The way people describe this bill is exactly right...
It's Barbarian!
Welcome back to 20th Century circa 1960- 1970's.
The Roe v. Wade was signed into law January 33, 1973.
The irony and hypocrisy in this is simply unmatched, since GOP doesn't care about any child who is born into poverty, they do everything possible to make the life of mothers miserable, but oh no...for some unexplained reason they love the fetus.
Really! Back to savages?
Lunatics!!!
18
As an Alabamian, I am ashamed and embarrassed. Today abortions, tomorrow birth control pills, morning after pills, and IUDs . Why is Alabama bent on becoming the most ignorant state in the U.S.? , last place in education.
26
For those who haven't seen it, Carl Sagan wrote an article about the facts of abortion, the "start of human life", and how faulty concepts of development from centuries past still affect our discourse about abortion:
http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
11
Bill Clinton said it best that abortion should be “safe,legal and rare” Even With the widespread availability and use of birth control in our sexually liberated culture that “rare” qualifier has been completely blown out of the water; why is that?
An estimated 60 million aborted lives since Roe? Certainly we have figured out the cause of pregnancy!
Look, as I am sure President Clinton thought, reasonable people can disagree on this issue; but, surely, even the most ardent “pro-choicer” must blanche a bit at that number; not to mention the implications resulting from the advances in medicine and medical technology which define life.
3
As usual, it is all about degrading and treating women as though they are not intelligent and can't make their own decisions. Are you going to force young girls who have been raped to carry the child full term?
Also, some more questions---are these republican men (and women) going to make sure that these women (and girls) have good medical care for before and after the baby is born? Are they going to make sure that these women (and girls) have support in terms of housing, medical care, food, diapers. etc. etc. or are they going to force these births and then walk away?
13
Every child should be a wanted child.
Overpopulation is a growing problem.
What idiots.
22
We must find a way to hold men equally accountable for unwanted pregnancy. Firstly, by the logic of these laws, child support should begin at conception. 2nd, the man should be required by law to cover 1/2 of all maternity care, including missed work. And why don't we have male contraception? There is so much about this imbalance that is outrageous in this day and age. Women are second class citizens. And poor women don't even count. And don't get started on the outrageous hypocrisy of these so called "pro-life" laws. Let's be real. These religious zealots don't care about "life". They care about holding these "tramps" accountable for having sex, as if they lure these poor men into irresponsibility. If they cared about "life" they wouldn't tolerate the shameful infant/maternal mortality rates in their states. And these same people are anti- contraception and sex education. The whole situation reeks of hypocritical and false piety. And it reminds us why mixing religion and politics is such a bad idea.
42
I am still waiting for consequences of those men who impregnate a woman who don’t want a child. Why are men excluded from this conversation? I say, give all men vasectomies until they are ready to be fathers. Or put them in jail for 99 years for inadvertently impregnated someone so they don’t do it again.
28
Dear "Pro-Lifers:" With so much passion being expressed on behalf of "babies" and "children," how is it that you tolerate this country's ridiculously high rates of mother and infant mortality, children born into poverty, child neglect and abuse, and lack of access to child care for working mothers? Why aren't you rushing to adopt or foster unwanted black or brown children, or those born addicted to drugs or with serious birth defects? Why aren't you insisting that every female over the age of 16 have access to free contraceptives and that children receive appropriate, comprehensive sex education in school? Unless and until you are doing everything that you can to ensure those children who are actually born have the opportunities to live, grow and develop in a society that welcomes and nurtures them, I will never consider you anything but the very worst kind of hypocrite.
33
How about the women of Alabama helping their own selves? The Alabama State Legislature is 84% male. We live in a democracy and women are the majority of the population. If women aren't going to run for office and get involved in leading their communities, then they are handing their freedoms to male supremacy. Grow up, women-who-enable-male-supremacy. It's way past time. Maybe you could take the time you spend putting on makeup, doing your hair and getting mani-pedis to campaign for your own rights. I'm sick and tired of acting like women in these states are powerless. At this point in American history, they are giving away their power. The women of Alabama are reaping what they sowed. Is it tragic for girls who can't vote? Of course. Alabama mothers are voting for their own daughters to suffer. That's on them.
10
This is an excellent editorial, but its last sentence indulges badly in hyperbole: “Don’t let abortion rights fade from consciousness as these extreme laws become America’s new normal.”
America is a big place, New York Times editorial board. These extreme anti-choice laws are very far from becoming “the new normal” in many parts of our country, including the state where I live—California.
1
Since this bill was voted in by an almost all white male Alabama State senate, obviously never having experienced pregnancy; I think this law should be followed up with a law that for every woman who wants an abortion and is unable to get one in Alabama, we cut off the genitals of the man who got her pregnant. Let's see if they are still in favor of this draconian restriction on a woman's right to choose when it is followed up with a similar draconian penalty on a man.
18
I will drive women anywhere in the USA or purchase them a bus ticket to Ct. for a first trimester abortion ! No questions asked. I will drive you to a counselor if you are already in your 2nd trimester and then help you recuperate from a more dangerous procedure. I would call a fellow nurse to take you for your abortion after 20 weeks unless the fetus was deformed or your life at risk. Then I would take you myself even then.
We have a continuum of professional retired nurses ready to help you without judgement and guided by our own belief systems. Theocracy has no place in this decision. Abortions will be safe and available. Find the “ helpers” in your communities. Call your American Nurses Association. Call the American Medical Association. Complain about these laws and tell these organizations to get off their collective duffs and start advocating for all women and our rights.
This old nurse was young once and we all have our own abortion narratives for ourselves , family members , friends , ..... tell your stories. Call your congressional reps. Form coalitions and hire legal representatives. ACLU here’s another trauma to deal with. Help!!!
28
Boycott the corporations with headquarters in these states. If all the women in America who are pro choice stopped buying Coke products (Atlanta) and Procter & Gamble products (Ohio), Bath & Body Works (all the Limited Brands - Ohio) you might see some bigger action in those states. It worked very well for the LGBT community in NC over the bathroom bill. Their protests lost us the NBA All Star game, which we got back after we changed the law.
I guarantee you if Procter & Gamble threatened to relocate to Colorado that the state of Ohio would protect women's rights.
14
We sent our daughter to school in the greater NYC area, and are actively encouraging her to stay in the Acela corridor or move to the West Coast. These demented abortion laws are just the tip of the iceberg of what the extreme right wants to do to women, and we don't think it would be safe or responsible for her to return to the South anytime soon.
20
Why is it that the same people who hate government and who claim it has no right telling people what to do outside the constitution are now wanting it to tell women what they can and can not do with their bodies. I say it’s time this country breaks in two. I’m sick and tired of having ridiculous arguments when we need to be seriously discussing how we’re going to stop destroying this planet.
14
This is horrible. Most of these states don’t provide free birth control, which would prevent so many unwanted pregnancies, let alone offer care to poor and underprivileged children. Groups and entertainers should start to boycott these states for such shameful behavior. They certainly do not respect the environment by supporting overpopulation.
11
It is quite a scary situation for our society when a woman is forced to have a baby under all sorts of circumstances - rape , incest, medical issues, failed birth control etc. A terrible punishment that lasts a lifetime for her and the baby. YET, when men are convicted of sex crimes they are barely punished. If a sex offender ( mostly men) wants out of jail, how about requiring sterilization ? That might at least help part of the problem of repeat offenders and unwanted pregnancies.
Also, how about insurance paying for men to have vasectomies? Why is the responsibility always placed on the woman ?
More young girls need to be educated on these topics so that they can become good leaders, not like that governor of Alabama.
I am a 54 year old white woman and stand with Planned Parenthood.
19
There is enough hypocrisy on both sides of the issue of abortion to feed China for ten years, if hypocrisy was edible like rice.
1
A question for those picketing Planned Parenthood: Who among you is willing to adopt an unwanted child—feed, clothe, educate, and love it for at least 18 years?
16
Is there any reason they couldn't have talked with their doctors and partners about birth control BEFORE the pregnancy?? I'm all for women's rights, and birth control is one of them. Why subject yourself to the physical trauma of an abortion when you could have prevented the pregnancy??
39
@Daisy22
Because preventing a pregnancy is a probability not a certainty.
295
@Daisy22 MD weighing in— Birth control even taken correctly is not 100% effective, and not all women can use hormonal or other birth control for certain medical reasons. Additionally these same states are attempting to restrict access to birth control as well as abortion.
458
@Daisy22
I guess the reasons include:
the state defunded or legislated the Planned Parenthood clinics out of existence,
the state deprived women of, or otherwise failed to provide, adequate sex education in public school,
widespread misinformation about sex,
failure of birth control,
the state permitted employer health insurance plans to exclude birth control from coverage,
human error,
abuse by partner.
544
Good article but woefully inadequate reporting by the Times overall on this issue. In particular, reporting fails to distinguish where there are true differences in public opinion in states and when a bunch of old white men have just railroaded the process. Also, focus on abortion obscures the issue of contraception, on which there is far greater consensus and where there has been a real abuse of the right of religious freedom (Hobby Lobby).
7
I may reread The Cider House Rules by John Irving and will dig out The Handmaid's Tale, which I never finished!
4
Let us tally the religious views of white evangelical Christians that bear on the question of abortion:
1) Men count, women don't. Women are to be submissive to men at all times.
2) Rape and incest are the woman's burden.
3) Pregnancy is the woman's burden.
4) Men bear no responsibility for pregnancy unless they choose to take that responsibility.
5) These arrangements are the will of their god
Clearly, abortion is not a privacy issue. It is a religious issue. It must be fought as a violation of religious rights, per the 1st Amendment.
8
The news media can help by making these questions a routine and required part of any interview with anti-choice male politicians: Has a woman you've impregnated had an abortion? Have you ever paid for an abortion? Have you ever helped schedule an abortion for a daughter or other relative or friend or driven someone to a related appointment?
8
I, again, implore the editorial board to stop using the term 'anti-abortion ' when what you're REALLY referring to is 'anti-choice'. There is NO 'pro-abortion' lobby...just 'pro-choice', 'pro-women's-rights' and/or 'pro-abortion-rights' positions, and the patriarchal anti-choice people are against all of these.
15
I plan to send another donation to Planned Parenthood, and I will also demand that every candidate I vote for stands in favor of women's reproductive rights.
9
Not even pretending to be objective on the issue, I see.
Not surprising.
I sincerely hope the court rules that the procedure is murder and a total ban is enacted from San Francisco to New York.
1
@T. Warren The Supreme Court doesn't make laws. Nor does the Federal Government have the authority to create a "total ban" for the nation. It will go back to the states. And, good luck trying to get a "total ban" in California, your state.
4
When it comes to universal health care, it can be approached through this lens:
The states with expanded Medicaid coverage have longer lifespans and lower maternal and infant mortality.
Make saving babies' and mothers' lives the rallying cry, then point out the huge differential between states that accepted and refused Medicaid expansion.
Thus it is PRO-LIFE to accept expansion (and maybe to advocate for even greater expansion, i.e. a public option for everyone, or Medicare for all).
How many people know that maternal mortality skyrocketed (doubled) in Texas after they defunded Panned Parenthood? And the states now making abortion illegal (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky) have the highest rates of death for both mothers and babies?
6
Let's hope the entire 2020 election is about abortion.
Climate change is important, and universal healthcare.
But this is the winning issue.
Every Democrat needs to make this her (and his) number one talking point.
Every one of them should say they believe abortion should be a private decision between a woman and her doctor. And that it's OK if states have some say in it in some cases, like when the pregnancy is advanced enough that the baby might be able to survive is delivered. And that any baby that is delivered alive deserves treatment.
In other words, describe Roe, and let the masses slowly realize it sounds like a good compromise. It is.
4
It is my understanding that Roe was based on the right to privacy. The same right that was the basis for Griswold (which legalized birth control - in 1965 there were still laws against it in some states) and partially for same sex relations (Lawrence). One can easily argue that these earlier decisions are also in danger. Welcome to the 1800's.
4
How about the women of Alabama helping their own selves? The Alabama State Legislature is 84% male. We live in a democracy and women are the majority of the population. If women in these states aren't going to run for office and get involved in leading their communities, then they are handing their freedoms to male supremacy. And, yes, I’m talking about poor women and women of color, too. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made it all the way to Washington on her own shoe leather and not much else. I’m sick and tired of acting like women in these states are powerless. At this point in American history, they are giving away their power. The women of Alabama are reaping what they sowed. Is it tragic for girls who can't vote? Of course. Alabama mothers are voting for their own daughters to suffer. That's on them.
2
How to protect the right to choose?
Elect Democrats, elect only Democrats to every office for which there is an election.
4
Tom Lehrer had a song about nuclear proliferation. The last lines were
We'll try to stay serene and calm
When Alabama gets the bomb.
In many ways, the US are a third world country - potholed roads, overhead power cables, long queues when it comes to voting, gunman attacks on schools like in Mali... Now parts of it try to become like Honduras or El Salvador. Is this the way to discourage people to flee those countries?
3
Donating and Voting is not enough.
Boycotts are a powerful way to change elected officials behavior. They worked for the Civil rights movement. They forced Mike Pence to reverse his anti LGBTQ legislation in Indiana.
If business and consumers start voting with their wallets, reactionary legislators will crumble. Cancel conventions in Atlanta, stop buying goods manufactured in Ohio, refuse to attend sporting events in Alabama, everything is on the table.
3
Doesn't anyone on that side of the fence find it odd, that the party that makes no bones about not having any interest in helping marginalized people, is somehow frantically worried about the plight of the unborn?
4
Someone posted a list in the comments section of another article here on this topic - this was a list of outrageous quotes from Republican lawmakers regarding rape. That list needs to go viral.
2
since women are the ONLY gender that can conceive, these laws are discriminatory and should be overturned on that basis. and please spare me the argument that a cluster of nonviable cells have equal rights to a living fully developed woman. and no female child under any circumstances should be forced to bear a child. seems obvious that the health and welfare of a child would not be served by pregnancy and childbirth. it is far past the time for the males of the species to realize that they are abusing their power and women with these ill advised zealous attempts to control a woman's right to choose for herself what is best for her life. as far as the over zealous females of this movement--they are beyond understanding. the cult of birth would have a bit more credibility if it were not isolated from the needs of people already here to thrive. how about putting some of that excess energy into doing something about the gun violence that murders precious children throughout the country almost daily? how about supporting (evil) government programs to house, feed, and medically care for children? how about pouring money into education--especially biology so the often abysmal ignorance demonstrated by some male legislators prevents their embarrassing and harmful attempts to control women? the GOP war against women really must be ended.
2
Happily, the NYT has applied one MAJOR tool in this fight, in this article, and that is framing the issue, rightly as anti and pro abortion (the historical labels.)
The relentless social engineering of language helped move this debate even more to the right when the historical label of anti-abortion was switched to pro-life (the wider definition of life (quality) however, having been mysteriously ignored along the way...)
Please, NYT, stay vigilant about this. More articles than not use the newer framework of pro-choice/pro-life, intuiting the dangerous presumption that pro-choice proponents are somehow anti-life. Time to re-set the needle for once and for all.
3
Last night my spouse and I were discussing how best to give support to organizations fighting these hellish laws and to organizations supporting women and girls who are disadvantaged in getting safe and affordable health care.
This article will be very helpful.
We also would welcome readers' suggestions.
Thank you!
2
It's more than likely that this Alabama bill will be struck down by a Federal Court (and therefore not take effect) and never get anywhere near the Supreme Court. There are four or five other abortion laws that the Supreme Court is considering. It's certainly not a sure bet that the Alabama law will be one of them. For now, and the conceivable (no pun intended) future, abortion will remain in Alabama.
1
I note that the "yea" votes were all cast by men.
