Abortion is legal in this country, and any woman can go to the hospital (as in the ER), or at a consultorio familiare to initiate the process. Both options are free of charge and free of judgement, especially the latter. As to why these two websites were rendered inaccessible it beats me, as there are many other local alternatives one may peruse, and they're all accessible. Hell, even the Italian Government Website has resources[1][2]!
> Both options are free of charge and free of judgement, especially the latter.
Maybe they are free of charge, idk, but they doesn't seem to be free of judgement. From the article:
Even if an abortion seeker is within the 12 week gestational limit and has access to a local hospital, a doctor can turn them away on the basis of conscientious objection, which legally allows any doctor to deny a patient an abortion on moral grounds. In 2019, it was reported that 67% of Italian gynecologists were registered as conscientious objectors and multiple hospitals reported having a 100% conscientious objection rate.
Even finding a doctor seem to be an issue, because most of them would tell you that they are more moral than you think and wouldn't do an abortion.
If a care seeker can find a doctor who is willing to perform an abortion, they must endure a 7-day waiting period between their initial request for an abortion and the procedure (which can push care seekers past the 12 week gestational limit).
So they believe that women are probably mistaken and don't know what they want, don't they? Or maybe they just want to make it harder to fit abortion in the 12 week limit?
In April 2024, the Italian parliament passed a measure allowing anti-abortion activists to enter abortion consultation clinics.
These activists I'm sure wouldn't judge. No way. Would they?
Let me help answer that question by abstracting away the charged element and disambiguating the most common point of actual logical contention:
Should doctors be forced to perform <P:procedure> they don't ~~condone~~[A:believe is medically safe and appropriate for a diagnosis|B:wish to support or endorse on non-medical grounds].
To me, and for most reasonable people I've properly been able to have a conversation with on this subject, the answer is universally an emphatic NO for the vast majority of possible procedures P, in both cases A and B. However, where things diverge is that most people believe there should be consequences for the doctor refusing on grounds B to perform a procedure other doctors would consider to fit the criteria of A, for virtually every P I've thought of. These consequences typically include removal of their license to practice medicine, and may include civil or criminal penalties in egregious cases where a doctor might claim religious objection to something like CPR in a situation where they were the only doctor working at an ER and the CPR was clearly medically necessary, for example.
> Should doctors be forced to perform abortions they don't condone?
No person should be forced to perform actions they don't condone.
But there is no unalienable right to be a doctor. If someone wants to be a doctor and not perform health care procedures, then that's not compatible with being that kind of doctor.
They are entirely free to switch careers to do something else.
> As to why these two websites were rendered inaccessible it beats me, as there are many other local alternatives one may peruse, and they're all accessible.
Because, presumably, abortion is legal only in specific circumstances (first trimester, I imagine) and these websites are bypassing that.
FTFA:
> Today, Women on Web facilitates online access to abortion pills
I'd expect any website that provides access to non-over-the-counter pills is operating against the law. I mean, it'd be nice if I can buy antibiotics online, but I can't in my jurisdiction.
Ah that does it. Abortion pills are not candies. There's a reason why they are expected to be used in a hospital setting, with medical personnel nearby. If these websites facilitate the distribution of prescription meds, they're no different from other "online pharmacies" and get the same treatment
>There's a reason why they are expected to be used in a hospital setting, with medical personnel nearby.
Not really true. They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use. They're evaluating packaging and instructions for possible OTC sale in the the future:
> They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use.
In that case I fully support the organisations involved to campaign to make abortion pills OTC legal. That does not mean that I support them skirting the law as it is now.
There is ample evidence that video appointments followed by pills through the mail are safe and effective with very low rates of complications that can be addressed in a local ER if needed.
in this part of the world, Mexico is known for public pharmacies that sell wildly-strong drugs of different kinds easily.. I doubt there are any websites that list what you can actually get if you walk in with cash
In Hungary abortion is technically legal but only surgically, and the public health system is mental torture including being forced to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus (thanks to our local fascist party). Women on Web is a million times more humane. It's not like anyone thinks "oh I'm pregnant I'll just pop a pill and it's solved".
> That's clearly already a child and I will object.
Not your body, not your choice.
Late stage abortions in order to protect the live of the pregnant woman happen. Unviable pregnancies happen. You know what happens in countries where abortion laws are so strict that even a medical emergency will land the doctor in legal trouble? The pregnant woman dies during or before childbirth.
