The OBGYN over at Althouse is saying “hooey” to your line of argument. Take it up with her, I guess.

Well, I’m not an ob, but I’m pretty sure that the standard of care for HELLP is to deliver or abort as soon as possible. If there’s some reason to delay, ie to try to prep a marginal fetus, say a 26 weeker, for birth so it has a better chance of survival, that’s one thing, but in the unlikely event that it occurs at, say, 14 weeks, who are we trying to kid? No one’s going to be able to hang on for 10 weeks or more with HELLP. If I were consulted as a hematologist on a patient with HELLP I’d suggest treating the underlying cause (ie, doing a delivery or abortion) asap, maybe giving some cryo or plasma, avoid platelets unless there’s serious bleeding, mak sure that the blood bank is ready with lots and lots of everything, maybe give steroids if you really have to wait. I’d also like to see what the patient’s ADAMTS-13 levels and von Willibrand’s multimers looked like, preferably before any platelets were given. And maybe see if she had any CD39 abnormalities.

Sorry, I’ve stopped discussing the issue and moved on to fantasizing about how to cure HELLP syndrome. To bring the comment back to something relevant: Suppose you or I or someone found a way to cure HELLP and prevent it from recurring. Suppose this cure were given to a woman who was just about to abort a wanted pregnancy because of HELLP. Would she then say “Drat you for taking away my justification for having an abortion”? I think it’s far more likely that she’d be happy to be able to continue the pregnancy safely. My point? One way to decrease the number of abortions that occur, especially late term abortions, is to find cures or preventatives for the problems that cause these abortions: chromosomal abnormalities, maternal health problems, intrauterine growth abnormalities, etc. Doing something about these problems would be much more likely to reduce the rate of abortion than lecturing women on how evil they are for wanting to abort a baby that’s not going to survive after birth or where the birth is going to kill her.

First, your initial statement was “The real bottom line is that the government doesn’t have any business regulating abortion more than it regulates any other medical procedure.” I was pointing out that the governmant does it all the time. Now you change your argument to exclude regulations for safety, which believe me drug companies rail against. Specific health procedures are regulated with reguard to the ability of minors to consent to them every day. Consent is required for medical procedures on minors. Abortion already enjoys wide latitude in this area, less rather than more restrictive. While boys are not forced to undergo vasectomies neither can they consent to their own.

Notification does not remove the minor’ ability to consent to the abortion nor prevent her from obtaining one.
I have tried to point out that health concerns are addressed under the current law and that arguments to the contrary are ill concieved, hard to defend, and frequently dishonest. Hyping risks and discounting physician’s willingness and ability to respond to those risks.
I point out the risks of abortion to remind you that abortion is not a benign procedure. It carries the risk of serious long term complicatins, and since the health issuses revolve around the safety of the minor they should be remembered. Any other procedure with these potential risks would require parental consent. Consrtucting a notification law with as little wiggle room as possible is not that radical nor repressive. It reflects knowledge that good judgement requires experience that minors usually lack.

Look, there was a standard under which the law would have been acceptable: Include a health exception. The legislature chose not to do so, as part of the ongoing game of trying to prevent women (of any age) from controlling their bodies. I don’t particularly like parental notification statutes, but I don’t see them disappearing anytime soon. And as should be obvious from the ongoing drama surrounding OTC day-after birth control, we’re not dealing with “well intentioned people.”

More broadly, you’re conflating regulation of medical procedures in general for safety reasons (which I don’t hear anyone arguing against), with regulation of a specific health procedure (abortion) because of some benighted drive to shame and control women. How else can waiting periods, “information” about cervical cancer or fetal pain, coerced ultrasounds, and the like be understood as anything other than disrespect for and attempts to control women?

And I would hope that all of us can recognize that when one gives one’s informed consent to any medical procedure, including abortion, one is aware of the risks. I’m not sure (because your post isn’t clear) if this is an argument against abortion in general or not, but every medical procedure carries risks. No one is trying to prevent, say, heart surgery or rhinoplasty because they have some chance of complications. On the other hand, if you’re arguing that these health risks mean that parents ought to know, well congratulations! Parental notification laws seem to be here to stay. They just have to contain a health exception so that young women can get the medical care they need when they need it (and in consideration for health beyond that physically tied to pregnancy).

DIC- life threatening
HELLP/ severe pre-eclampsia -life thereatening
hemorrage- life threatening
severe infection- life threatening
necrotic twin- see severe infection
incoplete spontaneous abortion with hemmorrhage- life thereatening and not really an abortion

pulmonary hypertension- gradual onset, diagnosis takes time, initial treatment would not be an abortion, if severe enough to require intervention within 48 hours- life threatening

Ectopic pregancy- not an abortion but a medical procedure ruptured medical emergency, otherwise treat medically to kill fetus
cancer- takes time to diagnose not an emergency does not need treatment within 48 hours.

well intentioned people can make this law work just fine.

I’m not sure whose a** the 1 in a 1000 number got pulled out of, but there is a definate rate of abortion complications as well, life threatening, and reproductive ability thereatening. Uterine perforation, infecton, increaesd risk of future misscarriage, bleeding requiring transfusion, death. The highest number I found for complications was 17%, lets cut that by 2/3 and call it 5 percent just for fun. That would be at least 50 people with an adverse outcome of some type in those same 1000 women. Yes, I puled this number out of my A** I doubt it will need to be adjusted down though. How important this number is depends on how you want to look at this issue. Perhaps it should have been left to the good Pro- choice people of NH instead of the courts.
Abortion is not without risks, if the abortion produces complications the parents are responsible for the aftermath. They are due some deference in the decision process.

Bottom line, there are few or no cases where a health exception would make sense, and in the case where they are, existing law allows ER doctors to do what they feel necessary to save the life of a patient.

The real bottom line is that the government doesn’t have any business regulating abortion more than it regulates any other medical procedure. I’m not willing to give the legislature the authority to force me to have a vasectomy; I’m stil unclear why some people are willing to allow it to force women to carry a pregnancy to term.
Consults his Patriarchy for Clueless Men…
Oh yeah, it’s not about health or babies; it’s about reminding women about their (lack of) power relative to men.

Jill: I love Ann Althouse.

Wow Jill loves Althouse and Althouse loves Alito. What a weird love triangle!

D&C and D&E have emergency uses other than abortion.

Doesn’t labor expel a lot of other stuff from the uterus that really needs to come out of there?

It doesn’t really matter how the “other stuff” comes out of the uterus, as long as it comes out. And speaking from experience, labor is not as effective as you might imagine.

(I actually typed “lick your ass” before I saw the typo. Oh, Freud, you naughty boy.)