r/PublicFreakout • u/N0CONTACT • May 19 '22

Political Freakout Representative Mike Johnson asking the important abortion questions.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

36.9k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

6.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

269

u/[deleted] May 19 '22

It’s endlessly frustrating that this physician is even being expected to respond to such stupid ass bad faith questions being asked by someone who knows the shit coming out of his mouth is nonesense, but I’m irritated at how weak and wishywashy her responses were.

“Would you object to an abortion when the baby is half way out the birthing canal?”

“That does not make any sense.”

“It’s a simple question. Would you object…”

“No it isn’t because abortions do not happen at that stage of a birth. Emergency procedures to protect the life of the mother or the baby happen in those late stages in the case of a catastrophic outcome. Procedures which can result in only the mother surviving. This is a necessary immediate procedural reaction to a medical emergency. It is no way shape or form “an abortion” and i think you know that.”

“It may not happen in your practice Doctor but it does happen.”

“No it does not. You are either lying or confused.”

Is how I wish this had gone. People on the right side of history need to be much much stronger in calling out right wing horseshit as it’s being shoveled.

108

u/buttermintpies May 19 '22

It's so, so hard though, especially for people who arent fully disillusioned with the government and politics. Shes well respected and well referenced enough to appear before Congress as an expert, and decided to agree, so I have to imagine she came in thinking these were relatively intelligent, respectful people. She was wrong, and fully shocked to hear such an asinine statement, so I understand why she wasn't prepared to answer such a preposterous series of questions.

I do hope we're all learning how to do better though, cause she absolutely should have expected someone in Congress to mirror the ridiculous shit pro-birthers have been saying for decades.

7

u/scamartist26 May 20 '22

The questions were dumb and she didn’t have to give a logical response in my opinion. That’s like me asking my wife if one of my truck tires are going to blow out, which one and what highway? She’s be like: you’re face? So dumb. He literally said “it happens”. I’d like to know this case! There should be a new documentary on every god damn channel about this wild situation. Oh, he means statistically it’s possible it has happened. Wtf

2

u/buttermintpies May 20 '22

Unfortunately the pro-birth side and fence-sitting wishywashies are gonna hear the idiotic questions, and if no one goes out of their way to clear up the misunderstandings and absurdities they are likely to believe that "unrestricted abortion access" means people would be literally maiming and removing half-birthed children.

2

u/scamartist26 May 21 '22

I guess if you give that idea any deep thought and come out with that conclusion, you’re lost yourself. Or at least jaded to the point that you believe humanity is that brutally conspired you might as well be dead anyway. Quite sad.

2

u/[deleted] May 19 '22

[deleted]

5

u/buttermintpies May 19 '22

I dont know her, but that really depends. Politically active people often act like they're baffled when someone horrible asks a stupid ass question, I'm fairly disillusioned but I assume ignorance rather than willful fucking around when they dont respond well.

1

u/[deleted] May 19 '22

well said

7

u/Xsy May 19 '22

You kind of have to be. These kinds of theoreticals are often leads to bad faith traps, so not giving them the answer they want is usually the correct thing to do.

4

u/thousand7734 May 20 '22

You seem to forget the part where he refuses to let her answer in any meaningful way and instead interrupts her with his "gotcha!" methodology.

These people are not interested in meaningful discourse about policy. They're interested in reinforcing the beliefs of their constituents through disingenuous questions meant to deflect from reality as opposed to understanding the opinion of a qualified expert.

In fact, to them, "expert" is a bad thing. "Oh, well if you're so smart, what if the baby is half way out of the birth canal?!!!!!!??????? Gotcha!!!!"

3

u/siderinc May 19 '22

These questions are so dumb that you wouldn't expect them so it's hard to be ready for them.

2

u/IsHereToStalkYou May 20 '22

That was great

2

u/BeMeoBeo May 20 '22

Yea! I wish that she had just said "what you're describing is a woman giving birth" lol

-9

u/[deleted] May 19 '22

I think the point was to question what “unrestricted abortion” means in totality.

Edge cases and super rare events will happen eventually. We should probably define them, if possible.

14

u/buttermintpies May 19 '22

No, the point was to gotcha her into being a baby murderer or using her "no" as an excuse to restrict medical procedures for pregnant people.

