Scroll down to the section on “views by trimester”. 61 percent believe first trimester abortion should be legal while 31 percent say it should be illegal. Only 27 percent support legal second trimester abortion (in all categories there are also a few who say “it depends” or “I don’t know”). That leaves 34 percent who (like me) believe first but not second trimester abortion should be legal.
34 is larger than 31 or 27 (or even if it’s within the margin of error, it’s undeniably a significant bloc of public opinion), yet I never, ever hear from fellow members of this group in the media or online. And when I broach it myself, I get pilloried by the pro-choice stalwarts (most of whom are not really even representing 27 percent, but are in fact part of the 14 percent who support unconditional legal third trimester abortion). No appreciation of the fact that without our silent plurality (which supports abortion rights in the trimester most abortions actually occur, mind you) to ally with, they would be hung out to dry. Ingrates.
And I’m just tired of seeing the groups on the extreme end fight endlessly and repetitiously without any participation by the groups that have caveats of some kind or other, who are an even larger plurality if you include the “depends” respondants.
It’s not silent. The Democratic Party position is to keep abortion “safe, legal and rare.” The Party’s position is consistent with Roe v. Wade, which is few to no restrictions in the first trimester, increasing restrictions during the 2nd, and very few abortions in the third (in cases of the health of the mother or significant deformity of the baby). There’s some argument within the party as to the specific details, but your viewpoint is thoroughly represented in one of the two major political parties.
In most states it’s not “significant deformity,” but “lethal defect.” A lethal defect is something like anencephaly, but it’s also a degenerative disease like Tay-Sachs that inevitably results in an unpleasant death, even though the child could live as long as five years. I think that things like Cystic Fibrosis may also be “lethal defects,” even though a person can live beyond adolescence (but it’s not common), because it’s a degenerative condition-- that is, you are always getting worse, so your whole life is a slow death (yes, I realize you could say that about anyone’s life, but with something like Cystic Fibrosis, or Muscular Dystrophy, your life is a slow death from this particular known cause, and you will suffer).
There are things that some people might consider significant deformity, like phocomelia, but it’s not a lethal defect, and in a lot of states would not warrant a third trimester-- or even second-- abortion. It’s detectable by ultrasound toward the very end of the first trimester, though, which is also when Down Syndrome is detectable by amniocentesis, so there can be a mad rush to have the procedure, because condition X that most people would choose to abort is not detectable until two weeks before the end of the first trimester.
Restricting abortion by “trimester” is an artificial construct. It was part of Roe v. Wade, but before then, when hospital boards decided whether or not to grant abortions, the fact that a woman was past her first trimester was not a big part of the debate. A lot of women who have unintended pregnancies may not know they are pregnant until close to the end of the first trimester.
I’m not against using viability as a measure for elective abortion, as long as it is true viability, not “whatever the Guinness book says is the smallest preemie to survive after months of extraordinary and expensive intervention.” Something more like, at what point do, say 50% of fetuses survive with no support, and at least 50% of the others (25% of the total) survive with intervention. Something like that. IANAD, or an ethicist.
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… very few abortions in the third (in cases of the health of the mother or significant deformity of the baby).
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Most late-term abortions in the US are performed for reasons having nothing to do with fetal deformity or the physical health of the mother. (Cite.) Yet the pro-abortion side resists restrictions on late-term abortion. (Cite - pdf.) Democrats also tend to resist things like parental notification laws. So it would not be accurate to say that the Democratic Party reflects the opinions of the majority of the US.
A lot of late-term abortions happen because the woman had no access to an earlier abortion-- the late-term abortion would have been an earlier abortion, had the woman lived in a less restrictive state.
Also, consent laws kill. Rebecca Bell was a 17-year-old girl who died in Indiana before the ink was dry on the new parental consent law in 1988.
Yeah, I’m for consent laws too. It’s absurd that a doctor or clinic can’t give my daughter so much as a Tylenol without my (or her mother’s) consent, but can perform an abortion (not sure what they do about the pain relief part!).
