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Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

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Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#71

Post by loup-vaillant »

lelanthran wrote: post #27
gpderetta wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So in practice access to it is not always that easy. Understood, but the solution cannot be "allow prescription drugs to be sold online". If access is not easy, there needs to be a different solution.

> 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.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#72

Post by chpatrick »

lelanthran wrote: post #49
chpatrick wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

[dead]

It has absolutely no medical function apart from further traumatizing a woman who's already in a really shitty situation.

No one's saying abortion should be possible at 8 months. At 6 weeks when there's a heartbeat it's barely a bag of cells.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#73

Post by bragr »

eur0pa wrote: post #20
lelanthran wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-o…

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:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#74

Post by ordu »

lelanthran wrote: post #27
gpderetta wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> So in practice access to it is not always that easy. Understood, but the solution cannot be "allow prescription drugs to be sold online". If access is not easy, there needs to be a different solution.

> 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.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#75

Post by Freak_NL »

lelanthran wrote: post #49
chpatrick wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

[dead]

> 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.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#76

Post by chpatrick »

onethought wrote: post #60
lelanthran wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

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.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#77

Post by luckydata »

petcat wrote: post #28

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.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#78

Post by drdaeman »

munk-a wrote: post #54
lelanthran wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

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.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#79

Post by ordu »

drnick1 wrote: post #43
petcat wrote: post #28

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.

The upside of that ISP-enforced bans can be trivially bypassed by using your own DNS or a public DNS like Quad9.

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.

Re: Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women

#80

Post by [deleted] »

realo wrote: post #57
Argonaut998 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you believe this fetus to be a human life then it follows believing that if it is terminated, it is akin to murder/infanticide. I don't know why people are being so (deliberatively?) reductive ITT.

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. It's her body and her life.

[deleted]
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