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
It's guilt-tripping based on an unscientific view of pregnancy. A foetus' heart starts beating way before it is even remotely close to being a child rather than a lump of cells.
> If it was so clear-cut the issue wouldn't be so polarising.
It's polarising because the topic is so very useful to get religious people who want to impose their holy book on everyone else to vote for you.
As of 2018, a study found that 95% of all biologists affirm the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilization.
> being a child rather than a lump of cells
A child is an individual organism of the species Homo sapiens. Since the majority of biologists (who are the de facto subject matter experts here) affirm that human life begins at fertilization, your opinion is patently unscientific.
You may argue, as some do, that there are cases, including abortion, where it is permissible to take a human life, however your opinion as expressed is in fact unscientific, and I would encourage you to question the cogency of your conclusions.
> The whole point of this paper you're citing is that the scientific definition isn't relevant to the ethical debate.
I don't think we have the same reading of the paper. Scientific facts inform ethical decisions, they are antecedent to them. We can't decide whether something is good or bad if we don't understand what it is.
But to the point, the comment I was responding to wanted to assert that pro-life arguments rested on some "unscientific" premise that a "lump of cells" is a "child," which is actually scientific consensus; my citation of that paper was to refute that claim.
Whether or not it is ethical to end a human child's life under certain circumstances is a moral question, but the fact that it is in fact a human child is scientifically settled.
> I don't think we have the same reading of the paper.
Strong agreement here.
> Scientific facts inform ethical decisions, they are antecedent to them.
Sometimes, as your paper is saying is the case, they're orthogonal to them.
> but the fact that it is in fact a human child is scientifically settled.
From your article, emphasis mine:
"While this article’s findings suggest a fetus is biologically classified as a human at fertilization"
The problem you have is that this paper doesn't discuss children at all, merely that a fetus is of the human species. It's basically tautological so of course it's essentially unanimous. A human fetus is a human fetus and not, say, a chicken fetus.
Ah yes, conception. The magical moment a body gets 'ensouled'. Wanting to protect literal embryos is considered a rather extreme view outside of Gilead though.
Convenient strawman, but you're the one bringing "Gilead" into this discussion. My argument is scientific, and I would appreciate it if your counterargument was too.
It's torture because abortion is never a trivial decision to make - by the time a person has decided to get an abortion and not become a parent we should respect their wishes. If a decision has been made there's no reason to cause pointless emotional grief before executing the operation.
It is mainly so because of lack of education and emotional manipulation into mixing up human biology and human personhood. Heartbeat doesn’t make a person. It’s not even a requirement to be a person (people with continuous-flow artificial hearts lack it). The first specks of personhood appear a lot later in the process.
A normal sane reaction is “yeah, there’s already a working cardiovascular system, better stop it before the organism develops even further.”
This said, it’s an obviously pointless and harmful delay. There is no reason to check a heartbeat of a fetus if a mother decides she doesn’t want to carry it.
Abortion should be possible at 8 months - it absolutely must be possible in the cases of complications to save the life of the mother. For other cases I believe it shouldn't be easily legal to ensure that people seek abortion aide earlier in their pregnancy but in the case someone is unaware (it does happen though it's outrageously rare) or in the case someone is prevented from seeking earlier care it should be an option. 8 months should be restricted purely because it can cause an immense amount of damage to your body and abortions at that point are technically complex so ideally people should be encouraged to make that decision earlier in the process.
In my personal opinion, though I am a bit in the fringe, person-hood doesn't come into being until a few years of development though if a baby is born and the family can't take care of it that's obviously a case where adoption would be preferred. Child rearing is a big life changing responsibility and I generally think it should only be undertaken voluntarily though the societal requirements and supports for child rearing in nearly all of the world put reasonable constraints on how far we can move in that direction[1].
1. As an example: financial obligations for child support are absolutely justified in societies where the financial strain on single parents isn't otherwise accounted for.
> Hang on, how is listening to the heartbeat mental torture?
How about if the state decided that it wouldn't force you to donate your organs to some dying person who needed them, but every time there was a person who needed your your organs and you declined you would have to sit and listen to their heartbeat for 20 minutes. Really sit and think about the person you're deciding to kill. After all, if you don't give your body to someone who needs it, you've killed them.
The whole point is to imply you are killing a baby. Like literally. The only reason for that law is that.
There is no medical reason. It does not address rational part of decisiom making either. It is an attempt at forced emotional guilting by medical professional. And to drag you through it.
