This is great -Tim Tebow is a top quarterback who has set college football alight.The thing is when his mother was carrying him she became very ill and was advised to have an abortion - obviously she didn't take that advice and equally obviously Tim Tebow is glad she didn't.
And now he is to appear in a pro life advertisement to be played during the super bowl.
And boy oh boy has that got some people into a tizz.
Get this from a Washington Post opinion writer.
Abortion rights groups are angry that CBS will run a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl from the rabidly homophobic and anti-abortion group Focus on the Family. Few have actually seen the 30-second spot. But we know that it will feature football phenom Tim Tebow, whose mother chose to ignore her doctor's advice to terminate her pregnancy.The thing is of course that the advice given to Tim Tebow's mother to abort him was clearly extremely bad advice and that is undeniable.
Did you catch that? Ms. Tebow was presented with a choice.
She was a missionary in the Philippines when she was stricken with amoebic dysentery. Doctors feared for her life and urged her to abort her fetus. That she would give birth to a son who would become the first underclassman to win the coveted Heisman Trophy is wonderful. Also wonderful is that Ms. Tebow was able to make an informed decision. Her doctors weren't muzzled by far-right zealots who want women to carry their pregnancies to term no matter what. And she wasn't forced by those doctors to end her pregnancy.
Focus on the Family is touting Ms. Tebow's right to choose while trying to deny the same opportunity -- the same right -- to other women. Whether CBS is right to run this advocacy ad after rejecting others in the past, I'll leave to others for the moment. But abortion rights advocates, such as the National Organization for Women, would do well to point out this hypocrisy with an ad of their own.
So the only counter argument is bluster.
"The thing is of course that the advice given to Tim Tebow's mother to abort him was clearly extremely bad advice and that is undeniable.
ReplyDeleteSo the only counter argument is bluster."
I was told by my then GP to consider terminating my first and also chose not to. I didn't consider the chances of the baby being born afflicted were significant and even if the problem had manifested, his life was worth living with the 'damage'. I thought I was given bad advice and so did the GP I changed to.
But it doesn't follow that every time a GP advises an abortion it is bad advice. Or that any time a female chooses abortion it is a bad choice. Or is that "bluster"?
But it doesn't follow that every time a GP advises an abortion it is bad advice.
ReplyDeleteI think it may well be bad advice for a GP to advise abortion. I suggest that all they can professionally advise is the chances of a particular outcome. Even then they would have to be clear the basis for that estimate, or if some were more honest, a guestimate.
To actually suggest an abortion rather than *neutrally* indicate the potential issues one way or the other is using their authority in an unprofessional way.
Do such Doctors mention side effects of depression, doubt, etc when outlining these options? That seems unlikely when they display such a lack of neutrality.
Obviously, every single mother that has "followed the advice" would never know the outcome. They would have to imagine (hope) that they made the right decision. Stories coming out like this would be a major upset of the apple cart, and this is why abortionists are worried. There are a high number of stories about people not following such advice, and being all the happier for it.
I wonder how many of the 17,000+ abortions performed in New Zealand were well advised?
ReplyDeleteThat would be about 25% of all conceptions in this country end in "termination".
Funnily enough in my immediate family there was a case where a sibling of mine was advised to have a "termination" and she didn't.
It nearly cost her her life and the baby died - so no heart warming tale.
But the child, who lived for a few hours has a name and a grave and is remembered as part of our family.
She is with the Good Lord now.
Indeed interesting.
ReplyDeletePresumably, there are many thousands of times a year that doctors advise patients that an abortion may be appropriate.
For some proportion of those, the patient takes the advice, we'll never know whether that was right or wrong. But presumably in almost all those cases the patient is still alive.
For some proportion of those, the patient doesn't take the advice, with one of two outcomes:
- the patient carries their baby to term, and there are no complications
- the patient or the baby has significant problems
For that latter group, I wonder what happens? How many women die? How many babies die? How many babies are born with significant disabilities? How much does that cost the health system - and how many other people could have been saved with the money that costs?
I realise it is very difficult to talk in such black and white terms, but the reality is that our health dollar is limited. When a mother chooses to have a baby with, say, cystic fibrosis, instead of aborting and trying again, that is her decision. But a baby with cystic fibrosis is very expensive, and the money spent might otherwise have been spent elsewhere in the health system. Potentially on a baby that had a much longer potential life span.
How would someone make this decision? I don't know. But it is very simplistic to point to one example of someone who ignored the advice and it worked out well, and from that infer that nobody should follow their doctor's advice to abort.
Sure, but the danger applies equally in the other direction - and is a little more chilling in deeply moral terms (IMHO).
ReplyDeleteIt becomes simplistic to move down the path of rationalizing the costs as a deciding factor - it evades the moral implications entirely by changing the focus of the question.
Imagine making the argument that infanticide is permissible if the baby is born with serious defects.
Then the argument is that killing before a baby is born, even if the baby is healthy, is morally preferable to killing a handicapped baby once they are born.
With that kind of debate, we would have to look hard at the babies born healthy in spite of predictions, and those born imperfectly but still pleased to be alive, and their parents still on balance happy with the outcome, as much as the statistics you suggest.
Very intense material indeed because it is literally about matter of life and death.
I'll agree very intense material. My problem is the problem that any right winger should have when decision making is divorced from the person who pays for that decision. A mother makes a decision to keep or not keep her child with cystic fibrosis, and I the taxpayer pay.
ReplyDeleteI know that for that mother it is an intensely personal and difficult decision. And if it were my kid, I would find it very very hard.
But as a hard headed taxpayer, I might rather that we spent the $500,000 differently - this child will have a very limited life span, we probably could have saved multiple other children with that money.
Part of the answer here is that we need to get out of socialised medicine - if a mother is making a decision but needs to include in that the full financial consequences, they might make a different decision.
Well Paul cystic fibrosis is a terrible disease but people live with it and often have happy and productive lives. You would deny them that?
ReplyDeleteAs in anything there is no guarantee.
And in any case identified genetic disease is not why the majority of abortions are carried out in this country and you know it.
The suggestion from this ad relates to abortions suggested by doctors for medical reasons. The fact that there are a lot of abortions for other reasons isn't particularly relevant to that.
ReplyDeleteThe suggestion from this ad relates to abortions suggested by doctors for medical reasons
ReplyDeleteYou are spinning Paul - the real meaning of this ad is that real people are dying in the abortionists rooms.
People who if left to live would go on to live happy and fruitful lives.
And that is what has got up the pro aborts noses because it is undeniable
Something like 30% of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion. Wouldn't your energies be better directed towards helping those who suffer this affliction and those who are trying to understand it?
ReplyDeleteYou claimed in the other thread that tobacco and alcohol have long histories of useage, as if that somehow makes the continuing harm they inflict OK. Well, abortion also goes way back in to prehistory. It wasn't invented last century, just criminalised.
Something like 30% of all conceptions end in spontaneous abortion. Wouldn't your energies be better directed towards helping those who suffer this affliction and those who are trying to understand it?
ReplyDeleteNon sequitur - spontaneous abortions usually occur because the fetus is non viable in any case - but anything that promotes new life is supported by me.
You claimed in the other thread that tobacco and alcohol have long histories of useage, as if that somehow makes the continuing harm they inflict OK. Well, abortion also goes way back in to prehistory. It wasn't invented last century, just criminalised. So does infanticide - that doesn't make it
right.