There is very little Democrats in Washington will be able to do to save abortion rights, unless by some miracle they keep the House and increase their Senate majority in the midterms. Kate Riga at TPM argues that even if the Dems could pass a law that codifies Roe nationwide, the current SCOTUS might very well overturn it if challenged, and Republicans could revoke the law next time they control the White House and Congress.
This is all true, but if it comes to pass that such a bill becomes possible, Democrats should pass it anyway. And here is why.
One of the biggest reasons legal abortion is vulnerable is that hardly anyone actually understands what Roe allows and does not allow. In any discussion group about abortion, the pro-criminalizers will still argue that Roe allows women to abort for any reason at all points of gestation, which it does not. They tell each other lurid stories about healthy infants born alive and left to die or killed right before birth. Most of them have only a hazy idea about how pregnancy/gestation progresses and don’t understand, for example, that a fetus at 20 weeks’ gestation will not survive birth no matter what anyone does to save it. They also tend to be very naive about what can go wrong with fetal development and pregnancies that make therapeutic abortion the humane, and sometimes the life-saving, alternative.
If we assume that most voters are not anti-abortion fanatics and are persuadable that a complete ban is a bad idea, the first thing that has to be done is simplify the issue. And the first thing to simplify: Nobody is pushing to make elective abortion legal throughout the entire 38-40 weeks of a full-term pregnancy. That absolutely has to be clarified.
One of my long-time gripes about NARAL and a lot of Democratic politicians is that they don’t try to educate the public about these issues. See, for example, How Democrats Need to Talk About Abortion and Why I Don’t Give Money to NARAL, both from 2019.
One of the things a national abortion law could do, if done right, is to clarify real-world abortion practices by setting up one nationwide standard insteads of a patchwork of state laws, many of which are under perpetual legal challenge. I am willing to bet that most voters don’t know what laws regulating abortions are on the books in their states unless their state’s abortion laws have been in the news recently.
And if Democrats want to stick to the text of the Women’s Health Protection Act passed last year, I would change one thing, which is to set a firmer gestational limit for elective abortion rather than rely on “the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider” that a fetus is or isn’t viable.
Most Americans think abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances (although claims I keep hearing that 70 percent of Americans support Roe v. Wade don’t match the polls I see, which say it’s more like 55-60 percent), and I believe that if the “some circumstances” issue were clarified, a lot of the acrimony and ambivalence would go away. The opposition to legal abortion would be limited to the hard-core anti-abortion fanatics, which polls suggest are less than 20 percent of voters, possibly a lot less.
It’s understandable why many courts and medical people don’t want to draw a bright line regarding gestation, because there’s always a certain amount of guesswork involved, both in determining precise gestational age of a particular fetus and in determining which might have a long-shot chance at survival outside the womb and which don’t. But I think that setting a firm gestational limit for elective abortion somewhere would put an end to a lot of opposition. There already are such limits in some states, but most voters don’t realize that.
The medical literature has been pretty much in the same place on this issue for decades, saying that the lowest possible threshold of viability is somewhere between 22-24 weeks, but “Current recommendations suggest babies born at 24 weeks of gestation should normally receive active intervention while babies born at 23 weeks of gestation should be discussed with parents regarding whether such intervention is appropriate,” it says here. In other words, even if the very early infants survive, their quality of life could be highly compromised, and decisions probably need to be made on a case by case basis.
Some of the confusion about gestational limits comes about because sometimes the count begins at the last menstrual period, not when the pregnancy actually began, which would usually be about two weeks later. Everybody needs to get on the same page about when gestation begins.
As a practical matter, even in the U.S. 90 percent of elective abortions are performed by the 12th week of gestation, which is way, way before viability. According to this very good article by Kaiser Family Foundation, 1.2 percent of abortions in the U.S. occur after 21 weeks gestation, and many of those are performed because of “medical concerns such as fetal anomalies or maternal life endangerment.” And it needs to be made clear that in these circumstances the law needs to butt out. Gestational limits are strictly for elective abortions.
