Not sure if this thread belongs in P&E, IMHO or the Pit, so mods: feel free to move the thread to wherever it belongs.
I live in Northern Europe and have followed the US abortion debate with quite some interest. I’ve been pro choice ever since I became politically aware, but IMNSHO:
To me, abortion isn’t only about the woman’s right to decide about her own body, it’s a balance between the woman’s right to decide over her own body and the unborn child’s right to a life. For me personally, there’s an absolute limit when the unborn child has a more than 50/50 chance to survive outside the womb. In my country, we’ve had discussions about health personell aborting a viable fetus while next door they’re trying to save the life of a premature baby born at the same stage i pregnancy. I’m most probably colored by the fact that one of my siblings nearly lost their child because permature birth.
So how do we balance a woman’s right to decide about her own body, and the unborn child’s right to a life? For me personally, I like the 12 week limit we have in my country. Before 12 weeks, the fetus isn’t a fully formed human, and abortion should be uncomplicated. After 20 weeks, the thing in the womb is a potentially viable human being. Ergo (in my mind), the limit for abortion should be somewhere between 12 and 20 weeks. Personally, I think that abortion beyond week #12 should be restricted, but I fully realize that i might be a mite too conservative. On the other hand, the parody of a woman’s right to decide about her own body would be the right to abort during the 9th month when the child definitely would be viable outside the womb.
I’ve weighed in with a couple of data points before. Maybe it’s worth doing so again:
“In 2014, 51% of abortion patients were using a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant, most commonly condoms (24%) or a short-acting hormonal method (13%).”
In 2016, two-thirds of abortions occurred at eight weeks of pregnancy or earlier, and 88% occurred in the first 12 weeks. Maybe it’s better to consider the rest as “exceptions” and let a woman and her doctor decide what’s best
“…one in three people confirm their pregnancies past six weeks, and one in five past seven weeks. Later confirmation of pregnancy is even higher among young people, people of color, and those living with food insecurity, suggesting that gestational bans on abortion in the first trimester will disproportionately hurt these populations.” [University of California - San Francisco]
Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973): PRIMARY HOLDING: A person may choose to have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Viability means the ability to live outside the womb, which usually happens between 24 and 28 weeks after conception
The Women’s Health Protection Act would ensure that later in pregnancy, states cannot limit access to abortion if it would jeopardize the life or health of the mother
After a brief increase immediately after the passage of Roe v. Wade, the rate of abortions in the US has trended steadily downward, ascribed to things like comprehensive sex education and access to affordable, effective birth control. A few years back, the rate dropped below pre-Roe numbers. The rate has increased since the Dobbs decision (effectively overturning Roe)
There are basically two kinds of late-term abortions: partial birth abortion and early delivery. A partial birth abortion is where the fetus is partially birthed and terminated before it comes out. Early delivery is where birth is triggered and the fetus is delivered just like a preemie baby. A late term abortion wouldn’t necessarily mean that the fetus dies. It could be delivered and treated like a preemie baby.
One justification for the line of when abortions are allowed is based on the viability of the fetus. Before that line, the pregnant person can choose what to do about the pregnancy. After that time, the government can take over responsibility for developing the fetus/baby. The state should not force someone to act as an incubator if the state itself can care for the fetus. However, viability is not a binary thing. It’s not like a fetus becomes a healthy baby at a single moment in time. The earlier in the pregnancy, the greater the chance for short and long term complications from an early birth. Viability might be technically possible at some early point, but the chances of success might be only 20%. And if the baby survives, it might have health issues related to being born so early. When thinking about the viability line for abortions, there would still need to be considerations for how viable is viable enough.
Let’s assume it’s a bunch of years in the future and we have improved our tech on artificial life support for seriously preemie babies to the point we can keep a gestation-in-progress alive outside the mother’s body starting at 8 weeks after conception.
Does that move the goal posts so now a 9-week fetus is “viable” and aborting it should be prohibited under the OP’s thought model? What about when we get even better and can carry a 4-week old gestation to a normal live birth, all artificially outside the mother?
This is why “viability” is a fundamentally flawed standard.
It should be up to women and their doctors. The law shouldn’t step in any more than any other medical procedure. I haven’t seen any evidence that women are having late term abortions for anything other than legitimate medical necessity.
