What is the law regarding late term abortion?

Isn't it very strict?
Are there different State and Federal laws?

The life of the mother being at risk and therefore necessity for late term abortion to save her is missing from what I have seen regarding Dr. Tiller. Oh yeah...and the fact that what he was doing was legal.

Those celebrating the murder of Tiller don't seem to want to talk about this because if they can instead paint him as an immoral monster who was only out to make a buck, then they can live with, and enjoy, their self righteous and psychotic hate.


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...wouldn't you think it should be front and center in this "debate"?

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that he falsified the opinion from the secondary doctors.

And he was acquitted. Our former state AG went after him for years. He even went on O'Reilly and implied he had subpoened medical records and shared them with Billo.

The anti-choicers here in KS have been after Tiller for 20 years. They are complicit in his murder, IMO.

Women came from all over the world to see Dr Tiller. He was one of only three doctors in the country who performed late term abortions. And the state kept such a close watch on him. No way was he breaking any law. No way. He would never have gotten away with it.

States *MAY* put additional restrictions to abortion, as they see fit.

But people are regularly denied this medical procedure in spite of their rights.

In Kansas, two doctors who don't work together have to agree it is medically necessary.

...protecting the lives of the mothers.

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I heard a horrific story last night at our vigil for Dr Tiller. A woman was pregnant and the baby died in her womb. This was in the 60s, before abortion was legal and the law was so restrictive she couldn't even have surgery to remove a dead fetus. She carried it for 6 weeks after it died. Finally a doctor agreed to do surgery. By that time, the woman was very ill and the baby was mummified. And the woman was never able to get pregnant again because of the damage from the dead fetus inside of her for 6 weeks.

DISCLAIMER -- I am not a lawyer and don't even play one on tv.

The charges brought against Tiller and of which he was acquitted just this past March were that he was performing late term abortions without the proper second-opinion necessary to be legal.

Kansas law requires that an abortion performed after 21 or 22 weeks gestation -- roughly five and a half months or the point of viability outside the womb -- must be certified by a second and independent physician as endangering the mother's life or her health to an extreme extent. This law is intended to prevent the kind of abortions O'Reilly shrieked about in the clips shown on Countdown last night -- that anyone with $5000 can get an abortion from Tiller "up to a minute before it's born." That is simply not true, at least not in Kansas.

Nationwide, there are, if memory serves me correctly, only about 2500 late-term abortions a year, far less than 1%. Virtually all are done for extreme reasons -- the fetus has developed abnormally and is non-viable, the mother's life/health is at severe risk.

What enrages me about O'Reilly's comments in particular is that he paints women as being the monsters. Oh, the doctors are there to do the procedure, but they wouldn't be doing it if there weren't all these selfish, evil WOMEN out there who get pregnant and then, JUST BEFORE THE PRECIOUS INNOCENT BABY IS BORN, these EVIL mothers get bored and decide to just chuck it all. Collapse its skull, suck its little brains out, and toss the rest in the trash.

THAT'S the big lie. THAT's the hatred of women that lies behind the lie.

Goddess damn you, O'Reilly and Beck and all you other pieces of jealous misogynistic shit who so deeply hate and loathe and despise women for their ability to make life that you have to accuse us all, as a gender, almost as a separate species from you lofty and noble and genocidal gender, of such heinous crimes.

WE DON'T DO IT, you freakin' assholes. WE DON'T DO IT.

You can claim that women are MADE BY GOD to be the nurturers. That because of our fecundity we should be kept at home, pregnant as often as possible, and relegated to a life of caring for others. We do not need to be educated for this role. We do not need any special training. All we need is a man to take care of us, to tell us what to do, to beat us if we get out of line (like wanting a life of our own), and to throw us over when someone better/younger/hotter/richer (Cindy Hensley) comes along. We're so expendable, so easily expendable, that in the same breath as you claim we are made to be mothers you can simultaneously accuse us of being baby-killers!

What we are, O'Reilly, is human beings. We are no more blood-thirsty and child-killing than you are, and probably a whole lot less. You need to stop accusing us of the exact same crime you believe justified the murder of George Tiller.

And to go back to the post that started this rant --

Yes, there are laws in place, many of them, that restrict access to late-term abortions. They differ from state to state. ALL OF THEM are designed not only to restrict women's access to the procedure but to paint women as selfish, uncaring murderers themselves.

it ain't fuckin' true.




Tansy Gold

to do a most extraordinary rant. :thumbsup:

I wish I could recommend your post.

:toast:

If Hugin were here he'd remind me to update my journal. Guess I better to that, huh?

:hi:

is outside of the skull are a couple of the main reasons. These baby's have no conscience and if they are carried to term can die in the mothers womb or can kill the mother during birth. I think some of the religious fundies, Randall Terry in particular, must be some of the babies that escaped with no brains.
Tiller actually performed an abortion for free on an 11 year old girl that was raped by her step father. They didn't know she was pregnant until late in the pregnancy. She probably would have bled to death during child birth. There is a reason he was called Saint George Tiller. :dem:

A 9 year old girl came to him wanting an abortion. She was 6 months pregnant. He refused to do it. When he told his family, his 10 year old daughter told him he should do the abortion because if he didn't help this little girl, who would.

child and they discovered the brain was grossly deformed and outside the skull. Her life was threatened by this condition and the baby would not have survived.

She had an abortion late in her 7th month - she and her husband were devastated. They wanted this baby, had planned the pregnancy, had the nursery all set up.

They had a private Catholic funeral and buried him. :cry:

She was very depressed afterward, went to grief counseling and then therapy because she was terrified to get pregnant again, even though the Dr told her this was an extremely rare and random syndrome and there was no need to assume it would happen again. This was in early 2001.

Happy ending - she now has 2 healthy kids, a son and daughter. Both were normal pregnancies.

Two doctors have to agree that the life of the mother is at risk. But to read comments at youtube (if you go there to watch some of the videos posted on DU on this topic), it seems that the anti-choice folks think it is simply a whim, that viable fetuses are cut up and butchered just because the mother, on a whim, has decided not to go through with the pregnancy.