The doctors who perform these abortions are providing a service during one of the most difficult times in a pregnant woman's life. We should trust the women to make these decisions, no matter how much you or Bill O'Reilly choose to trivialize the dilemma.

Ugh.

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No woman has a late-term abortion because she forgot she was pregnant for seven months. To even assume so displays a serious lack of sensitivity to the gut-wrenching decision women have to make. Or a serious lack of sense.

Grow a uterus before you start dictating what I should do with mine.

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@Lucille van Pelt: You asked for a link. The issue is of course that most of the links that describe the actions of which Tiller was accused come from questionable sources. He was accused of 19 cases of post viable pregnancy abortions. The Kansas law apparently allows some room for error in what is considered a viable fetus. My personal definition is a "fetus that could survive outside of the womb regardless of age." However, I didn't prosecute him. I called him a villain.

@jkinatl2: I wouldn't come in here and argue that abortion is murder as you put it. That would be a slap in the face to a lot of people who have carefully weighed their situations and chose to terminate a pregancy. I am saying that in most cases late term abortion is murder. If the health of the mother is in jeopardy then it may be a justified homicide, but it's still a homicide. That is only my opinion, of course. It was in fact actionable. Tiller was unsuccessfully prosecuted.

@Amdesi: Being cleared of all wrong doing doesn't mean that you didn't commit the Shenanigans (love their fried ochre). It just means that the facts of the case didn't prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I live in an area where Pain Management Doctors turn people into zombies by prescribing a 100 oxys at a pop and then walk from their charges. They beat the cases all of the time, because it is very difficult to prove. That doesn't mean they are innocent. I would like to have seen O'Reilly's "proof" as well.

When I assigned the "villain" tag, it was just based on my opinions and arguments.

@rahelio: I am obviously never going to be in the same position as these women. However, I force myself to make opinions on these things because it does factor into how I vote to a small degree. I also wont be personally effected by gay marriage, but I still wanted my voice heard on election day when Florida's Prop 2 (Same as CA Prop 8) came up on election day.

@Cicada: I agree that I don't have a strong understanding of what these women go through as I have previously mentioned. If a late term fetus has horrible genetic defects then IMHO it is a mercy killing. I'm sorry, but i still believe that there is a point that it is just too late to make that choice.

@willwriteforfood: I would agree that not a lot of good can come of a ten year old girl carrying a baby to term. However, that is usually a decision that could be made in the first few months when it could be terminated much more safely. However, let's say that for whatever reason it wasn't. I really don't think the ten year old and the doctor making that decision without any sort of input from anyone else.

"Grow a uterus before you start dictating what I should do with mine." I have to base my opinion on something. I don't think that if I was a female, I would have any more write to say what goes in in your uterus. However, a line has to be drawn somewhere. I just feel that it is at a point before a baby starts drawing air.

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Your decision is, indeed, borne of the soul-searched wisdom of someone who has never experienced a full term pregnancy. This may be of no evidentiary value to those like yourself who have it all figured out, but the UnPeople who experience pregnancy will annoyingly remind you that it is an uncomfortable physical state whose physical inconveniences and, yes, even pains, begin nearly immediately in the process. It's not really a condition that most can easily ignore out of laziness.

In short, my intellectualizing friend, you don't deal with the inability to breathe through your nose or the inability to keep a meal down for four months just to piss off anti-choicers when you suddenly decide to terminate a pregnancy for reasons of lifestyle.

There are more pregnancy complications out there, Your Honor, than are dreamed of in your philosophy of Sluts vs. Good Girls. I could tell you the tales I know; of the 19 year old married UnPerson confronted with unexplained hemrhorraging in her 20th week, hospitalized immediately. In her hellish treatment geared to save the pregnancy, she was informed coldly by a OB/GYN (a determined anti-choice one) that she could choose to terminate or choose to die, due to her high loss of blood. This situation would repeat itself only 2 years later to the still married, now 21 year old, fortunately with a more compassionate treating physician that time around.

I could tell you lots of these stories, and I'm sure you'd be comfortable affixing your retroactive stamp of approval on the decisions made by these UnPersons as "appropriate" to your criteria of sufficient hand wringing. I could mention terms you've likely never heard - and therefore deem irrelevant - like "pre-eclampsia". I could explain that there is a window for certain pre-natal tests that dictate that a pregnancy progress for months before serious complications can be detected. I would explain all of this, if I thought it would do one damn bit of good in bringing the reality of gray into your Black and White Courtroom.

To me, that's the most troubling part of your post; this election of yourself to the position of presiding Chief Justice in the court of Appropriate Emotional Reaction. Those on whom you wish to visit your minimum requirement of hand-wringing are already in the position of great emotional - and often physical - pain. Those you presume to be inappropriately capricious in their decision to terminate, and therefore suitable for a life threatening pregnancy continuation, are actually escaping your emotional jurisprudence. They bought Plan B months before the zygote-to-be-fetus had an operating brain, and consequently, months before they'd ever know if there would have been a serious complication in that pregnancy.

Perhaps Justices like yourself deem the UnPersons making these distasteful decisions to be lacking in male guidance on the issue, so you will self-assume the position to inform them if their emotional state is sufficiently tormented enough to meet your approval. I don't quite know what is leading you to this assumption of control, but it's clearly there.

I do know I've seen this self-appointment before, in countless childless young men who saw pregnancy termination as some sort of assault on themselves. Some preached the Bible on the topic. Many preached the Vatican. Some saw this religious preaching as a characteristic of the "weak-minded" and opted for the same conclusion even if they had to paint backwards to an "intellectual" humanist approach. It all wound up being the same very self-serving logic.

Many of those young men I knew grew up to be partners in a desired pregnancy themselves and saw, second hand at least, just how long, winding and bumpy an emotional path the next 40 weeks can actually be. Some, sadly, faced the very same decision they condemned in others during the time they were on the Emotional Court bench. All of those so affected would be outraged at the Other Guy who would make that assumption for himself, intruding into a family's decision.

Until whichever path will wind up your own is revealed, I'm sure you will continue your judging on others' emotions. I hope, for your sake, that you just grow up and out of it, instead of going the route of bitterness turned to murderous rage, like Scott Roeder did.

Considering the number of retirements from that bench that I've witnessed, I'd say your chances are against the Roeder route.

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You're full of shit, since you don't actually know what the doctor was charged with.

"Kansas law permits late-term abortions when two independent doctors agree that the pregnant woman would be irreparably harmed by giving birth

Prosecutors charged that the doctor, George Tiller, had an improper financial relationship with a doctor from Lawrence, Kristin Neuhaus, who provided a second opinion in the 19 cases cited."

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Hmm... I know there was something I was supposed to do this month... what was it? Oh yeah, the abortion! Between the cramps and swelling and incontinence, I totally forgot about this fetus in me!

The tiny percentage of women who get abortions in the third trimester do not wait because they're hemming and hawing. Most of the time, it is only then that some major birth defects can be detected. Or, in rare instances, they have such crap sex ed and medical care that they a)don't know they're pregnant or b) can't afford to get an abortion or get time off of work. There are also cases of depressed women who basically need to choose between giving birth and suicide.

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#1.) Unwanted pregnancies, abortions and STDs would DECLINE if America implemented a progressive agenda on sex education, contraception and family planning.

#2.) There is no No. 2.

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