Waiting Periods - Pros and Cons

[bleedingheart]

I am pro-choice.

However, the waiting period issue is one that I am conflicted about. For some perspective, my husband and I decided that after the birth of our last child that one of us would be sterilized. Whether my husband or I underwent the procedure, the medical doctors involved had a waiting period. Both the Gynecologist and the Urologist stated that they would not do the procedure immediately.

My hubby decided to go for sterilization because the male procedure was less invasive and his urologist insisted that he sign papers and he even counseled my husband about it because he stated that the procedure was not easily reversed and since my husband was a young man ..(around 32) he didn't want him making this kind of decision lightly.
After approximately 6 weeks the procedure was done.

Now I understand that abortion is a different situation altogether but I also think that there are women who may be terribly conflicted and if they proceed with the procedure without properly weighing the decision they may end up even more upset afterwards and have misplaced hostility towards the clinc. ( I am not insinuating that women who seek abortion haven't already weighed the options because most probably already have...)

On the otherhand, I think that this waiting period sucks because women who must travel out of state for an abortion or any great distance to obtain the service will find themselves having to spend more money to obtain a procedure since they will have to arrange for lodging, etc and for those who have already made up their mind the longer they wait the more it upsets them.

[slackmaster]

1. A right delayed is a right denied

You have a right to modify your body.

No moral dilemma for me.

[_TJ_]

11. I agree 99.9%

But do you not think some women might be really glad of the
delay? Some might change their mind and be really relieved
they didn't make a mistake!

TJ

[iverglas]

13. what's your point?

But do you not think some women might be really glad of the
delay? Some might change their mind and be really relieved
they didn't make a mistake!

Some people might be really glad if they had to wait 3 days before the could complete the purchase of a new car. Some might change their mind and be really relieved they didn't make a mistake!

I'm sure you agree that some people might change their mind, and that if they had proceeded with the purchase on impulse it would have been a big mistake and caused them years of heartache.

So would you support a law requiring people to wait 3 days before being allowed to complete the purchase of a new car?

What *is* your point?

That the fact that SOME women seeking abortions might change their minds while waiting (which ALSO might be a big mistake) is grounds for compelling ALL women seeking abortions to wait?

Please do clarify. (Another question won't do that, keep in mind; nor will any further extolling of the wisdom of waiting. The question on the floor is: should women be compelled to wait before having access to abortion services?)

[_TJ_]

14. Peace friend.

Take it easy friend, I'm on your side!

All I'm saying is it might actually be for the greater good
if everyone had to wait a short while.

I agree the majority would be inconvenienced but the minority who
change their minds during the waiting period would be very glad they
had time to think.

And then if they change their minds again they can still go
through with it.

I'm just theorising here - sadly I live in a country where women
have few options when it comes to their reproduction :(

TJ

[iverglas]

17. damn, just as I suspected

No answer to the question. And it was such an easy one:

The question on the floor is: should women be compelled to wait before having access to abortion services?

Musings are fun, but they don't answer questions.

And the thing to remember here is that this is not some hypothetical, philosophy-class question we're examining. It has been answered "yes" in some jurisdictions in the US at this time -- so the question then is whether it can constitutionally be answered "yes".

All I'm saying is it might actually be for the greater good if everyone had to wait a short while.

Perhaps you could share the criteria against which you measure "the greater good".

If one woman decides against having an abortion and this works out nicely for her, while 100 women are compelled to travel out of state (which many women in the US must do) and spend another half a week's wages on motel bills while sitting out their waiting period and then proceed with their abortions, has "the greater good" been served?

How about if one woman decides against having an abortion and this works out fine for her, while 10 women decide against having an abortion simply because they cannot afford the time and money needed to enable them to travel and sit out the waiting period -- and this works out horribly for them? How about if, during that waiting period, one woman is coerced by a third party into not having an abortion?

Questions. Answers?

I agree the majority would be inconvenienced but the minority who change their minds during the waiting period would be very glad they had time to think.

