I agree, inasmuch as you haven’t really made an argument, or expressed any opinion about the legality of abortion, at least in this thread. You merely made a claim about third-trimester abortions and provided a cite to a Washington Times article.
Just to play along, let’s assume that everything in the article is true. It doesn’t quite prove your claim, because the study in question used women who had abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation. It doesn’t say how many of those were performed within the 2nd trimester (up to 26 weeks) and how many were 3rd trimester (27 weeks or later). There’s a quote from a woman who had hers at 21 weeks, and the article ends with an anecdote about a woman seeking an abortion at 25 weeks.
What you say may be true, but you’ll need a better study to say definitively, one that focuses specifically on 3rd trimester abortions.
I’m pretty much with SlackerInc on this. I think abortions should be legal early and illegal late. As I see it the debate is largely carried out by the extremes; both sides seem to be deathly afraid of the slippery slope.
But isn’t the division already baked in? It’s a continuum, of course, but there are still roughly speaking three camps. **Deeg **and I, and all those others identified by polling, don’t belong in the “every sperm is sacred” camp with the godbotherers, but neither are we at all cool with shrugging off late term abortions that amount (to our way of thinking) to infanticide, as a “private health care decision, between a woman and her doctor”. So if we are not as of now in either camp, we can’t be “divided” from them.
But it would be nice to see our position represented in debates online, on cable news debates, etc. We should be treated as a powerful key constituency rather than marginalized as somehow irrelevant.
Well, you (the middle) are definitely a powerful key constituency, and highly relevant.
Moderates are the reason that conservatives have put in the “rape and incest” exception, and in many cases also the “life of the mother” exception.
Moderates are the reason that liberals accept the trimester schema, the viability criterion, and the basic idea of increasing governmental interest in a pregnancy as time goes by.
That there is any compromise at all is due largely to the people in the middle. Neither side dares alienate them wholly.
At the same time, well, they’re in the middle. They aren’t on anyone’s side, so no one is quite on their side. They’re a little like the angels who wouldn’t fight for God or for Satan. It’s nice that you aren’t on their side…but you aren’t on my side either.
So you serve the purpose of a “counterbalancing force” best.
(I’m glad this isn’t a proportional representation system: you’d be in there making deals. “Okay, we’ll wheel your way, if you cough up the minimum wage.”)
No, you seem to be the one not paying attention. The subject of this thread is not “share your opinions on abortion,” let alone “let’s have a debate about abortion in the wrong forum.” Your arguments are being dismissed because they have nothing to do with this thread. If you were someone who would align with the OP in that 33%, then your explanations might be relevant to the subject of thread, as you might be explaining why you don’t ever share your opinion.
The subject of this thread is specifically about people who agree with the OP. If your arguments have nothing to do with those people, then they are not relevant.
And I will say that I agree with the OP (generally), but I don’t voice my opinion often because I find that there’s really nothing to debate with either of the extremes. I’m either a baby killer or a misogynist.
And, frankly, it’s just not all that big an issue to me. These sorts of things are always a bigger issue for extremists rather than for the plurality that’s in the middle. When you aren’t on the extremes, you don’t have an “enemy” that you feel the need to defeat. The most vocal argument happen because both sides are defensive.
I will say that I do not discriminate by trimester, though, but, if trimesters are part of the question, I have to answer based on them. It’s really about viability and brain development for me. You can’t be a person unless your brain is functioning, and the right of a mother to control her body stop allowing the killing of the fetus once viability is reached.
So I’m okay with abortions in the first trimester, as that’s the one trimester where I’m sure that neither of these has happened. Both occur at some point in the second trimester. After that, an actual abortion must be medically necessary. That means that birth would have to put the mother or fetus’s life or health in jeopardy. I am not a doctor, so I cannot say when this is.
The beauty of my position is that rape need not figure into it. Exceptions for rape make no sense to me.
