Abortion facts that may surprise you...

[cynatnite]

Prior to the mid 1500’s the Catholic Church and other governmental laws focused on “quickening” (where the mother feels fetal movement) to determine whether or not an abortion was allowable. Prior to quickening, abortion was lawful.

Millions of women had self-induced abortions and thousands of those women died. There were more abortions performed per capita in the late 19th century than currently performed today.

The Comstock law, passed in 1973 in the U.S. made it a crime to sell, distribute, or own abortion-related products and services, or to publish information on how to obtain them.

Women who were victims of botched abortions filled hospital emergency wards. Septic abortion wards were set up in the majority of city hospitals in the 1940’s to 1970’s. Women died of abdominal infections, sepsis and bleeding.

One woman dies every 7 minutes around the world due to an unsafe illegal abortion.

Around the world, 42 million choose to terminate their pregnancy with close to half of those (20 million) being illegal.

Only 1% of women say they have been forced or pressured into having an abortion.

Most women do not later regret their decision to terminate their pregnancy. Relief is the most common emotional response following abortion

http://www.womenscenter.com

Whether legal or not, women will continue to seek out abortions. Many are desperate enough that they are willing to risk their own lives.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. K&R. Prohibition doesn't work, never has, never will. n/t

[felix_numinous]

13. +1000 Plus prohibition is only for 'the little people'

the rich can ALWAYS get abortions (a D & C on hospital records), smoke pot, and never do jail time.

So prohibition is NOT about ethics--it is about controlling average peaceful citizens, and justifying more and more police funding and surveillance.

[4th law of robotics]

2. What does the "quickening" translate to in weeks past conception?

[cynatnite]

3. I'm guessing 16 weeks or so...

Maybe a few weeks less. Sometimes it might be much later before it could be felt. Women with more weight in the stomach area would be more difficult to tell.

[toddwv]

4. From wiki:

Usually, quickening occurs naturally at about the middle of a pregnancy. A woman pregnant for the first time (i.e. a primigravida woman) typically feels fetal movements at about 18–20 weeks, whereas a woman who has already given birth at least twice (i.e. a multipara woman) will typically feel movements around 15–17 weeks.[4]

[murielm99]

7. Everyone has a different answer.

LOL. I am going by personal experience.

[toddwv]

18. Traditionally though, that's why pregnancy is broken up into trimesters.

So, yes... there is definitely variance but generally quickening begins after the first trimester.

[happyslug]

22. That is where the trimester rule of Roe vs Wade came from

When was Quickening? It was NEVER is the first trimester, but has occurred by the third trimester. Thus under the pre-1869 Catholic dogma, no problems with abortion in the first trimester, but sever problems with in the third trimester, with the second trimester almost on a case by case basis . This seems to have been Catholic Dogma while before 1000 AD (if not the actual dogma in practice of the time of St Augustine, c 450 AD). It was adopted as the rule by the Common Laws Court of Britain and that adoption was the reason the US Supreme Court came up with its three trimester rule in Roe vs Wade.

[murielm99]

5. It is thirteen to eighteen weeks.

First time mothers often do not associate that early fluttering with movement. The later movements are definitely kicks, and hard to miss.

I did recognize it sooner during my second pregnancy.

[Butterbean]

6. It depends on the woman and placement of the placenta and which pregnancy it is.

First pregnancy, anterior placenta: generally anywhere from 16-20 weeks.
Second pregnancy, anterior placenta: generally anywhere from 14 to 18 weeks.

If the placenta is posterior, meaning it acts sort of like a cushion between the baby and the woman's abdominal wall, she is less likely to feel fetal movements earlier, and it may be closer to 20-22 weeks that she feels movement.

Ballpark is around 18-20 ish weeks of pregnancy.

[MsPithy]

17. Anterior means the front or in front of,

posterior means in back of or behind.

[Butterbean]

25. And you are correct, mea culpa. I plead children running around acting like nuts

for the temporary loss of brain power.

[4th law of robotics]

9. Thanks for all the responses

it seems like around 20 weeks, which would fall in line with the vast majority of abortions performed in this country.

Meaning that 99% or so would not have been opposed by the church back in the 1500s

[GobBluth]

11. It would vary from each woman, and from pregnancy to pregnancy

I have 3

1st. Didn't feel movement until after 20 weeks. I probably WAS feeling something, but thought it was gas.

2nd. About 16 weeks.

3rd. I swear I felt stuff at 14 weeks. A week later I knew for sure I was feeling movement.

[CBGLuthier]

8. 1873 wasn't it?

for the Comstock law passage.

[Sal Minella]

10. St. Augustine (or somebody -- I read this YEARS ago . . . ) said

the quickening is the time when the soul enters the body of the fetus.
The fetus is just a "thing" until the soul enters it. I think we should convince
our religious brethren and sistren to go back to this doctrine.

"Quick"ening -- as in "the quick and the dead" or "the quick of the nail bed."

[happyslug]

20. St Augustine, cited both the Bible and Aristotle for that position

Thus it is older then St Augustine and seems to have been the rule at the time of Jesus and even Moses.

[zbdent]

12. "Only 1% of women say they have been forced or pressured into having an abortion."

and of those, 70% were probably working for an anti-abortion crusader group ...

[Manifestor_of_Light]

15. My exhusband wanted me to have one, the minute I said I was pregnant

I'm pro choice. I said "NO WAY". He said we couldn't afford it. He had a good job and good insurance. He was just selfish.

