These videos almost change my mind on really late term abortions, like 160th + trimester abortions, or however old Deborah Nucatola is.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]Chushin wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]nephorm wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
How is this appreciably different from pediatric organ donation using children who have managed to escape the birth canal?
[/quote]
And if the babies/fetuses are going to be aborted anyway…
This is considerably different from a moral hazard situation in which, say, women are being paid to grow fetuses that are then harvested.
What do you guys think they do with the remains after an abortion otherwise? Give them a funeral?[/quote]
Precisely.
If it’s a choice between an aborted fetus getting dumped into a hazardous waste bag and tossed into an incinerator, or being recycled to maybe save another life, I don’t see it as being a very tough decision to make. Especially if there is money involved.[/quote]
It’d be interesting to hear you discuss this with your employer. ;-)[/quote]
I’m fairly confident that if one of his children needed an urgent liver transplant, and the only available liver came from an aborted fetus, that he would not turn it down on account of his religious beliefs. Cannot say for certain. Perhaps I’ll ask him.[/quote]
I certainly would turn it down. However, I actually agree with your assessment of the situation, though we probably part ways morally much earlier and meet at this later point through a strange byway.
In my opinion, Varq is right. The lives have already been snuffed out. The little human has had her developing fontanel broken open and her brains sucked out before she ever had an opportunity, as we did, to have a shot at life. This side of the vaginal threshold or that side, she was killed because a collusion of people, one of them including her own mother, found her to be either an inconvenience or a source of lucre. Whatever the reason, her life was snuffed out before its potential was fulfilled. The kind of person who can do such a thing has already crossed his own threshold, so that harvesting those parts for whatever benefit they may provide is not really removed in kind from anything that he’s done already. How can you go much further than snuffing out a completely helpless, wholly innocent life, while audaciously, narcissistically retaining your own? If you have no moral compass in the first place, who could expect you to suddenly jerk north? As Varq said, what should they do, give the little bodies a funeral?
How this is somehow more morally repugnant than the act of killing the little human life itself is what has me confused.
*edited to clarify my first sentence.
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
[quote]nephorm wrote:
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
If Planned Parenthood counsels women who are considering abortion, wouldn’t it be unethical for them to have a financial stake in the decision process?[/quote]
Yes. If they are profiting off the sale, which is illegal and unethical, they should be prosecuted. If they are just reimbursed for costs, then it is not unethical (and probably not illegal, but I am not a lawyer).[/quote]
After reading about it in the WSJ this morning, she’s claiming that the fees involved are small, and only cover costs and shipment, that they do not do it for profit. I have a big issue with selling organs because it could encourage child abduction, murder, or the purposeful creation of fetuses for sale.
In contrast, I’m listed as an organ donor on my driver’s license.
BTW, I was in my university’s brain bank just yesterday at work, and had the opportunity to look at some brains donated by Alzheimer’s patients. It gave me a good feeling to know people are willing to donate their brain for research purposes after they die. It’s a noble thing. If physicians and lab workers become emotionally detached in the process, that doesn’t make them EQUAL to that abortion doctor, in my opinion, nor does it justify her behavior because other people who handle organs may not always be respectful.
I know a middle school teacher who passed away from cancer this year and choose to donate his body to the medical school here, because teaching was his life’s work. That’s a generous and noble thing, and I have a lot of respect for it. This Planned Parenthood scandal as something else entirely. Nothing good, or noble, or generous about that woman.
[/quote]
Excellent post. In almost every case, those you mentioned here, and those of parents who donate their children’s bodies to science that others might live, there is indeed a generous and noble ethic at work.
I cannot in any way believe that same spirit of generosity and caring is what motivates the sale of little body parts under discussion here. I challenge someone to convince me otherwise.
Nice to see you Cortez.
Aragorn, this may make you feel a little bit better. There’s a lot of good out there.
I got to see a miracle this weekend.
A little girl I evaluated was born with a very large cyst in her brain. This cyst was visible on ultrasound before birth, and if you can picture, it took up about 1/3 of her brain area. It’s inoperable. It looked like her occipital lobe was almost completely obliterated, along with some of the surrounding structures.