Just want to point out, it’s polarising because it’s a wedge issues that divides voting blocks neatly, and nothing to do with it being The Issue that it is.
More people die from obesity, cars, flu, preventable illness, etc. But we discuss endless this one issue… it’s for political science reasons not humanity/moral/etc reasons.
It's different from those other cases because it's like getting in a car accident and other people saying you can't get treatment because it's against their religious values, or saying you're not allowed to lose weight because they don't like it.
"Torture" is definitely hyperbolic, but being forced to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus is not something that's based on any kind of science or rational argument, it's quite transparently emotional manipulation.
I agree with you that it's a delicate issue, I really do. I'm also tired of taking infinite psychic damage trying to steel-man the arguments of people who are clearly not interested in operating at the level of steel.
> Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?Clearly you believe in the primacy of preserving life. I am wondering if your belief extends to after the child is born?
Are you suggesting that, because I object to abortion a day before delivery, that I must be some kind of misogynistic monster?
Because that's where the line is drawn in this current subthread - 1 day before delivery. If you cannot understand that people consider that a child (i.e. 1 day before delivery) then you have no hope of swaying your audience to your side of the argument at all!
Thinking about what they're doing and what those things mean.. some people just do what they want without putting a lot of thought into anything. We shouldn't make it easy for that type of person to hide from what they're doing.
Friendly reminder that at the 6th week, when the heartbeat is detectable, the body is still undecided whether it will keep the fetus. It's not an indicator of anything - just something we're emotionally attached to as humans.
20-25% otherwise healthy pregnancies end spontaneously before the 12th week and it's a mechanism used in non-surgical abortion.
At the 8th week my SO's gynecologist made an offhand remark not to get attached just yet, because we were still within the window where that happens.
What does that matter? You're the one making the decision, not nature. Personally I would give anything to be able to have a child, so honestly I don't understand why anyone would want to terminate a pregnancy. I'm willing to admit that people's lives are complicated and it's not my place to make that decision for others, but we shouldn't help people hide from what they're doing.
> but I also think that it's a good idea to know what you're doing
Why do so many people say this about women and their bodies? You seriously think the vast majority of women considering an abortion haven’t given it much thought? Should they all have to face more obstructions and guilt trips and patronizing lectures because a handful maybe don’t? It’s ridiculous.
As for the “heartbeat” standard, I’m not getting in to it, suffice to say that should not be a bar here for deciding a woman’s rights.
> I stand by this comment, downvote all you like folks.
I wasn’t going to until this part of your comment.
They are just applying the same logic behind all prescription medication to abortion pills.
To this day, despite having taken them for the past 30 years, I still require a new prescription for Adderall because society deemed the addiction risk too high to avoid inserting a doctor into the equation every 30 days.
Abortifacients can cause the death of the person taking them. That’s something no one wants.
Can some people manage the risks of prescription medication on their own? Yes, but like with Adderall, society tends to lean towards caution and considers a doctor’s visit to be morally neutral as doctors aren’t expected to moralize and guilt but perform a medical service.
Personally, I think a doctor who guilts someone over medication should have their license revoked. There’s a time and place for such feelings but medical interventions are life and death.
And by the way, men are allowed to have opinions about abortion. You can't just play the woman card and act like that changes anything men might have to say.
I am a woman. And I only said that last part because I'm sick of seeing the internet hide contrary opinions just because they don't want to hear something.
It's an unreasonable argument because the people who treat medication like candy are far less common than the people who are restricted from seeking medical assistance due to repressive family situations.
In Italy these services are thankfully not restricted in the same way they are in, say, America - but there are still plenty of life situations (like suffering SA from a family member) where shame, social pressures and threats can cause the regular medical system to be hard to access.
That is a far more reasonable scenario than "I just love popping abortion pills!"
No one claimed that people just "love popping abortion pills". At least my reading of their comment is that these pills are considered dangerous to take alone in your bedroom, without monitoring and follow-up by health professionals, and are therefore expected by the health system to be used in a hospital setting. That sounded reasonable to me.
That statement is unnecessary unless you believe that some people treat them as candies (not literally but take them casually and without thought).
All medication is dangerous in excess - OTC painkillers often have absolutely disastrous OD effects with ibuprofen causing major stomache problems if abused in moderation or heart/kidney problems if abused more seriously.
Finding an obiettore is a somewhat rare circumstance in a hospital, but it's unlikely in a consultorio familiare; those are structures whose only purpose is reproductive health, gynecological care, social services, and psychological consult, especially aimed at teens and women. If you're an objector you generally don't go out of your way to work there.