Also, it would seem that the "pro-life" people are much more concerned about the UNborn than the already born who have medical, nutritional, and financial needs.
5
@Daisy22. Because, as the CDC documents, a majority of pregnancies are unplanned.
The unstated exemption is for rich white men to send their pregnant wives, daughters, and mistresses out of state for abortions.
The tongue in my cheek suggests that a follow-up law should require exit and entry inspections of women's reproductive condition, with the understanding that if you leave the state pregnant, you either return pregnant or with your baby, or face fines and jail time. So long as white men are willing to be invasive of women's private lives, I cannot see their objection to this provision.
3
Roe is doomed, if not now, when one more rational, independent Justice dies. The change will be one more factor in the polarization and population shift in the nation. Americans are relocating to states with populations having political, religious, racial and sexual views similar to their own. Blue states are becoming midnight blue and red states deep blood red. The change does not bode well for America. There will be more conflicts in Congress, less compromise and greater levels of hatred and violence.
1
Roe vs Wade is heading for a fall, within a generation. There'll be no way of stopping it. The legal foundation of the ruling is entirely dependent on the 'fetal viability outside the uterus' argument, which will be undermined and voided by the extremely rapid development pace of reproductive medical technology in the coming years. We're already transplanting early sheep fetuses from their mother's womb to plastic bags in laboratories to finish the pregnancy successfully and the time when we'll be transplanting human fetuses, at any point during the pregnancy, to the prenatal lab to finish development is just a few decades away. Before you know it, any fertilized human egg/embryo will be just as viable in a prenatal lab as in a woman's fallopian tubes/uterus. Then the 'viability' argument falls.
2
Well in about a year, day care centers will be over run with
little ones. Children will be abandoned, ignored, abused,
maltreated. Schools will be over flowing. No room in
school? The countrysides will be filled with wild children
with nowhere to go.
4
Gee, Daisy22, good question. Why wouldn't a person really think things through when it comes to sex? Why wouldn't both the man and the woman (or boy and girl) be informed and prepared? Have you been reading about how many Americans do not have access to routine healthcare? Or how many parents can't seem to talk properly about sex to their kids? Or how impulsive, casual sex and promiscuity are portrayed in our entertainments? Or the ubiquity of pornography? Gee, Daisy22 from San Francisco, why don't people just behave differently than they do?
1
Women MUST insist that the state and the father absorb all costs associated with the unwanted pregnancy and the unwanted child, including all financial support and heatlhcare support. If women insist on this and the state resists, the whole agenda on enslaving women will be automatically uncovered.
(1) IN AN PRO-BIRTH STATE, women must insist on paid maternity expenses, including reimbursement for lost pay and medical expenses from the state itself. If a woman is forced to have an unwanted child, the state must assume any and all expenses associated with that, right up to college expenses.
(2) Women must insist on the right to be unburdened by being able to leave the child in a rescue cradle in state office buildings where the state government assumes custody of the unwanted child at state expense, NO QUESTIONS ASKED of the woman who leaves the child there.
(3) Laws need to be modified to terminate the parental rights of rapists (in the cast of incest or rape). However, rapists must be held liable for all expenses associated with the child from prenatal care to college.
If women insist on these things the truth will be quickly revealed that the GOP game plan is actually to curtail the civil rights of women and put women under the control of men.
6
At the risk of lowering myself to the bottom of the swamp where the bottom feeders gather, sadly it takes a personal tragedy to bring sense and reason to these people who would rob women of their domain over their own bodies. Let an Alabama legislator's wife, daughter, neice and/or another relative be caught up in this abortion mess created by their husband, uncle, father who voted for this law. How fast would he/she find a way to deal with it in ways unavailable to poor women?
Too much legislation gets past by people who have little or no sense as to what it means for the people the legislatiion is aimed to hurt or exploit. Involved in the Orientation of new congressional staff should be the concept of empathy. What would a particular piece of legislation mean for your family member?
7
Call or email the bureaus of tourism in these states and inform them that you will not visit, nor will you spend one penny in their states as long as these laws are on the books.
6
Criminalizing abortion is just the first step towards taking our birth control and then what's next? Why not make us quit our jobs and just stay home... Women who have the ability to make their own decisions are dangerous to them. Abortion is just a step in the stairway to pushing us down that stairway to the dark ages.
4
What about the men who impregnate women? I don't see any laws that punish them. How about mandatory vasectomies?
6
The Alabama ban on abortions will not effect monied women..They will have their abortions and no one will be jailed -not the women nor their doctors..if you are anti abortion then don't have one.
5
Of course, they can.
Stop voting for Republicans! It is that simple.
The bigger question is, what gives a few white men the right to treat women and minority as second class citizens?
9
Rape and incest? Or, as they're called in the Republican Party state committees in Alabama and Georgia, "going on a date."
Whatever happened to freedom? I've never heard anybody on the pro-choice side say the government should compel a woman who don't want an abortion to have one.
But every person on the pro-life side says the government should compel a woman to carry a pregnancy to term,willingly or not, and regardless of the most dire circumstances.
As the Republicans increasingly fail to meet, and even harm, the job, education, infrastructure, wages, environmental, justice system and health care needs of the American people, they increasingly focus on these retrograde cultural postures, from abortion to racism and xenophobia, to mobilize the most deluded members of their base.
Got to get rid of these "enemies of the people" and "fake leaders" (pardon the Trump terminology) in the next election!
9
Besides being opposed to laws that restrict a woman's access to abortion, I am appalled at the hypocrisy of those who are creating laws like those just enacted in Alabama and Georgia. The hypocrisy is that they have attached severe punishment of doctors who perform abortions, but attach no punishment at all to the women who hire these doctors! They say that abortion is "murder," but ignore the fact that hiring someone to perform a murder is also a felony, punishable by law in every state. And the reason they ignore this -- the hypocrisy -- is that they know that a law that did seek to punish women who hire a doctor to perform an abortion would never pass a legislative vote.
2
Go back and re-read the articles from the previous week. The GA law also targets women.
1
IF the abortion issue had been left up to voters and their state governments this issue would be somewhat settled in voters respective states. Instead, back in the 1970's: the Supreme Court did an end run on voters of conservative states...ruled in one fell swoop it was the law of the land and we have never heard the end of it.
1
That anti-abortion stance is rooted in extreme misogyny can no longer be seriously disputed. You could undo a lot of the nonsense by adding to such measures as Alabama's the additional fetal right to the support of both parents. The way to enforce that would be to require every 18 year old registering with selective service to provide a DNA sample. A pregnant woman would have only to name her fetus' father and the allegation, once confirmed, would ensure the father would be responsible for half her medical bills throughout pregnancy, the delivery expenses, and the support of the child until independence - which in the case of severely disabled children could be their lifetime.
That this would still be unfair to women and children and families is true, but beside the point. If males were guaranteed to be held as accountable for a pregnancy as women are, you would see the anti-abortion laws disappear faster than ice cubes on a hot griddle.
13
A significant number of commenters seem to think that only religious people are pro-life.
But, there are secular pro-life supporters who believe that a human life is created when the DNA of a unique being is set and that abortion ends that life.
Religious pro-life supporters believe that life starts at conception and that God is involved in that process of creation and that a life so started is a person bearing the image of God.
Both the secular and religious pro-lifers are in pain over the fact that millions of human lives can be ended in America for convenience or “bad timing.” Pro-lifers I know support ending a pregnancy to save the life of a mother and understand that women carrying babies are often in very hard situations and need help to keep that baby or help in putting the baby up for adoption. Pro-lifers support organizations that perform both such services. The idea that pro-life religious people support the unborn but do not support children after birth is belied by religious schools, hospitals, relief agencies, missionaries and food assistance programs worldwide, including here in America in almost every community.
3
@J. Robert Hunter - "A significant number of commenters seem to think that only religious people are pro-life"
Maybe its all the Bible quoting that is used to support their views. I don't know. (Funny though, they never quote Numbers 5:11-31, Hosea 9:14, or Hosea 13:16)
But lets be honest. It's not pro-life, it is Forced Birth. Pro-life is a feel good euphemism intended to hid the intent just as are the other branding initiatives of the right wing.
Individually some Forced Birth supporters may give or volunteer to support life after birth, but those are making the laws forcing gestural slavery are the same who are favoring, or making laws, that restrict access to contraception, health care, child care, Medicaid (right their in Alabama), other support programs, and on and on and on. They want to force birth in part as a punishment which includes the prenatal care and post birth expense and care.
9
They aren’t taking care of all children, though, are they? Come out of the cave and look around you. Look at abortion rates and how they have gone down and understand why.
2
I'd also suggest boycotting products manufactured in
Alabama and Georgia, or whose companies have U.S. headquarters there. This includes Mercedes-Benz, who assembles the majority of the SUVs they sell worldwide in Alabama and whose American headquarters moved from New Jersey to the Atlanta area.
If a "corporation is a person," kicking them in the pocketbook is definitely kicking them where it hurts. Since money talks--and purchases politicians--corporate losses by "halo" businesses will reverberate with all levels in those states' politics.
11
Birth control is unevenly available in the United States .
Planned Parenthood is ostracized all over the country and lack of education, religious upbringing and shame keep many young women from seeking counseling.
Money is also and important issue , Medicaid is not available for everyone and everywhere.
4
I don't want to help the women of Alabama and Georgia. I want the women there to realize that their vote really matters and when they vote for people who take their autonomy (and their daughters) they will live in a draconian society.
We don't learn. Twenty-two 6 year olds were murdered by a AR15 and people still want their weapons of war in every home. We get the government we vote for. We deserve this. Don't like it? Move to a state where women are respected and cherished and vote their interests.
13
Here's how: vote against Trump in 2020. If he wins, Roe v Wade will be gone right alongside of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The only hope for the health of this nation is to vote the crook out.
17
These laws are a consequence of a public school system ranked near the bottom ---
10
The same Republican Senators from Alabama who refused medicaid expansion - which resulted in the state's infant mortality rate - as in actual human beings - going up.
They sure don't mind putting a real person's life in jeopardy.
Also, who was that Republican in the front, with the blonde hair and wearing a dark blue suit and light blue tie, not only talking while a female Senator named Linda Coleman-Madison was at the podium.
While she was speaking, he turned his back and faced his good old boy fellow GOP senator, and just snickered and laughed.
Who was that obscene oaf.
No wonder Roy Moore was nearly elected to this Alabama senate.
13
If a government can take away a woman's choice to have a baby that same government could make medical supervision and contraception mandatory for everyone. A government that intrusive in our personal lives might also require DNA paternity testing and hold fathers libel, or even jail them. Whatever punishments inflicted on women and their doctors should be shared equally by fathers. Father-prisons could be run for profit. The revenue generated by the chain gangs could be invested in orphanages. I hope Atwood is working on a sequel. I hope America is better than this, but anymore, I'm not so sure.
11
It may be worthwhile to consider that every female of childbearing age was born AFTER Roe v Wade became law.
These women are not going to be willing to cede their autonomy to strangers.
Think about it.
6
I hope you're right... I'm a millennial. My fear is that the women of my generation won't be spurred to action because the idea of having an illegal abortion is such a foreign concept that it doesn't seem realistic. The problem, of course, is that unsafe, illegal abortions could very well become a reality now.
46
I read with dread about the Alabama law's prevention of abortion in the case of "nonviable" fetuses. Those of us from families whose members have given birth to children who fit this definition may be dismayed that, should the diagnosis have preceded the birth, we still would have been forced to endure the consequences of bringing the pregnancy to term under this new law. Cruelty is the only word for it.
20
@Portola I agree. Cruelty indeed -- to the innocent child during the most vulnerable state of his/her life.
1
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, laws like these serve another purpose: keeping poor women poor. Poverty is a plus for employers, keeping the workforce desperate enough to accept substandard wages and tolerate unhealthy and dangerous working conditions. The same politicians (bankrolled by the corporate class) who promote such restrictions also vote against programs that may alleviate poverty and assist poor families with children.
25
If states are going to declare fetuses as people, perhaps it is time for the pregnant women to use the "Safe Haven" laws in those states to abandon the fetus in a hospital and let the state provide care.
13
If you believe that human life begins at conception, then abortion on demand (rare issues of direct proximate threat to the life of the woman excepted) represents the delusional cloaking of a terrible act in the banal language of a medical standard operating procedure.
If you don't acknowledge the existence of the soul, or the personhood of a fetus (advances in 3-D and 4-D ultrasound notwithstanding) then there is no ethical dilemma in the mind of an abortion advocate.
Likewise if one rejects belief in God outright, then there is no slippery slope / road to perdition in the following train of thought:
"My body, my choice"
"I control any and all things connected to my body and my life"
"I am master of all that is before me"
"I am God"
None of us on this planet will intimately know which argument is correct until our time in this life is at its end.
Faith or absence of faith is another matter and people have to decide what their first principles are. As it stands, abortion is still legal in the US and people on both sides of the debate have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
@Todd Stultz---please tell me why you wrote "abortion on demand". Is there any case where someone did not want an abortion but was forced to have one? Where a woman did NOT "demand" an abortion but had one anyway?
This type of language has long been used by the Control Women side of the discussion. What does it actually mean?
4
@Todd Stultz
"Faith or absence of faith is another matter and people have to decide what their first principles are. As it stands, abortion is still legal in the US and people on both sides of the debate have to live with the consequences of their decisions."
Well, that fine. That's the way it's supposed to be. The folks who have a problem with this are the one who are trying to force women to be unwilling incubators for pregnancies they do not want or cannot carry to term. Go lecture them - they're the ones causing the problem.
2
I wonder if the Gen-Xers and Millennials really get what's at stake. They've never had to used wire hangers.
37
I'm happy to support "Fund Texas Choice", an organization that supports women's travels to abortion clinics in Texas. The Texas legislature's strategy at the moment is to slice away on abortion rights step by step - mandatory 24 hour waiting period, cancel funds for women's health care provided by Planned Parenthood etc. These rules hit poor women and women living in rural areas with few providers particularly hard.
22
Fifty years after the quiet revolution the social dynamic of a liberal democracy and its core values coincide with a technological revolution and jobs are not a Quebec problem. When I grew up Quebec was conservative and women were chattel today the stars are aligned to give Quebec with its majority female workforce one of the world's strongest economies.
I do not understand the widespread outrage from a population that has grown so rich because it has given its women the rights and privileges they deserve.
Your Alabamas vote Trump precisely because bad governance makes them poorer even as you grow richer which adds to their tribal identity.
The law that Alabama passed will hurt Alabama and its citizens economically, intellectually and physically. That is a price they are happy to pay to have their tribal identity affirmed. For the outraged that is a price one must be willing to pay for democracy.
The suffering Alabamans will endure may be better ameliorated by those outside of Alabama.
With democracy comes responsibility and Alabama has chosen a path that will diminish its wealth and limit its future.
The future belongs to the nations that best utilize its best and brightest and empirical evidence suggests most of the best and brightest are women and they ain't going to the Alabamas.
27
Alabama is one of the least educated and very poorest states in the nation. It is not a coincidence that they are also one of the most right wing states in the nation.
A bunch of old white men telling women what they can and can not do is not surprising in this state.
There is a link between education, wealth and conservatism that can not be overlooked, This is true in the USA, as well as many other countries. Old conservative men tell women what to do in poor rural areas all over the world.
39
This isn't about the "rights" of the "unborn" and never was. This is all about controlling women's access to the world outside the home. Abortion is really all about whether you see women as human beings or just things to be used by men for sex, for childbirth, and for domestic labor. If you support the right to abortion, then you see women as full human beings deserving of rights. If you are against abortion and want to outlaw it, you see women as inferior, as subhuman, good only as incubators. You want a return to the aberrant 1950s, the era of shotgun marriages, teenage marriages with high divorce rates, and limited options for women. There is no middle ground to be had. As long as a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus is in a woman's body, it is her body to do what she wants to do. To make a fetus have full personhood, something still denied to women, is to render women subhuman.
