From: nyikos@math.scarolina.edu (Peter Nyikos)
Subject: Re: First fetus, now trimester: Pro-Lie movement newspeak.
Organization: USC  Department of Computer Science
Date: 21 Aug 92 22:12:09 GMT

This follow-up contains some math trivia.  I am, after all, a math professor.

In <28680@option.GBA.NYU.EDU> smezias@option.GBA.NYU.EDU (Stephen J. Mezias) writes:

>In article <1992Aug17.213604.21970@ncsu.edu> dsh@odin.ece.ncsu.edu
>(Doug Holtsinger) writes in a continuing stream of newspeak concerning
>the word trimester.  Recently, DOD declared the word unclear: What
>does it mean he asks. 

What does DOD stand for?  I'm still very new to USENET.

> Now, to those of who went to a school like
>Stanford that had three semesters (trimesters) per academic year, we
>know it means one third of the complete school year.  Since a complete
>human gestation (that means pregnancy, DOD) lasts nine months,

Usually, 38 weeks, 40 weeks if you use the OB/GYN "default" definition,
as I pointed out in my "Ripley" post last month. [A sequel will be
coming your way soon.]

> one
>third would be about three months.  That would put the third trimester
>after the onset of the 25th week. 

Well after.  Slightly after the onset of the 27th week, if you go by "9
months"; slightly before if you go by 38 weeks.  

Trivia question:
When Blackmun peremptorily set up his trimester scheme, did he really
think  9  months equated to  36 weeks?  [As though every month were a
February?] Is that why he came up with 
24 weeks as the rock-bottom minimum for viability, when that figure
was "unknown to medical science," as Bernard Nathanson, one of the
co-founders of NARAL, puts it in _Aborting America_?

Actually, Blackmun is slowly retreating from the trimester schema.
In his *Webster* dissent, he said "viability occurs no earlier than
23 weeks gestational age" [492 US at 553], then waffled a bit in a
footnote on the following page: "there is an `anatomic threshold' for
fetal viability of about 23-24 weeks of gestation".   

Here he was quoting from a brief from the American Medical Association,
which ought to have known better: there are cases of prematurely born
children [`preemie' sounds politically incorrect to me] surviving even
at 20 weeks gestational age, which is where the Encyclopedia Britannica
says is usually the latest an "abortion", by its definition, can take
place.

Then, in the same footnote, Blackmun quotes another source which says
"no technology exists to bridge the development gap between the three-day
embryo culture and the 24th week of gestation."  

There's a lot of 
disinformation floating around out there, folks, a lot of it due to 
medical-legal people buffaloed by the gospel according to Blackmun, and 
Blackmun (maybe) not realizing this himself.

> So, DOD needs to change the meaning
>of the word to suit his purposes:

>>>> And it's not clear what Ms. Garvin defines as "third trimester". The
>>>> definition of third trimester varies; some put it at 28 weeks, others
>>>> at 24 weeks.
>>
>>> As has been posted previously in talk.abortion:
>>>    Statistics from the Alan Guttmacher Institute:
>>
>>The Alan Guttmacher Institute is the research arm of Planned Parenthood,
>>which is one of the largest abortion providers in the United States.
>>
>>>   LESS THEN 100 ABORTIONS ARE PERFORMED EVERY YEAR AFTER THE 24TH WEEK OF
>>>   PREGNANCY.
>>
>>Thousands of abortions are performed every year past the 21st week of
>>pregnancy.  

>Pro-lie newspeak.  I wonder if DOD has spoken to any pre-born children
>this week.

Even the FAQ, one of whose adulterations of RvW I will expose shortly,
an adulteration in the pro-choice direction [as if RvW were not pro-choice 
enough], agrees with Doug.  As for the "less than 100" figure of Mezias,
I'd like to see where he gets his statistics.  "Less than 1000" might be
defensible. 

And now some not-so-trivial questions:

 Does anyone know what happened to the woman who worked in the clinic
of Abortionist Tiller of Wichita, who said that there were hundreds of
third trimester abortions each year in Tiller's clinic, alone?

	Did Judge Kelly, who so zealously prosecuted the Operation
Rescue folks, ever get to see the inside of the clinic at all? 

	Did any of the federal marshals commandeered by Kelly ever
get to see the inside of the clinic?

Newsgroups: talk.abortion