No clue.
But it has seemed to me that the people who focus the most on pro life issues, often seem to utter in their next breath, anti welfare statements.
It seems that to be truly pro life, one would be for then taking the best care of that life throughout it’s span, no matter where the payment of that care is coming from.

I wonder how many of the 2,400 late-term abortions are for medical reasons or because the mother decided she did not want the baby.
I have personally know two situations where a late-term abortion occurred because the baby was extremely deformed and had no chance of living if carried to full term.

I wonder how many of those 28,000 babies that die in their first year of life outside the womb could have been saved if they had proper post-natal care/well-baby care?
Why is our infant mortality rate so much higher than other industrialized nations? Is it that our pro-life advocates believe that the right to life ends once you are born?

Personally I don’t imagine that any woman would wait until the 3rd trimester to terminate just because she suddenly decides she doesn’t want to have the baby. Medical reasons are a whole different story.
And I also feel that the pro-lifers fail to worry about the deaths of the children who die in the first year AFTER they are born. They should focus on that, not on a woman for whatever reason (and it is a serious decision) terminates a pregnancy.

Steven,
I do appreciate your concern for those that live and die a tragic life due to lack of medical care, education, diet, and / or financial means. And, yes – we should address.
Please, don’t diminish the slaughter that happens each year because we have abortion on demand, for any reason, no questions asked. Killing the innocent is just as bad as turning a blind eye.
We should work to end all innocent death…

Why is our infant mortality rate so higher than other nations?
Couldn’t it be because we try to save so many more difficult cases? Infants that otherwise would have been stillborn, miscarried, unwanted, not counted? Any reports of a surviving infant born at 22 weeks coming in from Cuba or Malawi?

Please read this Slate post:
The baby gap: the surprising truth about America’s infant-mortality rate.
http://www.slate.com/id/2161899/
“Comparing infant mortality rates between countries is fraught with uncertainty—after all, it’s hard to argue that every country’s figures are reliable. But it’s still worth asking what more we can do to stop babies from dying. Defined as death before one year of age, infant mortality frequently gets framed in the United States as a problem of insufficient health-care funding. In December, for example, a New York Times column blamed it on the lack of a single-payer health insurer. However, a closer look reveals the counterintuitive possibility that high infant mortality in the United States might be the unintended side effect of increased spending on medical care.”
It’s very informative, about a complicated problem.

Why is our infant mortality rate so higher than other nations?
Couldn’t it be because we try to save so many more difficult cases? Infants that otherwise would have been stillborn, miscarried, unwanted, not counted? Any reports of a surviving infant born at 22 weeks coming in from Cuba or Malawi?
———-
So you are comfortable with 28,000 babies dying in their first year, but uncomfortable with 2,400 babies being aborted in their third trimester?
In which area do you think we could have the best “return on investment” in money/efforts to improve the situation?

A question for those here who oppose late term abortions. Do you feel that the woman who consents to a late term abortion should be prosecuted for murder?

Yes

Your article suggests that the abortion is okay because more children die in their first year so why not let them die anyway. Their parents won’t take care of them so let them die. There are programs in this country for these children you are talking about. WIC, Medicaid are two that come directly to mind. Michigan has child health insurance for poor familes for $5.00 a month. That is returnable bottle money. I believe most late term abortions are done by parents who are told something is wrong with their child, i.e. Downs Syndrome. Think for a minute, how many young Downs Syndrome children do you see anymore. I realized this after I read an article about a nurse who cradled a baby that was left to die by the abortion doctor who was a downs syndrome child. This is what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Are we doing the same?

Robin,
My articles “suggests that abortion is okay”? That’s not what I’m saying at all. This article was not meant to anyway minimize the abortion discussion. My point is that if we’re working on saving babies, why do we ignore this other children? I’m not suggesting that we focus on infant mortality INSTEAD OF abortion, but rather in addition to

Mr. Waldmen, you asked why we “ignore” these other children. It would be much more enlightening if, instead of looking at the numbers you quoted, you plotted the infant mortality rate along with the abortion rate, over the last 100 years in this country.

In the last 100 years, infant mortality has gotten worse and we really dont know about abortion because we dont know how many illegal abortions there were before roe v wade. But there was certainly an i ncrease in abortion in the 1970s and 1980s and then a decline began in the 1990s.
The infant mortality rate has mostly improved — but gotten worse in the last year or so.