59
But this is self-government. Shouldn't people favor and support representative democracy in action?
@Fred Wild Civil rights are never subjected to a vote. And the right of women to control their bodies is certainly a Civil Right.
5
Remember, if it wasn't for Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders, we would be in our 26th consecutive year of Democratic presidencies, and there would be 8 Democratic nominees on the Supreme Court. Oh well!
22
No doubt. NJ almost had their own train station in Manhattan and tunnels. Instead, it’s people will continue to schlep to work on busses and delayed trains through penn. A democratic gov would be building great things, moving away from oil, and not telling women how to live. It’s time we have a peaceful civil war. Let’s just agree to move on.
8
@Billbo I love your peaceful approach. It did not work in the past . Only forceful resistance will do this time.
Extreme anti-abortion laws in red states and extreme anti-gun laws in blue states. Welcome to my world, folks. If there were enough centrists who showed up during the political primaries to dud the extremists, we would not be in this mess.
7
There is only one way to protect abortion rights and that is to make life in areas where women's rights are protected a no brainer as to where America's most skilled , most productive and most desirable citizens choose to live.
That is exactly what is happening and that is why I cannot understand the insanity. Trump is President because Blue America is doing exceedingly well. I spent a week in Washington DC and the smell of success is intoxicating. Let Alabama ban abortions and permit Alabamians the outrage that bad governance should inspire everywhere.
Even as Putin's choice occupies the Oval Office Russia's economy continues to decline and I suspect its citizens grow more cynical by the day.
11
At a minimum, I will never fly through Atlanta again...
11
Rapists in Alabama, especially those eyeing their female children or siblings: full speed ahead! So what if the women or girls die, or the newborn is without support, you can just feel SO powerful and manly, and no one is going to go after you.
32
Bring it on. If Roe is overturned, the tsunami that follows will make #metoo - and the 2018 midterms - look like a ripple on a pond.
22
@D.A.If Roe is overturned, blue states can still allow abortions. Pre Roe, I did a lot of cross country flying in the good ol' USA in my role as a U.S. Navy ferry pilot. Moving the Navy and Marine Corps planes around often entailed landing at civilian airports. One of these was in Zanesville, OH. The Fixed Base Operator there had a going business flying pregnant teenagers to New York, where these young women could terminate their pregnancies. Less affluent teenagers were more than likely unable to use this option.
7
Why do Republicans insist on taking steps backward as a nation?
25
Hey Alabama, for every woman FORCED to give birth shall be ENTITLED to a lifetime basic income and free health benefits and for every child she's FORCED to give birth to, shall be ENTITLED to child support until they're 18. You, dear sweet Alabama, will pay every dime for your actions.
How many laws exist against a man's body ? ZERO!
How dare you.
42
More Christian hypocrisy. These fanatics are tired of waiting for Jesus to return and so they are taking it upon themselves to punish "sinners". I would have more understanding towards them if they actually were trying to prevent pregnancy through advocating for sex education and birth control but they'll have none of that either.
26
Support pro choice candidates with your dollars in states where there is a chance of flipping a seat from red to blue.
15
Do not forget to speak with your pocketbook. I will not do any business with any company associated with the State of Alabama.
21
Say a woman wants an abortion and the father doesn't care.
If you're going to punish the woman for getting an abortion, shouldn't you punish the father as well?
Is he, or his family willing to take on the raising of this child if the mother?
I mean it's a nice gesture to jail doctors for 99 years, but really, this law is another shameful attempt for men to control women.
Men still act as though women are their property. Jeez, and people are worried about Sharia law taking over the US? I say it may have just gotten a toehold in Alabama.
29
I’m getting tired of my rights being constantly attacked by a religion I don’t subscribe to and don’t believe in. If members of the religious right don’t want an abortion they are free to never get one but they need to stop trying to cram their beliefs down everyone else’s throats.
68
Simple solution: every woman - every single female in America who is 18 years old or more - must vote. It's that simple., If you have not yet registered, do it now. Note the upcoming election days on your calendar and then make plans to vote. It's that simple. Let no man suppress your voice! No father, brother, husband, teacher, neighbor, religious leader, or friend can take your voice away; in the voting booth, it's simply you and the ballot. Do what you need to do. Now, more than ever, a woman's right - right! - to vote is the most important right she has. Don't blow it, ladies.
23
Also, if an organization to which you belong plans to have a convention in one of these states, boycott it and encourage others to do likewise. And don't go take vacations, or visit tourist attractions there, and avoid purchases while in these virulently anti-abortion states. Boycott!
14
Thank God that the Alabama legislature is standing up for the rights of unborn babies. We are praying for your success.
4
@hej Are you going to pledge you will adopt ten children that were born to mothers who would never have gone through the pregnancy. Take on the responsibility of raising these children. All talk no action.
4
Over half the white women in America voted for this war on abortion rights when they voted for Trump. Women have the voting majority. If they don't protect themselves with it, they have no one to blame but themselves. And after over a half-century of feminists screaming at women to wake up and protect themselves, no woman anywhere has the excuse of "ignorance" either. Laws against women are the fault of women. They have more than enough power to wipe out men who do this to them politically. If they keep voting for these men, it's the women's fault, and I'm angry with them, instead of feeling sorry for them. They have to take responsibility for their lives at the polls. Period.
11
Act locally, influence nationally...
Every concerned citizen should contact their governor, state reps and state senators. Push for each state to pass pro choice protections and guaranteed rights.
As more states pass protections, the impact of attacks on Roe will lessen. As more state pass protections, the popularity will become clearer to those using this as a campaign angle.
2
Not mentioned: It's time to boycott the states passing these laws. They should not get our economic support.
23
Alabama's (and Georgia's) legislators passed a deeply misogynistic law banning abortion. Of note, other than the woman governor signing it into law, all legislators were men, all hypocrites and cowards, as they themselves, although quite willing to cause a potential pregnancy, cannot become pregnant themselves; accordingly, with no right to decide women's concerns...and what's appropriate to do. These men have shown to be abusive to no measure on the law of the land (Roe vs Wade), that made abortion legal; and the wish we all have is that it be safe for the mother, available, but rare...if contraception is made available universally to prevent unwanted pregnancies, hence, an abortion.
7
Human life begins at human conception. After conception no one has a "right" to end human life.
3
@Malcolm Ryan
No one--including a fetus-- has the right to use my body against my will. Too bad, so sad for the fetus that it can't sustain its own life.
If you give it two seconds' worth of thought you'll find that this proposition is consistent with our legal system's treatment of forced bodily donation, and the majority of ethicist's opinion on the subject.
3
There is no medical, scientific support for the Christian religion’s claim that life “begins at conception.” That is a personal religious belief, not the basis for legislation affecting others, especially non-Christians and the secular.
6
@Incorporeal Being
It's not complicated. If a human sperm and a human egg unite to form a zygote, that "being" is human as well. It has a right to develop through all its stages from embryo to adult without the threat of being terminated.
The component for those who seek to restrict women’s health rights is the total domination of women. In their twisted philosophy forced pregnancy is their intimate tool. Proponents of restrictive women’s health rights are despicable.
10
Step one, take the rights of self determination from women, step two, take the rights of self determination from women. As women, the GOP would like to strip your rights as a human by making sure you are Lesser than than the governing body, REGARDLESS of whether you have ever personally considered having an abortion. It is not about kittens, puppies and babies, it is solely about a woman being equal under the law.
9
The clash between secularism and sectarianism represents asymmetrical intellectual warfare at its worst. Evangelicals feel free to impose radical political positions based entirely on their “faith,” but non-believers are not permitted to question the wisdom of governing a nation in the 21st century based on a collection of iron-age stories.
The gloves have to come off. If one side gets to argue that abortion is murder because a god plants a "soul" in every fertilized egg, the other side should be free to argue that that premise – and all religious belief – is really a bunch of nonsense.
14
A total boycott of these states is the only way to see them see the light. Make it hurt where it matters in today's America. Full Boycott.
17
"Finally, continue to talk about this issue"
And how do you respond when told you're supporting baby murder? Deflect to women's rights and essentially agree that babies are being murdered? That is why we are in this situation and why abortion rights are going to be taken away. The anti-abortion movement has successfully established the words and assumptions the majority of the public use when discussing, or thinking about, abortion. Add to that the common ignorance of biology and development, and definitions of the words "human" and "life" and abortion rights don't stand a chance. The pro-choice movement incomprehensibly refuse to debunk the anti-abortion pseudo-science. No, "human life" does not begin at conception. Sperm and egg are both human and alive. Etc.
There has been no new discoveries of human development since 1973 when a CONSERVATIVE Supreme Court came to a subjective compromise that abortion be legal without medical necessity till the third trimester. The facts they studied, and discussed in their decisions, are just as relevant now and should be used to refute the fact free assertion that the Gerber baby pops into existence at the "instant" of conception (it's not an "instant"). But no, apparently it's too hard.
4
@Mike Holloway
Yes, human life does "pop" into existence instantly after conception. Gerber baby does not. What abortion proponents don't acknowledge is that human life is a state and a process. It has a beginning and an end. It begins at conception develops from human living cells through many stages, and ends at death. It is all human life from beginning to end. From zygote to birth we develop organs, limbs, etc. From birth to death we develop motor skills, refined awareness, intelligence and wisdom. How can one say that any stage of human development is not human life?
@Rollingztone
"human life does "pop" into existence instantly after conception."
No, not with any definition of "life" that references objective observation. You've heard of "life cycle"? It doesn't refer to a straight line. Life in the development of an individual absolutely does exist prior to conception, which is a process itself, not a flash. Sperm and egg are absolutely alive. Now, anti-abortion propaganda would have you believe that a brand new individual pops into existence at the joining of sperm and egg, but a diploid number of human chromosomes exist in all your cells and we now have the ability to give all of them the potential to be a new individual.
See Carl Sagan http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml
@Mike Holloway
Mike, sweetie, can you say RU486? You’re just spinning your wheels...welcome to the 21st century!
I am not a fan of abortion. My wife and I had such a hard time getting pregnant that the thought of an abortion is unconscionable to me. I love my Son with all my heart. I can’t imagine a world without him.
.
If a State were to write into its Charter that they must fund public Education and children’s healthcare to the National Average; and if they were to also make it easier to adopt (including for LGBTQ couples), I would actually be OK with a ban on Abortion like what Alabama just did.
.
Of course we all know they would never do such a thing. Because for all the self-righteous nonsense, most who call themselves “pro life” aren’t really pro life at all. They're Pro Birth. They want children born. They don’t care one whit what happens after that.
10
Hey Zaw, totally understand that you and your wife struggled with getting pregnant and that the experience would have been difficult. But I would encourage you to think beyond your own experiences. There are millions of women who require access to abortion services. Your experience is not representative of the millions of women out there.
Rather than focusing on what when abortions should be allowed (i.e. rape, incest etc), what about providing women with family planning services, subsidised contraceptives etc. This is the only way to truly reduce abortion!
18
@Karuna. Oh I agree! The best way to reduce abortion is not through draconian laws to ban it. It’s to make it easier to raise kids (you do that with robust education, healthcare, and family services); easier to get contraception if you don’t want kids; and easier to adopt.
.
Sadly this is lost on most of the Pro Birth crowd.
4
While i fully support a woman’s right to an abortion, I do wonder what anyone expected would happen. I was thrilled by Roe vs Wade. I now think that a liberal Supreme Court found rather bizarre reasoning to legalize abortion by judicial fiat. There was no attempt to convince those who were opposed or to recognize their claims. There was no attempt to get legislative buy-in. Think what that must have looked like to a very larger portion of America who opposed abortion.
And it’s been nothing but a war since. I wonder what might have been had there been no Roe vs Wade and we had continued, as a nation, a 20-30 year conversation on abortion.
I was thrilled by Roe vs Wade; but just as we thought this decision by a liberal Supreme Court was great, we cannot now complain that a conservative Supreme Court might overturn it. It was, after all, from the standpoint of judicial reasoning, a pretty poor decision.
Painful when it’s our ox being gored, by a weapon we gave them.
1
@LKC
This is a life or death issue. It's mandatory that you stick to the facts and just any notion that fits your fancy. The 1973 Supreme Court was not just majority Republican appointed but majority CONSERVATIVE, not liberal. The majority of the vote for Roe were CONSERVATIVE justices. The lie that the court was liberal is just one of the many lies planted by the anti-abortion crusade. We have this thing called Google, but here's a Christian web site to explain it: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/voxnova/2008/05/22/were-republican-appointed-justices-who-favored-roe-in-1973-liberal/
Also a lie: the majority of the US at the time did not oppose abortion. Not even the majority of Evangelicals opposed it. It was only AFTER the decision that it was targeted as promoting promiscuity and became a political wedge issue.
7
@Mike Holloway
And before Roe, 30 states outlawed abortion entirely and 16 more outlawed it except in very special circumstances. Only New York allowed abortion unconditionally.
The decriminalization of abortion, could and most probably should, have been achieved at the state level, by legislatures, elected by the people.
I very much doubt that we would be in the situation we are in now, if that had been the case.
1
@Mike Holloway
That was a typo. it should have read: a very large portion of the US opposed abortion.
And with regard to Roe, it was a poor decision, judicial activism, that did in fact try to legalize abortion by fiat: “Roe received significant criticism in the legal community,[8] with the decision being widely seen as an extreme form of judicial activism.[9] In a highly cited 1973 article in the Yale Law Journal,[8][9] the American legal scholar John Hart Ely criticized Roe as a decision that "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be."[10] Ely added: "What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation's governmental structure." Professor Laurence Tribe had similar thoughts: "One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found”
And I’m sure that you’ll be happy to know that most anti-abortionist would agree with you that it is a life or death decision. Guess whose life?
Imagine how differently the abortion issue would be cast if woman or girl who became pregnant against her will could file for damages against the male participant in the pregnancy. Without the remedy of abortion, it is the woman who suffers physically, emotionally and economically. The male may have "regrets" but pays a comparatively low price for his participation.
But, as is patently obvious, the deck is stacked against girls and women by all male or majority-male legislatures. And, no doubt, while such gender imbalances exist, the outcome is likely to be bad for the gender that possesses both the ability and the burden of pregnancy and is denied a legal option to terminate.
23
The best way to protect not only abortion rights but any and all others, is to smarten up and turn liberal. There is no growth for country nor individual under a conservative mandate. Conservatism is a failed political party that attempts to grow by repression and discrimination. How any woman or minority of any stripe could vote Republican is simply far beyond me.
10
There have been abortions since women could get pregnant. The body also aborts nonviable embryos and fetuses as a natural process. It is safer to abort than go to term.
Medically no reason to restrict abortions. Science and medicine recognizes life and personhood at birth when viable. These laws are based on religious beliefs and the need to control women. They can practice both without forcing and imposing their beliefs and needs on the rest of us. My autonomy as an American is threatened.
20
Let the brain drain begin.
As a 13 year member of the professoriate in this benighted state, I can honestly say that some of my brightest students were young women who had no idea how intelligent they were. No one had expected them to think analytically, to write cogently and critically, to express their ideas and defend them in the academic arena, to think that their perceptions, their experiences, their ideas were worth defining and defending. But once they found their voice, get out of their way.
And it is all the more heartbreaking because the more educated they became, the greater the distance from their home cultures. In Alabama the provincialism and small mindedness of the rural South still attains across the state in a kind of Southern Baptist / evangelical war on modernism, the flash point of which is the status of women.