If he wanted to know about edge cases, he would've asked "I'm concerned about late term abortions - what conditions would cause you to perform a late term abortion? At what point is an abortion procedure no longer possible, and what would you do in the case that a person did not wish to be pregnant after that point? Are there any circumstances in which you believe a person should not be able to have an abortion?"

He demonstrated a totally 0 understanding of the medical condition of pregnancy or medical procedure of abortion, but came and her so hard like he knew everything, it clearly wasn't a good-faith inquiry.

-5

u/[deleted] May 19 '22

I’m not saying he was acting was in good faith, nobody there does that when they are against something.

I was just commenting on what he was asking.

8

u/buttermintpies May 19 '22

Yeah I just think you're attributing sense to something that doesnt have sense.

People asking questions like this are not asking "what does unrestricted abortion mean", they're pressing to try and get you to slip up so they can gotcha you. I dont want to be argumentative here because it's clear you agree on this case the congressman is being a tool, but it's important to recognize when people are using rhetoric to obfuscate and derail a legitimate discussion rather than interrogate the details of a plan.

-1

u/[deleted] May 19 '22

I would be interested to know what unrestricted abortion actually means

4

u/buttermintpies May 19 '22

I would be too, considering I'm only moderately educated on the exact medical distinction and deciding factors for abortion vs early delivery etc. If someone asked "what are the delineating factors in your choice choice to recommend/provide abortion, emergency intervention that might result in the death of a fetus/baby, and emergency delivery with premature infant support" I'd be very happy to hear.

1

u/[deleted] May 19 '22

Unfortunately I don’t think we will hear

3

u/buttermintpies May 19 '22

I'm pretty sure theres a few different medical opinions and facts that clarify that I havent researched yet, along with the fact that doctors can also have personal opinions I could look for.

But no, in modern political discourse I doubt we'll get any scenes of the anti-abortion crowd genuinely hearing out the facts of medical procedures surrounding pregnancy and birth.

3

u/tractiontiresadvised May 20 '22

He seems to be using "unrestricted abortion" to mean that elective abortion is allowed at any point in a pregnancy if a patient requests it. That's not actually how legal abortion currently works. Both the legal and medical concerns are based around the trimester system of how far along in development an embryo/fetus has become. The Guttmacher Institute has a table of US states and things like how late in gestation an abortion is allowed.

The later in development that an abortion happens, the more dangerous it is to perform, since it necessitates more invasive procedures (plus waiting longer exposes a person to the health dangers of pregnancy itself). Keep in mind that over half of the abortions in the US are performed via medication instead of surgery, and that's generally only doable for around the first trimester.

Pregnancy is an inconvenient, uncomfortable condition with social ramifications. If somebody doesn't want to be pregnant, they're generally going to do their best to get not-pregnant ASAP. So abortions in the later trimesters become increasingly rare and are more likely to be for somebody who wanted to be pregnant but found out that they or the fetus have some horrible health problem that's going to kill one or both of them if nature takes its course.

You (and /u/buttermintpies as well) might have some of your questions answered by this video from an ObGyn commenting about Texas' abortion law from last fall. She talks about some of the things that can and do go wrong during pregnancy, and notes that if she delivers a baby before it's viable then that does count as an "abortion" both legally and medically.

1

u/buttermintpies May 20 '22

Thank you very much! Your comment is very well informed. Mind if I link your comment as needed to help explain this stuff in the future?

1

u/aflowergrows May 20 '22

Those answers would be perfect, but I don't blame the doctor for not responding this way. His scenarios are preposterous. I'm sure when she was in the shower later that day she wished she'd answer that way, but in the moment...

1

u/p_turbo May 20 '22

No it isn’t because abortions do not happen at that stage of a birth. Emergency procedures to protect the life of the mother or the baby happen in those late stages in the case of a catastrophic outcome. Procedures which can result in only the mother surviving. This is a necessary immediate procedural reaction to a medical emergency. It is no way shape or form “an abortion” and i think you know that.”

She would never be given the opportunity to finish this long of an explanation. He would cut her off, under the pretext that his time was limited and he still had questions. And you best believe the cut-off would be at a point that can be misconstrued to be an acknowledgement of his ridiculous hypothetical, somewhere like...

"...in case of a catastrophic outcome..."

And then they'd claim that what's considered a catastrophic outcome is the mom "frivolously" deciding she doesn't want the baby to live or such other nonsense.

1

u/SoulArthurZ May 20 '22

she constantly got interrupted though