the_toast_is_gone

People are gambling on it every day. There have been hundreds of abortions in Missouri alone since Dobbs. The threat is not real because it isn't in the books. If it was, a doctor would have been prosecuted by now. If Republican DAs were so thirsty for a legal victory that they were willing to disregard a doctor's opinion that there was an emergency, one of these doctors would have been prosecuted by now.

So why do you believe murder is wrong?

The doctors stated that if she didn't receive immediate treatment, she was at risk of death. Similarly, if someone was stabbed and at risk of death, they would receive treatment. She should have received treatment.

If every doctor decided that every pregnancy was a severe, immediate enough risk to warrant an immediate abortion, those people should be prosecuted. That would be a grave medical error. This has not happened, and for the sake of society, I hope doctors do not come to that conclusion.

Your entire argument is founded on paranoid conjecture.

She was admitted to the hospital ER, kept overnight, and released without treatment. She was at risk of severe injury or death if she didn't receive appropriate treatment. Per the HHS secretary, "While many state laws have recently changed, it’s important to know that the federal EMTALA requirements have not changed, and continue to require that healthcare professionals offer treatment, including abortion care, that the provider reasonably determines is necessary to stabilize the patient’s emergency medical condition." Therefore, the hospitals are liable for not providing essential care.

"Life-threatening" is somewhat subjective, and doctors can be charged for providing non-emergency abortions. However, no doctors have been charged post-Dobbs with providing any abortions at all, therefore there is no meaningful risk of prosecution in emergency cases. If I was a doctor in such a situation, I wouldn't hesitate to provide the necessary care if I believed there was an emergency.

Nobody has been charged in post-Dobbs Texas for providing emergency abortions, or any at all. The law is working as intended.

The medical error is in believing that the law restricts doctors from performing life-and-limb-saving procedures. That leads to negligence, as in this case.

The laws on abortion say you can do them in an emergency, though. You're arguing something about them that is literally untrue. You are also imagining a legal threat that doesn't exist, because the law is written the way it is. Your wild speculation is doing you no favors. No doctors have been charged, No post-Dobbs ban state bans emergency abortions. Now, why do you believe murder is wrong?

If someone was stabbed and at immediate risk of bleeding to death, by your logic, immediate treatment would be "preventative care" and therefore not necessary. There's a league of difference between taking a pill to stave off a death that will happen within a few years, and receiving physical intervention to stave off a death that will happen in a matter of days.

"It's irrelevant because it is" is just an assertion with no evidence to back it up. You've yet to provide evidence or argumentation to counter what I've provided. But if you don't want me explaining what you believe, please tell me: why is murder wrong? If you want to complain about bad faith debate, then why will you not provide evidence (that we haven't already discussed and disproved) to back up your claims?

Texas disagrees.

Texas abortion law protects emergency abortions. The lawsuit was about an expansion of the definition of "emergency" justified by EMTALA. From the decision, quoted from the article:

Judge Leslie Southwick said there were several “extraordinary things, it seems to me, about this guidance,” and said it seemed HHS was trying to use EMTALA to expand abortion access in Texas to include “broader categories of things, mental health or whatever else HHS would say an abortion is required for.” Tuesday’s ruling, authored by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, said the court “decline[d] to expand the scope of EMTALA.” “We agree with the district court that EMTALA does not provide an unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child,” Englehardt wrote. “EMTALA does not mandate medical treatments, let alone abortion care, nor does it preempt Texas law.”

Nobody is risking their livelihood by performing abortions because there is no legal risk for performing them in emergencies. How many prosecutions of emergency abortions since Dobbs - not threats of prosecution, because those have no teeth - can you find? Or any prosecutions at all? And here is my source for the hundreds of abortions figure.

Hospital management was 100% wrong in this case, but sure, let's put that aside. Yes, 10,000 times out of 10,000, I would prematurely deliver a baby if it was necessary and I had the means to do so, or do any other procedure that wasn't meant to explicitly kill the fetus. If it was already dead, there would be no distinction there. If I had no moral compunction with abortion in general, 10,000 times out of 10,000, I would perform an abortion if I believed it medically necessary.

What's the difference between a "blob" and a "fully formed individual" and why is killing one acceptable while killing the other isn't? You also missed the "mother's body is made to accommodate the child" thing, too. That's what the uterus is for. If there was no such thing as a uterus and the fetus was a different species, then it would be a parasite. As it is though, a fetus is no more a parasite than someone living at home with their parents.

It's irrelevant because nobody has been prosecuted. You're imagining a legal threat that doesn't exist for the sake of pushing your ideology.

Case in point: you're willfully confusing definitions to claim it's okay to kill people. Everyone is composed of cells, therefore everyone is lumps of cells, therefore, according to the "lump of cells" logic, it is okay for parents to kill their offspring at any time. You're dehumanizing human beings to justify killing them.

The doctor can determine what an emergency is. Nobody has been prosecuted for performing an abortion since Dobbs. The "grey area" you're arguing for, if it exists, is irrelevant.

A fetus is the offspring of two parents. You're confusing the definition of child as in "adolescent animal" and the definition I'm using, namely "offspring". A fetus is an organism composed of human cells, therefore it is a human being, therefore killing it without a critical reason is murder.

The law on the books is that a doctor can legally perform emergency abortions. Nobody has been prosecuted on the claim that the abortion wasn't an emergency, or even for performing an abortion at all.

The fetus carries its parents' DNA, is created from their intercourse, and is descended directly from them. They may not have reached adolescence, but in terms of genetics and biology, it is still their child.