23
Growing up, we were all taught we lived in the greatest country in the world. A lot of people, especially in rural areas like where I grew up, died believing that.
But the world is smaller now. Now it’s too easy to learn that if we’d been lucky enough born in any number of European countries, or Canada, we could have expected longer, healthier, happier lives. We wouldn’t spend our lives in debt (unless we really worked at it), we wouldn’t lose everything we have when we get sick, we wouldn’t grow into old age wondering how we would survive.
And women would be treated like human beings instead of incubators existing at the pleasure of men.
Remember all those other countries, the ones people wanted to leave, where people didn’t live free and didn’t feel safe? We live in one of those countries.
The barbaric laws against women in Alabama, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, Utah, Arkansas and counting? I am numb.
52
With a right-wing U.S. Supreme Court and many state governments firmly in the hands of reactionaries, I believe that the only response with the possibility to influence these states in the foreseeable future is one of economic boycott.
I will not visit these states, and will avoid even travelling through them; if such travel is unavoidable, I will not spend even one dime within their borders. Perhaps with greater impact, I will do all that I can to avoid any purchases of products from companies manufacturing in those states, or with headquarters there.
Regarding Alabama, that means that I will not buy a Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Hyundai, or Mercedes-Benz automobile, as these companies have major assembly plants there. Kia has an assembly plant in Georgia, also an oppresive state for reproductive rights, so that is another brand I will boycott.
23
@Fred Drumlevitch
I should add the automotive plants in several other states that have all either enacted or moved towards repressive legislation recently: Nissan and Toyota in Mississippi; Ford, GM, and Toyota in Kentucky; Fiat-Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda in Ohio.
That further restricts my choices, but some brands still remain possible.
4
@MCRaven
Most academia doesn't stifle speech. That a particular position doesn't get equal exposure doesn't necessarily mean that it is equally valid (or even valid at all) and being suppressed. If one student says that two plus three equals five, and another says it equals four, the "four" answer is not being stifled if it is ignored or declared wrong.
Likewise, if a student calls the American Civil War a noble "Lost Cause" of the South, and Robert E. Lee a selfless hero, it wouldn't be stifling to declare such claims wrong.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
There is, however, a different problem with academia, in that it has in recent years begun to focus more on current relevancy and even "job training" and, as a result of funding cuts, formed alliances with business that have at least potentially compromised its role in teaching students to think critically.
3
I’ve wondered if all the Trump craziness has obscured the relentless assault on reproductive rights in state after state. That’s why I think Alabama’s new law might be good news. It clearly defies Roe v. Wade. It clearly bans abortion (never mind the equivocation.) I hope it is the long awaited clarion call to awaken people who up to now have taken reproductive rights for granted.
10
It's time for a woman's right to choose (WRC) amendment to the Constitution. Enshrine the right in a way that the Supreme Court would be powerless to interfere.
8
republicans were the strongest supporters of legalizing abortion in the late 60s, early 70s. look at the high courts and state governors: nixon, reagan, nelson rockefeller, russell peterson and several nixon and eisenhower court appointees. history tells us that this issue is about population control, not women's rights or children's rights.
4
Thank you for this - I've been wanting to take action in a meaningful way today and this gave me the resources to do so.
6
I long to hear a Dem candidate say the following:
Nobody is for abortion.
We all want each child to be planned and wanted.
Dems do this through education and access to birth control.
We invite GOP to join us in creating a culture where each child is planned, wanted and can grow in a society that values their future. The best place to address abortion is prior to the pregnancy. However, when unplanned pregnancies do happen, the response is personal and private between a woman and her physician.
40
@Gayle Get over it! Democrats have said so for YEARS!
Thanks NYT for constructive things to do for women in EVERY state. I made small donations to NARAL and to the ACLU this evening and I am planning to reactivate my escorting this week. Illinois has a Bill—Reproductive Health Act—in the works now that’s will empower women no matter what the Supreme Court does going forward. Thank God we had a blue wave in 2018. Now we need a blue tsunami in 2020.
9
Elections have consequences.
I have no doubts that other shoes will be dropping...
4
Either a woman is fully human, an end in and of herself, or she is the means to another's end. The Constitution does not allow that some people are "more equal than others" and they are means for the ends of others. Disqualifying a woman from decisions regarding her own body and life reduces the woman to a means, a slave, a machine, a thing that produces babies for the benefit of others and not herself. Abortion is not the issue. The issue is whether a simple medical decision by a rational person is one that is trumped by one who is not.
58
@Maxine and Max
Abortion is not the issue. The issue is that a wise and humane society needs to nurture and protect human life, at all stages of development, from conception to natural death. And its institutions should support that end. Preventing the termination of a human life is not a reduction to slavery.
Blame Repubs? Here is Joe Biden, our own 2020 Dem nominee:
"When Joe Biden Voted to Let States Overturn Roe v. Wade"
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/us/politics/biden-abortion-rights.html
And he claims he is the most "progressive"!
4
Thanks, Bernie
1
Leaving aside the NYT's position on the issue, I wish the paper would stop using the term "reproductive rights". Other than victims of rape, everyone has the right to reproduce, or not.
6
Actually it’s the right not to reproduce — the right to control reproduction — that’s at stake. Hence “reproductive rights”.
It’s not just abortion. It’s also sex education and access to birth control. See: Hobby Lobby.
What term would you choose?
7
Where is the outrage? Where is the mass resistance? Christian Fascism is advancing state by state.
Mike
19
There are 268 people scheduled to be murdered by the state of Alabama via their capital punishment laws - legal murder of adults. Adult lives don’t count in Alabama, only fetuses in women do - I wonder why.
54
What do we do with the 13 year old girl who was raped by her father and got pregnant. ?
15
Or the woman carrying a fetus with a lethal condition, like anencephaly.
8
Somewhere between the New York abortion 'til birth and this Alabama law there must be some compromise.
2
Any compromise comprises a woman’s ability under the law to exercise her agency in leading her life. Any compromise grants the state power to commandeer her body in support of another, something that never happens except in cases of abortion.
Compromises on the totality of an individual’s agency are ugly and ultimately unstable. The 3/5 person compromise on slavery was resolved only by civil war and three constitutional amendments.
You could say Roe is a compromise: once the fetus is viable — meaning it can survive without the mother’s bodily support — then it gains rights as a human being under the law. The “compromise” you think is possible starts there and is measured by how much of the woman’s right is denied.
5
Now we see what we already know, the Republican Party is the Party of Misogynists;disrespect for women is evident from the president on down;the Republican party like trump disrespects the rule of law, with trump minions like Graham advising Jr to ignore the subpoena & the "head" of the DOJ ignoring the subpoena to appear before Congress;no rules of conduct or behavior for these men, but lo, if you are a woman, they want you to bear a child, any child, one from incest, one from rape the Republican party demands you deliver; just as with black slaves, Republicans want to own womens reproductive rights; what are the men who impregnate women required to do? Where is the outrageous law that controls a man's reproductive rights? That Alabama has the worst living conditions for its poor and black citizens as revealed by a year long study by the UN "The 88 Million Homeless in America";Yes you read that right, but what are the Republicans doing about the homeless, the elderly without food, like Mulvaney, who ignorantly claimed Meals on Wheels doesn't work only because its a social program & the Kochs tell Republicans no more social programs;&the Kochs hate Social Security, so look out people; Republicans repeatedly vote against affordable housing, universal healthcare, sufficient food assistance, universal Kindergarten,and sufficient funding for public education;Republicans want every sperm to be born,but when a child is born their voting record tells them "Drop Dead"
15
Time to look for a BETTER horizons...
Here they are pro-birth after that the pro-life don't exist.... just the the complainers about why so many in welfare... and why our taxes are spent on them....The are much better places than these... puritan trying to purify their evil hearts...
5
It's time to include men on this mix: it's their sperm that helps goin the zygote.
It's time to criminalize all non-baby producing emissions. Lengthy jail time and large fines, with perhaps the forced Administrative oversight of offenders' sperm emissions are now called for. Immediately, state boards shall be created to adjudicate licenses to emit sperm, with testing of fertility, motility, clinical scrutiny ok for all intended mothers (for there shall no longer be any non-procreating emissions of sperm.
So called "nocturnal emissions" are hereby banned as well, with identical penalities. Special patrols will monitor community activities, where state and federal funding is at stake. Special equipment will detect sperm, including from helicopters.
On the bright side, all this will create JOBS! So, huzzah!
Some will resist; They always do, LOL! But we cannot afford, as a great nation, to wait for someone ELSE to do all the heavy lifting: men must see the good in this fight.
14
No American company, organisation or individual should do any business in Alabama. Zilch.
19
The only thing that could stop these laws if some of the politicians, including Trump, have a daughter or wife who has a life-threatening pregnancy and needs an abortion. Or one where it is obvious the fetus is not viable and they are forced to carry it to term and deliver it. Of course, these hypocrites would quietly go to a place where abortion is still safe. This is the last rallying cry of the "Christian" right. They have left all the rest of their morals behind in following Trump, the twice-divorced, philanderer, crotch-grabber, cheat and liar.
10
Of course, you are neglecting what happens when birth control fails. All the time. I had a condom spring a leak on me. My partner and I did what "was right," but we still ended up with an unintended and unwelcome pregnancy.
9
How dare these “people” decide what a woman can do with her body. So if their life is in danger it’s OK?? So, if a young woman is sexually abused by family members and gets pregnant, that’s NOT a life threatening situation?? Well, they’re wrong, dead wrong! How many unwanted & unloved children are in the world already. Are these people prepared to carry these babies, pay huge bills to have them delivered and even larger bills to raise them?? NO NO NO NO + NO!! It’s easy to site God but is any one person willing to be God loving & take 1 unwanted child into their life? NO NO NO!
16
Remarkably, I'm the few from blue states who is yelling hooray in the light of the new abortion bill.
It's really disappointing to see our society in America who say that killing a unborn baby is moving foward in our world.
Pro life supporters like me aren't supporting Christian Sharia law.
We support the existence of human lives, not seeing a baby's chance of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness being wiped away without knowing.
5
Unless you have a uterus and can forcibly become impregnated, I don't care what you think.
24
And in pursuit of your high-minded moralism, you’re prepared to commandeer the woman’s body for the purpose and some years of her life.
How would you feel about someone else telling you when to have a baby?
20
It's a shame the State didn't take the same interest in gun control as they do in control over a woman's reproductive organs. lol!
20
Blame Reagan, who started all this.
6
This isn't really about life or protection of life, if that were true they would have proposed throwing vasectomy doctors in jail also. This is about power and abortion and is the vehicle and the ticket to ride for Republicans and the religious right who have been electing all these conservative judges, Duh. Figure it out folks these are the same people who would build walls on the southern border, mount machine guns and shoot the first kid trying to get across. They are not about life they are about power.
For those of us who were there in the 50 and 60s and remember the arguments back then it turned on old white men being sick and tired of their daughters and granddaughters being unable to have kids of their own because they had gone to the coat hanger chop shop that would provide an abortion and come out of the operation unable to conceive, or worse they died in the "operation." New restrictive laws will only turn back the clock to that time.
Now we have a new group of old white men and their road is power, money and control. Figure it out.
14
The anti-abortion faction is led by right wing ideologues who actually don't care about the issue. During the George W. Bush administration, they were often overheard mocking the religious "idiots" who voted for Republicans. They were willing to flagrantly use the issue because of the inherent mindless intensity they knew it would generate in anti-abortion fanatics. They didn't care that they were pushing people to commit heinous, illogical crimes, killing women, mothers, doctors and nurses. No one actually sits down and discusses the pros and cons of abortion. The anti-abortion people don’t appear to want to think reasonably. Fetal tissue or human eggs are hemorrhaged out every time a woman has her menstrual period or a miscarriage. These Issues should be between a woman and her physician, not some politician lacking any sense of morality.
12
It's no accident this is in Alabama. This isn't about morality, this about eugenics and containment of the pure white race race. In other words, entitled white men want to control the civil rights of unmarried professional white women. Unfortunately these laws will disproportionately impact poor white and black women-who may loose ALL HEALTHCARE if this is passed. This an attack on public women's preventative healthcare including ovarian and breast cancer screenings. White working-class men without college degrees are being taken advantage by billionaires that live in a delusional reality separated real people. If they attempt to overturn Roe, they will have a true revolution on their hands. I am 40 and sick of adapting to a reality shaped by conservative white men that still think white women need to have babies to sustain white supremacist rule. And, Kavanaugh and Thomas who are accused of sexual harassment, assault, and possibly rape are determining my basic human rights? We are in 2019 not the Victorian era. This is so much further than overreach, the Republicans are officially an authoritarian fascist regime. I'm ready to fight! Bring it.
18
What about the babies rights?
5
Do you mean the so-called "rights" of a creature that has no whims nor desires and is in a state which if an adult were in would be called a "vegetable" since it cannot exist or live on its own in any way vs the rights of a woman or girl who is able to think and plan and is, at least, more likely to have wishes and desires for, say, a life which does not include having to give birth to a baby with which she was impregnated when her father raped her?
7
Babies have rights. Zygotes don’t have rights. The Alabama bill protects them as if they did.
10
@Rafi We are not talking about babies.
11
If the god people of Alabama want to send doctors who provide abortions to prison for 99 years, they should certainly send the women who receive them to a similar term. I'm sure that Alabama's felony murder law holds that all participants in a crime are equally guilty before the law. Just because Good Christian Alabama women sometimes find themselves in a pickle, due to poor impulse control rape, or a "funny uncle", shouldn't give them a pass, which is exactly what this law does.
3
Money talks and nothing else matters.
Mercedes, Honda, Hundai and Toyota all have assembly plants in Alabama.
Vote your conscience by buying cars made elsewhere. Let the companies know how you feel and what you plan. What do you think the legislators who think it’s okay to put their slimy hands all over women’s wombs will do when they get a phone call from the biggest employer in their district? Quit wasting your breath. Go do something.
7
@Andre Thanks for the information, I am presently looking for a car to purchase.
2
Go ahead Alabama, join Mississippi in making your state a monolithic bloc Christian conservatives. No one else is going to want to live there. And then once that's accomplished let's see what happens to your economy.
8
In my humble opinion, no man has a right to tell a women whether or not she can or can not have a baby.
Did the AL govie have any women on it?
2
My guess is that if you check the voting records of the legislators who voted for these draconian abortion laws you will find that they are also the same folks who vote for the death penalty and against any funding of health and wealth initiatives for poor children. They profess to love the unborn but the living they don't give a hoot about.
9
Wait?
A democratically elected government outlawed abortion. I don't agree, but, is that not what government by the people for the people is for?
If the folks in Bama don't like it, they can vote the guys out right?
So, what's the beef?
3
The beef is the gerrymandering. Can’t win for loose.
4
AS long as women in teh stet of Alabama voites to get the GOP back in power , who are we to protest!
It may be the law in the country today
but thanks to awesome hatred for Hillary we are in the cusp of losing the right for all women
and I have no answer in store for my daught if she one day ask me what were "our generation" thinking? !
4
"Mr. Chambliss also seemed to argue repeatedly on Tuesday that women in Alabama would still be able to get abortions — but only before they knew they were pregnant." This absurdly ignorant statement is why we need equal female representation in elected office. A woman may not know she is pregnant by the time the heartbeat can be detected. The cruelness of this AL law is despicable. All Americans should be ashamed and worried about the curtailment of personal freedom and the religious intrusion into people's personal lives.
8
Not too many comments here from Alabama - how about everyone minding their own business? This is what the majority of people in Alabama believe - they think what many of you think is a medical procedure is murder. Are they wrong? No - because people can reasonably believe life starts at conception. Its opinion - not science.