"Inconvenienced". Such a convenient word.

If you were required to wait three days between registering your intent to voice your opinion and actually voicing your opinion, or between registering your intent to pray and actually praying, would you regard this as an "inconvenience"? Surely you would not regard this honking great burden on the exercise of your right to speak or to pray as too great a price to pay, given the off chance that someone else might put those three days to good use to contemplate her life and decide not to speak or pray after all.

Really, there is nothing preventing, let alone prohibiting, any woman who wants time to think about whether or not to have an abortion from doing so.

And then if they change their minds again they can still go through with it.

Yes, pregnancy is just one endless horizon stretching out in front of one, offering one endless windows of opportunity for making a decision, changing it, changing it again, making appointments, cancelling them, making them again, scheduling time off work, cancelling it, scheduling it again ...

I'm just theorising here - sadly I live in a country where women have few options when it comes to their reproduction

Ah, I see that neither of us lives in the US. And I imagine that when abortion is decriminalized in Ireland, it will come with all sorts of bells and whistles like waiting periods, in the early days. It will undoubtedly be necessary to "compromise" on such things just to get women any access to any choices at all.

But at present, the waiting periods in question are those imposed in the US. (In Canada, for example, the only waiting period there is, is the time between when one contacts a clinic or one's physician and the time the procedure can be scheduled -- sadly, here too, that can be unacceptably long for women in some remote locations or in a couple of backwoods dwarfish provinces that have refused to incorporate abortion clinic services into their health plans. And in the UK, there is a technical requirement for a counselling referral, but there are no distance/travel issues for women there.)


Laws are generally not properly made to protect people from themselves when what they are doing is not inherently and seriously harmful to themselves (or anyone else). The law does not generally treat people as if they are morons who cannot make proper decisions about their own lives unless they are forced to think for a while first.

There are balances to be struck sometimes -- making me wait 3 days to get married might not really be justified, but a lot of people (and not just the ones getting married) might be spared a good deal of grief by imposing that requirement. And abortion, unlike marriage, is not generally something that many people undertake when they are too drunk to know better, for instance. And marriage, unlike abortion, can be postponed a few days or weeks or months without any adverse effects in most cases.

But I have yet to hear of any good enough reason to prohibit women from exercising their right to have an abortion when choose.

And all that is without even mentioning that the imposition of waiting periods, in the US, is simply one element of the broad anti-choice campaign to eliminate access to abortion, which it is recently doing by trying to persuade public opinion that abortion (rather than being "murder") is bad for women, and that all of the rights violations it is attempting to have imposed are for women's own good. Let's not play into their hands by giving them an inch. They don't want an inch; they want women's whole lives.

There is nothing inherently good or bad about abortion, and the fact is that we have no way of knowing whether someone who was compelled to sit out a waiting period and then decided *not* to have an abortion has in fact made a *bad* decision that will then have horrible consequences for her for the rest of her life. And I don't see any "greater good" in that.

[_TJ_]

21. Peace friend - I agree with you

I have changed my mind on this issue and am in complete agreement
with you.

The opinions I offered were simply my opening thoughts on the
matter, as I never had to think about this before.

On further reflection I think that the waiting period serves
no worthwhile purpose.

On a side note, It is rather pointless to hope for a day
when abortion will be decriminalized in Ireland - we are sadly
one of the most backward countries in Europe on this
specific issue. I think 80% of the population wish it to
remain illegal. At least the UK is but a short trip away - 10,000
Irish women make it every year I believe.

I spend a lot of time trying to convince people that reproductive
rights for women are essential in a liberal society. Sometimes it
is like talking to a brick wall.

TJ

[iverglas]

23. history moves quickly

The older you get, the faster it goes, and the more you see it.

When I was a kid (the 50s and 60s), birth control was illegal in North America. If I assume that you are of an age that you could be my daughter -- you see? Just one generation, and my world changed completely.

