's reproductive rights.)
But there is an undercurrent in the loonies to create an environment where women are considered perpetually pregnant. There's plenty of language about drinking while pregnant that tacks on to the end of the warning "women who are pregnant, nursing, trying to get pregnant, or of reproductive age".
I'm not saying we're near a state where that fringe takes over, but I think it's equally naive to say that they're strictly adopting the medical convention and they don't mean anything ominous by it.
(Although the "anyone of reproductive age" thing is medical CYA, not religious wing-nuttery.) Nevertheless, medical CYA and religious wingnuttery can end up having a kind of synergy.
32: I'm not saying we're near a state where that fringe takes over
Because it happened 31 years ago?
Heh. (I suppose I should say I don't think they're anywhere close to establishing a norm where women are considered to be perpetually pre-pregnant. I don't think it's taken root among standard conservatives.)
The right to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester is a constitutional right. The relevant question therefore is when a bunch of wealthy white male eighteenth century slaveowners believed pregnancy began.
[just kidding. The trimester framework was invented by justice blackmun. The relevant question is when a twentieth century wealthy white male former med mal defense lawyer believed pregnancy began.]
||
This is my new favorite reading of poetry on youtube. The reading Alicia gives to "Leaves of Grass" brings out the best in the text.
|>
31 -- The point of the legislation is to explicitly shrink the window during which abortion is, grudgingly, legal. It's the second trimester they're after, first, and they've been having good luck with that project these last 20 years.
38
Well yes, which is why I have a problem to restricting abortion to before 20 weeks. But my issue with making a big deal out of this particular part of the law is that they aren't restricting what used to be 20 to 18 weeks, they're restricting what used to be 18 weeks to 18 weeks, if that's clear. i.e., what's bad about this law isn't a redefinition of the first trimester, it's that it's trying to restrict abortion to the first trimester.
The "two weeks before you're pregnant!" framing is stupid. You can go to any what-to-expect kind of site on the internet and one of the first things that they explain is that you're not pregnant during those first two weeks, but the OBs have to start counting from somewhere, and most women have no idea when they ovulated, when the egg was fertilized, or when it implanted, but the last menstrual period is hard to miss, and for most women, it's going to be close enough. It's not crazy to think that your first positive pregnancy test might be at week five. Whether the legislators understand this is tough to say.
That said, there is a problem with reifying this into law, aside from the shrinking second trimester window. If a woman's cycles are irregular, or much longer than 28 days, LMP is going to be a bad way to estimate gestational age. It seems crazy to hang so much on gestational age and not permit other ways of testing for it (I get that they're trying to restrict abortion access, but I guess it hasn't occurred to them that the date of LMP is self-reported...)
The Idaho version of the 20 week law is very specific that the 20 weeks runs from fertilization. (Idaho Code 18-502 et seq.) This supports the news story, and advocacy group, contention that Arizona is shaving 2 weeks off the already unconstitutionally* low 20 week limit some states have adopted. I'm not going to look at the other states, but I think we can presume that these statutes come from the same template distributed by anti-abortion groups. And that the Arizona statute will be the new normal for that.
* I don't think pre-viability bans are constitutional. Yet. I was interested to see that Idaho defines trimesters: first is weeks 1-13, next is weeks 14-viability, last is viability to delivery. Maybe this is usual too, for the same reasons.
but I guess it hasn't occurred to them that the date of LMP is self-reported
I'm sure they're working on a plan for state-mandated menses inspections.
Idaho also has a law on estimating post fertilization age. 18-04. I'd cut and paste, but my laptop doesn't work that way.
Aside from the jurisprudential focus on trimesters, what would a more scientific viability threshold be?
It's hard to say. According to some friends in medicine, about 23-24 weeks is the absolute earliest a premature baby has even a chance. That's due to the limits of technology.
All the loony wing of the GOP had to do was keep mum for a bit longer, and they had a credible shot at a White House they could work with.
On my first read, I thought Stanley was saying his mother was leaning Republican until the abortion stuff came up.
That misreading brought to you by me.
I'm sure they're working on a plan for state-mandated menses inspections.
Paid for by the same office that does drug testing for welfare recipients.
31: I think this is the problem--that lawmakers who know nothing about human biology are legislating what OBs can do rather than allowing them to do their job based on their own training.
Yeah. The crime the law establishes is one perpetrated by the doctor. From Charley's link in 8:
Challengers also pointed out the risk to doctors who perform abortions in violation of the law: up to six months in jail and loss of their medical licenses.
That was the issue in Roe v. Wade, no? The criminality was put on the doctor (not that we'd want it put on the pregnant woman, either, and I don't think anyone has tried to go that route), so it infringes on his/her rights, on the doctor/patient relationship, and so on. I should read up on that -- it's been a while.
Just to follow up on that last. From the wikipedia article on Roe v. Wade
The Court additionally added that the primary right being preserved in the Roe decision was that of the physician's right to practice medicine freely absent a compelling state interest - not women's rights in general.
Anti-abortion assholes may not know much about biology, but it wouldn't be surprising that they know enough to reword laws such that they shave off abortion eligibility in a sneaky way. All of the comments treating rights advocates as tricksy and Arizona anti-women legislators as sincere and medically sound strike me as, uh, misguided.