So, her parents knew when she was still in the womb that this baby was very likely going to have some profound challenges. We expected blindness at the least, and very likely profound physical and mental disability. Of course, we all wondered if she would survive and if she’d ever walk or talk.
I evaluated her at about 15 months, and she could see! She was doing quite well, but wasn’t yet walking or talking. It was one of those, “we’ll have to wait and see” situations, which is really a hard place for a parent to be. Shortly afterward, the family moved to another state.
Flash forward. I got to see her again last weekend. She’s now about 4 years old. She not only has good vision, but she’s running around and talking much like any child her age. As I walked up, she said, “Shhh! (holding her index finger to her lips) Be quiet! The baby is sleeping.” I’m still just completely in awe. It will go down as one of the most beautiful moments in my life.
The human brain is an incredibly plastic and adaptable thing. I will never think about this without feeling immense gratitude that I got to meet that amazing little person and her lovely parents. And I guess now I can be grateful that that woman from Planned Parenthood never got her hands on her.
That’s all I’m going to say about that.
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
Nice to see you Cortez.
Aragorn, this may make you feel a little bit better. There’s a lot of good out there.
I got to see a miracle this weekend.
A little girl I evaluated was born with a very large cyst in her brain. This cyst was visible on ultrasound before birth, and if you can picture, it took up about 1/3 of her brain area. It’s inoperable. It looked like her occipital lobe was almost completely obliterated, along with some of the surrounding structures.
So, her parents knew when she was still in the womb that this baby was very likely going to have some profound challenges. We expected blindness at the least, and very likely profound physical and mental disability. Of course, we all wondered if she would survive and if she’d ever walk or talk.
I evaluated her at about 15 months, and she could see! She was doing quite well, but wasn’t yet walking or talking. It was one of those, “we’ll have to wait and see” situations, which is really a hard place for a parent to be. Shortly afterward, the family moved to another state.
Flash forward. I got to see her again last weekend. She’s now about 4 years old. She not only has good vision, but she’s running around and talking much like any child her age. As I walked up, she said, “Shhh! (holding her index finger to her lips) Be quiet! The baby is sleeping.” I’m still just completely in awe. It will go down as one of the most beautiful moments in my life.
The human brain is an incredibly plastic and adaptable thing. I will never think about this without feeling immense gratitude that I got to meet that amazing little person and her lovely parents. And I guess now I can be grateful that that woman from Planned Parenthood never got her hands on her.
That’s all I’m going to say about that.
[/quote]
Amen.
If these organs are adapted enough to be used in successful transplants, doesn’t that speak to the viability of the life they are ending? Basically isn’t this an acknowledgment by the doctor’s harvesting the organs that the child at that point is viable if not for their act of homicide?
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Or is it just the tone of voice they use to talk about it all?
[/quote]
I think it’s this: The “pro-choice” movement has done a very good job of doing for abortion what the military and (chicken, in so many cases) hawks have done for war. Years upon years of calculated rhetoric and linguistic chicanery have effected a kind of Orwellian stultification, an opioid die-off of literal and clear thinking. Just as war is now built of “targeted action” and “freedom” and “operations” (rather than splattered brain, and blood fauceting through the nose of a person who’s been shot in the head, and rotting corpses, and dead kids), abortion is now built of “reproductive choices” and “reproductive health” and “a woman’s right to choose.” Even those of us who are not part of the Left’s sanitation project are subconsciously affected.
Then something like this comes along, and we are all reminded that ah, yes, this is about killing something that has a heart, and lungs, and a liver. It is a snap back to a reality that we all understand but that none of us can keep at the fore of our minds indefinitely. The casual manner of speaking, stabbing fork in hand, adds some measure of insult to injury (though that, as you mentioned, is not rare for a person working in medicine).