It won't very likely be another generation before abortion is decriminalized in Ireland. Pockets of human rights violators don't survive too well when they are in the middle of a sea of progress. Ireland is no longer the insular (figuratively speaking) society it was only a few years ago. Economic development and recognition of rights / breaking down patriarchy go hand in hand, and Ireland is certainly experiencing the economic development side of progress. From reading results of surveys and referendums, it seems that abortion might be legal in Ireland tomorrow, if not completely unrestricted, if the urban areas were the only ones deciding.

Of course, there are always backlashes and backwaters ... such as we see in parts of the US today, and in the US as a whole in some ways.

I was musing to my co-vivant a while ago about how it's time we had some earth-shaking technological development. In the last 150 years or so, we'd had internal combustion engines, electricity, photography, the telephone, radio and then television, faxes and computers and the internet. Time for something else. I was thinking maybe teleportation ...

Then last night it struck me. When I was a kid, telephones with pictures were a big feature of science fiction. Look at the first two Star Trek series, one even after I'd grown up: seeing the person you were talking to on screen was one of the magic things they could do that we couldn't. Now we can. And I didn't even notice when it happened.

My grandparents were born about 1900 -- when their mothers couldn't vote. In 1950, my mother was dismissed from her job with the government of Canada when she married. When I finished university about 20 years later, "help wanted" ads listed jobs by "males wanted" and "females wanted". When I started law school about 2 years later in the early 70s, mine was the first class (1/3 women) to be more than about 8% women (although my particular school was a little late getting with the program ... the dean until that year having been an Irish Roman Catholic stalwart ...).

This looks like a good review and summary of the situation in Ireland:
http://www.marxist.com/women/ireland_abortion_referendum.html
(I don't *completely* adopt the last few paragraphs of rhetoric, largely because I know that it is simply nonsensical to talk about a time when all pregnancies will be wanted pregnancies. That isn't reality.)

The right-wing elements of the Irish church and government have been doing a decent job lately of exposing themselves for what they are. Fewer and fewer people tend to agree with positions like disallowing rape, or the possibility of suicide, as grounds for being granted an exemption to the ban on abortions (because women are manipulative scheming liars who will dishonestly threaten suicide and allege rape), just because the stupidity and viciousness inherent in such policies and statements is too much for most reasonably intelligent and decent people to swallow.

And of course there is a quite well-organized and articulate feminist movement working to expose them and advocating for women.

Take heart. I predict a very few years before Irish women are able to exercise their rights.

[_TJ_]

24. But does history always move forward?

"http://www.marxist.com/women/ireland_abortion_referendu... "

You don't need to remind me of that. The X and C cases ripped
Ireland apart worse than the Terri Schiavo business is tearing
America apart.

"I assume that you are of an age that you could be my daughter"

No but I might be the right age to be your son. :)

"It won't very likely be another generation before abortion is decriminalized in Ireland."

I hope to see it but believe me we have hypocrites and bigots
in spades in Ireland. And I honestly fear the rising tide of
religious fundamentalist insanity that is gripping your country
will spread over here. It already seems to be taking root
in the UK. :( :(

TJ

[iverglas]

25. eek

And I honestly fear the rising tide of religious fundamentalist insanity that is gripping your country will spread over here.

Not *my* country! My country is Canada, an oasis of sanity and respect for the most part. (We won't get into Alberta.) That's why I attempt to be a little polite about the backwater to the south of me when in Rome. ;)

Our fundamentalist nutballs have their occasional day in the spotlight, but overall we dismiss them as fools and swine.

Circumstances will always alter cases. Societies having difficult times adjusting to change will exhibit backlashes. And the success of the ruling class in manipulating and deceiving the rest of their societies will vary depending on the means they have available to them. In the US, a significant factor is the concentration of wealth in so few hands. (Income in the US is distributed tremendously more unequally than even in the UK, the next country on the developed-nation list in terms of income inequality/disparity.) Cultural/historical factors of course also vary.