2
Given that it’s opinion, not science, everyone should indeed mind their own business. If people don’t want to undergo abortions, that’s fine. Just don’t force your opinion on anyone else. Which is exactly what this law is doing. So maybe those against abortion should mind their own business instead of forcing their opinions upon the rest of us.
28
You don’t leave a question of whether or not an act is murder to personal preference - it’s best addressed democratically (at the state level)
1
Yet the conservatives of Alabama won't expand Medicaid to provide healthcare to low income families (and babies). Hypocrites.
16
The NYT for the past 30 years pushed an approach that did not put women’s rights to the forefront. Those rights were always meant to be compromised by this paper. The rights of women have never been a litmus test for support of candidates or party for this paper.
This paper for decades have treated the ability to have an abortion as a given, but also something that could be negotiated away.
Alabama’s law is the natural extension of that “compromise”.
Alabama should feel shame, but where has the NYT been for the last 30 years? Not fighting against any of the policies and people who got us here.
This is what happens when you compromise on basic human rights for economic gain for the rich. To the NYT did you all get paid enough to give up women’s rights? Was it worth it?
1
Simple answer, we can’t help. The southern states are controlled fully by retrograde white aristocracy that would love to go back to outright owning black and brown people. They have no time for the rights of those they have ordained as less than themselves. Women are on the list. They seek command and control of others as a way to protect and project power. A bigger problem is all states in question at the lower end of every measure of human development and require massive federal subsidies to stay afloat. SC and AL for get back around $2 in federal funds for every dollar they pay in taxes. NY and CA get back about 50 cents. If they don’t want to part of civilized world do what any good parent would do, cut them off. Let them run there ‘handmaiden state’ and send luggage and relocation assistance so anyone with a brain can leave.
2
Back to back-alleys and coat hangers.
Make America Great Again.
11
There is too much religion about human conception usurping the freedom of expression and self determination.
8
"Down where the right is a little far-righter,
That's where the South begins."
Unfortunately.
4
If there were any rule of law in this country, these religious extremist laws would be immediately struck down by an appeals court. But we suddenly live in a Christian Saudi Arabia.
12
I am constantly saddened that America is moving back into the Dark Ages under Republican rule. I believe that we should be moving into the 21st century instead of backwards. It is as if America died. Yep, Republican politicians have killed America. I'm looking forward to the "Rebirth of America". What is it going to take in order to do this? A Revolution ?? Perhaps !!
4
@TommyTiger It seems that we are heading in that direction.
The "pro-life" crowd has so much love and compassion for an unborn fetus. Once born, kick em' to curb. After birth, the Republican mantra of survival of the fittest and every man for himself kicks in. They don't want to spend a dime to help unwanted children yet have no problem if their tax money goes toward building a wall. These people have no shame. If there is a heaven, they'll never see it.
13
With abstinence or birth control, abortion is not needed.
2
@Dia
From RAINN.org :
Studies suggest that the chance of getting pregnant from one-time, unprotected intercourse is between 3.1-5%, depending on a multitude of factors, including the time of month intercourse occurs, whether contraceptives are used, and the age of the female. The average number of rapes and sexual assaults against females of childbearing age is approximately 250,000 per year in the US. Thus, the number of children conceived from rape each year in the United States might range from 7,750—12,500.
According to the CDC, 9 out of 100 women who are on the pill get pregnant in the first year of use. After sterilization or IUD, the pill is the most effective birth control. With the use of male condoms, the rate of pregnancy is 18 per 100 women within the first year.
Were you aware of these statistics?
16
@Dia We are talking about coercion and rape. Man wants, man grabs.
2
@Dia
Birth control fails.
Abstinence is a non-answer.
Rape happens.
Pregnancies go awry.
Pregnancies put women's health at risk.
But sure, you've definitely solved a massive public health/policy debate in an 8 word sentence.
1
Let’s try a little reverse psychology and not challenge the law in the courts. Why should Planned Parenthood and the ACLU waste their resources fighting a law the legislature openly admits goes beyond anything it wants? Let Alabama have this law. Let’s see how mothers, fathers and husbands react when a daughter or a wife gets knocked up by a rapist or the degenerate uncle or brother and the trusted family doctor is unwilling to perform an abortion because he or she doesn’t want to go to jail for 99 years. And if the doctor does perform the abortion, the ACLU can bring a lawsuit against the doctor to protect the integrity of Alabama law on behalf of its citizens who elected the wise legislators who passed this law.
4
So the only exception to this ridiculous restriction is when a woman's life is in jeopardy. Can't it be argued then, that being forced to carry a rapist's baby to term would endanger the woman's mental health and increase the risk of suicide? Could that possibly work as an interim loop-hole if/until something more substantial is done to combat these restrictions? What about the women who can't afford to have a baby when they become homeless? Doesn't that technically put their lives in jeopardy?
5
Abortion has not been outlawed in Alabama - it has been outlawed to poor, rural, uneducated woman who do not have the resources to go elsewhere - a little trip to Sweden - to have an abortion. Those of us with enough money and know-how were able to get safe abortions even before Roe. That is one of the most shameful aspects of anti-abortion laws. All of the women in the Alabama legislators' families will be able to get a safe abortion if they want or need one. They all should be ashamed of themselves. We must fight back however we can.
11
Just wait. Some of these laws criminalize abortion wherever it happens. The Georgia law, if I’m not mistaken, holds the woman criminally liable if she travels out of state to have an abortion prohibited by that law.
Maybe you can leave the stare. Then you have decide not just to move, but never go back, lest you be caught while speeding or something. And you have to hope another state won’t extradite you.
3
@James K Lowden. I don’t see how a state can claim jurisdiction in another state. If abortion is illegal in State A, but someone gets an abortion in State B where it’s legal, State A should not be able to prosecute. Your state of residence doesn’t determine the legality of actions you take in other states.
And if there is some law about traveling to another state, well, if you’re pregnant and do any traveling, you’re at risk of arrest if you miscarry while away.
Pretty much I foresee that women will be afraid to get medical care if they suspect they are pregnant. Home pregnancy tests will be done in secrecy. What if you miscarry and someone finds out? Better not tell the family. If you have an abusive partner, better not let him know until you’re safely past the early stages. He can sic the authorities on you by lying about the circumstances of your miscarriage. Maybe start saving up for lawyers fees ahead of time to defend yourself.
2
A thought. All women who believe that this law is wrong leave the state and go to a more progressive state. Alabamas tax base will shrink as the men will follow women. The state needs to hurt economically for this draconian law. Can we have boycott of the entire state from all progressives in the country? I for one will never set foot in the state until sanity returns. For the same reason, I refuse to travel to an Islamic country. I even avoid transiting through Dubai.
5
@Sam I command you for your resolve and character.
If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe tomorrow the abortion access landscape will be virtually unchanged. The out cry here is totally out of proportion to the facts. Nothing will change in 40 states, few more might become more restrictive and a few may ban abortion outright. Once the game is narrowed people can advocate for changes in those few States where abortion is limited. The best advice is to pick your fights after narrowing the field. There are millions of people in this country who sincerely believe abortion is murder - you will not change their minds by screaming at the or making silly arguments about theocracy.
3
I for one don’t expect to change their minds with silly arguments. Or with rational arguments. You can’t reason a man out of a position he didn’t reason himself into.
That said, their opinion doesn’t count. I don’t mean it has no political effect; of course it does. I mean no one’s opinion trumps another individual’s rights. I expect the courts to recognize that. Naturally I’m disappointed sometimes, but that’s still the right thing to expect.
5
I'm glad everyone is so outraged when a state blatantly passes something that is violation of the constitution.
I live in California and they recently have passed gun laws that are blatant violations of constitutional rights but I didn't see the Editorial Board outraged about that.....
I hope both of these laws from Alabama and California are shot down once they make it to the Supreme Court.
3
You’re only mistaken about what the 2nd amendment means. I suspect it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
We have lots of gun regulation in this country. Not enough, but a lot more than none. The Firearms act of 1934 regulated machine guns for example. The Supreme Court decided it was constitutional.
Maybe you disagree with their assessment. Fine. But that doesn’t make it “blatantly” unconstitutional.
The same goes for California’s new law. Maybe, under some interpretation, it’s unconstitutional. But probably not; it’s at least defensible.
5
The ACLU should not challenge this in court because you are giving them what they want, for the case to go to the highest court which may overturn Roe v Wade. Let the folks who live in these states move to places where they can live a normal life with true freedoms to choose what they do with their bodies, to vote, to live in a multi-racial, sharing society. Let these narrow-minded, so-called religious focused states go back to draconian days - maybe that's what Trumpians mean by Make America Great Again. And maybe if we're lucky, Trump and his family and Pence can live there and tell everyone what to do according to their (im)moral, totalitarian standards.
2
So, let’s see. You were born female. When you get older you decide to have sex (not an illegal action) or you were attacked, raped (illegal action). Pregnancy is the result. According to the forced pregnancy crowd, you have no choice but to turn your body over for the use of another entity for nearly a year. Then you must hope that none of the dangers of pregnancy arise because that same “pro-life” crowd will be of little or no help. And, they likely have already deprived you of health insurance and pre-natal care that’s adequate, affordable, available where you live.
Now, change the human at the center of this scenario to male. What is required of him? Perhaps, financial support but the woman can’t necessarily count on that either. Who does not have bodily sovereignty? Lawbreakers and slaves.
It’s easy to make laws (and get into wars) when it’s not your freedom, your financial future, your very life on the line. Women will never be equal without full reproductive freedom.
17
I'm in Georgia, and it was a stolen election. One and a half million voters were purged off the voter rolls. Russia hacked down to the county level. Ballots were thrown out, there were not enough voting machines or provisional ballots, polling places were moved or closed, senior black citizens were taken off a bus on the way to the polls, etc.
This was systematic. Brian Kemp running for governor and controlling the process as Secretary of State was coordinating his attempts with Republicans in other states.
Same thing with abortion. This isn't just Alabama or Georgia. It is a systematic oppression of all women in the country.
Argentina forced an 11-year-old child to have the baby of her 60+ year old rapist. That will now become the law in some states.
I just donated to both Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
No Republican will EVER get my vote again.
18
The legal age for marraige in Alabama with parental consent is 14.
In Alabama, of the sexual assaults that occur each year, it is estimated that only 32% are reported to law enforcement. In 80% of these cases, the victims knew or were related to the offender. According to the latest data reported by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency's (ALEA) Crime in Alabama, 1,890 rapes were reported to law enforcement. Seventy-nine percent of these rapes were committed by someone the victims knew. Nearly 23% of these victims were between the ages of 13 and 16.
And now Alabama wants to eliminate the rights of women to safe abortions?
WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE. So I choose to BOYCOTT any state who:
-Passes any laws eliminating Hospital / Clinic / Doctor provided abortion as an option
-Sets punitive laws to punish Doctors who provide safe abortions
-Reduce to the point of unreasonable the amount of time to recieve a safe and legal abortion
-Do not make birth control information and perscriptions affordable and readily available to all women AND men.
I will not knowingly purchase from (in store or online) any business in these states. Further I will not vacation in, be a part of any business meetings held in, or travel through the following states.
Alabama
Georgia
Kentucky
Mississippi
Ohio
WILL YOU JOIN ME?
20
I’m in. They are my official do not touch, visit list.
3
@SK YES. I am in.
Please, politicians and government have no business interfering with the rights of women to take care of their personal health. And to the folks who comment that - “oh, joy, now more babies can be born” - read your history. More women will die from unsafe abortions. By the thousands! I lived through those years before Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. Women who are desperate will find a way, and have done so throughout history. And the rich will continue to have safe abortions.
From “What we don’t know about the uterus can harm us” by Monica Hesse, WaPo, May 13:
“I once snorted at my desk while skimming a complaint from a gentleman annoyed that menstruating women felt the need to waste money on sanitary products. Why didn’t they just learn to ‘hold it,’ he suggested, the way men kept themselves from urinating?“
Do you want this person as a judge? I would refer to these men who pass these misogynistic laws as Neanderthals, but I would prefer not to insult ancient people. When the tribe grew too big to feed the elders probably knew which herbs to use.
7
Alabama’s public education system ranks in the US.
It shows.
5
May 15, 2019
Then we have a very smart judge to this discourse for all.
"The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control."
RUTH BADER GINSBERG, Ms., Apr. 1974
11
This is an issue the Alabaman's citizens have to decide.
2
I feel like we're in a recent episode of Call the Midwife ( PBS) back in England in the '60's , in which a young mother died of an infection from botched back alley abortion. Is this what we have come to in this country? In 2019?
8
Interesting comments. Very few give more than a passing thought to the child.
2
It has never, ever, been about the child. It’s about hateful men thinking they can tell a woman what to do with her body. It is also about GOP wanting women, who are more often Democrats, to have no civil rights.
6
Sir,
If you want to define a fetus as a child, that’s fine. But I don’t.
6
@Sean Boldt There is no child. A CHILD IS AN ENTITY THAT EXISTS ON ITS OWN,INDEPENDENTLY OF ITS CREATOR.
1
Rep Terri Collins stated: "...an unborn baby is a person who deserves love and protection." The key question is "what is a person?" There are numerous definitions of a person but, for the sake of discussion, let's use: "A person is an entity that has the moral right of self determination." I'll also throw into the mix a person has to demonstrate intelligence, self awareness and consciousness. When an embryo/fetus becomes a person is not a question for government, but rather the medical and science fields. If a woman has a miscarriage and the doctor finds it required medical attention to keep harm from the mother, who gets to sit back and judge if the doctor did the right thing? A prosecutor? Is the United States going to start an Inquisition of it's own? Any discussion of this cannot include just women. It takes two to tangle and men should not be excluded from this discussion/penalties. I cannot help but think, under this administration, the real drive is to take power away from the women. Government seems to talk out of both sides of their mouths. We allow people who are on life support with no hope of recovery to end their lives, pull the cord. So it's permissible to kill someone in this situation? Nobody understands the situations individuals find themselves in other than those individuals. What has happened to the Republicans who used to want the government to get out of the peoples lives?
13
Why do we never hear of our government doing anything to support women who are raising babies alone, or who have a child with a disability, or who are desperately poor. What about helping women to obtain cheap, dependable contraception. Finally, how can we teach our young girls to be strong and proud and to love and respect themselves and not feel a desperate need to be loved by another. I cannot help but feel that for some, forcing a woman to go through am unwanted pregnancy is seen as a just punishment. We need to examine this issue with compassion and love for all.
15
The so called " New World " is older than the Old world of Europe.
Philosophical ideas that date from 200 years and that have not evoluted.
Resulting in the most violent crime nation on earth with the highest ( by far 6 times more than Europe ) incarceration rate per capita. 750 vs France 100 for exemple .
Still the death penalty not abolished : the last industrialized nation.
No health insurance.
Abortion laws from 200 years ago.
8
@JPH
perhaps this is what republicans mean with "maga"? How many years are they planning to spend on this maga-project? I mean, how many years until they will consider maga to have been achieved? Other countries wonder whether to wait for you, or ditch you. Tilting more and more towards ditching you, as time passes by.
1
@JPH They were no laws.
The only way to defeat the right wing is to overturn Casey and let each state decide. Women's bodily autonomy will remain protected in more educated, progressive states and women in regressive states will lose their right to access abortion and birth control. Meanwhile, the regressive states will continue to lose population--especially educated people--and business. Americans are lucky. We have a right to choose to live in one of 50 different states. Every time a woman in Alabama is raped and forced to carry her rapist's child, a few more Alabaman's will decide to either vote differently or move to somewhere less backward. When the rates of teen pregnancy, unwanted babies, and poverty struck single mothers rise to the point that the state cannot cope financially or socially, a few more people will either leave the state or vote differently. Right now, the right wing and Republican Party use the issue of abortion to hold the entire country hostage.
