On May 18, 2005, at 11:29 AM, Dan Minette wrote:
As far as I can tell, your reading and Harry Blackmum's opinions of this
are different:
and I quote from his opinion:
[...]
(c) For the stage subsequent to viability, the State in promoting its
interest in the potentiality of human life may, if it chooses, regulate,
and even proscribe, abortion except where it is necessary, in appropriate
medical judgment, for the preservation of the life or health of the mother.
Health is clearly in there, not just life. DSM 300.02 is a clear easy out.
How do you figure? The proviso includes "appropriate medical judgment", which leaves psychologists right out, as only psychiatrists are also MDs, and only psychiatrists would be (implicitly) entitled to render *medical* judgment regarding a woman's health.
A non-psychiatrist MD, furthermore, would not be able to make judgments based on mental health -- or so I understand -- so Dr. Nick Riviera can't just waltz in, say "Hi everybody," and prescribe an abortion based on *anything* he pulls from a DSM.
If you want to continue contending that a psychiatrist is likely to risk his license and professional future by trumping up a faked mental-health reason for a woman to have a late-term abortion, you certainly can, but it'll be an extremely tenuous argument, I think.
All it takes is a quick visit to the right free clinic to get this out.
Even more odd. If it's a *free* clinic, what is the motivation to perform an abortion on trumped-up grounds? Wouldn't that be more likely with a bribable private practitioner?
Have you taken a breath or two, stepped back and really looked at what you're suggesting, then compared it to the actual figures for abortions? I think you might be a little too emotionally involved in this to see that some of what you're suggesting here really doesn't make a lot of sense.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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