That’s an interesting point, and has some interesting ramifications. For example, if a woman wants an abortion after viability, can the boyfriend, husband, grand parents, etc claim it and request a C-Section/inducement? If so, could they get child support?
AHunter3 allowed for restriction of third trimester abortions although allowing they should be allowed. Annamika agreed with that.
Der Trihs explicitly said no third trimester abortions except for the health of the mother (which I think most people agree upon if “health” is narrowly construed to not include things like financial health).
Diogenes believed the pregnancy should be endable by the woman but not the termination of the baby’s life in the third term. That is a little dodgy, I think, but not insupportable.
Elective later term abortion is insupportable under any ethical construct I can think of.
Given that the words ‘unrestricted abortion’ did not appear in this thread until you wrote them there, that’s not surprising.
“Abortionists” “Abortionists”. Wanting to spite “abortionists” is a pretty ridiculous reason to base your vote for president on. Especially given the past 8 years of having a Prolifers Dream President.
We don’t support abortion rights so abortionists can make money, we do it so women and girls who have gotten pregnant accidentally can quickly resolve what would otherwise be a life-changing predicament. And we justify it on the grounds that the fetus’ brain has not developed to the point where it’s remotely reasonable to reagard it as a person.
Along with safe and legal, we want abortion to be “rare”, right? What that means is that we want fewer women and girls to get pregnant in the first place. If that means less business for abortion clinics, so be it. The goal is to reduce the number of out-of-wedlock and mistimed births.
As for a “slippery slope”, you do know that’s a logical fallacy, right? And what eventuality are you decrying? That all unmarried women and girls who’ve gotten pregnant accidentally would get abortions instead of only about half of them? Egad, that would be a blow. Or that there would be more late-term abortions? How many women want to get late-term abortions now? Don’t you think they’d rather get it done as early as possible?
SQUEAKY WHEELS on FAMILY PLANNING: http://www.squeakywheelsblog.com/abortion
I’ve read over this bill a few times and I’m glad its stuck in committee. I could see that changing though if the Dems get enough power in congress. I’m am, of course, troubled by the abortion part but here is the is the part that’d have me opposing this bill no matter what it was banning bans on.
It is just me or are these really tenuous reasons to fit anything under congress’s power. Heck, I think you could play fill-in-the-blank here and make these apply to nigh anything. Also, if congress can ban abortion bans why can’t congress use the same reasoning to ban abortions nationwide (assuming RvW has been overturned)?
We had to have an amendment to ban alcohol. They had to bribe/threaten the states to get an drinking age of 21. We had to have a supreme court decision to restrict abortion bans before. Now suddenly congress can just do such things themselves? Is there anyone who can explain to me how this can be constitutional? I have been told the courts have taken a broad view of the interstate commerce clause, but this just seems a bit too much.
They’re in the OP: “totally **unrestricted **on-demand abortion”; words do not have to be sequential to show up in Searches.
…as a compromise; FriarTed alleged that some Dopers believe that abortion should be allowed until the moment of birth. **AHunter3 **says very explicitly, “…I believe any pregnant person should be able to terminate pregnancy at any time, up until the moment of birth, without restrictions”. That’s pretty clear, I think. **Anaamika **agreed with the whole post, including that.
He said “after the third trimester”, which would be, y’know, birth. I guess we can ask him if he meant “after the *onset *of the third trimester”, but that’s not what he said.
I agree, as I said.
Perhaps. But that wasn’t the citation request.
I’m willing to admit that I couldn’t quickly find less ambiguous cites for **Dio **and DT, and to being surprised that it was AHunter3 and **Anaamika **that made the first unambiguous comments I could find. But I’ll also add that I didn’t do anything like an exhaustive search on the topic; there may be other posts by these or other posters which are less ambiguous, or not. But two posters does satisfy your request for a cite, so I’m done wasting bandwith on Searches for now.
See! I knew this would turn into a debate! Caveat lector makes some good points; I don’t see how the bill (as currently written) could possibly pass the constitutionality test – particularly with the current Supreme Court. I agree with the poster who said that the bill’s primary purpose seems to be to give candidates something to wave in front of their constituencies, either pro- or anti-.
Isn’t this the law in Canada (well, lack of law)? That women can legally have an abortion up until the moment of birth? I’d be curious to know how many are happy to hang about for eight months before finally taking care of business. And if a tiny percentage do procure abortions past the third-trimester mark, I’d be curious to know whether their medical reasons would be deemed ‘acceptable’ under American abortion laws.
I think that is an unfair reading of it since there is, by definition, no such thing as an abortion after the baby has been born. Makes no sense to read it that way. I cannot speak for him of course but that is my sense of it.
I am surprised at Annamika and AHunter3 on this and particularly surprised to see such here. As I said though that notion is pretty far out there and not supported by the vast majority of pro-choice people much less anti-choice people.