I’m sure you’re aware that it _greatly_ depends on the region you’re living in. The fact that consultori are for reproductive health doesn’t mean that there are no obiettori: for some of them the purpose of those structures are exactly to prevent abortions. There are many accounts of women who were pushed to not interrupting a pregnancy.
Read the article. It's 67% of registered obgyns and fully 100% of some hospitals. Why would you believe it's 1 of 1000 in a world where countries consistently successfully create legislature targeting women?
In 2022 there were about 65k abortions in Italy, two thirds of which were with ru486. All of them completely legal and paid for by the national health care. Not sure there is a need for pills over mail.
It's great Italy it has the protections it does, but as long as there are practitioners or institutions that might not respect obtaining this healthcare (out of religion, belief system, whatever, the reason is irrelevant), there should be robust systems to avoid those challenges for those seeking said healthcare. Pills available by mail on demand, automated vending machines, etc.
As mentioned in the 1983 film "WarGames", "We ought to take the men out of the loop".
> Do you realize that abortion pills are potentially dangerous..? That's why you have doctors prescribing drugs
False. They've been repeatedly shown in studies to be safe for home use. Having an abortion is generally safer than continuing a pregnancy to term. Please update your priors.
I don't know where you're from but in Italy MANY medicines that are potentially dangerous but safe for home use are prescribed by a doctor that knows about your medical history.
Please look up "potentially dangerous".
In addition, for many women getting an abortion can be extremely traumatic. That's why many clinics that offer abortion pills also have a psychologist on staff. Sometimes they'll have he/she talk to the patient.
> In 2019, it was reported that 67% of Italian gynecologists were registered as conscientious objectors and multiple hospitals reported having a 100% conscientious objection rate.
I couldn't find any information, either. The only thing I was able to find were many posts on Reddit from women trying to get these websites to send them abortion pills.
I assume that this might be the reason why they got blocked--or if not a possibility.
I don't understand why women would need these websites, there are plenty of free resources like local hospitals and doctors who are generally completely fine with abortion.
It is indeed legal, but gynaecologists can object to help for conscientious reasons (65% do) and in quite a few hospitals, 100% do object, especially in the south. So in practice access to it is not always that easy.
Agree about that. The question is whether all websites providing black-market potentially generous medications are being targeted or specifically just abortion pills. I genuinely do not know, this might be making the news but actually be part of a wide blockage.
> If access is not easy, there needs to be a different solution.
Indeed, access must be made easy. Abortion, through a pill or otherwise, should be accessible anywhere, freely, and any medical record should be kept absolutely secret, including from the family, especially if she’s underage.
I don’t think that’s the direction they’re headed though. I’m pretty sure in fact the whole point of allowing stuff like objection of conscience is to make abortion less accessible.
That is my point. If access is not easy, selling prescription drugs to anonymous buyers is not the solution - access must be made easy.
> I’m pretty sure in fact the whole point of allowing stuff like objection of conscience is to make abortion less accessible.
I don't think so. No one, whether a doctor or not, should be forced by the state to end the life of any being. That choice must be totally theirs to make, not the states.
I do not trust any state, government or ruler with the power to compel speech or action.
> No one, whether a doctor or not, should be forced by the state to end the life of any being.
I feel you. But that right not to kill, conflicts with the autonomy of women. Which is more important?
> I do not trust any state, government or ruler with the power to compel speech or action.
France, and many other countries, makes it a crime (misdemeanour I think?) not to help people. If I see someone about to die, and I could prevent that, and I don’t, then I could go to jail.
This is textbook compelled action, and I fully condone it. If you don’t help someone from immediate danger you’re trash, and you should pay the consequences.
> I feel you. But that right not to kill, conflicts with the autonomy of women. Which is more important?
The right to not kill, obviously. What kind of question is this? You want to judge someone for not being (in their minds) a murderer instead of a controller-of-other-people?
> This is textbook compelled action, and I fully condone it. If you don’t help someone from immediate danger you’re trash, and you should pay the consequences.
Sure, but we aren't talking about immediate danger. All those countries you list don't compel you to help someone who is in no immediate danger.
It would, but then there’s another dilemma: in a country where there’s a limit to how far into pregnancy you can abort, that pill could easily be used over that limit, and then you have to question whether the increased availability is worth a possible increase in late(er) abortions. I think I would prioritise availability, but not everyone would want to.
