I think this completely ignores the moral issues of later term abortions. I am an atheist, and I am disturbed by the idea of a voluntary abortion after 20 weeks. Voluntary meaning no medical necessity.
I think Republicans have latched onto this issue and Christianity in America has adopted it, but there is far more at play here than just Christian nationalism.
Yes, they've taken the extreme view of "aborting a baby right before it's born" which doesn't fit the majority of cases and used it to argue against the norm, but if that were actually the case they would be limiting abortion to "reasonable" limits, not straight up "snitch on your neighbours if you think they've had an abortion" laws.
Late term abortions are almost all wanted babies where something has gone horribly wrong for the baby, the mother, or both. There are also vanishingly few of them.
What issue? What are the numbers on non medical necessity abortions post 20 weeks?
Why 20 weeks? Are the voting populace or politicians knowledgeable enough about pregnancy to be able to legislate these things without exposing doctors and women to unnecessary legal risk? And again, back to the numbers, does the is even need legislating? Are women or doctors haphazardly running around killing perfectly viable fetuses for fun?
There are over a million abortions performed every year in the US. If your belief is that these are humans with all the rights of any other human, that’s a staggering human rights issue.
The concept of viability is legal fiction. Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development and likewise, until about age 3 or so, no child will live without external support. Culturally, we celebrate “birth”, but that event has nothing to do with life.
On the other end is the necessity to support the life of a mother. While unfortunate, I think that’s a rare time that terminating a pregnancy is appropriate. That doesn’t mean lifestyle or convenience, though. That’s situations where only one or fewer people will make it alive if nothing is done. This represents a fraction of one percent of abortions. Other abuses may fall into this category.
> Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development
This cannot be true, and just because a fetus could live does not mean the quality of life is worth living. Not to mention the staggering costs of NICU healthcare.
The numbers I was asking about were specifically post 20 week, as a reply to parkingrift’s concerns.
Babies survive outside the womb prior to 20 weeks. That will continue to go down as technology progresses. What does cost have to do with whether someone is a person?
Sorry, I misread “given the technology” as today’s technology. But then I do not see how the concept of viability is legal fiction. Medical science can keep fetuses born after x weeks alive with y probability, and that y is near 0 or 0 before x weeks.
Cost had to do with practicality. It does not seem reasonable to expect a society to invest $10M into raising a 1 week old fetus that will need 24/7 support to live. Point being that there are limits real life and a purely philosophical exercise is not useful.
It’s legal fiction in that the concept was created in a court to justify why a person at a certain developmental stage wasn’t really a person. It’s not a scientific definition, a “law” of nature, or previous cultural definition. The idea was created to advance a legal argument. It’s fiction in that the value chosen was arbitrary then, is not a discrete event or time period, and by the same standard, is earlier than when defined and will continue to be earlier as technology advances.
The practicality of saving a life is certainly different than the legal justification to end a life. The point of technology being able to support development outside of a womb is evidence, imo, of the organism being independent from the mother. If that organism is individual and human, (s)he should have the full rights of all persons.
To me that means finding options that don’t involve terminating lives when the mother decides they are not prepared to parent. Right now the options outside abortion place significant strain on mothers, but as a society, 50 years have been spent not investigating alternatives and going all in on abortion. It’s already possible to transfer embryos fertilized in a lab successfully into an unrelated host.
Ultimately it is a philosophical argument. I can’t find any argument that has convinced me that a human is a human regardless of the stage of development or capabilities of the person. I’ve argued that “viability” will continue to be earlier for the past 20 years and haven’t been wrong about that yet. It’s currently limited by technology, but that shouldn’t impact the rights of individuals (in this case the unborn).
> And again, back to the numbers, does the is even need legislating? Are women or doctors haphazardly running around killing perfectly viable fetuses for fun?
1% of the abortions occur in week 21 or later, of a total of 625.000-930.000 abortion per year. So about 6250-9300 abortion per year in week 21 or later. Assuming a number of these are health related, "livestyle" abortions is probably less than 9300 per year.
