> Can you find a single example of an abortion being done at 32 weeks? As far as I know there's virtually no way of doing so (vs premature live delivery) that wouldn't result in life-threatening harm to the mother. Is abandoning a child under your guardianship really a criminal act in most jurisdictions in the US?

Not exactly 32 weeks, but close:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/abortion-doctor-kermit-gosnell-gui...:

> "Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered. ... The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby's neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that 'snipping,'" the report alleged.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/doctor-kermit-gosnell-found-guilt...:

> Prosecution experts said one was nearly 30 weeks along when it was aborted, and it was so big that Gosnell allegedly joked it could "walk to the bus." A second fetus was said to be alive for some 20 minutes before a clinic worker snipped its neck. A third was born in a toilet and was moving before another clinic employee grabbed it and severed its spinal cord, according to testimony. Baby E let out a soft whimper before Gosnell cut its neck, the jury was told; Gosnell was acquitted in that baby's death.

Wow. Unfortunately I imagine we'll see a lot more of that sort of thing as more and more women are unable to access safe/legal/well-regulated abortion clinics.

> Wow. Unfortunately I imagine we'll see a lot more of that sort of thing as more and more women are unable to access safe/legal/well-regulated abortion clinics.

IIRC, all that stuff was done in an actual licensed abortion clinic.

Also you have a weird kind of argument that seems to pivot on the false assumption that the issue is how gruesome the act is, not the act itself.

I read the wikipedia article, it seems there were multiple failings at various levels of government that allowed that clinic to remain open. And where did I comment on the gruesome nature of what was done? It's the fact he was responsible for the deaths of mothers and infants post- delivery (earning him the title of convicted serial killer) that provoked my reaction. I can only hope that every effort is made to ensure women in states where well-regulated clinics are no longer operating are able to travel as needed to access them.

> And where did I comment on the gruesome nature of what was done?

It was implicit in your response. The acts I cited were gruesome, and your response implied the response should be to replace them with better-regulated, more antiseptic version of the same act.

It's possible the interpret your comment as an extremely aloof statement of fact without implicit policy advocacy, but that interpretation strains credulity.

Absolutely I believe clinics run in such a way need to be shut down, I can't imagine anybody arguing otherwise.

Unless you somehow believe that doing so without providing a safe/regulated alternative will magically result in women no longer having health-threatening pregnancies or reliably deciding to persist with their pregnancies no matter what (despite all the evidence to the contrary from other parts of the world with very limited legal access to abortion), then I can't see how you could not advocate for better-regulated facilities.

And just in case there's any doubt as to my position - if a woman pregnant at 30 months were to decide she was no longer able to continue the pregnancy, such that live birth was not an option for whatever reason, and there were a way that the foetus could be safely and readily aborted with no risk of harm to the mother, then absolutely she is the only person who can reasonably make that choice. The rest of us have no right to insist we know better, no matter how much we may dislike the result (and yes, I would absolutely be saddened to know that foetus was robbed of its chance to develop into a human).

> Absolutely I believe clinics run in such a way need to be shut down, I can't imagine anybody arguing otherwise.

So your issue isn't so much with snipping the spinal cord at 30 months, but but whether the scissors are dirty or clean?

If a technique was developed such that it was safer to abort a pregnancy than to perform delivery at 30 weeks and that technique happened to involve snipping the spinal chord then I would definitely want to see that option be legally available and offered by well regulated clinics, yes. And sure, it sounds somewhat gruesome, but so do many commonly performed surgical procedures.

Killing your child by depriving them of your support is absolutely a crime in every US jurisdiction.

A sibling post to mine suggested that was not so. Some googling suggests it's a "felony". I'm not even 100% sure what the situation is in my own country - it's hard to imagine there's a significant number of mothers of sound mind who would deliberately abandon their child such that it has no chance of survival. Not that I believe it has significant relevance to the abortion criminalisation debate either way.

> Can you find a single example of an abortion being done at 32 weeks?

> it's hard to imagine there's a significant number of mothers of sound mind who would deliberately abandon their child such that it has no chance of survival.

I don't see how either of these quotes fit into a discussion about abortion/childcare law. Shouldn't the law make as clear as possible when it is illegal to abort a pregnancy or give up the care of an infant? The argument that "nobody will ever/has ever (that we can think of) do something so horrible as that" does nothing but muddy the water.

Let's just assume that at least one person in the future wants to abort their healthy 39 week fetus, and at least one person in the future wants to abandon their infant. These would hardly be the most surprisingly immoral things ever done by human beings.

No, but using extreme possible scenarios as a basis for criminal law hardly seems like a sensible strategy either. Criminalising certain activities always has consequences. If the threat of being thrown in gaol for abandoning an infant really does have the desired preventative properties, and doesn't lead to other unintended consequences (e.g. women choosing abortion or attempting an unsupervised birth instead if they're at all concerned they'll be unable to care for the child, and risk being gaoled for abandoning it), then sure, criminalise it. Both seem like unlikely propositions to me.

In my county a woman was charged with first degree murder last year for abandoning her baby to die: https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/anne-arundel-glen-bur...

Criminal laws exist in part to express society’s moral norms. Abandoning babies to die isn’t illegal because it’s a widespread problem. It’s illegal because it’s wrong.

But if your point is that the Venn Diagram intersection between pro-choicers and folks who want to decriminalize infanticide is not a null set you’ve made it.

Charged with attempted first degree murder. But thanks for the link. And while I accept laws do exist to enforce societal norms, if the effect of those laws is to make matters worse, they're still bad laws.

I can't say I have a strong position on infanticide. There are undoubtedly cut and dried cases where an adult deliberately terminates the life of a newborn baby that should be classified as criminal acts. Abandoning your own child probably deserves a separate legal classification.