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Comment by Shatnerz | Hacker News Reader

> Not moving my family to Texas, Florida, or Alabama, for anything. Beautiful states, but I have a daughter.

Are women not safe in these states? I'm not sure I'm picking up whatever you are implying.

Women die because they're not allowed to abort nonviable fetuses that would also likely kill them. Seems very unsafe, I wouldn't want to be a woman there.

"Abortion in Texas is illegal in all cases, except to save the mother's life, or prevent substantial impairment of major bodily function." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Texas#:~:text=Abor....

The trouble with this language, which seems unambiguous, can be difficult to implement in an emergency situation. For example: https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-sepsis-life-saving-abortion-...

As a partner with a wife who went into septic shock, sepsis is no joke. I was given a 40% chance of her living through the night, which, thankfully she did. Doctors are understandably hesitant to perform an abortion because they could be held criminally liable if some court after the fact, with months of hindsight, may consider that the mother could have lived even if the baby was brought to term. So this is a no-win scenario all around and a terrible law from a party that claims to eschew any government overreach into personal lives.

you may or may not be aware that a common result of such laws is that doctors refuse to get involved in cases where an abortion is necessary to save the mother's life, because they don't want to have to convince a jury of it. better to take a different patient and not risk going to jail until the trial

Nobody knows the letter of the law in the real world and carveouts like this are meant to appease political opposition and get laws passed, not to be enforceable/usable. It's an effective total ban.

For non-Americans everywhere, disallowing abortion including nonviable pregnancies sounds barbaric. America is viewed as the most advanced nation in the world. But these Taliban-level backwardness is mind boggling.

America was never this regressive and tribal when I went to school there in the mid 80's til the 1990.

That is terrible. How often does this situation happen?

Here are some statistics about Termination for Medical Reasons (TFMR): Pregnancies with major congenital fetal abnormalities: Most pregnancies with a major congenital fetal abnormality end in TFMR. The percentage of pregnancies that end in TFMR can range from 70% to 95% depending on the severity of the abnormality. Stillbirth: TFMR is almost twice as common as stillbirth. In 2018, Tommy's statistics reported 2,943 babies lost after being stillborn, while the DHSC reported 3,269 TFMR during that same time period. Down's syndrome: 20% of TFMRs are due to Down's syndrome. Pregnancies with Turner syndrome: Turner syndrome leads to the highest rate of pregnancy termination (100%). Pregnancies with Klinefelter syndrome: Klinefelter syndrome leads to the second highest rate of termination (73.9%). In the UK, over 70% of congenital anomalies are detected during pregnancy and, of those, around 37% will result in TFMR. In Europe, the prevalence rate of TFMR is 4.6 per 1,000 births. Seven percent of women cited health concerns for themselves or possible problems affecting the health of the fetus as their most important reason in 2004, about the same as in 1987.

I don't know the statistics, but even if it happens only once, the authors of the policies in place should be prosecuted.

One stat that jumps out is that infant death rates are way up. Forcing women to complete their term anyway is sadistic and completely unnecessary.

It's hard to tell what you're actually asking but the Louisiana department of health claims it's about 1 in 10,000 die from pregnancy complications [0]. University of California San Francisco claims 6%-8% of pregnancies are high risk [1].

The World Health Organization claims a global rate of 4.3 mother deaths per 1000 live births in low income countries versus 1.2 deaths per 10,000 live births in high income countries [2].

[0] https://ldh.la.gov/page/pregnancy-risks

[1] ucsfhealth.org/conditions/high-risk-pregnancy

[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mo...

I'm not sure, how many women a year should we say is acceptable?

30-40 seems reasonable.

Also a parent with similar concerns including book bans, systematic weakening of science, education and library institutions, unstable power during temperature extremes (TX), unrestrained gun violence, restrictions on sex ed, and encouraged intolerance of gender differences. To name a few.

Yeah, they are really antagonistic to women, there are strict anti-abortion laws that even include travel bans

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/13/abortion-travel-ban-...

Rural states often are significantly less safe for women, e.g. Texas ranks much higher than the national average, although Alabama and Florida are quite low in this dimension. https://www.statista.com/statistics/232563/forcible-rape-rat...

Alaska: 134 per 100k, The Netherlands: 7.1 per 100k.

Something is very wrong in the USA.

Given Alaska is a 3x outlier compared to the national average, and almost 2x the next highest state, it seems unreasonable to draw conclusions from it alone.

The US: 40 per 100k NL: 7.1 per 100k

I think I'll continue to draw "unreasonable" conclusions.

If you'd wanted to make the stronger case, you could have used those numbers the first time. ;)

I fail to see how you made a valid counter argument though.

There isn't one. You're right. You were just using shock numbers to argue it, when the fair numbers did so better.

Do you have the E.U. as a whole compared the US? If you're going to compare, might as well do apples to apples.

You’re assuming perfect statistics. I wouldn’t.

It's always incredible that "statistics aren't perfect" suddenly doesn't apply when we're talking about the biggest GDP or Military.

They’re likely referring to the effects of the Dobbs ruling [1].

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobbs_v._Jackson_Women%27s_H....

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