Why is is ok for the government to train 18 year olds in the military to “kill” but not ok to stop the growth of an unborn human? The unborn human is a part of the woman’s body and is her decision whether or not to continue its growth. She holds its life in her body and it is she that decides and knows best what is right for her and her potential child.
I was told by an Iraq army veteran that the first thing he was told in basic training was “like it or not, your job is to kill.”

I’ve read similar stories about the infant mortality increases and linking the higher rates to illegal immigration. The news media has aired many stories about the shortgage of nurses and doctors in this country. Over ten years ago a pre-natal nurse told me about hospitals being overwhelmed by illegal immigrants who would come to the hospitals and have their babies in the parking lots. Hospitals were overwhelmed by the demand and lack of funds. Emergency rooms are being forced to close due to insufficient funds. Canadians pay much higher taxes than American’s for socialized medicine, almost 50%.

Back in the 1960s I worked with many children who had been born with disabilities due to failed do-it-yourself abortions by desperate mothers who had preferred trying drugs instead of coat hangers to end their pregnancies. Many of those mothers believed abortions were wrong, but felt they had no other choice. If abortions are made illegal again in a society where many people believe they’re not immoral we’ll have thousands, if not millions, of babies born with disabilities. We need to be prepared to deal with them. I believe unborn babies are humans and killing them is wrong, but we need to find ways to cut down on the unwanted pregnancies instead of just changing that law.
I’ve personally known mothers who killed their unborn babies out of compassion rather than have them endure horrible lives in the foster care system, while infertile couples who longed to adopt were turned down repeatedly because they weren’t rich or didn’t fit the ideal of perfect parents. Those things can be fixed. Other mothers may think death is preferable to life with a hereditary disease. Maybe anti-abortion laws are more likely to be accepted if exceptions are made for cases when it’s not just a convenience for people who were too irresponsible to use birth control.

Jan, your experiences with the children born with disabilities due to the mother using drugs to abort should be told to those who want to do away with Roe V. Wade. Preventions is, of course the best idea, but there will always be unplanned pregnancies.

I hate to be a stickler, but there’ no such thing as a “7th TRImester”, “tri-” being the operative prefix for things that happen in, um, THREE’s!
Shurely the “7th month” is what was meant?
Meanwhile, let’s all hope America does not devolve into a State that tells women, ‘You MUST have this baby!’ Talk about intrusion into people’s private lives. UGH!

The Old Testament Demiurge loved to kill gentile fetuses, thats a fact. If you have a problem with abortion, don’t bring god into it, because Saklas the Kosmokrator may only be against abortion because he has other more Sadistic plans for your child.

I worked in an abortion clinic for two years and I am still amazed at the notion of “irresponsible”. Almost all of the unintended pregnancies were due to unavailability of birth control, birth control failure or using birth control methods incorrectly due to ignorance. I recall one woman who had high blood pressure and was unable to use hormone based methods. Her spouse refused condoms as a form of power and control over her. Teenage girls often said that they took one of moms pills, why didn’t it work? The stereotypical woman who was just lazy or uses abortion as birth control is a rarity,a myth,a political ploy. What is needed is easier access to birth control, affordability and education.

“…more babies’ lives could be saved through a concerted effort on infant mortality — largely through better prenatal care among the poor — than through a late term abortion ban.”
Not an “either/or” choice. There is no reason society cannot implement both except that advocates discount to zero or virtually zero the value of fetal life. When you promote a philosophy that it is purely a woman’s choice, that abortion is legal and safe, and the life inside is mere tissue…pre-natal care’s importance wanes in importance.

Abortion is a dividing issue. But the fact is, more people (54% in fact) are pro choice. You can ban abortion all you want to but it won’t stop it. In fact, in south america where abortion is banned or severly restricted, their rates are as high as any where it is legal.(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/international/americas/03abortion.html)
Does everyone really want to see a repeat of Caucescu’s Romania? You want to reduce abortion rates? Educate at an early age and continue to do so through out a childs life and offer affordable and easy access to birth control cause telling people to keep their legs closed or their pants zipped doesn’t seem to be working.

thank you for this post. I try to listen to all sides, but I’ve always believed that the “pro-life” religious viewpoint is pure hypocrisy because they always seem to believe in protecting life “from conception to birth” and not anytime thereafter. This kind of thing is part of the reason why. Why isn’t healthcare ever part of the “pro-life” position? Or preventing war, domestic violence, or the death penalty?