3
If I understand this bill correctly, a doctor performing an abortion in Alabama could be subject to 99 years imprisonment.
Let's consider passing a national law as follows:
Any state or national legislator who votes to approve legislation which subsequently is found un-Constitutional by a state Supreme Court OR by the U.S. Supreme Court shall be deemed to have committed a felony punishable by 99 years in prison (with no chance of parole) AND a fine of $250,000.
7
I live in Alabama and I think that all the lawmakers that voted for this law should be thrown in jail as what they did is illegal.
3
Make that 1 million minimum.
1
There was Explosive Outrage when it was discovered the Facebook had shared or sold people's personal data (age, residential area, phone numbers etc) to marketers and pollsters. Now we see States mandating that confidential health records be sent directly and deliberately to law enforcement, just in case! something illegal went on.
Putting aside the debate of pregnant woman's right to choose vs a growing fetus's right to live, these recent laws are a Call to Attention to all citizens. Tools are available to make every piece of legislation readable by anyone who is interested. We must demand the Right to Read what is being put upon us Before it is Law! A reasonable window of time, for public absorption and discussion should be part of the Bill Protocol at every level of legislation. The road to a Supreme Court challenge should paved with debate and diligence not a 'Surprise' mortar shell dropped in the Dark Ignorance of the Night!
10
Best suggestion ever! You are brilliant !
Before any of the President's defenders brandish his bonafides as a pro-life warrior, let's remember that one of the 'services' that his long time lawyer and so-called 'fixer' - Michael Cohen - provided for one of his two other clients (Trump friend Eliot Broidy) was to arrange for an abortion and subsequent $1.6M settlement after an illicit affair between Broidy and a playboy model. This is the company he keeps.
25
Rather than calling those who support these bans as "anti-abortion" or "anti-choice" (and certainly not "pro-life"), I suggest we start referring to them as "anti-woman" because that's exactly what this is all about.
56
Exactly.
1
They define themselves by whether they can afford to feed themselves, house themselves, clothes themselves, medically care for themselves. In short, reproductive decisions are part and parcel of a woman’s civil rights and freedom to live in America.
And to criminalize miscarriages shows massive ignorance of women’s physiology.
7
Hidden behind the false characterization of abortion as murder or baby killing is the paternalistic desire to control Women’s sexuality, and that’s why they attack access to contraceptives as well, rather than encouraging their use as a way of reducing the need for abortion.
31
GOP want less democrats to voice their opinions and exercise their rights. One way for them to do that is to attack the voices and civil rights of women. GOP can never win honestly. Cheating and stealing is their only course.
To force a rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term is a form of slavery. Last time I checked, the 14th Amendment outlawed the practice. I'm pretty sure Roe vs. Wade settled this argument.
32
Add to that the insane forcing of visitation of a rapist to visit a child born of rape and inflict additional torture on the rape victim. The GOP hate women.
4
Why doesn't congress just stop granting of all government contracts, student loans, business and educational contracts, and aids/grants, farm subsidies, etc to states and localities who deny access to full women's medical treatment without harassment?
Huh? Huh? Huh?
13
@Margie
Because the executive and half the legislative branch of government is controlled by the GOP.
Because so many delusional people keep voting GOP criminals into office. Who do you think is dreaming of multiple ways to deny women and minorities their rights?
Add to that lazy and clueless people who don’t vote at all. And horrific voter suppression tactics that by default keep electing criminals.
1
The only reason to go to Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky or Mississippi right now is to volunteer to drive a woman to another state so she can get a safe and legal abortion if she wants/needs one!!! My protests will be with my wallet and my voice- In both big and small ways! These states will not be getting my child's college application fees or out of state tuition, they will not be flown thru for airline transfers, no esty shops from there will be sending me products. I am crushed at the lack of respect that women receive- don't you all have mothers who have made choices for you- don't you respect them? Do you know how hard it is to not have a choice over your own body? Has anyone demanded that YOU not get care that you need or deserve? How can you deny the next generation of women your respect- This is an outrage pure and simple.
45
Amen. It certainly is.
4
A young woman in my community walked in front of a train just for getting pregnant.
14
How did these Alabamian geniuses come up with 99 years as a penalty for medical professionals performing a medical procedure? From a hat? A bible scripture?
All physicians of conscience in Alabama should either go on strike or better yet, just move out of the state altogether.
23
While I realize that women have always had to take the responsibility for birth control, even to the point of buying and carrying condoms and forcing men to use them, this is just another way for men to control women and then criticize and berate them for their normal, human, sexual activity. Am I the first one to say that most men have no idea how the female reproductive system works? If there's a heartbeat, then its alive? Give me a break. Then go to a medical center and tell them,"I've chosen to give birth right now."
Don't teach our children about that, its nasty, its dirty. No, its just plain biology. Its so ridiculous
I'm signing up to drive to Georgia or Alabama or wherever to take women wherever they have to go to get a legal abortion. We are shamed enough for not being the ones to say "no."
15
I don't understand. Either we have federal laws passed by the Supreme Court or we do not. If any state can ignore federal laws with no consequence, why have a Supreme Court and what good are such laws. If states can overrule any SC decision, we again have no real federal legal system. If every time a state decides to ignore federal laws, we have to go back to the SC for yet another decision, we are in a continuous loop. No good can come from this. Sooner or later, this will happen to the Republicans and then they can deal with this obvious oversight. Trump and his gang win again. He was right about wining but by breaking laws.
9
You are right. The Supreme Court is pretty much useless these days for your exact reasons. I would also add since Supreme Court is now acting so partisan, let’s have immediate term limits for these pontificating demi-gods. Then we can vote them in or out like all the other partisan hacks.
2
@Paul Raffeld They're putting these laws in place now because they are hoping the SCOTUS will be crooked and over turn Roe v. Wade.
Start a charity based, general fund to pay for women who'll need to travel out of state to have an abortion.
How many can there possibly be?
Problem Solved!
2
How many can there be? Surely you jest.
2
Why doesn’t New York mind its own business instead of meddling with other states? The Supreme Court should have left it to the states to decide instead of deciding for them, but it knuckled under to the politics of it. Women’s lib was the thing. Now we have an abortion industry which the government makes everyone pay for whether they approve of abortion or not. The decision has divided our nation and should be reversed.
1
It’s just Women’s Lib. Does anyone seriously believe that outlawing abortion will prevent people from obtaining abortions? Back to the alley, and the 1950’s.
4
@Edward
What a silly comment. Because NY is part of this great nation and contributes considerable taxes as well. Look at the polling data and surveys. We are divided regardless of which way its decided. Then let's just divide the Republic into 50 small countries and go our separate ways?
1
Women, and secondarily men, must rise up in numbers never seen before and march to your state capitols and on Washington DC. Peaceful, loud, lawful, protesters need to plant themselves outside the homes of any elected representative who votes to overturn a woman's right to choose. Just like in the 1960s lawful civil unrest needs to take to the streets and demand those who overturn a woman's right to choose back off those positions. If not, they will be voted out of office.
11
@Magan. “Must rise up” such drama. Have you any clue that there are equal numbers against killing babies? Perhaps you need to realize that women don’t have to get pregnant.
1
Rich women and their daughters, very much including those related to the men who passed this awful law, will continues access abortion services, as they did before Roe. It’s only poor women who will be effected.
10
And that includes the entire middle class, who are not at all wealthy. The GOP are criminally insane and hateful.
2
There are millions of children living in poverty in the United States. There are irresponsible men and women blatantly ripping off the welfare system by having more children because it more beneficial than working. How is this less moral than abortion. It is the height of irresponsibility. WE have NO clue what God will think (or if there is a God to judge). I am so glad I am not a woman being told what I can do, who I can love, when I should marry, and now I am forced to give birth against my will. How is that better?
9
I wish the second sentence would have said "...women and girls" instead of "women in Alabama would be forced to carry unwanted or nonviable pregnancies to term in nearly all circumstances, including when a pregnancy results from rape or incest".
This is shameful.
319
@Pam Ensor Roy Moore wanted to insert girls (or insert himself IN girls), but I guess they aren't listening to him anymoore.
7
@Pam Ensor Hello? It isn't a ban on abortion. No one is forced to carry a baby to term. It is not unreasonable at all to restrict the heinous practice to the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Truth be known, the Good Lord doesn't approve of it at all.
@Chip Are you in the past or an alternate universe? The Alabama bill is a complete and total ban, not a restriction to 20 weeks. The other band in question like GA are 6 week bans, which is essentially a total ban because nobody knows they are pregnant before that point, and even if they figured it out days after it happened (not likely; that would be miraculous because the hormonal shifts are much slower to be evident), so many other restrictions are in place (liking waiting periods and multiple appointments) that you would never be able to have the procedure in time. So to recap, we have several functional bans and the AL legislation is a TOTAL BAN, with no exceptions for the case of rape or incest.
20
Hopefully attorneys challenging the new law will start with the fact that there is no rational basis for it. That would educate everyone that these types of laws will not survive the rational basis test to even get to a discussion overturning Roe. Depending on the legislative record it also probably violates the establishment clause.
We're going to learn a lesson if this goes as desired.
More unwanted babies = more crime and poverty. While personally I would not want anyone to have an abortion - it's the woman's call, not the governments. Another example in which radical conservatives do not follow through on their 'commitment' to individual rights.
12
Republicans very narrowly captured both legislative houses and the governorship in Iowa for the first time in decades. Shortly after, they passed a fetal heartbeat law. Planned Parenthood challenged it in STATE courts. The Iowa courts ruled it unconstitutional under the state constitution. Now they have passed a law to change how candidates for the court are nominated, a law that is also being challenged in court. (The actual selection process is constitutionally mandated.) Republicans will stop at nothing to overturn women's reproductive rights. The ballot box is the only answer.
20
Republican politicians are the true criminal class, not some smoking weed. Let’s put the real criminals in jail.
1
Looks like an underground railroad with financing needs to be established so poor women (the rich always have access) who seek an abortion can travel and receive the service in a state where the elected officials have not drunk the evangelical Kool Aid.
373
There more than two economic classes in the USA. The rich, who have rigged the economy to steal our taxes, the poor, who sadly sometimes vote against their interests or who are crookedly stopped from going to the polls through voter suppression, and the millions of middle class folks, who make ends meet but do not classify themselves as poor, even though their incomes are barely hanging in there.
15
@Bailey
This is exactly what existed in the 60s organized by doctors and the clergy who were tired of their patients/congregation dying and leaving their other children without mothers.
33
@Bailey I believe I read recently that some states are going to outlaw traveling to another state to get an abortion. I hope that's not true. I like your suggestion.
18
Get sterilized. Otherwise you will have to have a pregnancy that may prove fatal to you or, heaven forbid, if you suffer a miscarriage you may be charged with murder.
11
@Patricia
I was thinking the exact same thing as I was listening to related coverage in the car. But I'm not sure we should stop at sterilization. If Roe v. Wade is overturned we have to provide hysterectomies on demand to any female who wants one. Because the radicalized "Christians" are coming after birth control next.
3
Okay. Soooo... let me understand the implications. Because of someone else's faith based beliefs, my tax dollars will be sent to support all the new welfare babies born in the state of Alabama? Let's be honest. Any woman of means will go to another state, Canada, or any country they can afford to get to in order to do what in her heart is right FOR HER. This bill will only truly affect, teenagers and the poor women of the state increasing the welfare rolls. Alabama residents are already noted as being the fifth most depend on federal money in the nation. Separation of church and state is now officially DEAD. Through our tax dollars we are going to have to pay more in taxes to support another state's religious rhetoric and their unwanted children. Alabama rapists, pedophile fathers, and deadbeat dads get a free pass. YOU get to pay for their kids. As a New Englander I say unto you: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." .... Hello. Prime Minister Trudeau...
15
@Newenglander
Alas, you live in a country which culture was solidly based on the Judeo-Christian religious and moral ethic.
This isn't ever going to be the place for recommending allowing the deaths of children already safely delivered.
Obviously both sides need to agree to laws that both can live with.
2
@Newenglander
your the people who want to raise 70% taxes on my buisness
1
These draconian laws will not stop abortion. All they will do is make abortion less safe. This reminds me of a line from a book about Margaret Sanger, who was an early pioneer for birth control. She talked about watching women line up in the street waiting for 50 cent abortions. Non medical people performed unsafe abortions in my life time, prior to legalization. That is what these extremists want. They want to take away the rights of women.
373
NYT - I respect you...but this has never been about abortion rights - this is about controlling women. This is a human rights issue. These laws are not about preserving the sanctity of life - they are about controlling women (notice the consistent lack of post-natal support in any of these states). Please stop framing this as an abortion right - this is about women's autonomy. This is about (mostly white) men trying to inflict control over half the population under the guise of "morality". This has never been about the fetus, though many religious folks have subscribed to the notion it is (Again refer back to the lack of post-natal support to debunk the underlying moral argument - there isn't one). It's time to call a spade a spade. This is about controlling women.
49
I have no doubt that some of these male lawmakers would have a pregnancy that resulted from their extra- marital affair terminated. Likewise, if their daughter’s pregnancy was caused by a man of a different race.
The hypocrisy of these self- righteous politicians is stunning, until it happens to them!
14
Judging from early polling on the Alabama bill, I think NYT commenters are in for a rocky ride. Many Americans don't, in fact, have a problem with prohibiting abortions after a heartbeat is detected.
4
@AACNY
Only because those people have no understanding of science (fetal development), & receive their information from facebook, Fox TV, &/or their church.
Additionally, their understanding of the separation of church & state is zero.
Perhaps the time has come for a minimum competency test for voting - the same as one must pass in order to receive a permit to learn to drive.
7
A poll where, in the GOP Congress in Alabama??
The needle has not moved on abortion in 40 years except for extremists becoming absolutely fanatical.
3
Alabama forgot to include one item in this law:
Garnish the wages of the father for 18 years. If the father fails to pay, they need to be sent to a newly created state debtor's prison.
46
Sounds like that State is turning into a Religious theocracy and we all know about their lack of human rights issues. lol! I'd have thought Central government was the law making legislature for all of the UNITED states of America.
Of course none of these people who are anti abortion want to take the unwanted kid into their homes and bring it up and want the welfare state to do all that.
It's an individual womans right to chose as it's her body and health that's at stake from producing a kid that she doesn't want to take responsibility for. The kid just becomes a burden on the rest of society.
Most woman would rather have an undesirable abortion then have a child to a man who wants to support the baby; most intellectually handicapped born children grow into adults that no one wants around and the parents want the government to care for them, and pay for care givers. Have an abortion then have another child that isn't intellectually handicapped. It's always these minority groups that bully everyone else into paying for their child that should've been aborted because the parents don't want to put the time into looking after and feeding it.
4
I don’t even know how to talk to the other side about this.
Being pro-choice, I believe the right to an abortion is about women’s freedom and rights. It’s about the right to control what happens to your own body.
Pro-lifers believe that having an abortion is the moral equivalent of going into a maternity ward and stabbing babies.
We’re not even having the same conversation. I don’t know how to bridge that gap.
30
@Zoe
That's the point! This debate was manufactured so as to be incommensurate. How else would we bicker about it for forty years?
I personally oppose abortion and firmly believe that it is the taking of an innocent life. BUT, I would never deign to tell anyone else how to live their lives and would not impose my beliefs on anyone else.
I guess that makes me pro-choice?
The question of abortion, absent a consensus of the public, is just too big and too personal a question for government to get involved. So long as the government spending tax dollars to provide abortions, they shouldn't be regulating it, either.
People are free to make their own choices, even if those choices are wrong. It's not the government's place to police morality.
8
Overturning Roe v Wade is the feminist position if feminism = equality.
