Kevin Drum, in commenting on a Washington Monthly column linked to in the link I provide, asks this question:
Both authors involved note that, of course, no pro-lifers would ever touch it, but he was curious about the pro-choice side.
And I’m curious about the ones here, specifically. What say you?
If my math is right, 22 weeks is more than halfway through the 2nd trimester. Unless I’m missing an exception, I’d take it. Of course, I’m a male, and not one of the sort who thinks he should have a say in such matters beyond the ballot box.
Seems good to me.
Of course, C is ludicrous, and as far as I’m aware this is the status quo with late-term abortions illegal in most states already. So, it basically seems as if asking pro-choicers “If we kept the status quo and quit having abortion as a political football, would you be ok with it”, and since abortion is currently legal, I can’t see many turning that down.
I’d probably agree to similar limitations on late-term abortions (which already exist in multiple states) with the proviso that if a physician deems there to be a serious health risk (not just impending death) there may need to be exceptions to the law.
It’s a moot question since few if any anti-abortion rights activists would agree to legalized abortion even if it occurred seconds after fertilization of the egg, never mind 22 weeks.
No, of course not. Abortion is a constitutional right, a fundamental component of social justice, and incidentally a fantastic way of reducing the number of children on public assistance, being cared for by the state, or abused by their caregivers. We should not terminate (abortion puns!) the right of a woman to reevaluate her family planning strategy if 23 weeks post conception her house catches fire and her husband dies in the conflagration.
Women are allowed to make their own choices about their own reproduction. Period.
–Cliffy
What constitutes a serious threat to the mother’s health? Would you permit a late-term abortion if pregnancy is making the mother actively suicidal?
Anyway, I think late-term abortion needs to remain legal, so I wouldn’t agree to this compromise.
If we can allow for serious heath risks to the mother (more than just death) and for extreme abnormalities of the fetus, then I’m fine with it.Of course, that’s pretty much the law as it stands, so…
Side note: it’s downright astonishing to me how few people understand even the basic issues involved with various proposals they espouse. People will go on and on about abortion laws, and never know they are describing the situation as it already exists. Welfare and affirmative action are other topics where people don’t bother to educate themselves in even the most basic way before spouting off. What makes people think they have something to add to the conversation when they don’t have even a rudimentary understanding of the facts? Topic for another thread, I suppose.
ETA: I re-read this, and realized my side-note sounded like a snarky swipe at the OP. It wasn’t meant that way, and I apologize.
The part about banning late-term abortions is good. I would want to know how abortions are going to be made freely available. If taxpayer funding is what they mean, then no - pro-choice has to include the choice not to fund or assist in abortion for non-health reasons or it isn’t pro-choice.
Unfortunately, the proposal is a non-starter, since c) isn’t going to happen and the more ardent pro-abortion side isn’t going to accept the late-term restrictions (as we have seen in this thread already).
Regards,
Shodan
Is there a provision in this hypothetical proposal that stops anti-abortionists from continuing their campagn to get all abortions banned?
I assume it’s ©, seeing as how it says “everyone.”
Just to ask, as a generality, was the OP somehow unclear? Should I have provided more quotation of the article(s) I linked to? Because a couple of folks are saying and asking about stuff that I thought was clearly explained in the quote I provided, so maybe it’s not as clear as I thought it’d be…
I’m not comfortable legislating a right to use one person’s body to further the survival of another person so I’m against it.
I’m going to pretend you don’t know you’re equivocating here.
The “choice” in pro-choice doesn’t refer to any choice anyone could ever make. It refers to the choice to terminate a pregnancy. The fact that you want it to include some other, irrelevant, choices that other people might make in other areas of policy has no bearing on what the word actually means; indeed, one might suggest that those of us to whom it applies might be better equipped to delineate its meaning.
On the merits of your argument, my taxes fund all sorts of stupid shit I disagree with, including plenty to which I have religious objection. One person having an objection to government policy doesn’t give them a veto over the other 300 million people’s decision to implement a tax-funded plan.
–Cliffy
I don’t have the right to negotiate on a woman’s right to choose, much less all women.
I am not equivocating in the slightest. I am making an effort to say exactly what I mean.
Or to assist someone else in terminating a pregnancy. Or indeed, to decide if abortion is morally correct, or not.
Which is a bad thing, and shouldn’t be increased or extended, if it is possible to avoid such.
No, it certainly doesn’t. However, if one argues on the principle that “abortion is a personal decision that no one else can override”, then it is a violation of that principle to say “no matter what you think, I am going to force you to assist in paying for abortions”.
Those who want to claim the term “pro-choice” for themselves, and then try to impose their decisions on others, lose credibility. ISTM.
Regards,
Shodan
Isn’t this already the status quo? By my understanding of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, elective abortion is legal up until the point of external viability, which tends to happen around the 22-week range, and later abortions are legal strictly out of medical necessity.
I’m OK with it conceptually. My view is that a woman has a right to decide that she doesn’t want the fetus inside her anymore. Once the fetus is externally viable (I think this is around 22 weeks), the destruction of the fetus is no longer required for the woman to exercise her right to decide what’s going on with her body.
At that point, she has lost the right to decide that she wants it destroyed because she doesn’t want a baby. Actually, one can argue that she never had THAT right to begin with, it was simply the unavoidable consequence of terminating early in a pregnancy.
So, post-viability, the woman has a right to schedule a procedure to remove the fetus, then she gets to deal with the outcome of that procedure, a preemie. Or she can choose to keep the fetus until term, and deal with a full term infant, it’s her choice.
Part c) violates the First Amendment, so I could not support the proposal.
Unless you specifically defund torture, drone strikes, wars people don’t like, oil, highway projects foreign aid or pretty much anything else the government does your going to be funding something that someone who pays taxes morally objects to. Should the US military be prevented from serving meat to the troops because vegetarian tax payers object?
I’d generally support financial assistance for abortion one the purely practical grounds that it spends much less of the tax payers money than would paying for the costs of birth and welfare support for an unwanted child.
Yes, pretty much, except under the status quo the “easily available” part isn’t always true.
That depends on your definition of “medical necessity”. 9 states ban late-term abortions except to save the life or physical health of the woman. 4 states allow late-term abortion only to save the life of the mother. (Cite - pdf).
Regards,
Shodan