(Now this is assuming an actual increase in late(er) abortions: I believe I have seen evidence that increased availability tend to lead to earlier abortions, not to mention safer. And we need to couple all that with regular contraceptives and sex education, so unwanted pregnancies don’t happen that often in the first place.)
Fair, although some kind of certificate of when the pregnancy started could be given to whoever has pregnancy as soon as they go to a doctor to get it.
By default, I mean, not upon request.
This way it could be certified how far the pregnancy is.
> If access is not easy, there needs to be a different solution.
The only way is to make access easy. If you make it hard, then demand for black market drugs will drive supply. Which in turn would drive a repressive machine. Sites blocked, people convicted and so on.
I don't know why anti-abortion activists are unable to understand it. The only working hypothesis they are actively resist any understanding. A dogmatic worldview can lead to such behavior.
> I don't know why anti-abortion activists are unable to understand it. The only working hypothesis they are actively resist any understanding. A dogmatic worldview can lead to such behavior.
The pro-lifers don't have a monopoly on stupid people - see above where a pro-choicer is arguing that abortion 1 day before delivery should be legal.
Argue rationally about what? I invite you to stop for a moment, reread our converstaion while asking a question: what about are we supposedly arguing. There was no rational arguments, you've changed topic from peculiarities of anti-abortion mind works to peculiarities of pro-abortion minds, which I'm not interested in, how you can imagine. It is not a rational debate, it is a rhetorical trick to lure me into a discussion I don't want to be a part of.
> Your link is frequently posted by people who have no wish to argue rationally.
I suppose it was LLM who told you that? I personally never saw that link posted. In these situations people mostly invoke "whataboutism", but I just thought it was not right, before we established beyond reasonable doubt that you are fighting a political debate. I mean, we see demagogy used, check. But your motives are still not clear enough to claim with certainty that you are caught up in political partisanship and it is the reason behind your behavior.
You entire thesis was that one party to the argument is stupid.
My reply (with evidence, btw, see poster upthread) is that both parties are stupid.
I am obviously not on any one side of this issue (see all my other replies); you obviously are on one side of this issue.
After all, while you call the pro-lifers "anti-abortion", you aren't calling the pro-choices "anti-life", are you? There's a reason all the rest of us have settled on "pro-*", and that's because we are respecting the arguments being made.
You are merely slinging mud. After all, which sane person can really be proud of saying things like this:
> I mean, we see demagogy used, check.
> anti-abortion
> you are caught up in political partisanship
> It is not a rational debate, it is a rhetorical trick
(It's Not X, It's Y - huh, where do we usually see that?)
> unable to understand
> A dogmatic worldview can lead to such behavior.
Did you notice that you entire argument is based around calling people names and/or attributing malice intent to their position?
You didn't even try to make an argument. If I was you, I'd be too ashamed to even post here...
Oh, and finally...
> I suppose it was LLM who told you that?
If it makes you feel any better about yourself, then sure. Believe that.
> You entire thesis was that one party to the argument is stupid.
It is your interpretation of it. My proposed explanation for their behavior is not stupidity, but dogmatism of their worldview.
> I am obviously not on any one side of this issue
It doesn't seem obvious for me at all. You are talking emotionally, trying to trigger my emotions with all kinds of tricks. I infer that you are emotionally invested into the topic.
> After all, while you call the pro-lifers "anti-abortion", you aren't calling the pro-choices "anti-life", are you?
Yes. The problem is with abortions. And "pro-lifers" if you look at them closely, are not fighting for life, they are fighting against abortion. They do not fight against wars, against anti-vaccine people, they do not fight about automobiles. There is a lot of opportunities to fight for life, but they fight against abortions, which is not even close to a top cause of deaths among humans.
They name themselves "pro-life" but it is a sneaky way to frame a discourse.
> You are merely slinging mud.
I'm asking for alternative explanations for anti-abortion activists behavior. Anything beyond dogmatism would be welcome. You are talking about me instead.
> Did you notice that you entire argument is based around calling people names and/or attributing malice intent to their position?
I do not attribute malice. Though I allow myself to express opinions about what is going on in their head, but it is the whole premise of it. I'm interested in what is going on in their heads. I have one explanation, you fail to provide another.
> You didn't even try to make an argument.
You don't seem to be interested about my arguments. You never asked about my reasoning that allows me to jump from the observed behavior to dogmatism. So why would I spend my breath explaining you things that you are not interested in?