According to KFF, the single biggest reason women delay getting an elective abortion that long is that they either needed time to scrape the money together or were hassling with insurance coverage. A few didn’t realize they were pregnant until they were pretty far along. Some had trouble understanding how to get an abortion or how to get transportation to a far-away clinic. Some delayed because their boyfriend/husband disagreed.
For a lot of reasons, the longer an abortion is delayed the more expensive and time-consuming it is, so it becomes more and more burdensome for poor women who have to delay the procedure to raise money.
Still, if the money barrier were taken away, that 1.2 percent would be even smaller. Several western European countries have a 12-week gestational limit for elective abortion, and this seems workable for them, but in every case women can get a first-trimester abortion in just about any medical facility, and that abortion is paid for by taxpayer-supported national health care. They don’t have to delay for financial reasons.
If there were, say, a national 23-week gestational limit for elective abortion, the criminalizers would fight to lower it. And then the discussion should include getting rid of the Hyde Amendment. We can reduce the gestational limit only if Medicaid pays for abortions. But having one national law, one standard, putting everyone on the same page, might make such negotiation possible.
And yes, there would be a few women who fall through the cracks and won’t realize they are pregnant until too late. “A few studies have estimated that one in 400 or 500 women are 20 weeks, or about 5 months, into their pregnancy before they realize they are pregnant. One in 2,500 women make it all the way to labor before they understand they’re going to have a baby,” it says here.
The criminalizers will never be happy if even one woman is allowed to abort for any reason. But I suspect the post-Roe period is going to open some eyes, and those ambivalent about abortion might realize that an absolute ban isn’t the way to go.
And of course, if Republicans control the House next year, there will be no such law. I’m just speculating, just in case.
As I understand it, in Judaism, if a mother's life is at risk in a pregnancy, an abortion is an option. If this is true, will we see such a case go before SCOTUS where they have favored religion in past cases?
Also, just to note, an argument can be made that this whole issue is less about controlling women and more about enlarging the white population.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD0kIFp_zzI
Considering that new laws are including the banning of all contraceptives along with the threat of being punished if the woman crosses borders for an abortion.
These are some excellent suggestions/recommendations, maha.
But RepubliKKKLANS/KKKonservaTURDS don't care about gestation periods. Remember, they HATE science! All they care about is power. Whether it's political power, or familial power. Laws can be clearly written, but that won't mean anything to these Jesus-freaks.
Instead, they'll try to avoid any new laws by saying that Jesus told them that life starts at conception. "Just now! No, really!"
I can imagine the questioning: "What were the day(s), date(s), and time(s) you rode the balogna-pony in March of 2022, Ms. XYZ ('Ms.?' You need to get married, you trollop, you!!!"
These theocratic "Christians" only want power. Whether it's political power, or familial power.
There is NO BETTER HIGH for these sick creeps than forcing others to live their lives according to their diktats!
And so, we'll all have to live in Gilead, and absolutely follow their absolute rules, or else possibly, we'll face dire circumstances. Meanwhile, they won't have to follow the same rules, because they're so much holier than we are.
Civil war here we come!
Make that, uncivil war, here we come!
We're not certain yet what excuses will be written into the decision that strikes down Roe. Based on the draft released, there isn't any brilliant legal reasoning that brought the court to a conclusion. It's a conclusion in search of any justification.
Which is why you are right – Congress should pass the law which standardizes the protection for women for a medical procedure. The weakest link in Roe is the extrapolation of a privacy right that's not in the Constitution. Passing a law doesn't put women's rights in the Constitution either but for the USSC to strike down the law, the court would have to go against the medical wisdom that justifies what a woman decides in consultation with her doctor.
The GOP is out on a limb. The further out on that limb they go, the thinner it gets. Oo yes, we want to push them to go after contraception. We want them to strike down a law that only protects the doctor-patient relationship. Because the way this ends is packing the court. For the public to be supportive, this court has to be exposed as being extremist.
