Pregnancy begins two weeks before conception

[Sky Warrior Bob]

The 18th week bill includes a new definition for when pregnancy begins. All of the bills passed the Senate and now head to Gov. Jan Brewer ® for her signature or veto. Passage of the late-term abortion bill would give Arizona the earliest definition of late-term abortion in the country; most states use 20 weeks as a definition.

A sentence in the bill defines gestational age as "calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman," which would move the beginning of a pregnancy up two weeks prior to conception.

Elizabeth Nash, states issues manager for Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research organization in Washington, said the definition corresponds with how doctors typically determine gestational age. She said since the exact date of conception cannot be pinpointed, doctors use the day of the woman's last menstrual period to gauge the duration of a pregnancy. The method does not provide an exact date.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...usaolp00000003

So yeah... Arizona, proving its idiocy yet once again.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

So on the day of conception a women is now considered two weeks into the pregnancy even though she just got knocked up? I can understand that the excat date of conception isn't easy to pinpoint, but two weeks?

meh.

[Jagos]

Dear lord why are Republicans fighting the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s?

[Satan's Onion]

Originally Posted by Jagos

Dear lord why are Republicans fighting the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s?

Because if they throw enough money at it, and they're manipulative enough, and everyone else is burned out/alienated from the democratic process/apathetic enough, they can win.

[Ryanderman]

Merits or lack thereof of the law aside, isn't the beginning of the menstrual period, usually about 2 weeks before ovulation and thus conception, pretty standard as week 0?

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Ryanderman

Merits or lack thereof of the law aside, isn't the beginning of the menstrual period, usually about 2 weeks before ovulation and thus conception, pretty standard as week 0?

Which is a perfectly acceptable amount of looseness for a standard to have in all those circumstances where you aren't threatening women and doctors with the possibility of criminal investigation for the suspicion of them killin someone who may or may not have existed

NOTE: uh post heavily edited sorry if someone already responded to the shitty post i had here in the 20 minutes it took me to rewrite this one

[Ryanderman]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

Which is a perfectly acceptable amount of looseness for a standard to have in all those circumstances where you aren't threatening women and doctors with the possibility of criminal investigation for the suspicion of them killin someone who may or may not have existed

NOTE: uh post heavily edited sorry if someone already responded to the shitty post i had here in the 20 minutes it took me to rewrite this one

My point, though I didn't really state my point at all my apologies, was that the article paints Arizona Republicans as part of a conspiracy to change that date. It's not that at all. It's how the standard 40 weeks of pregnancy have been defined all along. They're changing nothing related to that. Just using standard terms. All other laws in the US relating to weeks of pregnancy use the same definition.

If the standard 40 weeks of pregnancy definition is a problem, I have no comment on that.

[pochercoaster]

Originally Posted by Ryanderman

My point, though I didn't really state my point at all my apologies, was that the article paints Arizona Republicans as part of a conspiracy to change that date. It's not that at all. It's how the standard 40 weeks of pregnancy have been defined all along. They're changing nothing related to that. Just using standard terms. All other laws in the US relating to weeks of pregnancy use the same definition.

If the standard 40 weeks of pregnancy definition is a problem, I have no comment on that.

Merits or lack thereof of the law aside, isn't the beginning of the menstrual period, usually about 2 weeks before ovulation and thus conception, pretty standard as week 0?

Women can conceive and ovulate during any part of their cycle, though your highest chances are in the middle of the cycle when you're supposed to ovulate. If this wasn't true then you could have sex without contraception during menstruation without risk of pregnancy (common urban legend), which is patently FALSE. Menstruation does not always work like clockwork. Ovulation can be hastened or delayed due to any number of factors. Periods are not always on time. Ask any woman. I certainly don't know any who haven't missed a period or had a really early period at least a few times in their life.

Thus: the only thing this bill does is make it more difficult for women to obtain abortions. There shouldn't be restrictions on when a woman can obtain an abortion, frankly. It's pretty much bullshit.

[Sky Warrior Bob]

Originally Posted by Ryanderman

Merits or lack thereof of the law aside, isn't the beginning of the menstrual period, usually about 2 weeks before ovulation and thus conception, pretty standard as week 0?

The method used, is far from accurate. It's a guesstimate, that just hasn't had to be accurate, since it was used well into an actual pregnancy, to make an educated guess at the conception.

It was never meant to be used in this fashion, and it's inherent flaws become blatant.

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by Sky Warrior Bob

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...usaolp00000003

So yeah... Arizona, proving its idiocy yet once again.

There's nothing idiotic about it; it is completely consistent with and salutory to its proponents' philosophic viewpoint that bitches ain't shit.