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Arizona passes law that conception begins at end of last menstruation
Time for SBPs why zygotes can't be persons post.....
Arizona lawmakers gave final passage to three anti-abortion bills Tuesday afternoon, including one that declares pregnancies in the state begin two weeks before conception.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to prohibit abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy; a bill to protect doctors from being sued if they withhold health information about a pregnancy that could cause a woman to seek an abortion; and a bill to mandate that how school curriculums address the topic of unwanted pregnancies.
The 18th week bill includes a new definition for when pregnancy begins. All of the bills passed the Senate and now head to Gov. Jan Brewer (R) for her signature or veto. Passage of the late-term abortion bill would give Arizona the earliest definition of late-term abortion in the country; most states use 20 weeks as a definition.
A sentence in the bill defines gestational age as "calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman," which would move the beginning of a pregnancy up two weeks prior to conception.
Elizabeth Nash, states issues manager for Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization in Washington, said the definition corresponds with how doctors typically determine gestational age. She said since the exact date of conception cannot be pinpointed, doctors use the day of the woman's last menstrual period to gauge the duration of a pregnancy. The method does not provide an exact date.
"It will have some impact, from what we understand there are abortions provided at that point in Arizona," Nash said. "It will reduce access."
Nash said nationally, 1.5 percent of abortions in the U.S. occur after the 21st week and 3.8 percent occur between the 16th and 20th weeks. She said the bill would violate U.S. Supreme Court rulings on abortion by mandating a cutoff date that is before viability and not having enough provisions for late-term abortions needed to protect a woman's health.
State Rep. Kimberly Yee (R-Phoenix), the bill's sponsor, was not immediately available for comment. Her assistant said that Yee, a former aide to former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), was voting on the House floor.
State Rep. Matt Heinz (D-Tucson), a physician, said he did not want the state to set the gestational age since science could not provide a precise one. "I imagine it will be a legal dispute. How can a judge determine gestational age?" Heinz said. "If medical science can only determine gestational age to within 10-14 days, how can a superior court judge do it?"
The other two bills passed by the House include the state's "wrongful birth, wrongful life" bill that prohibits lawsuits against doctors who do not provide information about a fetus' health if that information could lead to an abortion. In addition, parents cannot sue on the child's behalf after birth.
The third bill requires that schools teach students that adoption and birth are the most acceptable outcomes for an unwanted pregnancy.
All three bills are now headed to Brewer's desk for her review. The governor has not announced a position on the bills, which is her practice, but her spokesman indicated that Brewer has a long commitment to pro-life issues.
Re: Arizona passes law that conception begins at end of last menstruation
So I know the post was mostly about the gestational age bill, but the above really really ticks me off. This can't be constitutional, can it? To willingly withhold health information from a patient that directly affects said patient? If I had a doctor that did this, I'd sue the pants off him. I mean, some folks are really attached to wanting a specific sex . . . does that mean doctors are going to refuse to tell us what sex our unborn kids are so that we don't abort them? I mean, how far are we going to push this? What if a pregnancy is ectopic and I go to a doctor who is anti-abortion in every and all situations? Is my life not valuable enough to be told that I'm going to die next week because the embryo implanted in my fallopian tube?
This pisses me off too. I'm paying my doctor for her professional advice not her moral/political beliefs.
How this isn't a war on women I don't know.
Above Us Only Sky
This whole article made me want to punch someone, but the above in particular....aaargh!!!!!!
WTF? We're really doing this? We (collective "we") are really just going to sit and let this happen. Denying medical info because the far religious right doesn't like it? F*ck them. Last time I checked, they don't run this country.
I thought we had a thread about the information issue and figured out that it applies only to mere negligence and does not protect gross negligence or a willful withholding of information. The goal was to weed out out the nuisance malpractice suits, as opposed to the legitimate ones. I think we all recognize the actual end goal here, but the conclusion was that this particular piece of legislation wasn't as draconian as it seems on its face.
Hopefully someone can find the thread and repost.
Things like this make me want to carve out a piece of the U.S. and let the Religious Right have their own little country and leave the rest of us alone.
I'll give them Arizona and Mississippi
Above Us Only Sky
I remember this thread as well, but you can't even go to *My Posts* to search for old threads anymore. Yay for Nest improvements!
They already have them.