Excellent post. I’m starting to think there is some kind of neurological basis to being the kind of pro-life person who can’t look beyond birth. What makes a person so vehemently opposed to the idea that each life deserves protection both before AND far beyond birth? Why do they so tenaciously contend that abortion always and in every situation trumps any other threat to life — even when faced with statistics like this? They come across looking as though they just don’t give a rip that kids die of hunger every day, that our infant mortality rate is atrocious, that our health care system has TRULY created a “culture of death” now, in that it selects who gets to live (the insured) and who gets to die (the uninsured) in the typical emergency room. I’m pro-life. Not just pro-birth. But I feel like my perspective of being pro-life is so completely different than the folks who run Right to Life and other conservative, knee-jerk anti-abortion groups. What is it that makes our brains work so differently on this issue? We are working with the same set of facts: Abortion is horrible because it results in the taking of innocent life. So does war that kills civilians, poverty, domestic violence and unequal access to health care. Why is it so inconceivable (no pun intended) to these people that a person could be just as concerned about those life issues as about abortion? Why do they argue so strongly that there is no proportion between them? It’s as though their cognitive processes are SO fixed on an image of a fetus in utero that they literally can’t see beyond it. How will we ever work together on an issue like this when our perceptions of “protecting life” are, at the most basic level, so different?

__ You say that you “don’t mean this as a diminution to the abortion issue,” but create a false divide between all abortions (over 780,000 unnecessary, unhealthy ones a year) and concern for infant mortality and suggest that concern for one means neglect of the other. The facts of the matter are that many medical and social service professionals plus a large group of “pro-life” volunteers are concerned with infant mortality. As Vice-President of our local Right to Life organization who confers regularly with our State organization plus several other groups I can affirm that we are concened with the protection of all innocent human lives from the moment of fertilization until the time of uncoerced death. However, individuals and groups do still have limitations and simply cannot address every aspect of the problem. Abortion from all ages and at all stages is never safe and is the single most obvious point at whicn to make the best positive, healthy, helpful difference for the baby, the parents (there are two), and our communities. As more people get involved with their caring organizations, pro-life organization, churches, social service groups, and even politics we can together make the differences needed to help. Join us. Make a real difference.

For Pete’s sake, get a copy editor on staff.

An utterly false dilemma. The reason U.S. infant mortality is so high is that the United States counts all live-born infants AS infants, REGARDLESS of gestational age. Many other countries don’t. In Switzerland, the baby has to be at least 30 cm. long to count as a human being. It’s easy to inflate your infant mortality statistics when you refuse to define many children who are born as actual children. The USA’s definition of who is an “infant” is probably the broadest in the world. The whole lament over our infant mortality rate doesn’t take into account our broad recognition of WHO IS HUMAN. As for the tired old canard about pro-lifers not giving a hoot about babies once they’re born, that’s bull, pure and simple. Pro-lifers are there for you at all stages. In my experience, people who make these accusations are the same people who are NEVER there for you, because they’re too busy being cool, posing and making phony arguments about what pro-lifers supposedly do and don’t do. Pro-choicers, whose apparently grave concerns only begin once the child is born, are probably the least generous when it comes to putting their money where their flapping mouths are.