In short, we are reminded that a spade is – and always has been – a spade.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I’m fairly confident that if one of his children needed an urgent liver transplant, and the only available liver came from an aborted fetus, that he would not turn it down on account of his religious beliefs. Cannot say for certain. Perhaps I’ll ask him.[/quote]
I certainly would turn it down. [/quote]
Well, then. I stand corrected. Or sit, rather. Don’t much feel like standing after those kettlebell swings.
Not so much as you might think. Don’t know how many of these abortion threads you’ve followed, but I’ve stated my position on the abortion issue pretty clearly. The unjustifiable killing of a person is indefensible, and as Horton the Elephant so rightly said, “a person’s a person no matter how small.” But that’s not, it appears, what the topic of this conversation is about.
In fairness, it was Nephorm who said that. I just agreed.
Me too. The death itself is what we should be concerned about, not what happens to the body afterwards.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Or is it just the tone of voice they use to talk about it all?
[/quote]
I think it’s this: The “pro-choice” movement has done a very good job of doing for abortion what the military and (chicken, in so many cases) hawks have done for war. Years upon years of calculated rhetoric and linguistic chicanery have effected a kind of Orwellian stultification, an opioid die-off of literal and clear thinking. Just as war is now built of “targeted action” and “freedom” and “operations” (rather than splattered brain, and blood fauceting through the nose of a person who’s been shot in the head, and rotting corpses, and dead kids), abortion is now built of “reproductive choices” and “reproductive health” and “a woman’s right to choose.” Even those of us who are not part of the Left’s sanitation project are subconsciously affected.
Then something like this comes along, and we are all reminded that ah, yes, this is about killing something that has a heart, and lungs, and a liver. It is a snap back to a reality that we all understand but that none of us can keep at the fore of our minds indefinitely. The casual manner of speaking, stabbing fork in hand, adds some measure of insult to injury (though that, as you mentioned, is not rare for a person working in medicine).
In short, we are reminded that a spade is – and always has been – a spade.[/quote]
Excellent observation. I think you’re right.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I’m fairly confident that if one of his children needed an urgent liver transplant, and the only available liver came from an aborted fetus, that he would not turn it down on account of his religious beliefs. Cannot say for certain. Perhaps I’ll ask him.[/quote]
I certainly would turn it down. [/quote]
Well, then. I stand corrected. Or sit, rather. Don’t much feel like standing after those kettlebell swings.
Not so much as you might think. Don’t know how many of these abortion threads you’ve followed, but I’ve stated my position on the abortion issue pretty clearly. The unjustifiable killing of a person is indefensible, and as Horton the Elephant so rightly said, “a person’s a person no matter how small.” But that’s not, it appears, what the topic of this conversation is about.
In fairness, it was Nephorm who said that. I just agreed.
Me too. The death itself is what we should be concerned about, not what happens to the body afterwards.
[/quote]
Well then, it sounds like we agree upon pretty much everything. This situation is even uglier than your quote quagmire.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I’m fairly confident that if one of his children needed an urgent liver transplant, and the only available liver came from an aborted fetus, that he would not turn it down on account of his religious beliefs. Cannot say for certain. Perhaps I’ll ask him.[/quote]
I certainly would turn it down. [/quote]
Well, then. I stand corrected. Or sit, rather. Don’t much feel like standing after those kettlebell swings.
Not so much as you might think. Don’t know how many of these abortion threads you’ve followed, but I’ve stated my position on the abortion issue pretty clearly. The unjustifiable killing of a person is indefensible, and as Horton the Elephant so rightly said, “a person’s a person no matter how small.” But that’s not, it appears, what the topic of this conversation is about.
In fairness, it was Nephorm who said that. I just agreed.
Me too. The death itself is what we should be concerned about, not what happens to the body afterwards.
[/quote]
Well then, it sounds like we agree upon pretty much everything. This situation is even uglier than your quote quagmire. [/quote]
Which you fixed…stealing my thunder, dang you. (^_-)
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
If these organs are adapted enough to be used in successful transplants, doesn’t that speak to the viability of the life they are ending? Basically isn’t this an acknowledgment by the doctor’s harvesting the organs that the child at that point is viable if not for their act of homicide?[/quote]
Not necessarily. A person can have organs that are perfectly viable for transplantation despite being brain-dead or in a coma, kept alive by a life-support machine. It is precisely because the fetal organs are still developing (i.e. not yet fully developed) that they has value: the stem cells harvested from them can be used to regenerate organ tissue in a recipient patient. But it does not follow that those same organs would be able to function if the baby were disconnected from the “life-support machine” (i.e. her mother).