> If it makes you feel any better about yourself, then sure. Believe that.
It is not about me, it is about you. I'm interested in what is going on in minds of others, and I don't see any other explanation for you claim than LLM. You see, I've learned about tu quoque specifically for that post. I felt that "whataboutism" is something close to what you did, but not exactly that, so I visited wikipedia and looked around to find this article. And then you state that you see it all the time. I'm very interested in rhetoric tricks, if I noticed a link to that article before, I'd remember it. But I don't.
But you somehow generated the claim that this link used all the time. How?
I can agree that I was not too polite, I should have asked you, where you've learned that, instead of voicing my hypothesis, but still I've asked. And I ask again. But you never answer questions, so I shouldn't hope for an answer, should I?
Sure, but access is easy enough. Not worse than anything else than the government does.
Much better than--let's say--getting an MRI.
Looks like this thread has gotten the attention of weird activists that want to find injustice everywhere and jump to conclusion--as long as the conclusion is women oppressed and censored.
I don't think GP was making that argument (well, I didn't read it that way). He's just saying that access may not be easy.
[EDIT: I see GP did reply to parent, and he apparently was making that asinine argument :-/ Oh well, at least I interpreted original GP comment charitably]
of course doctors should not be forced, that's ridiculous, but the SSN should prioritise hiring non-objecting doctors, at least in areas where there isn't enough coverage (in the same way it should prioritise hiring other specialities as needed).
> of course doctors should not be forced, that's ridiculous, but the SSN should prioritise hiring non-objecting doctors, at least in areas where there isn't enough coverage (in the same way it should prioritise hiring other specialities as needed).
I agree, they should!
But what do you do if your society just does not have enough people (nevermind doctors) who share the beliefs of pro-choicers?
At the point where you cannot find enough people to carry out an order for one side of an issue, it's a signal that the society itself has already taken a stand on the issue.
It's bizarre to me that countries in Europe can just compel their ISPs to block websites completely without any judicial review. That kind of thing would run afoul of all kinds of first amendment litigation in the US. The FBI will occasionally seize a domain, but only after a court order.
absolute freedom of speech is not a value or constitutional right in most european countries. I don't understand why americans can't get comfortable with the notion that other countries have different laws. There's plenty of things that could be considered bizarre and arbitrary in the US form the perspective of a european, I know full well being one living in California for 20 years.
I think Americans get that other countries have different laws. But freedom of speech, an ideal we lifted from European enlightenment thinkers, is so important to our culture and national mythos that it is a little surprising how differently it's valued in much of Europe.
I'm sure the culture shock goes both ways though, as you say. Curious about your perspective on the the most bizarre / arbitrary things in the US?
It is a temporary solution. Events of these kind tend to escalate up to a obligatory VPN for just using Internet, and beyond that to VPNs that resist blocking, like amnezia-wg, xray and suchlike.
You see, they block, then they notice that blocks do not work, they try harder. And still harder, till the situation comes to impasse, when to try harder means to shut off the Internet. It stops there, everyone is using some kind of DPI resistant VPN, paying more for internet access, and ISP spending more to block what politicians deem worthy of blocks. A pure waste of money. Though datacenters are happy, because they host a ton of VPNs.
If other websites exist about this topic, why are these two specifically being censored and by who? If abortion is legal (within a set of guidelines), what laws exist that these sites are breaking or close to breaking that might lead them to be censored?
> If abortion is legal (within a set of guidelines), what laws exist that these sites are breaking or close to breaking that might lead them to be censored?
Mailing out prescription drugs without a prescription.
The issue with abortion is that some think the fetus deserves legal protection because it is equivalent to a human baby. So, they don't think it should be killed. In Italy, abortion is allowed in the first 90 days. After that, it is illegal. These websites were providing abortion pills to be used past the 90 day period, which is illegal.
So, these websites were being blocked because they were engaged in illegal activity.
The woman is clearly a human life too, and every western country has a right to self defense. A fetus is an imminent danger to women, their health, and their property. They have a right to remove it from their own body to stop that.
Or am I allowed to unconsentually put myself inside anyone for months, eating the food from their blood like a tapeworm, causing chronic pain, permanently changing their hormones, potentially risking death, just to come ripping my way out of their body and then demanding 18 years of pay and attention?
Am I entitled to an unconsenting healthy person's blood or organs or marrow if I'm going to die without it and we know they're "probably" going to be fine?
