He is a particular idiot. he’s from my home town, unfortunately. and you’re right — it’s absolutley ridiculous for them to be doing this right now (not that it ever isn’t ridiculous, but you know what I mean) because Gov. Strickland has straight out stated that he will veto. There is really no way this legislation will ever get passed (thank god), and they know that, which kind of pisses me off all the more, because it’s just such a fucking waste of time, you know? It’s nothing more than an attention-mongering trick to prove to everybody how good and brave they (the legislators introducting/supporting this) are, all the while distracting from any real issues possibly going on in Ohio. I just find that so many of these abortion debates are distracting. It’s the whole salt-in-the-wound thing: these laws suck because of what they’re actually about, and they also suck again because they distract legislative, media and politicacl attention from business that might, you know, actually help people.

Tom,
Legislators typically don’t write their own legislation and the language of legislation can often change during the legislative process because language often doesn’t start out as carefully written as it should be.

Oy. First of all, if the language isn’t carefully thought out, why would you link to it as some sort of “gotcha!” take down of the post? You presented the excerpt of the legislation as though flatly contradicted what Jill said. It did not. The language quite clearly stated that abortion would not be prosecuted if it were a “proximate result” of life-saving measures and that abortion was not the intent.

So now you switch gears and say that the language isn’t carefully written. If that had been your argument from the beginning, you would have been fine. It wasn’t. You went on about the language of the legislation and what it allowed as though it were carefully written to allow life-saving abortions. Until you were proven objectively wrong by the passage you cited. Now, not only is the language not careful, but they didn’t even write it! A-And it could change!

This language is carefully thought out. The notion of abortion as an unintended result is reiterated twice.

(D) Division (A) of this section does not apply to a person who provides medical treatment to a pregnant woman to prevent the death of the pregnant woman and who, as a proximate result of the provision of that medical treatment but without intent to do so, causes the termination of the pregnant woman’s pregnancy

Your trolling skills need work.

Jill,
The reputable news organization you linked to never specifically said the legislation didn’t have a “no exceptions.”

You’re right. It just said:

Less than three months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ban on a controversial late-term abortion procedure, a Cincinnati Republican has reintroduced legislation to outlaw all abortions in Ohio.

So excuse me for reading “all abortions” as “all abortions.”

You may not like the language of law’s exception but an exception is there.

And I’m beginning to doubt that you know how to read. Look, the bill outlaws performing abortions. Period. Removing a woman’s entire uterus because she has cancer is not performing an abortion, even if she’s pregnant — the pregnancy ends, but there was no abortion. Under this law, you cannot perform an abortion. You can “accidentally” terminate a pregnancy as a side-effect of other treatment, but as far as I can tell there is no reading of the statute that would allow a doctor to purposely perform an abortion procedure.

Try this: If a woman has weak kidneys and childbirth will kill her either during the birth or soon after, can the doctor, under the language in this statute, perform a D&C abortion procedure and only a D&C abortion procedure to end her pregnancy?

Please explain how one could stretch the language of the statute to encompass her situation. I’d love to hear it.

Or, please tell me of ANY situation under the statutory language that would allow a doctor to perform a direct abortion, with the intent of performing a direct abortion.

Bzzzt. Already refuted. Go back to square one.

You may not like the language of law’s exception but an exception is there.

Cooper,
Your logic is faulty. What does me being active in prolife work have anything to do with whether this legislation would protect a mother’s life or whether I’m being disingenuous? I’ve been around numerous prolifers for years and I don’t know of very many who think procedures which save the mother’s life by ending the life of an unborn child (such as removing an ectopic pregnancy) are immoral.

It’s unfortunate that you put such bad motives on me. When Jill screwed up and claimed a mainstream prolife organization was in favor of violence and then changed her post without noting it in the post or in the comments – I didn’t personally think she was being intentionally deceptive. I thought she made a mistake – probably because she views prolifers with so much animosity that the idea that a mainstream prolife organization supporting violence didn’t sound that off. To me it sounded so off I took a couple minutes to double check her claims.

Tom,
Legislators typically don’t write their own legislation and the language of legislation can often change during the legislative process because language often doesn’t start out as carefully written as it should be.

But back to the subject at hand: What would happen to a woman under the law proposed in Ohio in this scenario: She unforunately develops breast cancer while pregnant. Normally, that might not be too big a disaster. Some studies suggest that pregnant women with breast cancer do fine and can be successfully treated with little danger to themselves or the fetus. That’s the average case. But some breast cancers are highly estrogen driven. Suppose the pregnany is causing the cancer to rage out of control in her body. It does not affect her uterus so taking out the uterus per se isn’t particularly useful so the “innocent double effect” doctrine doesn’t come into play, but the presence of the fetus is clearly killing her. Or a woman with PPH: she’ll die before the pregnancy advances very far, without ever having any particular uterine disease that could justify removing it. Or severe CHF. Or…you get the idea. What would the law allow or not allow when the pathology is not uterine but the pregnancy is clearly deadly? As written, it does not allow abortion. An honest pro-lifer who really wanted elective abortion to be illegal but abortion in cases where the mother is likely to die from the pregnancy to be legal would oppose this bill. Anyone like that out there? (Crickets.)

I’m surprised the Ohio Republicans doing this again now that they’ve lost a lot of their former strength in the state government, but from what I can tell from his website, this particular guy is an idiot anyway. *sigh*

YES – there are some supposed pro-lifers who would prefer that women die. The world is not a nice place (especially for women), whether JivinJ wants to believe or not.

The language of the legislation could certainly be more specific/better worded – for example it could say “sole intent” or even just get rid of the “as a proximate result of the provision of that medical treatment but without intent to do so” but the obvious intent of the legislator seems to me to provide an exception for the mother’s life in those rare cases such as ectopic pregnancies where there aren’t other options.

No, the obvious intent of the legislation is to forgive abortions when, and only when, they are a side effect of a life-saving treatment. In other words, abortions as collateral damage. In the case of ectopic pregnancies which are doomed to begin with, they would be forced to wait until the mother’s life, not simply her health, was in jeopardy. And then the only action that could be taken would be removal of the portion of the tube, not the dissolving of the fetus with medication.

Read it again,

(D) Division (A) of this section does not apply to a person who provides medical treatment to a pregnant woman to prevent the death of the pregnant woman and who, as a proximate result of the provision of that medical treatment but without intent to do so, causes the termination of the pregnant woman’s pregnancy.

It’s not simply abortion as a “proximate cause,” but it quite clearly states that abortion cannot be the intent even when the mother’s life is at stake.

These people work very hard at the wording of these documents. Their language is no accident.