I would be easier to convince that late-term abortions should be legally limited only to those that are medically necessary for the mother, or ones where the fetus is found to have a lethal defect, if I were convinced that women had easy access to both birth control and early-term abortion, and the education and means to obtain and use them effectively. Because I think there are a lot of failure points along the way, many women end up advanced in pregnancies they didn’t want, and wished to abort much earlier.
For example, if it were illegal for licensed pharmacists to refuse to dispense the morning-after pill, if every high school offered more than “abstinence only” sex ed. and if there were no parental consent laws, then I would be a much easier sell on late-term abortion limitations.
I personally think talking about late-term abortions is jumping the gun. We have a system right now that makes them necessary. We need to rebuild from the ground up, and then a lot of my views would change.
And, there is a difference between “I’m not being represented/heard in the debate” and “I’m not prevailing in the debate”. Sometimes you are well-represented and attentively listened to… and still get only crumbs thrown your way.
It doesn’t help that those at the extremes believe this is a Righteousness v. Evil question.
Right, but this is just the problem: since the debate is dominated by the extreme sides, we end up with people taking extreme positions because (as someone noted upthread) they are so afraid of the slippery slope, or of the camel’s nose in the tent or however you want to frame it. Stubbornness about letting “the other side” make any progress causes the dominant players in the political debate to all take positions that are repugnant to the majority. There’s something very broken there.
And I believe that my “caucus” is naturally at home on the left/center-left, if the extreme feminist pro-choicers could just relax and let us be part of the coalition without hurling abuse at us. We could get out there and make, not a defensive, cautious “safe, legal, and rare” case, but a positive case for state-supported, geographically well-distributed availability of women’s health care, and for comprehensive sex education in schools including provision of condoms to teens without parental consent (pills or devices are a different story and don’t prevent STDs anyway). And if this program is implemented, it should mean that no woman is forced to complete a pregnancy and birth against her will.
Right, totally. This is my frustration: I get grief in both those terms, without (usually) getting support from people who sympathize with my position (so it’s nice to hear from you and others ITT who do).
Totally with you on that as well. Seems like a really incoherent position. Which hints at the difficulty in dividing this into only three categories.
That may be part of the problem as well: those not in the two extreme camps have diffuse differences of opinion with each other. Although it looks like those two extreme camps fairly neatly match each other in size, and combine to represent only 28 percent of the population. Upthread I already noted 14 percent supported unlimited third trimester abortion; now I found on Polling Report that the same percentage believes it should always be illegal, even in cases of rape and incest (though that drops to nine percent if the woman’s life is in danger–still mighty high if you ask me).
I take exception to this framing: we are on our own “side” (“in our own camp” might be a better way to say it). It’s not like I’m in the middle on this just because it’s the mushy middle or something. I have a distinct antipathy for both prohibitions of early abortion, and facilitation of late abortion.
Okay, fair enough. I apologize for the implication that you’re not committed to any formal viewpoint. If we leave out my quip about the angels who wouldn’t take a side, does that address your objection?
There may actually be “three sides” but they are not independent entities. The middle overlaps with both ends. This is why the ends aren’t happy with the middle…but also why the ends need the middle and must always court it.
The deadliest possibility is that the issue maintains parity, but the middle dwindles to insignificance. 49%, 49%, and 2%. (Like the Israeli Knesset in the eighties…)
The best possibility is what RivkahChaya suggested: re-structuring of the debate from the ground up.
A new division of views on the order of 15%, 40%, 15% would be healthy too. (I’ll still be in the left-hand 15%, but I’ll have much more reason to act diplomatically toward the middle 40%. So will the guys in the right-hand 15%.)
In a real multi-party system, where each party has its own agenda – imagine if the Libertarians and the Tea Party each had a full 20% of the seats in Congress – then deal-making could (and typically does) come in to play. The parties would deal away their less-heartfelt agenda items in order to gain concessions in their most-heartfelt agenda items.
Someone on one party might agree to accept Minimum Wage increases…if the other guys would accept further limitations on abortion. Meanwhile, someone on another party might be willing to drop insistence on M.W. increases…if another guy is willing to help reduce those obstacles and limitations.