Yes but... you used the word "belief". Nothing scientific there.
If the mother was raped and knows for sure she will not bring up her rapist's kid ... or if there is a possibility that letting the baby be born will kill the mother, MY belief is to follow the mother's wishes.
Not all of us I would bet. One can believe the fetus is a human life, and still want to allow the mother ending it. Sure it’s rough, but this is a classic case of conflicting interest. Pretending the fetus isn’t human yet is just one of several ways to side with the mother’s decision. Malformations or danger to the mother’s life are two others. And then there’s the more radical position that as long as the fetus hasn’t left the womb, the mother’s autonomy is still more important than its life.
This last one is less a belief, (one week before birth the baby is clearly viable), than it is a value system. Though I’d be curious to see the statistics on countries that allow abortion up to birth itself. If it turns out practically no one aborts after 4 months or whatever, that particular point would be moot.
> This last one is less a belief, (one week before birth the baby is clearly viable), than it is a value system.
Upthread, a response to me indicated very clearly that, even at 1 day before delivery, it should be the mother's choice.
There's a lot of nuance here, with clearly many people stuck in denial: this is not a binary question. There's a spectrum, all the way from 1 day after conception to 1 day before delivery.
The pro-choicers are pretending that all the pro-lifers want to outlaw the morning after pill. The pro-choicers are also not doing themselves any favours by actually, on this story alone, positioning themselves as supporting 1-day-before-delivery abortions.
Everyone has a line they'll draw. Not everyone's line is in the same place.
You are being downvoted, and I don't know why. The majority of abortions are a result of people getting pregnant and not wanting a baby. And that's alright, there's nothing wrong with that.
I say this as someone that is 100% pro-abortion. If a woman wants to not have a baby, it's her body, and her right to decide. The discussion ends there.
Life is hard in the best of times. It must suck to be brought into a world where your mother doesn't even fucking want you around.
Moreover, it's probably preferable that people that make poor decisions regarding pregnancy opt themselves out of the gene pool.
Even so, you are deliberately dismissing rape victims that got pregnant[1], what is their recourse? Or do you just care about the rights of a fetus while it's in utero and then they're on their own as soon as they pop out?
I linked to a study exploring the numbers in the US states where abortion was banned, not referring to Italy here. My response was to the "rape victim red herring" which i find incredibly distasteful.
If someone is morally opposed to abortion, they don’t need to have one. That’s where it should end, there’s no need to control the bodies of others due to a moral belief that other people don’t hold.
The fetus is inside of an adult human with a life they’re living. The decision is theirs to make, nobody else should have input, but unfortunately that isn’t the case in some places.
Someone having an abortion have zero effect on a person who is against abortion but has never met them. The anti-abortion person should mind their own business.
I don’t believe in god and think religion is generally harmful but I don’t go around campaigning to eliminate religious freedoms. I don’t tell religious people I think their beliefs are ridiculous, I keep it to myself.
Abortion wasn’t even an issue in the US until Atwater->Reagan realized there were a bunch of religious people they could manipulate into voting for the GOP by making abortion a wedge issue.
That is unfortunate, but the opposing view entitles a fetus to use of another persons body. This is something I am not entitled to, even if a blood transfusion, marrow transplant, or organ donation would save my life with certainty.
There are several aspects to this. One is control over women. Another is panic over the idea that other people with darker skin tone might overrun us with their reproductive might; either by mating like rabbits, or straight up stealing our our women. (They’re ours, right? Riight?) Also, the Book said something like "Be fruitful and multiply".
The weird thing about Great Replacement bullshit, is how it manages to mix superiority complex with inferiority complex. Like viewing oneself as less attractive than the "inferior" brother accros the street, or believing in the superiority of one’s culture, and in natural selection, and be afraid of being overrun by an "inferior" one…
Controlling reproduction means controlling women. Controlling women seems to be a high priority for crotchety old men. But that doesn't really answer your question, it just rephrases it.
I think it is like anorexia. Someone who has no control over their own lives tries to control the few things they can. An anorexic controls their food, but a married man controls his wife and kids. It makes even the weakest person feel strong to have someone to boss around.
> Controlling reproduction means controlling women. Controlling women seems to be a high priority for crotchety old men.
You ignore that so many leading anti-abortion activists are women. I think for example of Joanna Howe, [0] who is arguably the most prominent activist against abortion rights in contemporary Australia-and far from some “crotchety old man”, she is a 43 year old law professor.