You should look at Quebec. Barely a half-century ago, it was priest-ridden, underdeveloped and governed, provincially speaking, by (elected) vicious right-wing bigots. It is now one of the most progressive societies on earth. The RC church has virtually no influence there. Same-sex marriage is legal in Quebec, which introduced "civil union" laws for all couples before the courts ruled in favour of actual marriage for same-sex couples; and more couples, including couples with children, choose not to marry in Quebec than anywhere else in Canada. The Canadian law against abortion (which required the permission of a hospital committee on life-or-health grounds) was struck down in a process that started with juries in Quebec refusing to convict the doctors charged with breaking it, so the Quebec government simply stopped trying to enforce it. An overwhelming majority of people in Quebec (the "pure wool" Quebecers, the historically French/RC population) still self-identify as RC, but particularly among young people this has no influence on their political and social views.

I would never downplay the complexity of social change, but it's hard not to see that human history does move in the forward direction overall, and that Ireland really isn't "exceptional" in so many ways as to keep it outside that stream for long.

France is long-time big-time RC as well; it's joined modernity. Portugal is still dragging behind in terms of social/legal modernity -- but then it's dragging behind in terms of economic development, too. Ditto Latin and South America, generally speaking.

I can imagine it is depressing to live in the time/place before the changes happen; fortunately, I didn't have to live long with that situation here. But it's a process, and we're all part of it, and the dinosaurs really do die.

[Warpy]

18. That's kind of patronizing

Any woman who calls an abortion clinic for an appointment has already agonized over the decision for days, sometimes weeks. Many of the women come from out of town, and can't afford an extra 24 hours in a city while they wait out a stupid, unnecessary waiting period. It's an undue burden placed on a legal but not readily available procedure. Only when every OB-GYN and hospital offer the procedure might it be appropriate. When women have to travel hundreds of miles to find a clinic, it is not.

Sterilization can be done in a doc's office for men, and most urologists will do it. It is a readily available procedure wherever a man happens to live, and a waiting period doesn't put an undue burden on any man who can stay at home in his home town. Female sterilization is major surgery, and since it's an elective surgery, the waiting period is built in with the scheduling.

[_TJ_]

22. my apologies warpy

I did not mean to be patronising at all. I accept that I was out
of line on this issue and I have now changed my mind.

I agree with everything you said.

TJ

[gollygee]

2. Why should anyone else have the right to *make* a woman wait?

Anyone who wants to wait is free to do so. Any woman can certainly take a couple of days to decide. No one should force a woman to decide immediately, and no one should assume a woman is incapable of making up her own mind without outside help.

Even now, with safe abortions legal, women still intentionally fall down stairs, drink toxic substances, etc., in an attempt to end pregnancies because safe abortion is still not as accessible as it should be. We don't need to make safe abortion *less* accessible.

[_TJ_]

12. but people make mistakes they regret

Wouldn't a delay be to a woman's benefit sometimes?

[Scout]

15. the possibility of some women benefitting some of the time...

is not a sufficient justification to force all women to wait.

Many clinics already offer counseling before they will agree to perform an abortion. Many of those will NOT do the procedure if they think that the woman is under duress from a boyfriend or other family member.

If a woman is not yet sure about abortion, she can cancel the appointment, she can talk to a counselor, she can talk to a religious advisor all on her own. She doesn't need to be reminded that she can seek counsel, and be forced to wait and go home and think about it, as if she were a naughty child being sent to a time out.

And chances are pretty good that, even if she doesn't want or need counseling, she'll get some from the "sidewalk counselors" who will be protesting and shouting obscenities and accusations at her as she goes into the clinic.

There are no benefits to be gained by forced waiting periods, and harm can and does occur if not physically, then at least financially by forcing a woman to postpone a desired abortion.

[_TJ_]

16. no argument here

I think your position is probably correct.

[Warpy]

19. No.

Count her travel time to the clinic as the waiting period. Don't force an overnight stay in some overpriced hotel.