1) According to John Locke's theory of property, ownership of property (such as wages) are a result of bodily autonomy. As such the seizure of property if a violation of bodily autonomy.
2) Men have no right to "paper abortions" and are unable to opt out of paying child support if they do not consent to be a parent.
3) Women have access to abortion because pregnancy limits their bodily autonomy.
If 1, 2, and 3 are true then the law protects female bodily autonomy to a greater extent than male bodily autonomy. Equal treatment under the law is required by the 14th amendment. So either abortion needs to become illegal or an equal male "paper abortion" needs to be legalized.
2
@nick, feminism = the fight against the oppression, violence towards and control of women.
3
@nick
No it doesn't, because women are also obligated to use their wages to care for their children.
The law imposes the same burdens on both parties.
You're just upset that the woman makes the decision to have the baby without your input.
But that's her decision, not the state's regulation.
The best way to protect abortion rights is for young people to have lots and lots of children. roe v. wade, as well as prior court cases in California, New York, and Connecticut, came on the heels of the baby boomers' sexual revolution. Republicans in the 60s and 70s supported abortion rights because they reduced the size of a seriously at-risk population (i.e. the children of single teen mothers). Republicans changed their tune a decade later when the issue became campaign fodder for candidates who really had no interest in passing legislation regarding abortion.
2
I don't know what the answer is. Abortion is never going to end. Having it safe,legal, and humane was the answer. there are folks who think contraception is a form of abortion. And you never have to have one if you don't want to. I do know when I talk to my male counterparts they don't fully understand. We start as little girls, 11 -12, with menstrual cycles, fear of rape/incest, pregnancies not wanted,birth control, the whole cycle of a pregnancy with all the joys, fears, possible death, pain, a healthy baby, a baby that is not. or dies. No woman gets over giving up a child for adoption. Read The Girls That Went Away. Where is the support when this life has been born? no where. And women who don't get it, astound me. Women need to be in charge of the decisions about reproduction not the state or other people sitting in a state house. They are left with the responsibilities for the life of their children ultimately. We don't even have childcare so women can go to work.
I can afford to go elsewhere. I also live in NY. The whole lower part of this country has made it impossible for poor women and young women to get to the last remaining clinic in their state for an exam, birth control, prenatal care, and abortion. It is as if the lower part of this country is another country. This is tragic.
19
I work in a clinic here in Atlanta and the easiest way to help is to spread the word that abortion is still legal until 21.6 weeks in the state of GA. You can post it on social media, when it inevitably comes up in a conversation remind folks of the fact that the law isn't even set to be enforced until 2020, and the likelihood of it being overturned is great.The National Abortion Federation has funding for women who can't afford to pay for their procedures, and ARC (Access Reproductive Care- Southeast) can connect women with drivers and also childcare. There are so many resources available to women for the healthcare they need. Get the word out. Clinic workers are still here for women's safety, privacy, life circumstances, emotions. We're still here to give great care and compassion.
35
I was raised by a New Deal Democrat in a family of union supporters, bar none and nothing. It was only in the 1970s that the usurpers of this tradition began teaching the rest of us that we were enemies of women if we couldn't support a raw legal attack on pre-natal human life. This is one of the most profound moral and intellectual transformations in human history, and the triumph of its evil lie is that those who would protect the most vulnerable possible form of human life are somehow enemies of women and humanity. This is, I repeat, a vicious, totalitarian lie and, yes, a frontal assault on everything that Judaism and Christianity have ever meant by truth and ethics. There will be a time in human history when those who capitulated to it will be known and categorized quite as thoroughly as they have tried to de-legitimize not only the value of the human "fetus" but of those who tried to defend it against a demonic mob.
3
Hopefully as many big businesses as possible will boycott states like Alabama and inflict real pain on lawmakers. I can only thank god that I’m not from a place that holds women’s rights in contempt. Also hope that intelligent students flee these states quickly. This issue is also a lesson into why religion does much more harm than good.
8
I hope the governor of Alabama is listening to survivors of rape, incest, the death of a fetus. The physical and emotional changes that accompany pregnancy are almost unendurable once a doctor tells you, as mine told me, that no baby would be born alive.
Can you imagine being forced to go through pregnancy and delivery of a baby born to someone who survived a rape or became pregnant by incest?
Does cruelty know no bounds?
14
Let’s use the right words from now on. These people are NOT pro-life, they are anti-choice. They are anti-women. We know that. They spurn equal rights. Just imagine a world in which men could get pregnant. Ha.
29
Democrats must abandon abortion as a political cause. When Democrats support abortion, they alienate voters in heartland, and this costs them elections.
I am confident that if the Democratic presidential nominee doesn't support abortion, they will win in 2020.
1
Politics over principles. There is the problem.
4
You're not wrong. There is no other issue that rips the country apart quite like this one. So many people voted for Trump solely for "the judges". The irony to me is that Trump himself could care less about this issue. Gotta hand it to him, he exploited it to great advantage. It sickens me.
5
"Democrats must abandon abortion as a political cause"
Reproductive justice has been a key part of the Democratic Party platform for decades. Patriots stand and defend the sacred civil, human, and Constitutional rights of innocent citizens.
Suggest you change your user name, since patriots do not agitate to forcibly strip away the sacred rights of their fellow citizens.
3
How to protect abortion rights? I'm more concerned about protecting the rights of helpless humans who have yet to be born—not in the business of playing God. The culture went south with "birth control". Practice pregnancy control instead.
Besides, this is not a total ban on abbortion. It just doesn't permit abortion after 20 weeks unless the woman's health is at risk. How is that a problem? I suppose those who oppose will have us sacrificing our first born to Moloch before it is all over.
2
I guess it comes down to this: do you believe that a baby/fetus in the womb that has a detectable heartbeat and can clinically feel pain should be afforded human rights?
From a purely scientific point of view it is hard to argue a baby/fetus (whatever syntax you use) after 6 weeks of gestation isn't a human being with rights.
Welcome to a new emerging legal paradigm that's defined by science.
1
@JOHNNY CANUCK
You're missing an important piece of the puzzle. Do you believe that a fetus has the right to use a woman's body without her consent to sustain its life?
Why or why not?
If you're inclined to say yes, then ask yourself why our legal system does not compel mandatory organ donation.
If a baby that was born 2 days ago needs a blood transfusion, can his parents be compelled to donate?
No.
We don't even take organs from a corpse--- from DEAD BODIES-- without prior consent. So the real question is, do you believe that living, breathing women should have fewer rights than dead bodies?
1
I just love that the “pro-life” group has absolutely zero issue with the children they think they’re saving having access to guns that they can bring to school and shoot other children with.
The logic defies me.
18
i have always marveled that "pro-life" states are also "pro-gun" - and they fail to acknowledge the irony.
8
"How to Help Protect Abortion Rights"
Ban religion. As a side benefit, It will also solve most other problems.
27
We'd like to think women would be nice and civilized and support each other first and foremost. Ha.
Women guards had no problems with inflicting savagery on other women in German concentration camps and I suspect a former friend would do something horrific to me if her god trump instructed her to do so. It's been a painful realization.
What has been more painful is realizing that democracy is not a shared value. Not at all.
5
I am all for an economic boycott. If the supreme court goes back to "state's rights" in determining access to abortion, I will work to establish a new kind of underground railroad to help women in abolishment states escape to states that still allow abortion. The money that I donate will help these women's travel expenses and medical costs, if needed. If my personal presence is needed I will try to do that too.
11
@Delores Porch I will join the cause guarantied.
I don’t see the women on college campuses protesting against men exerting control over them by taking away their pro choice rights. There should be riots. If they’re not willing to get aggressive about autonomy over their bodies like we did in my day then it is the era of the Handmaids Tale and they don’t deserve say over their own bodies. But I think more highly of young women and think they should be out in full force and even violent if that’s what it takes to preserve their rights.
The rich will always have the option of abortion. They can go to Ireland.
7
@Pola I agree, violence and sabotage may be the only recourse if every else fails. This will be a civil war like we have never seen before. One exception, in ancient Greece when the Amazons ganged together to destroy the men who abused them for long. This is an avoidable tragedy which will affect every single American, if these neanderthals could mind their own business.
Roe has never been properly explained or defended. People are going to be all over the map about abortion. But Americans are not divided over the right to privacy. We are one of the most individualistic peoples on earth and the busybody neighbor, the busybody relative and the busybody government are all unpopular. SCOTUS did not "legalize" abortion. It vacated state level abortion laws by saying: Americans have a right to privacy, Debating when life begins is interesting but its not the debate. The debate is this: do you value your constitutional right to privacy, yes or no? Who is a better judge than you what should occur in your body? Here is the proposal. The gentlemen leading the least successful state in the union are proposing to make judgements for you. That's it. Not when angels become angels or Sid the kid, or Sam I am... but just this: do you you want the character who got elected to your state legislature as a part time job to be making your personal decisions?
10
Democrats supported slavery in the 1800’s. Democrats fought civil rights for minorities in the 1960’s. Democrats have supported unfettered abortions for the last 50 years. Maybe just maybe the Dems need to re-consider their views on civil rights.
3
@D
Your second sentence is incorrect.
Only Southern Democrats opposed civil rights. Northern Democrats were liberal.
The Southern Democrats defected to the Republicans for Nixon's "Southern Strategy," and the two parties became what they are today, with the GOP opposing rights for everyone— except far right gun owners.
I have no idea what you mean by your last sentence.
18
I can’t believe the ignorance in this comment and that the New York Times allowed it. I’m embarrassed to have to write back and refute it.
1) Southern strategy from the 60’s- the old Democratic Party (specifically in the South) indeed housed the same bigoted thinking that pervades the GOP today. This is why so many southern Democrats became Republicans. The GOP is today a White male Christian party of and for the richest interests. I can’t help you if you can’t see this.
2) comparing the long struggle of Civil rights for live adults vs. the rights of a non viable fetus who is inside the body of an adult woman. You are basically comparing the agency of a non viable fetus or zygote (mass of cells) to the Black people who were lynched by White mobs. And you are doing it without any regard to the Women who actually ALIVE. They are not just hosts!!
Stop hurling your narrow minded woman controlling theology on the rest of us. It’s backwards and ignorant and does nothing to prevent abortions or promote healthy life.
5
The lawmakers in these southern states must have rocks for brains . More years in prison for those who preform abortions than those who commit rape. Why not make shoes for women illegal so they can keep them barefoot and pregnant also! What will they try to do next! Lets see what they do if their girls get pregnant! I am a father of woman who stand for equality, in pay and the right to do with their bodies what they choose. More people should mind their own business!
18
@jack + Sharon from upstate NY. Roe v. Wade is not about babies, kittens or puppies. So many of the comments I have read, focus on the right to terminate a pregnancy.
I don't believe this comes close to the backstory of what overturning what Roe v. Wade intends to do. Consider this...Roe v. Wade does NOT mandate that you have an abortion. Through this legislation, you are granted equality to your male counterparts; you too have the right to autonomy/self-determination over your body. As with every man in the land, this legislation allows you the right to accept or refuse medical services, based on your own personal beliefs and medical needs. I use the term "granted equality to men" since with everything granted, it can be taken away - and it will be.
Someone in Washington wants to decide that you, as a woman, are not qualified to make that very personal decision. You need the guidance and wisdom of your husband, your partner, your church or your government - in other words, your superior, to determine what is best for you and your family. However, your husband can choose to have a vasectomy without interference from you, as his spouse, or the government, because that is as the law allows. What? continued...
4
@jack (3) continued. Consider all of the implications carefully when you make your choice unless you are certain this scenario is impossible.
To conclude, reminders: Federal govt. already mandates when life begins, at breath. Consider taking a dependent deduction for a 8 mo. stillborn child - not happening.
Consider that your husband can dictate how many children you have by having a vasectomy without YOUR permission.
Consider that none of this has anything to do with Babies, Kittens or Puppies. Roe v Wade is solely about you, as a woman, being EQUAL under the law.
5
@jack (2) continued. Here is the crazy thing about law. When one truth is held evident, the opposite is held equally true through precedent. If you relinquish your right NOT to have a child to a third party (govt.,) you ultimately relinquish your right to decide to HAVE a child to a third party. You are essentially putting your rights to reproduce into the hands of those with "greater wisdom." Are you ready for that?
I'm convinced that Roe v. Wade would be a very different conversation if EVERY WOMAN OF COLOR were to pledge to have 6 children. If every woman of color pledged to produce 6 voting entities, the conversation would look more like how can we put a stop to "these people" upsetting the balance of European Descent...of what our country should look like?
This is the pivot point at which we go back to Roe v. Wade, when the legislation was overturned and a woman no longer had the right to control over her body. Once over turned, your govt. now has the right to determine IF you are allowed to have a child. So you are not the sharpest tool in the shed...denied. So you are not white enough...denied. So your are not of the correct religion...denied. Same story but different side of the coin.
1
Babies are born prematurely at 6 months and later. Aborting a fetus at 6 months that could otherwise live is nothing but murder. It's shame that most readers and the NYT don't understand that.
6
@MCH
Late-term abortions are extremely rare, and almost always are to save the life of the woman or because of life-threatening deformities in the fetus.
By the time a fetus is six months old the woman has made pretty clear that she wants the baby.
14
@Jerry Engelbach Tell that to the VA governor and a legislature that "addressed" the needs of women who might want to kill a baby AFTER it's been born. That said, if , as you say, "By the time a fetus is six months old the woman has made pretty clear that she wants the baby", why challenge any law that would prohibit late term abortions?
2
MCH
What you have proposed in which Woman can arbitrarily terminate a pregnancy at any point is illegal. I think you know that. If you don’t, educate yourself.
1
Bridget of Maryland,
Many of the attacks on pro life folks are not reported by the media. If Brian Sims had not videotaped himself harassing these two teenage pro life girls we most likely would not have heard about this. There was another attack on an 85 year old pro life man in San Francisco who was physically attacked recently. This was also on video but if it hadn't been we would not have heard about it.
The media immediately reports the attacks on pro abortion folks but does not give the same attention to attacks on pro life people and there are many. Now people are realizing that there a lot of attacks and more towards the pro life side.
Pro life people are dignified and quiet people who do not believe in violence. This is what we practice. The ones who do create violence are deranged and sick. These people do not speak for us or represent our values.
3
@KMW
Your "many attacks" appear to be just two.
And one of them was verbal — the kind of attack with which anti-choice folks have been regularly harassing clients and workers at abortion clinics.
Not to mention the murders of abortion providers.
How about cutting the hypocrisy?
7
Thank God for a representative who walks the walk to actively stand and defend the sacred civil, human, and Constitutional rights of innocent citizens. Many thanks to true patriot Brian Sims for standing up and speaking up against the radical theocratic enemies of innocent citizens' sacred rights.
3
The biggest danger to our democracy is the hyper-partisan nature of our national politics. The abortion 'debate' is the #1 tool of those who seek to inflame our public discourse and keep us divided.
This column gives some good advice on how to stick up for your beliefs in a practical way. But it's important to resist the impulse to demonize the other side. For our democracy to succeed, we have to focus on the many areas where we can all work together. Don't let the extremists get their way.
4
Odd, but when it comes to the mortality rate of REAL human beings who are infants, Republicans in this state couldn't care any less.
Republicans refused to allow Medicaid expansion in Alabama.
The infant mortality rate in States that have refused to allow for Medicaid expansion has risen.
You can't find even one Republican who cares that they are responsible for the deaths of real infants, infants that were human beings.
38
A first attempt at overturning the Establishment Clause.
We are in extremely dark times.
11
The biggest thing we can all do to protect women’s rights and the civil rights of all people is to campaign for and vote straight Democratic tickets in every election - federal, state and local. Anyone who identifies or runs as a Republican at this point expressly or tacitly approves bigotry and misogyny.