But even when polling is cited as **Shodan **did above, it is usually by people who do not actually support first trimester abortion rights (Shodan, can you weigh in as to whether this is the case with you?) but are using them somewhat disingenuously as a cudgel.
What I continue to insist is vastly underrepresented in the conversation is the bloc that steadfastly (not grudgingly) supports the right of first trimester abortion, but opposes its legality after that point.
So what do you think should happen to girls who are pregnant, have parents who won’t consent to an abortion, because they are crazy religious, and she can’t afford a lawyer for a judicial bypass?
The fact is, that in most cases when someone over the age of about 12 wants medical treatment, and the parents deny it, a court will side with the child. This has happened when children have wanted things like chemotherapy, and their parents have been Christian Scientists. But while there is a window of time before treatment must begin, or when there isn’t, and a doctor says that, the case can be expedited, girls seeking judicial bypasses sometimes must wait so long for their turn in court that they miss the window for a first trimester abortion-- or sometimes an anti-abortion judge may slow down her paperwork.
I had a friend who had to submit paperwork for judicial bypasses because she worked for a PP in Indiana. It was horrible.
Consent laws lead to self-induced abortions, or girls who conceal pregnancies, and abandon babies in alleys.
This has nothing to do with my point, which is that the Democratic Party by and large reflects the OP’s position, and it’s nonsense for the OP to claim that he/she doesn’t have a place to participate.
RivkahChayah, there are all kinds of lamentable ramifications* of being raised by ultraconservative religious folk. One of them may be that such a girl has to give birth and give a child up for adoption.
A large and silent voting bloc does support that position. And some Democratic politicians give lip service to the position, but mostly defensively, because they are running against dogmatically anti-abortion opponents who have a chance to beat them.
But where can I go that is an intraparty dialogue and stand up for my position without getting a barrage of hostility and attracting very few supporters? (And as I said, I’m not talking about, or interested in, support that is really just from stealth prolifers.) I guarantee if I post about this on Daily Kos, for instance, I will get reamed for it.
*Being homeschooled and taught that Jesus walked with dinosaurs, being taught to be ashamed of one’s body and one’s sexuality, being taught that homosexuality is a cardinal sin, etc.
Daily Kos is not the entire Democratic Party. Why don’t you go down to your local Democratic Party meeting and find out what’s going on there?
And is your position really that nobody should be allowed to have an abortion ever in the (ETA) second or third trimester? What if the baby is non-viable and the mother’s life is in danger? Would you be okay with an abortion then? If so, then you aren’t presenting your views correctly, and if not, then I’d say you are the one with extremist views.
I have been to my local Democratic Party meetings aplenty (in fact, I let them use my building for campaign HQ in a couple elections, and Claire McCaskill was in it the day Todd Aiken made that ridiculous “shut that whole thing down” comment). And I run into the same buzzsaw with them, let me assure you.
In the third trimester (and the second trimester for that matter), I would be in the “it depends” category. But I would not support legal elective abortion at that time–only something that passes muster with a bioethics type board. In the first trimester, though, I believe no justification of any kind is necessary, no waiting period should be required, and access should be available within a reasonable distance of all populated areas.
Before I go, I just wanted to respond to this. Spare me. There’s a whole pro-life block in the Democratic Party that almost derailed Obamacare because they wanted additional guarantees that government funds could not be used for abortion. They’re not just paying “lip-service” to anything. Spare me this whole “defensively” crap. It’s a coalition party, and not everyone gets every specific thing they want. That doesn’t mean that your views aren’t represented. Your views are very well represented, you just don’t seem to have put in any effort to find out that they are.
Why does the existence of a “whole pro-life block in the Democratic Party” not just add credence to my point? I’m not pro-life, and very much dislike being lumped in with them. I’m looking for the “vehemently pro-choice for the first trimester only” bloc.
I already explained to you that this is the Democratic Party position. Few restrictions in the first trimester and increasing restrictions as the pregnancy progresses. Apparently, you have some magical set of restrictions and caveats, which you can’t define, but which allow for some abortions in the second and third trimesters, but which the Democrats don’t represent, because they aren’t defined and something, something.