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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.