By the way, if the Dems can codify Roe they then can court strip it so that SCOTUS can't rule on it.
"Court strip it"?
How would that work, exactly?
When the law is written, terminology to the effect must be written into that this law cannot be brought to question by the Courts. Ironically, it was Roberts, prior to his SCOTUS days who discovered this workaround when asked to find a way to bypass court jurisdiction.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/judge-roberts-and-the-court-stripping-movement/
Just a note: it doesn't prevent reversal of the law when the GOP take control.
I've been saying for years:we need a right to vote amendment and an equal rights amendment. Law just doesn't cut it.
Cracks me up that there is whining about the privacy of the court. Over half the population is losing its most basic privacy rights and the idiots on the court are the object concern.
And where. , where are the sorry men that got these women pregnant? Why Are they invisible and silent? The men are a sorry pack of dogs.
There's a way for that sorry pack of dogs to pay up. If a woman has no reasonable right to privacy, then why should a man? Enact a DNA database ( pre-pregnancy ) for all boys starting a age 12 and have it on hand when a 15 year old gets his girlfriend pregnant. The parents of the boy are then on the hook for child support until that boy becomes a man. Never happen, of course, two wrongs don't make a right, but just throw it out there and listen to the howls of hypocrisy.
With respect to what would happen if the law were nationalized and made clear and consistent, I think you answered that yourself in the post about why you don't give to NARAL: the right would just lie about the state of affairs, and nobody would effectively call them on it. National legislation would have been nice in maybe 1992. Now that ship has sailed, I think.
I think that if the Dems get the majorities to pass a law it should be a law that requires any state that forces a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term must determine the biological father through genomic testing and require that father to have full financial responsibility for the upbringing of that child.
I say "full" because we are talking about a pregnancy that the mother doesn't want to complete. Since the state is taking agency away from the mother, there is no justification for giving her responsibility for the child. But, wait! There's a father whose agency hasn't been taken away by the state's abortion criminalization law, so let's give him some skin in the game and see what happens.
The governor of Mississippi said yesterday on Meet the Press, that if "you believe as I do" then… Well, I think that is unconstitutional. It is a flagrant violation of the U.S. constitution regarding the separation of church and state. It involves the notion of a soul, which is totally a "church" matter not a matter of the State. His position is governor of a state not as an imposer of a particular theology. He is in fact prohibited by the U.S. constitution from favoring one religion over another which his statement implies. He might have a belief but cannot make his belief the politically correct one any more than MTG can make alien laser fire from space politically correct or theologically correct or anything more than a fantasy. The governor should know better and refrain from that sort of argumentation. He gets what is a Ceasar gets but no more.
Mitch McConnell is emboldened. Whereas before he was muted, focusing on the leak and not the substance, apparently he now has confidence they can do this without much blowback. He's now saying outright that if they gain full control, republicans in congress will pass a bill that will make abortion a crime nationally. And they will ditch the filibuster to get it done.
Democrats need to start talking now about what the abortion bill entails, but also the other implications of the USSC draft decision, as written by Alito, that threatens privacy rights and other rights we've been taking for granted will always be on the books, once passed. Not to mention what they intend to do with contraception and literally take women back to the dark ages. Literally
Most voters don’t want this, but they need to be informed. If democrats can educate voters what the current law entails and what their legislation would do they could rally voters and put a stop to this hateful insanity.
Since we are set to lose all rights not in the constitution when can we get rid of corporations and their nonexistent rights?
Women native americans will all lose their right to vote. There is so much material here.
Why don't we just get the vote out like last election. It may even be easier. I agree about holding the men just as responsible; but, I would go a bit further. If the woman and doctor are punished in any way, the man should be equally punished. It's been a really long time since there was an immaculate conception. Regarding pregnancy, no woman does it by herself. It takes two to tango.