[ehrnst]

27. You could say that about any elective procedure.

But you don't. There is no medical reason to burden someone beyond what medical professionals deem neccessary for them to be informed about the risks of the procedure.

And they say waiting periods do no good - and only delay women for weeks, sometimes.

[noamnety]

3. Do all medical procedures require a waiting period?

Is there a mandatory waiting period for plastic surgery? For eye surgery?

The concept is ridiculous. Unless women are calling clinics the day they find out they are pregnant and getting same day appointments, which I highly doubt, they already have had a chance to sleep on it.

It's just another roadblock, and as was mentioned, many women can barely scrape together the money, let alone getting a day off of work. This is just another roadblock which would undoubtable prevent some women from being able to get medical care.

If they want a law that says 24 or 48 hours must pass between the call to a clinic and the actual appointment (no same day appointments), I could live with that as I suspect it works that way anyway - it would give the woman a day or two to consider, but not require an extra visit, more money, more time off work, and extra travel arrangements. But I would only support that if it became the standard for all elective/nonemergency surgery - not just this particular procedure.

Personally, I'd rather see a mandatory waiting period on enlisting in the military.

[bleedingheart]

5. Actually many elective procedures require waiting periods

Competent plastic surgeons will not put breast implants in a woman's body the moment she shows up at the office. Many require that women speak to a counselor about the ramifications and if the physician doesn't think the woman is realistic, he/she will refuse to do the surgery.

The only elective procedure I know of that typically happens same day are those that are less invasive, like mole removal.

I too believe that most women who want an abortion already have mulled it over in their mind for 24 hours or so but without seeing the way the bills are written I don't know what that 24 hour waiting period constitutes.

Does calling the office on a Tuesday for an appointment on Wednesday satisfy the requirement???

[ehrnst]

10. Not the same thing...

The abortion requirement means that the woman has to show up 24 hours before the actual time that she needs to check in for surgery. This is in addition to any delay based on medical or scheduling issues. This is not the case with any other procedure.

It is purely to make her wait and create as many obstacles as possible. Despite the fact that mainstream medical associations have stated that these mandatory waiting periods only delay women and cause greater risk to her with that later procedure - these PL politicians claim that they are doing this for "women's own good."

And on the surface, 24 hours doesn't seem like a hardship until you look at the facts about providers.

Mny clinics only perform abortions on Saturdays or a few days a week, and that can delay a woman for weeks - especially if there are few in her state. MS only has one. 98% of all US counties have no provider.

Add and extra day off work, a hotel stay, extra childcare, someone to drive you...and that 24 hours can translate into weeks very easily.

I don't think that there are any elective surgical providers that work on a "walk-in" basis. They don't want to be standing around doing nothing, so they book ahead of time.

[Warpy]

20. No, antiwoman laws mandate an office visit with fundy counseling

and an overnight wait before the procedure can be done.

It's just another stupid, patronizing piece of crap they'll use to chip away at our rights.

[iverglas]

4. big differences

Whether my husband or I underwent the procedure, the medical doctors involved had a waiting period. Both the Gynecologist and the Urologist stated that they would not do the procedure immediately.

There was evidently no legislation involved. The professionals in question, in the exercise of their professional discretion (which is subject to the ethical rules made by that profession's governing body, on behalf of the public, in the exercise of the authority that the public assigns to it), decided what the needs of their patients were, and adopted practices accordingly.

(Undoubtedly they also decided what their own needs were, in terms of ass-covering in the event of patients deciding they had not got proper care, and adopted practices accordingly. As long as the two considerations didn't place them in a conflict of interest in which they chose to protect their own rather than the patient's, no problem.)