I am not worried at all that women would be lining up for elective late term abortions even if such a thing were possible (which it in no way should be).
Near as I can tell there are no laws governing abortion in Canada. Not for lack of trying mind you (they did have one that demanded up to life imprisonment for getting an abortion) but currently none.
Given that here are the numbers on abortions by gestational age in Canada in 2004:
So, if we go with that 401 number and 36,874 for which they knew the age (not sure why that disagrees with what they wrote but I am adding the numbers) then 1% of all abortions after the baby was viable outside the womb. That of course makes no comment on WHY those abortions were sought (medical necessity, just didn’t want it or whatever).
ETA: Looks like clinic stats are not required that gets us to the larger number. In general I would suspect those are all early term abortions since clinics, generally, will not have the ability to perform the much more dangerous and difficult process required to abort late term pregnancies. Just a guess but I know that is true here in the US and see no reason to suspect it would be different there. Such a thing needs a hospital and they provide stats on this. As such our 1% is almost certainly much, much lower for all pregnancies.
I did have a great-aunt who was known to say to her offspring, “You know, I brung you into this world, and I can sure take you right back out of it, so best you don’t give me reason”
I think that’s kind of extreme. You gotta exercise the option before you give birth!
But yeah. I’m not being misrepresented or misquoted. I also did not buy my beliefs in a prepackaged plastic bag of beliefs marked pro-choice. I thing a fetus is alive, and human. I think an embryo is alive, and human. I think a zygote is alive, and human. I think aborting any of the above is killing. But not murder. I think it should be legal until birth. I don’t think it would necessarly always be moral, but I’m not the one who would be making that decision. And I think some hypothetical abortions performed 16 minutes before birth might be the results of fully ethical and moral decisions, and I’m not willing to try to bang out any general rules saying “cases that meet these criteria, OK. Cases that do not, nope, can’t do 'em, can’t obtain 'em”. It’s a pregnant person’s inherent innate authority to make that decision.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I think Roe v Wade is an entirely tolerable compromise, as long as anyone who might wish an abortion has easy and affordable access to it. To my way of thinking, that means local (every hospital receiving Medicare and Medicaid reimbursal must either directly provide abortion services or provide transportation to get the patient to someone in an adjacent facility who will) and free for the indigent, and insurance-reimbursable for the insured.
This bill has not made it out of committee for three reasons:
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The Democrats know that the Republicans would filibuster it.
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You don’t want to give the Republicans an issue like that just before an election.
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Public opinion in the U.S. is very mixed on abortion, and it’s not clear that this bill would have the support of the people.
Now, if Obama is elected and the Democrats gain a filibuster-proof majority, reasons #1 and #2 go way. But reason #3 will still give them pause. Only about 40% of Americans support the general availability of abortions. The other 60% either want it prohibited or want greater restrictions on it than there are now. So this is not a winning position for Democrats, unless Obama can convince the nation that it’s a good thing using the bully pulpit.
The purpose of the constitution is to constrain the powers of the government. That’s why it took an amendment to ban alcohol; it created a new federal power. The Congress can pass laws that constrain the power of government, i.e., this act prevents the government from interfering in the reproductive health of women. But they cannot pass an act banning abortion, because that would be expanding the power of government, which would require an amendment.
How is not an expansion of the power of the federal government to say that the states cannot do something? I can see that they can say the federal government can’t pass abortion bans, but the states? That seems like a large increase in federal power to me.
The states cannot restrict a right guaranteed by the constitution. and like it or not, that is what Roe v. Wade decided.
But the FOCA alleges that the feds have the right to prevent states from banning abortion under the interstate commerce clause. It’s a pretty silly notion, but let’s pretend it is valid. Couldn’t they use the same authority to ban alcohol, or abortion? Certainly alcohol is shipped over state lines more than abortion.
If the interstate commerce clause gives the feds the right to tell the states what to do about abortion, then it gives them the right to tell the states what to do about abortion.
Sure. They used the same authority to ban marijuana.
The difference is that in the case of FOCA, the federal goverment is restricting the power of government; it guarantees the right of women to get an abortion. You can’t use the commerce clause to expand the power of government to restrict individual rights, especially in the case of Roe, which is settled law. In both cases, it would require an amendment.
Yes Row currently restricts bans on abortion. However this law is only necessary if RvW is overturned. Otherwise it is pointless. Congress is saying they have power over this due to the commerce clause so in the event RvW is overturned its restrictions will still be in force.
Where does it say the congress can’t use the commerce clause to restrict individual rights? I’m honestly curious.
Why can they not the ban traveling over state lines for the purpose of supplying materials for abortions, shipping materials over state lines for the purpose of supplying abortions, or traveling over state lines for the purpose of obtaining or supplying an abortion. These seem like commerce to me if we are going to go by how the clause is currently begin used…