All three of these are fwcked up. Are there really doctors out there that would withhold information? What happened to "do no harm?"
Lawyers - what's the chance of these laws being unconstitional?
my read shelf:
I mean really have them..... I'd love to see what would happen (in a theoretical sense... I don't really want the poor to suffer) if they lost the Federal gov't teat that they rely upon so heavily to pull their boot straps.
Above Us Only Sky
They would need a "northern" state as well that way they're given climate diversity. Idaho?
my read shelf:
Exactly my thoughts - like you said, we can see the "end goal" but that particular bill wasn't as bad in its wording as it sounds in the headlines.
I guess I don't see the point of codifying that conception begins at end of last menstrual period, even if that's already the medical standard for determining gestational age. Is it to eventually restrict access to reproductive health for the period between two periods because you "could' be pregnant? If a doctor says you are 18 weeks pregnant then presumably they are taking into account your LMP and not the actual conception date so I guess I am just not sure what the point here is.
So the 18th week bill - is that 18 weeks gestational age (start of 3rd tri) or 18 weeks + 2 weeks before actual conception? If it's 18 weeks gestational age, that's actually moving it up a month before most other laws AND before the first and "big ultrasound" for most women.
My Chart My Nest Bio
DD #1 passed away in January 2011 at 14 days old due to congenital heart disease
DD#2 lost in January 2012 at 23 weeks due to anhydramnios caused by a placental abruption
Codifying imprecise dating based upon LMP alone does a disservice to women and their doctors.
It basically outlaws most 2nd trimester abortions which are legal and forces a woman who is told at her big U/S that the fetus isn't viable to carry it to term and watch it die or be delivered stillborn
Above Us Only Sky
http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/1/64118685/ShowThread.aspx
Because Jesus.
To those who were asking of the previous post, yes we did, and here it is:
http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/forums/thread/64112739.aspx
This bill (the AZ one) has additional issues, though.
"You don't get to be all puke-face about your kid shooting your undead baby daddy when all you had to do was KEEP HIM IN THE FLUCKING HOUSE, LORI!" - doctorwho
FUUUUUCK, that means I'm a week pregnant!!!!
So is my miscarriage going to be when I ovulate and it goes unfertilised?
They have snow in Utah.
Or worse, watch it live in terrible pain for a few weeks or months or years before it dies.
/dead
This is so silly. Just stay the F out of my uterus!
What about people that don't have a period? If I was pregnant and someone asks me my LMP, I would say 10/5/2009. I haven't had one since then due to pregnancy and BF.
But I could still get pregnant if I started ovulating one month and never had a period.
Off to the beach
DS 7/18/2010
Handy 2.0 Due Early August
2011/2012 Races
12/17/2011 Christmas Caper 10K
2/11/2012 Have a Heart 5K
3/17/2012 DC RNR Half Marathon
4/22/2012 10M Parkway Classic
10/28/2012 Marine Corps Marathon
I really think my head might explode. I truly have a headache now.
And WT EVER F is this shiit: The third bill requires that schools teach students that adoption and birth are the most acceptable outcomes for an unwanted pregnancy.
Requires!??!?!
Yes,I'm smiling...I'm a marathoner!
Bloggy McBloggerson
CO Nestie Award Winner-Prettiest Brain-Back to Back!
2011 Bests
5K-22:49 10K-47:38 Half Mary-1:51:50
2012 Race Report
1/1-New Year's 5K-22:11
2/11-Sweetheart Classic 4-mile-29:49
3/24-Coulee Chase 5K-21:40
5/6-Colorado Marathon-4:08:30
5/28-Bolder Boulder 10K
F*cking idiots. That makes my baby overdue already because I have irregular cycles. I guess all the medical technology that confirms the date of conception I arrived at based on my date of ovulation is incorrect and I should get my @ss induced today before my uterus explodes! (Not because exploding organs would be bad for me, but so it doesn't hurt the baby.)
ETA: I wonder how many babies actually are harmed by this because they are induced prematurely. Or even die because of it. Or what the cost of all the extra preemies in the NICU would total, assuming all the affected babies end up making it. I mean, a woman who had two anovulatory cycles before conceiving would be "40 weeks" with a baby whose respiratory system can barely function and whose eyes are still developing.
::head explodes::
Way to protect babies by actually hurting babies.
i am so with you on this. my head is absolutely spinning.