The professionals who provide women with abortions are subject to exactly the same ethical requirements. If they encounter a patient who they have reason to believe has not made a properly informed decision in that respect, or whom they believe to have emotional or other difficulties that interfere in her ability to make a decision in her own best interests, they have a responsibility at least to explore her situation farther, and in some cases to provide services to assist her, or refer her to appropriate service providers. A physician who believed that a patient might be acting under coercion, or saw that there appeared to be factors present that would result in the patient suffering more adverse effects from terminating than from continuing the pregnancy, would have a duty to inquire and advise based on what s/he determined.

But physicians just don't have a duty to deny patients services, or delay the provision of those services, based on their own feelings about the service or about the nature of the decision.

This is the only reason that I reluctantly go along with the "between a woman and her doctor" formulation. The physician is providing a professional service, and there might be situations in which it would be unprofessional to provide it to a particular patient.

But that has absolutely nothing to do with legislated waiting periods (or legislated propagandizing of patients).

The only big important decision that I can think of where a waiting period is legislated (where I'm at) is marriage: the three-day period between licence issuance and ceremony. But in that case, the licence can be obtained in Place A and the ceremony performed in Place B, for instance; this is not the case for waiting periods before abortions. And there really is seldom an urgent time-frame for marrying. (And if there were ... say, one party was dying ... an exemption could be obtained.) And it's arguable that society can be affected by people leaping willy-nilly into marriage on 10 minutes' notice, marriage being an institution subject to public rules and to litigation in the courts, and a marriage being something that can affect third parties' rights; the same cannot be said about people's medical decisions, and specifically about abortion.

... I also think that there are women who may be terribly conflicted and if they proceed with the procedure without properly weighing the decision they may end up even more upset afterwards and have misplaced hostility towards the clinc.

And that's for the clinic to determine. A reasonable apprehension that a patient will allege malpractice where none occurred would likely be good reason to refuse services.

For info, have a look here:
http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/anti-tales.shtml
"The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion"
-- When the Anti-Choice Choose

[REP]

6. Some States Have Waiting Periods For Sterilizations

My own speculation on the reason for the waiting periods is to help sheild the surgeon from lawsuits if the patient later changes his/her mind about being sterilized. I know that when I had mine done, I waived it to the legal minimum allowed. I was lucky that I had a surgeon who treated me as an adult, and didn't question if I really wanted it done even though I had no children or what would happen if my husband died and I met a man who wanted children (questions that are routinely asked to nulliparous women who seek sterilizations). I'd bet that 99.9% of all men and women who seek surgical sterilization know it's permanent and that's why they want it done and they .1% who doesn't, does after the informed consent is done.

Likewise with abortion. Most women have given some thought as to what to do if an unwanted pregnancy occurs long before any such pregnancy does occur (and most try to prevent that from happening). Even those who don't put much thought into the what-ifs start thinking when the stick turns blue; they don't get magically transported to the nearest abortion clinic the minute the blastocyst implants into the endometrium.

Yes, there will always be people who make bad decisions for bad reasons. We can either bubble-wrap the entire world for them, or treat them like everyone else, and allow them to make their own decisions.

[ehrnst]

9. However, Major medical orgs oppose waiting periods for abortions

Legislated waiting periods come from politicians, not the medical community.

Here's a report on what the medical community has to say about it.

http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/facts/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=1715

[cally]

7. I think there should be waiting periods for all medical procedures

Like you, I'm conflicted. Many will head to other states for abortions and have to wait it out. That's wrong on so many levels. So, I'm for leaving it to the woman, her conscience, and her religion. I don't want to legislate anyone's decision.

Personally,..all should wait to make a decision. Same as all the other decisions we make in our lives.

[ehrnst]

8. There is no medical reason for it, and it can delay many women

for weeks.

These waiting periods are not even deemed neccessary for plastic surgery - which can be far more dangerous.

I'm betting your husband's physician was not required by law to make your husband wait 24 hours between being checking in for the sterilization actually getting it done - just to be sure that he had given it proper consideration.

And Sterilization is procedure that affects all future reproductive options - and abortion does not.

[Undercover Owl]

26. the logic escapes me.

Wait a little longer so the fetus can be even older and more developed when aborted..?