*edited
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Which you fixed…stealing my thunder, dang you. (^_-)
[/quote]
I just edited out your edit in which you said that you had edited. Then all was well. 
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]Chushin wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]nephorm wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
How is this appreciably different from pediatric organ donation using children who have managed to escape the birth canal?
[/quote]
And if the babies/fetuses are going to be aborted anyway…
This is considerably different from a moral hazard situation in which, say, women are being paid to grow fetuses that are then harvested.
What do you guys think they do with the remains after an abortion otherwise? Give them a funeral?[/quote]
Precisely.
If it’s a choice between an aborted fetus getting dumped into a hazardous waste bag and tossed into an incinerator, or being recycled to maybe save another life, I don’t see it as being a very tough decision to make. Especially if there is money involved.[/quote]
It’d be interesting to hear you discuss this with your employer. ;-)[/quote]
I’m fairly confident that if one of his children needed an urgent liver transplant, and the only available liver came from an aborted fetus, that he would not turn it down on account of his religious beliefs. Cannot say for certain. Perhaps I’ll ask him.[/quote]
These organs are not harvested for transplantation. Regardless, the act is barbaric. Even presuming that these organs could be used for transplantation is it ethical to kill a living human being to preserve the life of another?
We are dealing here with an organism who has developed heart, lungs, liver, etc. This is way beyond the point where the fetus’s differentiated cells are difficult to determine their purpose. This is a point where if labor was induced, the child could be born alive and survive.
At this point, the doctor has to carefully choose which part of the child to ‘damage’ in order to preserve the organs she has been requested to harvest.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
How is this appreciably different from pediatric organ donation using children who have managed to escape the birth canal?
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/5/982.full
Consent? Of whom, the child? Absent in either case.
Consent of the parent? Present in both cases.
Is it the money involved? Would it make a difference if Planned Parenthood didn’t make a profit on the sale of fetal tissue?
Or is it just the tone of voice they use to talk about it all?
Yes, hearing these people talk as casually as they do about the disposition of postmortem fetal organs might be disturbing to some viewers, but just eavesdrop on a couple of surgeons sometime. Or a couple of soldiers. Amongst themselves, I assure you, there are no hushed tones of reverence when talking about dead bodies, even the ones they caused.[/quote]
So are you saying you support the practice? The fact that doctors can be coy or irreverent about the things they do, does not change what it is they are doing. Deciding which way you are going to kill the child, in order that you may preserve the tissue and organs for which you have ‘orders’ for doesn’t merely smack of irreverence.
In other circumstances, does preserving certain organs for transplantation change the manner in which a doctor treats somebody?
Again, do you support the practice?
[quote]NickViar wrote:
Is anyone surprised that folks who are okay with killing children for the sake of convenience are talking like this? Really?[/quote]
Should it? Not really. Somehow it still did. The good, is that it exposes the practice for what it really is. We’re not talking about a ‘woman’s right’, ‘choice’, or ‘reproductive care’. We’re talking about hearts, lungs, livers, brains, etc. Of a living human being that is being killed.
Do you think there is full disclosure here? I would like to see the signed forms, by the mother, where she agreed to donate her child’s organs. I am pretty sure no such form exists.
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
[quote]nephorm wrote:
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
If Planned Parenthood counsels women who are considering abortion, wouldn’t it be unethical for them to have a financial stake in the decision process?[/quote]
Yes. If they are profiting off the sale, which is illegal and unethical, they should be prosecuted. If they are just reimbursed for costs, then it is not unethical (and probably not illegal, but I am not a lawyer).[/quote]
After reading about it in the WSJ this morning, she’s claiming that the fees involved are small, and only cover costs and shipment, that they do not do it for profit. I have a big issue with selling organs because it could encourage child abduction, murder, or the purposeful creation of fetuses for sale.
