The anti-abortion dog may catch the car.
The anti-abortion team played the long, long game. It worked. Victory is in sight. The Supreme Court may reverse Roe v. Wade.
The dog has longed to bite that tire. It will end badly for the dog.
In 1973 the Supreme Court announced a decision in Roe v. Wade. It established a constitutional right for a woman to have an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, and a qualified right in the second trimester. States with majorities that wanted to ban abortions in that period could not do so.
A long process to reverse Roe v. Wade began. The process required networking and promoting law students, law professors, law clerks, and judges. It required making opposition to abortion a litmus test for Republican candidates. It required Republican presidents to appoint anti-abortion judges. It required the politicization and mobilization of White Evangelical Christians in league with the post-Goldwater GOP. It required Mitch McConnell to refuse to fill a court vacancy. It required Ruth Bader Ginzburg to die and for her to be replaced by a judge appointed by a Republican president when there was a Republican-majority senate. It took states to prepare legislation designed to probe the potential cracks in the logic of Roe v. Wade and the state of Mississippi to set up a case banning abortions beginning at the 15th week of pregnancy.
All that was the dog chasing the car.
Abortion has been a very good issue politically for Republicans. It linked Christian faith to opposition to abortion, making Evangelical Christians the largest constituency in the GOP tent.
If Mississippi wins its case, some legal analysts predict that fifteen or twenty states would be prepared to make abortion essentially unavailable in their states.
It is easier to have a sentimental and protective view toward a potential baby and to ignore the wishes of the woman herself when the woman is invisible. Anti-abortion messaging focuses on the baby that isn't created, not the woman. In a locality where women can quietly disappear and have a procedure, there is a safety valve. Abortion is personal and private. Were abortions not allowed, more of those women would emerge from the shadows. About 900,000 abortions are recorded every year, although abortion numbers are under-reported because several states, including California, do not report them. About 85% of those abortions are done by unmarried women.
Republican majorities in states in the American South and Midwest have nibbled at the edges of abortion bans, and have found success. Rules regarding waiting periods, mandatory counseling, design requirements for places doing abortions have mad abortion clinics expensive, hard to access, and limited in number. There is only one abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi.
 |
| Anti- abortion ad |
Prediction: People will like the idea of an abortion ban better than the reality of one. This will backfire on Republicans.
Some people desperately want an abortion because they very much did not want to get pregnant. The reasons might be economic, social, legal, or something else. For better or worse, traditional values notwithstanding, the Pope notwithstanding, most Americans have de-linked sex and childbearing. Most Americans want to plan parenthood and they want to limit the size of their families. Sometimes unplanned pregnancies happen.
The age of first birth in the USA is now 26 for women and 31 for men. There is little cultural sanction against unmarried twenty-and-thirty-year-olds having sex. We assume it. They are having more sex than babies. In modern American society, children need to be "fit in" to multi-faceted lives. Married women get abortions. A woman with two children may not think she can handle a third or fourth.
Women have their reasons for abortions. The Guttmacher Institute polled 1,200 women post-abortion and asked why they chose to abort.
25%--not ready for a child or another child. The timing was wrong.
23%--cannot afford a baby
19%--have completed childbearing/have other children depending on her
8%--don't want to be a single mother/relationship problems
7%--not ready/too young
4%--would interfere with education or career plans
4%--physical/health problems
3%--health of the fetus
 |
| Anti-abortion ad |
The current abortion access situation, where it is legal everywhere, easily available in some areas but difficult in others, is a federalist process. It essentially fits the current cultural and moral climate because our thinking, like abortion access itself, is complicated and hypocritical. A great many people want abortion to be rare and discouraged. They consider it wrong on principle but also something that is necessary in practice when the woman herself and her situation is considered.
This hypocrisy and mental compartmentalization are not unusual. It is how Americans handle defecation; we know it happens but our mental branding of other people leaves out that private reality. It is how Christian supporters of Trump handle his adulteries; the "real" Trump is the guy holding up the Bible, not the one having sex with Stormy Daniels. It is how Democrats handled Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; move on, they said.
If popular majorities in a state manage to ban abortion they will upset this hypocritical equilibrium. The woman in a jam will become visible. The politics of anti-abortion will change, at least on the margins because the government will have become the tyrant telling the woman what she must do. Some people will be OK with that, but there is middle ground on this issue. There are people who want abortion to be legal, safe, and rare, not illegal, unsafe, and more-rare.
In an evenly divided partisan country, the surest way for Republicans to lose on this is to win.
