First of, the Americans can do what they like, doesn’t really concern me. But I guess if it can work in Scandinavia, I see no reason why it couldn’t be made to work in the USA. It’s not like the USA is a lawless third world country yet.
"Are you planning to hire additional law-enforcement officers to investigate”
Has not been necessary in Denmark.
“Planning to alter medical ethics so that doctors and nurses are required to inform government of patients seeking late-term abortions”
All cases of somebody seeking late-term abortions are automatically registered.
“What kind of “expert council” are you proposing:”
Could be like the Danish: A council consists of one communal worker with legal expertise and two doctors, of which one must be a specialist doctor in gynecology and the other specialist doctor in psychiatry. The decision can be appealed to a higher council.
“Are states required to pay for the establishment and maintenance of these councils”
Yes. They are in Denmark. Not a great cost. But Danish “states” are less independent that American.
“What about sparsely populated states like Wyoming or Alaska, where a pregnant woman might easily be hundreds of miles from a council?”
I don’t think the council meets the woman. She fills in a form together with her doctor.
“What about the woman?”
I don’t know. Of course, I guess it makes little sense to have a law, which can be broken without penalty. Are there any such laws? But I doubt it will be necessary.
“What range of penalties did you have in mind?”
In Denmark illegal abortions are punished with prison up to 2 years – and 4 years if the abortion was performed by a non-qualified personal (quackery). That is the person performing the abortion. I’m not sure if the woman can be punished. Anyway, it has to my knowledge never been tried.
“Can a doctor explain away an emergency late-term abortion after the fact to the above-mentioned council, claiming the situation was too dire to wait for an appointment?”
as it works now, the council only enters the picture before an abortion. This is theoretical as it has never happened, but once an abortion has been performed, if somebody finds it suspicious then it would be a police matter. All abortions in Denmark are performed in state hospitals.
What you said was: “I don’t think there is any great number of Danish women self-aborting (late-term) or going abroad for late term abortions. There is a case ever three or four years…” Now maybe that’s not really how you meant it, but you can’t accuse me of putting words in your mouth. Those are your words.
Sure it is. A law isn’t ineffectual only where it fails to prevent every single instance of the prohibited act. It has to be viewed in total. In the case of the Denmark law, by your own admission 7 out of 8 women who applied were able to get late abortions despite the law (and I can’t imagine how traumatic it must have been for them to have to go through the process of appealing to a committee - a committee, FFS - just to get the abortion they were entitled to anyway), and an unknown quantity that is at least 26 but undoubtedly much higher either had illegal abortions or went elsewhere. That, to me, is a law that is doing nothing but delaying and complicating women’s access to abortion - not preventing it.
Of course, but the consequences of making those laws need to be taken in mind.
I have no doubt that there are other things that a majority of Danes find morally wrong and yet they are not illegal, either because doing so would impinge on someone else’s rights or because the consequences of making them illegal would outweigh the benefits. Laws against female genital mutilation, or murder for that matter, do not fall into those categories. Laws against abortion do.
Google isn’t really a cite. One particular group opposed to the treaty used abortion as an argument, and confused a lot of people. Some of the Yes side have tried to emphasise that as a factor (it suits them to portray No voters as stupid and misinformed). But the studies that have been done, by the Government and the EU Commission for example, show that it wasn’t a deciding factor except for a very small number of people. I myself campaigned against the treaty, and spoke to I don’t know how many people in one of the constituencies that recorded the highest No vote, and not a *single * person mentioned abortion as one of their concerns. Not one.