Steven Waldman
To the post by Appalachian prof, I give a hearty “Amen.” More to your point about the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ web site being silent on your artificial dichotomy. The bishops simply do not traffic in artificial dichotomies. In legitimate dichotomies, they simply do not write position papers or instructions to the faithful on any two legitimate issues juxtaposed with one another.
The work of a conscientious Catholic is to not only read and synthesize the Scriptures and Catechism of the Church, but the many instructions given on matters of social justice at every level of Church Teaching. The late Pope John Paul The Great spoke unceasingly of matters pertaining to every dimension of social justice in his Encyclicals, Address to Te United Nations, homilies in Rome and around the world, etc. Pope Benedict XVI has similarly done so as Cardinal Ratzinger, and now as Pope. They are but two recent examples. There are many more at the level of Bishop’s Conferences.
You say, “We can argue whether there’s a moral difference between a seven month fetus dying because of a mother’s decision and an infant sentenced to death in her first year because of bad prenatal care, but I suspect it’s a distinction that would not be meaningful to the dead baby.”
Forgive me, but I have come to expect better of you. There is simply no similarity to argue here. It is the worst dichotomy I’ve seen on the topic. There is all the moral difference in the world between a mother who procures a late term abortion and one who through ignorance, poverty, poor self-esteem, mental illness, etc… fails to secure adequate prenatal care. I worked for seven years with unwed mothers in Times Square before becoming a scientist. Many arrived at our shelter eight and nine months pregnant without ever having seen a doctor, unaware of the most rudimentary knowledge of their own bodies.
In Catholic moral theology, we maintain that in order for an act to be considered sinful:
1. There must be serious matter involved.
2. The person must give sufficient reflection.
3. The person must give full consent of the will.
So, yes, there is a difference between neglect born of ignorance and a volitional act to murder a child. The baby is just as dead, but such moral equivalence imputes to the mother who did not know any better the same degree of culpability as the one who with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will procures a late term abortion.
You also say, “I mean this as no diminution to the abortion issue but more babies’ lives could be saved through a concerted effort on infant mortality — largely through better prenatal care among the poor — than through a late term abortion ban.”
Again, this is a false dichotomy. The only relationship between the two is that they share a lack of social justice. A just and decent people can, and should, address these as separate issues, each according to its own merits-or demerits.

wow i feel completely refuted. as a prolifer i can now see that i am total hypocrite and that because i live in a country that can’t guarantee that no one dies in the “seventh trimester” I am clearly the equivalent to the “pro-choicers” who advocate the direct, intentional, conveyance killing of 1.5 Million innocent people a year.
clearly you can only dedicate yourself to one cause its either a right to life in the first three trimester or the seventh…do prochoicers ever wonder why they spend so much time trying to make this stuff up…is it to hide a guilty conscience?
the Catholic churchs is the largest private provider of healthcare in the world and am pretty sure they are pro health care.
When you have childern please feel free to go to any of the following countries and see how things work out for you? Singapore, Macau, Anguilla, Slovenia, Malta and Cuba
maybe the infant mortality rate is higher in the US because so many childern who would survive birth do…or maybe it has to do with demographics and parental age….use some common sense

Break down the statistics by race to understand why USA has such high infant mortality rates.
I guarrenteed you the children who are dying are vast majority black and mexican.

Anonymous, the Centers for Disease Control already did break down the stats by race; check figure 3 in the pdf file from National Center for Health Statistics for yourself. On second thought, there’s no need to. Infant mortality among Blacks in the USA is twice the national average, while Puerto Ricans and Native Americans (including Native Alaskans) had infant mortality rates about 25% higher than the national average. As for Mexican-Americans, the same article reported that their infant mortality rates were on the order of 25% _lower_ than the national average.
For that matter, even Canada does a better job at preventing infant mortality than the US (5.3 infant deaths per 1,000 live births compared with the US rate of 6.9 per 1000_; but Canada can do better still if our people start paying attention to the plight of Native Canadian mothers.

Why is our infant mortality rate so higher than Singapore, Macau, Anguilla, Slovenia, Malta and Cuba?
I have always believed that the prolife religious viewpoint is pure hypocrisy because they always seem to believe in protecting life from conception to birth and not anytime thereafter. This kind of thing is part of the reason why.

The credit loans suppose to be important for guys, which would like to ground their business. By the way, it’s easy to receive a car loan.

Fun … something new
Looks like I was a little
time to keep up with life.
ambienbuy.net

adaptation stratosphere found

ipcc pollution figure observational

notes european geoengineering decade

required running governments reliable

average exempt water

vapor clouds century app

This blog’s title intrigued me, as I have never heard of a seventh trimester. However, I suppose that would be the first trimester of a third pregnancy. I didn’t make it to the seventh trimester, or the seventh month for that matter.
I survived two trimesters in utero, and one trimester in the NICU of the hospital where I was born. I appreciate my mother persevering through such a high-risk pregnancy 30 years ago. It saddens me that to this day, there are babies aborted later in pregnancy than I was even born.
I hold a doctorate degree, enjoy a full life, and am involved in helping my community.

I have always believed that the prolife religious viewpoint is pure hypocrisy because they always seem to believe in protecting life from conception to birth and not anytime thereafter. This kind of thing is part of the reason why

ambien