9 comments:
It might be 15 week limit is the middle ground that doesn’t upset people too much. If it got to 6 weeks or even less, then the outrage would take place. It’s a difficult subject even for those of us who support women’s rights on this. Crime and poverty has gone down as a result of legal abortion. I’m guessing there will be limited comments on this one, it’s touchy.
Roe vs Wade became law in 1973. Conservatively, 1 million babies are killed each year by the procedure or about 50 million since 1973. Before he was executed, Adolf Eichmann said that 5 murdered people was a tragedy, 5 million was a statistic. Call us Adolf.
They'll be clinics set up along the borders of the anti states and the pro states. Also, on the Mexican border by Texas. Lots of ways to get around that. Coat hanger sales may increase by a lot.
Once the baby is born, then what? Who will take care of it? The mother will have to stay at home for a while. Who will take care of her?
Maybe they'll bring back orphanages. Those Catholic ones were a blast I heard, especially if you like to be beaten by a crusty old nun.
Kids aren't cheap. Who will pay? Will the government take over child care? A million unwanted kids a year is a lot of responsibility. Who will take it?
Too many questions, not a lot of answers. All driven by religion.
Republicans don’t want the government forcing us to wear masks but do want the government forcing women to carry babies to term.
To Dave, above:
A fetus is not YET a baby! Until viability, it is a forming mass of tissue, without sentience, and not self-aware. Just having human DNA does not mean that merciful killing cannot take place. We do so with brain flat-lined elders. In Oregon we allow terminal patients to end life, we have capital punishment, we have wars where young people die, and so on. And we allow sentient animals, with more self-awareness than has the fetus, to be euthanized humanely. It is the active brain that determines humanity, not the genetic material.
The medical profession needs to get more specific on this distinction.
Until viability, this is a growth in a woman's body, sometimes not wanted or acquired deliberately. She has every right to control what is in her body.
And of course the issues others have raised about who pays for these unwanted beings for the rest of their childhood is important.
Dave, we will send all of those unwanted babies home with you to care for til adulthood!
I have never been to a church service where so called “Christians” who believe in LIFE pass the collection plate in a Sunday service to help an expectant mother pay for the birth and raising of an unwanted child let alone a wanted child. Their hypocrisy is beyond belief. They also do not support a “good” woman’s right to make her own decision regarding her body. No one wants to have an abortion. Women are emotionally shredded and carry the guilt for life. They can never forget that event unless they are psychotic. How about having a tubal ligation or an hysterectomy? How about having a vasectomy? People do it for the fun of it? I hope Amy Coney Barrett does a lot of speaking in tongues before she and her buddy god ax Roe Vs Wade. Everyone knows someone who has had an abortion. Ask them all about it.
I am sure, it was the highlight of their life and their husband’s life. Who will throw the first stone, apparently many good preachers and a lot of great politicians?
Re: churches helping unwed mothers
A simple Google search will show you many religious organizations accepting donations to help unwed mothers.
And for as long as I can remember, many religious organizations established and operated ophanages to take care of kids given up for adoption.
Of course there are religious organizations and public agencies also helping out not only orphans but children rescued from families.
Saying you haven't experienced these helpful efforts doesn't mean they don't exist.
Me, raised Catholic, but now agnostic, but I don't begrudge those who are religious.
There are many alternatives to abortion, just as there are other alternatives for human behavior that result in potential harm to an individual - acting more responsible with life choices needs to be more widely followed.
Of course, I'm not ignoring rape which can and does lead to unwanted pregnancy.
It's unfortunate that political rhetoric has made abortion a key decided for who to vote for. Paying more attention to candidate competency would be more useful.
To Diane above. A fetus has a heartbeat and is medically viable at 10 weeks. Nevertheless, many grow on to die in the warm safety of their mother's womb. As to your last smug point, my wife and I have rescued, adopted or fostered far more such children to adulthood than most people. However, our compassion has not been enough to stem the rising tide of death.
Dave, you are flunking logic 101. A puppy has a heartbeat. a snake has a heartbeat, a bee has a heart beat. A man on death row has a heart beat. A warrior has a heartbeat, an elder, deciding to die, has a heartbeat, failing or not. This is a fallacious argument used to justify saving every fetus. It is the human BRAIN that determines what we call a Human Being. Being a thinking self aware being. Having empathy, which even an intellectually challenged human often has in spades. Other animals are being found to have more of this self-awareness than we previously thought. And someday we will be arguing the rights of AI.
And I don't know what you mean by Medically viable at 10 weeks. Is it able to live freely out of the womb?? Probably not.
I am glad that you personally have rescued children and raised them. That is great. It doesn't change the fact that most people opposed to abortion would not fund the safety net programs needed to save the vast majority of them.
Post a Comment