You're trying to make a scientific or analytical response to what I've just said is a moral issue. You can surely disagree, but many people find late term abortions repugnant. Some people find any abortion at any term repugnant. You can have these feelings without associating them with religious views. I'm not religious, as I've said. However, my broader point here is that people are making a mistake directly associating views on abortion with religiosity or conservative political views. It's not that black and white.
I live in New York. Abortion is legal for any reason up to 24 weeks, and then legal for any medical reason beyond 24 weeks.
Nationally, about 1.3% of all abortions are after 20 weeks. I don't have further data as to what percentage of that 1.3% were due to medical reasons. Big round numbers here 1.3% is roughly 8,500 20+ week abortions in the US per year.
> Why 20 weeks?
With current technology it is roughly where viability starts to climb from 0%. Possibility of feeling pain and/or terminating a living, viable, being. At 24 weeks the viability can be as high as 70%. It is okay that you do not find this disturbing, but I do find it disturbing. It's disturbing to me to think about voluntarily terminating a pregnancy after 20 weeks with no medical issues for the child or mother.
If given an option this is how I would vote. Unfortunately, there is no nuance in most American political issues. I don't have a choice to vote on allowing abortions for any reason up to 20 weeks, or for any medical reason afterward. I typically get to choose between "ban all abortions" and "allow almost all abortions."
And after 25 weeks one really needs to consider that the fetus may have a misshaped heart and no chance of survival outside the womb, requiring an abortion.
I am also pro-choice - I have thought the viability standard was always going to be a moving target thanks to
medical and technological advances that could topple at some point too - even if you defined it as something like NNth percentile.
It does seem to me that setting an arbitrary (but flexible) point of no return was going to be necessary (probably around 18-24 weeks)
The trimesters have absolutely 0 actual meaning here, as this is fundamentally putting an arbitrary line on a continuous process. Yet this is probably the only way you're getting anything, as they're at least a useful Schelling point that can get some compromise.
Regarding your second statement, I don't think anyone would consider aborting babie(s) after carrying for 20 weeks. These cases are outliers & it is mostly due to medical conditions.
> I think Republicans have latched onto this issue and Christianity in America has adopted it, but there is far more at play here than just Christian nationalism.
Yes, and polarization-fueled straw-man memes really obscure that. I swear some people's only understanding of "the other side" is a twisted view of the distortions of some overheated partisan bomb-thrower, stupefied into slogan form. But you kind of need something like that to feel confidently self-righteous.
I'd wager than many are talked to abortion, specifically that late in the cycle, out of a desire for organ harvesting from newborns and not out of necessity.
What’s the context? What is the research of? Is consent required / has it been received? Is this a common practice? Is it common to sell non-fetal tissue for research purposes? Etc etc
Linking to a cryptic 575 page long PDF file is too conspiratorial to take seriously.
> I'd wager that the vast majority of abortions post 20 weeks are performed with extreme reluctance and sadness, and only out of great necessity.
My point was specifically aimed at this parent comment. It is easy to make baseless wagers about motivation. I find it an equally compelling narrative that, given research and financial incentives, there is great motivation for abortion clinics to persuade individuals to abort children. Especially late-term abortions since developed infant organs are likely demanding a premium due to their rarity.
Not really, no. You're spouting random conspiracy theories. You provided unverified primary sources. Any rando can make a website and post a PDF on it for $10.
If the SCOTUS did that, then they would be legislators, not judges; it is up to congress to decide where that cutoff should be, and then pass a law if they want - RvW didn't outlaw abortions, it just punted it back to the correct body to act if they wanted; I suspect they (congress) will be forced to pass a law, and it will likely set at a date that makes nobody happy - not the abortion at any time crowd, and not the 'zero exceptions' crowd. Most of Europe seems OK with a ~12 week cutoff. I suspect something around that, with narrow set of exceptions, would satisfy all but the most extremes on both sides.
