How to End Abortion in America

I'm wondering what criteria you are using to say that after 8 weeks, it's a baby? I'm not saying that's wrong, I'm just interested in the thought process. For me, I think it's more like 4.5 to 5 months. Until that point, there is no fully functioning brain, so the entity is similar to a brain-dead adult in my mind, though I don't believe it attains rights until it is not longer being supported by the mother's body.

I do agree with the concept of reducing the number of abortions through counseling, good sex education, easy access to contraceptives, and adequate societal support for raising children, but as you acknowledge, there will always be some need for abortion.

Support the Women's Autonomy and Sexual Sovereignty Movements!

How does this help anyone involved? And what does all of this misguided do-gooderism cost?

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Her two marriages had ended in divorce, and Danielle, 30, was raising her two boys alone. Her boyfriend, Lee Crump, was excited about becoming a father for the first time, and he was able to offer some financial support; he had a decent job pouring cement. But Danielle didn't trust any man to stick around once the responsibilities of parenting caught up to him.

She wasn't sure she was ready for more responsibility herself. A high-school dropout, she had earned an equivalency degree, but worked mostly in temporary clerical jobs. She got health insurance from the state; federal housing vouchers; disability checks for her 9-year-old, Jonathan Price, who has cerebral palsy. Still, there was never enough money.

Her bungalow, across the street from a lumberyard, was sparsely furnished: a ripped couch, a TV, a shelf of children's books. The scuffed walls of the living room were bare except for a few framed portraits of her boys. Danielle didn't have a bed for her 3-year-old, Dashon Starr; he had to share with her. A baby would need a crib, a car seat…. She lay awake nights.

In early June, a sonogram picked up two heartbeats: twins. Danielle felt sick.

Two weeks later, another scan detected five cysts, possible signs of a birth defect, in Baby A's gestational sac. Danielle thought of abortion, but only briefly; she knew she couldn't, because of Jonathan.

Her son had suffered an unexplained cerebral hemorrhage in the womb at the start of her third trimester. Warning of severe brain damage, Danielle's doctors recommended abortion. But Danielle had recently started going to church; firm in her newfound faith, she decided to leave the baby in God's hands.

Jonathan suffers frequent seizures and can't always control his hands. He's prone to outbursts so violent that Danielle once called police to subdue him.

. . .

When she was 16, Danielle aborted a pregnancy at her father's insistence, she said. She has made peace with that now. But when she thought of Jonathan, when she felt the bump of her stomach, she knew she could not abort the twins. Nor would she consider adoption.

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There's more to the LA Times article but reading this part I get the following info --

This woman has had 4 pregnancies.
She is underemployed, unmarried [the boyfriend did split apparently] and on every sort of assistance program she can find.

Where is the kindness is suggesting she continue to live like this? That it is oh-so-sweet that she wants to go through this latest pregnancy to give birth to a brain dead child?

It would do her a lot more good to teach her how to use reliable birth control. To explain to her that this indulgence will likely cost more than a lifetime of birth control would cost her.

She's no hero in all of this. And neither are the people supporting her in this continued self-destruction.

Nance