In contrast, I’m listed as an organ donor on my driver’s license.
BTW, I was in my university’s brain bank just yesterday at work, and had the opportunity to look at some brains donated by Alzheimer’s patients. It gave me a good feeling to know people are willing to donate their brain for research purposes after they die. It’s a noble thing. If physicians and lab workers become emotionally detached in the process, that doesn’t make them EQUAL to that abortion doctor, in my opinion, nor does it justify her behavior because other people who handle organs may not always be respectful.
I know a middle school teacher who passed away from cancer this year and choose to donate his body to the medical school here, because teaching was his life’s work. That’s a generous and noble thing, and I have a lot of respect for it. This Planned Parenthood scandal as something else entirely. Nothing good, or noble, or generous about that woman.
[/quote]
But who is giving the consent to harvest these organs?
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
Nice to see you Cortez.
Aragorn, this may make you feel a little bit better. There’s a lot of good out there.
I got to see a miracle this weekend.
A little girl I evaluated was born with a very large cyst in her brain. This cyst was visible on ultrasound before birth, and if you can picture, it took up about 1/3 of her brain area. It’s inoperable. It looked like her occipital lobe was almost completely obliterated, along with some of the surrounding structures.
So, her parents knew when she was still in the womb that this baby was very likely going to have some profound challenges. We expected blindness at the least, and very likely profound physical and mental disability. Of course, we all wondered if she would survive and if she’d ever walk or talk.
I evaluated her at about 15 months, and she could see! She was doing quite well, but wasn’t yet walking or talking. It was one of those, “we’ll have to wait and see” situations, which is really a hard place for a parent to be. Shortly afterward, the family moved to another state.
Flash forward. I got to see her again last weekend. She’s now about 4 years old. She not only has good vision, but she’s running around and talking much like any child her age. As I walked up, she said, “Shhh! (holding her index finger to her lips) Be quiet! The baby is sleeping.” I’m still just completely in awe. It will go down as one of the most beautiful moments in my life.
The human brain is an incredibly plastic and adaptable thing. I will never think about this without feeling immense gratitude that I got to meet that amazing little person and her lovely parents. And I guess now I can be grateful that that woman from Planned Parenthood never got her hands on her.
That’s all I’m going to say about that.
[/quote]
That’s a great story.
[quote]pat wrote:
But who is giving the consent to harvest these organs?[/quote]
The mother, when she signs the consent forms.
Couldn’t find the forms they use in Georgia, but in Texas at least, there are these clauses in the consent form:
"I give my permission to this doctor and such other associates, technical assistants, and other health providers as the doctor thinks is needed to perform the abortion on me using the surgical and medical procedures checked above.
“I give my permission to my physician and such associates, technical assistants and other health care providers to perform such other procedures that are advisable in their professional judgment.”
(emphasis mine)
Harvesting fetal tissue for transplantation probably falls within the purview of “such other procedures”.
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
If these organs are adapted enough to be used in successful transplants, doesn’t that speak to the viability of the life they are ending? Basically isn’t this an acknowledgment by the doctor’s harvesting the organs that the child at that point is viable if not for their act of homicide?[/quote]
I think that’s ultimately what people are finding disgusting. In reality this is the logical way to discuss fetuses from the liberal perspective. They are a clump of cells and the abortion is a medical procedure on the mother. If that were true, why wouldn’t you discuss it without emotion, over a salad and a glass of wine?
But people are hearing about actual human livers, lungs, legs, and the crushing of baby heads. These words are necessary to discuss the practice of what is actually being done, but it also reflects the human life involved and breaks down their little bubble of distancing themselves from the reality. If she said the same things but talked about tissue and other sterile things, I doubt libs would care. BUT you actually name the tissue, legs, torso, chest, heart, lungs, and suddenly they start squirming repulsively. Well, this is was you wanted. Don’t like hearing about the reality, too bad.