A 9 week fetus is not fully formed and will never be viable outside the womb. Ergo, aborting a 9 week fetus cannot be prohibited under the OP’s thought model.
Unless, of course, we see dramatical changes in human reproductionally biology. Which i (personally) seriously doubt will happen.
Are there exceptions for health of the mother? What about the case of a nonviable pregnancy where the fetus is not going to live but aborting now would reduce it’s suffering? Or rape or incest?
And who is the burden of proof on for these time-sensitive determinations.
A lot of the new abortion laws are similar to the apparently moderate view you seem to be describing, after x number of weeks, abortion is only allowed in circumstances such as an imminent risk to the pregnant person. However in practice doctors aren’t sure if they can perform an abortion even for a risk of death until the pregnant person is actually dying, and then it can be too late.
A fetus isn’t fully formed before week 12 when most organs have been created, albeit only partially formed. At week 8, we only have a bunch of somewhat differentiated cells. At week 20-22, the fetus/child is viable outside the womb.
If you don’t realize those fundamental biological facts, we will most probably not have a productive discussion.
I don’t see the problem, there. If we get to the point where an artificial womb can take a fetus from 8 weeks to term with no issues, then if you are pregnant at over 8 weeks and don’t want to keep the baby, you have it removed and lose all parental rights, just as if you gave that baby up for adoption.
If our artificial womb tech is that good, I’d expect the norm becomes for people to do that regardless of whether they plan to keep the baby or not. And eventually we can stop fucking around with this pregnancy business altogether.
And, if the fetus has serious deformities that will make it likely live for a few hours or days after birth? Or, the mother has a cancer diagnosis and must choose between an abortion and dying of cancer? Or, she develops other serious health problems related to the pregnancy? What then?
In my opinion, she and her doctor, and whoever else she wants to include, should be part of that decision-making process. I don’t think you should be, or your local PM.
You poisoned the well with your OP anyway, with “unborn child” when you meant “fetus.”
Cool. Are you paying for that procedure, rather than the likely much cheaper option of an abortion?
Personally, I’d be fine with public funding for this; but regardless of who is paying, the moral calculus IS different if the baby is viable vs not, and that IS impacted by available technology.
You could easily take the example to an extreme that at least demonstrates the ridiculousness of viability as the only standard - what if the technology existed to take an embryo immediately after conception and gestate it into a human baby over 9 months in a lab. That would mean that the morning after pill is killing a viable embryo and breaks the viability rule, even though the thing bei g killed has nothing in common with a human being other than DNA, and there is of course no ability for the parents to have discovered pre-viavility and terminated in an acceptable way.
And you could take it further - what if the embryo incubator only sort of worked, had a high rate of just killing the embryo/fetus and almost always resulted in deformities that don’t occur from natural gestation. Is there actually a discernible threshold for what viability really means.
I disagree that the moral calculus is different – the moral calculus is that a woman should be able to do what she wants with her body, with the advice of a reasonable doctor. Having to go through some future fetus removal procedure is already too much of a burden.
ETA: I probably won’t be back. This is just yet another abortion thread, with a poisoned well at the start. No one will convince anyone of anything.
In that case, since growing embryos in a lab is demonstrably superior to doing so inside a human (risking both the fetus and the human every single time), we should probably switch entirely to reproducing in that fashion, and take steps to ensure we don’t accidentally fertilize one another.
It would probably be the single greatest thing to happen for gender equality.
“Reasonable doctor” is doing a lot of heavy lifting, there.
No reasonable doctor is going to provide an abortion at 8 1/2 months, because at that age what you do in an emergency is deliver the baby. Because an 8 1/2 month old fetus is pretty much a fully viable baby.
If we had the technology to incubate 12 week fetuses as easily as we do slightly premature infants, then a reasonable doctor would not abort a 12 week fetus.
What I mean is growing the embryo in a lab and then transferring it into an articial womb that can incubate the fetus for the full 9 months. AFAIK this isn’t technology we actually have now, and im hypothesizing that there are unique complications from this.
If it is something that can be done now, the hypothetical is reality and under the viability test, literally any post-conception birth control or abortion is murder.