I don't think you need an analogy like that to explain why people want to control women. They want to control women for the same reason they want to control men. Is it any mystery why people seek power? Those with power can decide how to distribute the resources of the society in a way that preferences them and their inner circle.
Access to reproduction is one of the most basic resources a society has available. It is common for the old men to control the young men by being the ones to decide who gets access to women. "Work for us loyally, and we'll allow you to get married"
I don't think they are trying to control men. I'm not seeing any evidence of that. When I see a law that attacks women, it is very clearly targeted towards women, but I don't see anything that clearly targets men.
Controlling women means controlling men. The most basic way to do that is by controlling who is allowed to get married. Attacks against the reproductive rights of women are caused by a desire to avoid "side channels" by which a couple could avoid passing through the systems established to control marriage.
Society became much more complex than a tribal village where the elders decide everything, and so have the levels of indirection in how control of reproduction is wielded. The situation is also quite a bit more complicated now that populations are able to grow so far above the local carrying capacity of the land. Yet we can still trace a line back to when it was necessary for a community to collectively maintain the sustainability of their population by deciding how many children could be supported at any one time.
I zeroed in on khalic's mention of "far right populism" which I thought was a universal term, but skrebbel made it sound like that doesn't apply to Italy (but I still think it does), so I clarified.
The first thing she did in office was a order to be called "il signor presidente", masculine of the correct "la signora presidente".
She's not an old man but behaves as such and the fascist side of her support is strongly misogynist.
This is the kind of rational you arrive to, if you spend too much time in feminist circles and never bother to actually try to understand the other side. I can assure you that nobody thinks in terms of "controlling women".
The worse the experience of working life gets, the more important an idealized family life becomes for many downwardly mobile or precarious people. Most people's family lives cannot actually live up to this fantasy, so scapegoats - gender non-conforming people, feminists, immigrants - are required to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
So, providing information on how to carry out abortion after the 1st trimester in a country where abortion in the first 90 days is legal and free is not the disturbing part to you… it’s trying to prevent abortions after those 90 days.
I believe there’s something very wrong with your moral compass, pal.
This is obviously a contentious issue, but it's important to understand why.
Catholics are "pro birth" in general, but it really doesn't have much in scripture to support it; there is of course the "Quiverfull" movement which aims for each birth to be "an arrow in the quiver of God's army"
So for all of that, it's clearly a religious viewpoint and that raises serious 1A questions.
A question I've never seen addressed by those who hew to this belief system:
Apparently roughly 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, which is (using the belief system above), God is performing an abortion. How does that reconcile with that stance.
My personal take is simple: "every baby should be a wanted baby"
The politics of it started half a century ago, and the politicizing of abortion was very much intentional:
I'm arguing in good faith and welcome valid criticism.
Please note that I'm not trying to troll (the bit about God doing abortions may seem like it but that point stands on its own: if an abortion is the cessation of the development of a fetus or proto-human, then a miscarriage is effectively an "abortion"). The question becomes "why did that happen". This is an important question to ask because women are being imprisoned for miscarriages and the "passionate pursuit of the matter" does not always lead to justice.
As for any strawmen from me, my conflation of Catholic teaching and the Quiverfull movement -- I'll own that outright as being lazy on my part.
Politics can be construed in different ways. Yes, there have been laws and movements, but not under the banner of any US political party. I'm talking about as a partisan platform issue. I remember, I was there. It's very well documented and there's an even less palatable facet to that movement as it has been documented that it was intended to succeed segregation as a politically activating issue.
Now back to your points:
Conflating infanticide with "abortion" is an Equivocation — using a single term or concept across two things that differ in a morally or legally. Also known as a false equivalence. It also begs the question, since the equivalence between fetus and infant is precisely what's in dispute.
I'm engaging here in self-defense, because there are parties actively trying to make this country a theocracy and I think thats a very bad idea.
But I would add, I don't think we can define a person as anything other than a genetically distinct individual of the species Homo sapiens. If a definition were to be proposed not on the basis of what something is, but rather how it functions, where it exists, or its level of dependence on other persons, then personhood ceases to be an inherent property and becomes a conditional privilege. And historically, whenever society has tried to separate biological human status from legal 'personhood,' it has paved the way for dehumanization and injustice.
To preserve human equality, personhood must be tied strictly to objective biological reality.
[1] https://www.salute.gov.it/new/it/tema/salute-della-donna/
[2] https://www.salute.gov.it/new/it/tema/salute-della-donna/int...