The U.S. tradition of two major parties that roughly split things right down the middle helps minimize this kind of horse-trading. The obvious disadvantage is that it is painfully polarizing, but the advantage is that neither side can make that kind of concessionary exchange.
I don’t like polarization…but I like ad-hoc coalitions a hell of a lot less.
ETA: the “you” in the first quote wasn’t mean as indicating you, SlackerInc, but was a generic “y’all,” i.e., all of us. Bad phrasing. My fault.
If a proposal is under debate to allow abortion on demand in the first two trimesters but ban it except for narrow circumstances in the third, and the debate turns on the propriety of such a limitation in the third trimester, the debater’s overall views are relevant.
One should probe the position “I wish to ban all third trimester abortions” to see the rationale behind it. If the rationale is " I wish to ban all third trimester abortions because I believe that they are murder just like first and second trimester abortions" then, in the context of this debate only, that position should be dismissed. Why? Because for the purposes of the current proposal, we have already rejected such a position and there is no need to revisit it.
What we are trying to do currently is see if there is justification for treating the third trimester different from the two prior trimesters. If your position is that there is no difference, then by definition you aren’t agreeing with the proposal.
Do you all think their is any chance of a compromise agreement?
I feel about should be legal. However their should be some laws such as
Requiring abortion clinics to meet minimal standards of safety and health.
Parental notification if the woman is under 16.
3rd trimester only with a 2nd doctors opinion.
I mean, come up with a set of standards both sides can begrudgingly compromise on. The pro-choice side will be forced into some restrictions while the pro-life side will be forced to accept their will be legal abortion on demand.
A very significant majority of the pro-choice side, actually, in real practice, would be absolutely overjoyed to accept a compromise of the sort you describe.
(I, personally, am opposed to parental notification laws, for reasons I’ve stated above, but, hell, if it gets rid of such noisome obstacles as mandatory internal ultrasounds, or bans on doctors discussing procedures with patients, I’ll take the trade-off in a New York heartbeat.)
Same with some portions of the pro-life side who want all abortions banned no matter what. They are just totally unrealistic and that the procedure is necessary and will be there no matter what.
But I think most people are in the middle on this. I think one former surgeon general, C Everett Coop I believe, talked about just such a compromise but got nowhere with it.
I have been observing with interest the battle over increasing the standards for clinics and doctors. Some of it seems more than reasonable: there’s no reason the regulations for abortion providers should be more lax than for pretty much any other health care provider (and was it in Philadelphia where that one clinic was positively medieval?). But then it turns out that some of them really are almost like Jim Crow type tests: abortion providing doctors must be certified to practice in local hospitals, but the hospitals won’t certify them. Once again, we get to the idea of “reasonable”: standards can be stringent but they must be achievable to a reasonable degree.
I don’t see that being a possibility. The feelings are too strong. The pro-life side believes that abortion is murder. It’s hard to compromise on that.
I think most pro-choice people like reasonable restrictions, but they face the same problem as pro-gun people face. If you accept these restrictions, then it simply redraws the battle lines to where the next “compromise” won’t be reasonable.
Who would enforce this compromise anyways? Does it mean no more confirmation litmus tests for Supreme Court justices? Scalia signs an agreement not to overturn Roe? Ginsburg signs an agreement not to strike down third trimester abortion laws?
Politicians look at poll numbers. They also look at fundraising, and who comes out to volunteer, work on campaigns, etc. The people who will do this tend to be the extremists. Abortion is a great issue for stirring up passionate emotions, and passionate emotions in a smaller number are often more valuable politically then the tepid support of a larger number, especially in intraparty politics and party primaries. BigT’s line about misogynists or baby killers is exactly right … Only extremists would say things like that … But extremists come out to vote in primary elections and give money. There’s no EMILY’s List or National Right to Life Committee for moderates.
Media types, even if not extremists themselves, will follow the pols in framing the debate.