I had a beautiful healthy child, now grown, and he said he had to "punish me" for that.

Some guys just don't want the responsibility. So much for promising to love, comfort, honor and keep me. He did none of those and then whined about "this marriage is a failure!"

Still don't understand him.


My life would be quite empty without my beautiful daughter. Some people are just so negative about everything. Especially grumpy men.

[4th law of robotics]

26. Uhh . . . I would think mutual consent to rear a child together

would be a good think to determine prior to having a kid.

Obviously the choice to abort is yours. But you really can't blame him for not wanting to have a kid if that wasn't explicitly agreed to prior to the pregnancy.

[Vanje]

27. Dude needed a vasectomy

and/or real strong condoms.

He could have taken some responsibility for the family fertility.

[4th law of robotics]

28. Or he could have just kept his legs together

I mean if you don't want to have kids keep it zipped, amiright?

/do you seriously place all the blame for a couple breaking up due to major differences in opinion on procreating exclusively on the husband?

[Vanje]

31. It takes two

[4th law of robotics]

32. Yes, to form a healthy marriage takes two people

and if one of them wants to undertake a completely life changing event that is really something they should discuss with the other.

For instance: if the husband decided to get a Mike Tyson style facial tattoo that would be his right (his body afterall) however I could understand how the wife, not being informed of this, might be upset when he comes home looking completely different than when they got married.

Seriously, this isn't a reproductive rights argument. No one is denying that her authority on whether an abortion is performed is and should be absolute. The point is that making this choice without consulting the partner is not a good idea and it's not entirely fair to stick him with all of the blame for not going along with such a life-changing scheme on a whim and without being consulted first.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

33. He certainly didn't bother to use condoms.

when it was rather accidental.

We never discussed it. I assumed he would be thrilled, as I was. He got custody of her and he got to pay for her college education. He blew up her college trust fund that my parents had started for her when she was a small child. He did that by going after my parents for no good reason as part of the nasty divorce.

My parents' lawyer warned him and his lawyer that if he went after my parents that he would be jeopardizing his daughter's college education. He did it anyway. The had to liquidate the trust fund and spend it on lawyers to defend themselves. He spent thousands of dollars going after me in the divorce and saying I was a bad person.

I had to pay him child support for many years.

He didn't love me or respect me and I was too stupid to figure this out until later.

[AlbertCat]

14. Abortion...

.... a fact of life. Adults know this. Fantasy-land types don't.

[trackfan]

16. In the novel War and Peace, Tolstoy implies that the Roman Catholic Church

was what one would join if one wanted to do wild, "sinful" things frowned upon by the Russian Orthodox Church, such as get an abortion, or a divorce.

[happyslug]

19. The Catholic Church position changed in 1869 NOT the late 1500s

Now, one Pope did change the rule in the 1400s, but in the late 1500s the old rule was restored to what it had been for over 1000 years at that time. That rule, the Quickening rule, basically Roe vs Wade would stay Catholic dogma till 1869, when the present rule was adopted.

The push in the 1800s was more from the medical field then religious. Abortions, like child birth, was NOT done by doctors, but by mid-wives. The medical establishment pointed out quickening was part of an on-going process not a sudden change in the Fetus. Since the Fetus was just going through a slow development, abortion should be done under a Doctor's care NOT a mid wife (which was the argument of the medial community).

The Religious Community was slow to adopt this change, Doctors wanted to be the exclusive people at birth (and to do abortions) by the 1820s, it took to 1869 for the Catholic Church to adopt the change (and that had to do with the lost of the Papal States to the then new state of Italy then anything else, if it was NOT for Italian unification and the call for a new Council of Bishops, called Vatican I, as the Pope look for support to preserve the papal states, the Catholic Church may NOT have changed it dogma for several more decades, the next Council was Vatican II in the 1960s).

Just pointing out that on one point this cite is wrong by about 300 years.

For more see:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3361
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12178868

The real key to Catholic Doctrine is the two great Doctors of the Church, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, both viewed a fetus had no sole before quickening and that was the dominate thought within the Catholic Church before 1869.

Furthermore the Comstock law was passed in 1873 NOT 1973:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws

[Fawke Em]

21. I knew all this!

AND... I was raised Catholic!

[ProfessionalLeftist]

23. The issue isn't whether or not we can stop abortions

Because women will always get abortions if they want one. The issue (the question) is whether we will stop women from dying from abortions. And that can only happen when abortions are readily available, affordable, safe, and legal.

[loyalsister]

24. Another interesting fact

Many clergy members (even in Texas) were supportive of Roe and filed amicus briefs to that effect.

[mother earth]

29. Perhaps surprising to those who have their heads in the sand, or worst up their arse. Yes, abortion

is not going anywhere, legal or illegal, where there is a will there will always be a way. Best to make sure it is performed in a health care setting by medical professionals instead of backwoods butchers.

[tsuki]

30. The only Pro-Life person that I ever met in my 65 years was

pro-choice. It sounds strange, but she felt that making something illegal did nothing to change the abortion issue. True, she was an elderly woman that remembered pre Rowe vs. Wade America. As she said to me, until we change our attitude toward families, abortion was here to stay, legal or illegal. We had a long talk about family policy in the US, which she claimed was anti-family, anti-child.

She was awesome.