49
This has to be met with corollary legislation for males to avoid the unconstitutional targeting only of the female half of America for punitive legislation.
A National DNA Registry for all males can be proposed by and set up by the Alabama Congress- DNA readings can kept on file to match any future pregnancies with financial responsibility from the male match.
Those who have no problem with the ceaseless attack by the fundamentalist religious on the rest of America should have no problem being the first to register. Let's start with the 27 Alabama white male legislators who voted for it. Should be no problem.
47
Freedom for men is the unrestricted ability to buy assault weapons and use them as a tool for population control.
Freedom for women is the removal of any means of terminating a pregnancy, so eventually the men with assault rifles will have targets.
This is of course a "Swiftian" satirical comment, and as in the case of Jonathan Swift, in rather poor taste--but also, as in Swift's case, it contains a sordid kernel of truth about the twisted way in which humans can rationalize their behavior.
What a piece of work is man!
17
Instead of setting up funds to help women get safe abortions, let's set up funds to help them get out of states like Alabama and Georgia and start their lives over in places where they will be valued and respected. This attack on abortion is just a symptomof something much bigger. If you believe these lawmakers really care about life...just watch how at ease they are with executing people.
15
In Ohio there was recently an abortion bill presented that included a requirement in the case of ectopic pregnancies for the doctor to remove the fertilized egg from the patient's fallopian tube and implant it into her uterus. I have an idea. Implant it into the father. End of abortion discussion. Morning after pills are now available in PEZ dispensers and abortions may be had on demand at the CVS drive-thru.
13
How about moving to a more civilized location?
6
@Ned Reif - Moving is expensive.
As for the idea that anti choice extremists are protecting women against the ‘dangers’ of abortion, (A very safe procedure as is widely known) let’s look at the tragic case of the 11 year old Ohio child repeatedly raped and eventually impregnated by a 26 year old. Under Ohio’s just passed law, which thankfully is not yet in effect, this poor 11 year old would be forced to carry a pregnancy to term. No exception for rape or incest. Aside form the immorality of forcing her to do this, it would be far more dangerous for her health than a safe and legal abortion. No, this is not about protecting women. It’s about evangelical extremists forcing their religion on us and punishing women (and girls) who dare to have sex outside of marriage. If they were truly ‘pro life’ they would support free birth control for all, expanded Medicaid, gun control, abolishment of the death penalty, and would support our last ditch attempt to save the planet from the destruction caused by climate change and poisoning of the environment. No, they are ‘anti choice’.
I for one will not set foot in, nor will I have anything to do with OH or AL or any other state that has become a living embodiment of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’.
Never in my life did I think this day would come. This is exactly what the religious right wanted when they voted for Trump. They sold their souls to destroy women’s’ reproductive rights. Women will die as a result. May you reap what you sow
81
The level of ignorance that suddenly finds itself empowered by the mere presence of Trump in front of TV cameras is almost unquantifiable.
Alyssa Milano suggested women protest by refusing sex.
I think there should be a much stronger, more sweeping reaction.
Everyone who can manage it should move away from the states that are enacting such absurdly regressive laws. Basic freedoms of adult taxpayers to make decisions about how to live their lives are being encroached upon by ignorant, dictatorial busybodies who are perfectly content to help Trump demolish basic economic safeguards without which no one has the means to provide for even 1 child.
You want more children to be born? You not only need to advocate for better living conditions for all families & better opportunities for young people & women: you need to be denouncing Trump's trade war. And also the crazy talk about war with Iran.
Many people can't afford to move. But those who can, should. Property values will decline.
At a more basic level: unplug the TV. They track who's watching. It matters to Trumpists that his image be worshipped & these bad laws obsessively discussed. Opt-out of the programming entirely. Tell them you have no interest in propping up a system that does nothing to provide basic, adequate support for all its members -- including families facing an unexpected pregnancy under very difficult circumstances.
There would be fewer abortions if there were less poverty & more love.
7
@Maria Ashot By the way women did precisely that 2480 years ago in ancient Greece to stop a war by refusing to have sex with their husbands. The author was Euripides.
1
If you are a musician scheduled to perform in Alabama at Hangout Fest, please boycott it and encourage others to do so.
60
If a woman is against abortion, do not have one.
If a man is against abortion, don't impregnate anyone.
60
@Anne
And if you oppose Alabama's abortion laws, don't go there.
2
If you want to protest for or against abortion the first thing should be to ban religion of all kinds from the argument. I know it will never happen because America is the world champion of hypocritical cherry picking of beliefs to justify things but evangelical "Christians" are the driving force behind abortion protests, drum beating for a new war and pretty much anything else that is dragging America backwards in development. Religion is poison but evangelicals are pure and pious frauds.
15
@markd To the point .Thanks.
I can’t help but wonder who the drug companies are that benefit here? Morning after pill, perhaps? Let’s follow the money..... This is more than the crazy religious right at work.
3
@KHa1963 - Doubtful since red states make getting that pill tough to do.
It's an issue proven to distract right wing voters from the fact that Republicans have their hands in the cookie jar and are poisoning our air and water and doing their best to keep poor people poor.
3
Fetuses are only babies in waiting. Until people are willing to fully support mothers, families, and living children, they should stop isolating the unborn from the continuum of life.
9
It is beyond belief that a woman believes she has a right to tell other women that they no longer have the freedoms that men have, rapists have and incestuous family members have.
And the men who voted for this bill must think rape and incest resulting in pregnancy is just fine. It makes me wonder if both Terri Collins and the others who voted this bill in are sexual abusers themselves.
The fact that five Southern States are so tied to this horror of forbidding women to have control over their bodies blows my mind. I was under the mistaken assumption that Southern States believed in freedom for women. I guess they miss the slavery they once coveted and this is the answer. Enslave women.
19
@Jean Interesting extrapolation. Brilliant!
Like the rest of the country, women are a majority of the Alabama electorate. They certainly have the electoral power to protect their abortion rights. Instead, they voted voted for a bunch of reactionaries in the state legislature. Apparently Alabama women operate by a set of values different from those of the folks who run NARAL.
Imposing a 'right' on an unwilling state to protect a minority group is one thing, but 46 years after Roe v. Wade, with its beneficiaries now a majority of the electorate still not convinced they actually want that right, perhaps the Supreme Court ought to stop trampling on their voting rights. There's a world of hurt waiting for Alabama, but perhaps that's what it will take to change hearts and minds. That's exactly what happened in Ireland.
4
The continued assault on individuals rights and freedom by the GOP in modern America is simply astounding. The sheer hypocrisy they showcase in such matters while railing against such trivial issues such as health insurance and freedom cannot be overlooked or forgotten. These are the very same politicians who lie to your face every election cycle as they claim they are the party of personal responsibility, less government regulation and of course, freedom from government persecution. Yet its only the Republicans who continue to inject their narrow views and chosen ignorance into your home, your business, your school, your mind and the absolute worst invasion possible by any government, your body.
9
I am pro life. For me that means for women having the "choice" to continue or not a pregnancy.
I am tired of accepting that these extremists, that ignore women's life circumstances, sometimes trapped in abusive marriages, coercive situations, parents that may not allow them to live freely, that do not care about the babies once they are born, have the monopoly on the "life" word.
Women die from illegal abortions.
It is not only rape or illness. There are horrible situations in life that can prompt a woman to have an abortion.
There is no shame in having an abortion. Often, there is life in having a legal one.
Mothers who can be independent, have a career and means to support a child, and a child that has an opportunity to have a good life.
13
The anti-abortion politicians believe that every fetus has an absolute right to be born. Once born, it is on its own.
9
We ( the USA) tried this before. It was called the volstead act and it outlawed alcohol for 13 years. How did that work out?
Destroying fetuses is not a joyful thing. Neither is drunk driving, alcoholism liver damage etc but we as a country like to drink and we also........like having sex. Unintended pregnancies will happen. Taking away a safe option to terminate is forcing someone else’s morality on all women.
Is this country really ready to only have sex when producing a child is the goal? If a fetus has all the rights of an individual should pregnant women be monitored for what they eat and drink. Should a pregnant woman who drinks alcohol be imprisonmed for child endangerment? This is a very slippery slope.
The 18th amendment didn’t end alcoholism but it did give organized crime a boost. Outlawing abortion won’t stop people from having recreational sex but it will criminalize much of the country and increasingly burden our society. It took 13 years to overturn the 18th amendment and left us with the mafia. Let’s not make the same mistake again.
7
Can we talk about birth control?? When used, most abortions wouldn't be necessary. Why is it so many are so reluctant to talk about birth control. I've had an active sex life and two children I absolutely adore. TWO.
@Daisy22
I also have two children. Two pregnancies, two children. My parents thought I was "most likely to get pregnant in high school". I did not. I was 33 before I had my first child. Good birth control practices or good luck, roll the dice on that one.
My second child has multiple mental health issues. He requires so much help and assistance and has since he was a toddler. I ran into an acquaintance who had very little sympathy for my plight. He mentioned that he and his wife had planned so much and so carefully they were prepared for anything that might happen. His seven year old had just broken his arm falling off some gym equipment.
I walked away feeling less than. I thought, what if that little boy had fallen on his head and things became much more complicated. Hospitalizations, loss of income and potentially long term care. Was he prepared for that!
Things happen and that's reality. Life is messy and unpredictable.
There but for the grace of God go I.
2
@Daisy22
Good for you.
I never had an unplanned pregnancy and was always scrupulous about BC. Good for me.
Now about everyone else... why do we get to have a say?
3
@Daisy22
I am a physician, I knew how to use birth control. Yet it failed me.
I had an abortion sometime after having mastectomies for early breast cancer. I had 2 young children at the time, I was 36. I lost weight, not bec of the cancer but bec I was so fearful of leaving my children without a mother that I could not eat.
Bec of the weight loss the diaphragm did not fit as well.
I do not think the pregnancy was life threatening to me, perhaps it had a small increase in risk.
Yet it was my choice to terminate the pregnancy.
By all means, lets talk about birth control, all insurances should cover them, not like this GOP tampers with coverage. But let women choose without judging. You do not know their circumstances.
11
"Leaving abortion to the states" relies on the same faulty logic as leaving slavery or Jim Crow to the states. In both cases, a person's basic human rights depend on where they live. I don't think the U.S. Constitution permits that.
18
I'd be very interested to know what these senators would want to do if their daughters announced they were pregnant at 14 or 15 and wanted an abortion. It's so easy to legislate morality for everyone else.
7
We should go for a Constitutional amendment endorsing a right to abortion. That's the way we should have gone in the first place. This whole ugly controversy could have been avoided if the people had been allowed to govern themselves.
1
Women continue to be second class citizens, their lives dictated by men. Women are forced to live in their own dystopian society, while men enjoy endless freedoms!
7
So a heartbeat is detected. That equals a “baby” a “soul” a “life”. If the sex was not consensual(rape, etc) there appears to be multiple options to prevent the life prior to a heartbeat. Unlike when R v W was decided. So updating the law seems more than reasonable. “Unwanted pregnancy” is a grand and foolish oxymoron.
3
@Pilot
Your argue is applesauce. Even with well used contraception, some pregnancies result.
8
@Casual Observer
Your example is quite an exception. Most abortions do not occur because birth control, used properly, failed.
1
@Pilot, consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy.
2
What has happened to freedom? Freedom to own as many guns as you want, even if there is occasional collateral damage. Freedom to not buy health insurance even though the rest of us pay for your visits to the emergency room. But in this one private matter, there is no freedom.
14
Thank you for providing some concrete things we can do to push back against these laws and stand up for women. After Brett Kavanaugh was nominated, I sat down and made my first-ever donations to NARAL, Planned Parenthood and Emily's List. It made me feel infinitely better to be doing something rather than just posting angry comments (which, don't get me wrong, has its place!). I hope that one of the few upsides to this is that so many more people are, like me, getting off the sidelines and getting involved, donating time and money to the vital defense of women's freedom and autonomy.
323
@danielle fabulous comment; wonderful to read.
10
@danielle I'm off the sidelines, too, but I'm advocating for the unborn people who deserve a chance at life. I consider myself a liberal and a Democrat, and I am opposed to abortion. Yes, we exist. There are tens of millions of us.
It's time for Democrats to win elections again, and to do that, Democrats must stop advocating for abortion. Many people believe that abortion is murder, and Democrats lose when they support that. Why don't you join me in opposing abortion so Democrats can move on to other important policy like ousting Trump and enacting healthcare for all?
4
@danielle This is not a total ban on abbortion. It just doesn't permit abortion after 20 weeks unless the woman's health is at risk. How is that a problem? I suppose you will have us sacrificing our first born to Moloch before it is all over.
3
The best way to protect choice: VOTE. This issue is EXACTLY the reason why voters need to line up behind the Democratic nominee for President, whoever that turns out to be, as well as, for Democrats all up and down the ballot. Work for whichever candidate you want in the primaries, but then, fall in line in a UNITED front. Women's rights are being chiseled away because ANTI-CHOICE voters UNITED on this. Women's rights can be restored and protected the same way if PRO-CHOICE voters unite.
12
We need millennials to turn out to vote, even if their top choice doesn’t win the nomination. This affects their future more than any other generation. Turnout by young voters is crucial, as we learned from 2016.
5
@BD, this is the thing for me. I've written the checks and the letters to my elected representatives, and marched in the streets for decades now. For this and so many other life impacting issues, where are the young? In a time when there is no impediment to spontaneous organization and communication, they are absent. What else will it take for them to become politically active?
3
@Donna Me too Donna. If this doesn't incite young people to become active, I don't know what will.
1
To confuse a potentiality with an actual thing is the height of lunacy. Every cell in your body has the POTENTIAL to become a great artist or scientist. That doesn't mean a skin cell IS a great artist or scientist. If it does, we are all washing entire generations down the drain in a soapy tributary of death every time we shower.
I can understand how one might become a flat earther or even believe in the Easter Bunny. But in 2019, I can NOT understand how anyone can possibly be a Republican. It boggles the mind.
18
I thought that the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865. Being pregnant involuntarily is servitude and a form of slavery.
In addition, the 1st Amendment prohibits any law which prohibits the free exercise of religion. These anti-abortion laws impose their religious ideas that life begins at conception and that man has control over womens' bodies on those who do not share those beliefs. My religion does not teach that. In my opinion, women should not be subject to involuntary servitude, slavery, or criminal prosecution in support of state-mandated religious beliefs.
14
The babies are the ones who need protecting from abortion. There are thousands upon thousands of pro life folks in the US and they need to band together and organize a rally in those states that are passing strict abortion laws and trying to outlaw it altogether. There is strength in numbers and that is one thing the pro life side has.
Recently 1000 pro life supporters from across the US ascended upon Philadelphia after Democratic representative, Brian Sims, harassed two pro life teenage girls outside an abortion clinic. He videotaped this event for all to see and the pro life movement took off to Philadelphia. They are well organized and financed and have the power to do this over and over again. I will gladly donate my time and money for this very important cause. All they need to do is tell me where and when they will be protesting in a quiet manner and I will be there. I will be joined by my fellow pro lifers who will continue to make a difference in saving babies lives. This is too important of an issue to ignore and babies lives are at risk. Maybe these pro life men and women need to get themselves to Alabama and Georgia where the most need seems to be right now. We can only make a positive difference in fighting the good fight.
4
Are you willing to provide the necessary resources for the women who are forced to carry the fetuses that were conceived during an act of sexual violence or abuse? Are you willing to pay for the healthcare, prenatal care, delivery, nutritional needs, housing, and mental health care that is required? Are you willing to fight on the front lines for common sense gun reform and school safety measures to protect children that are not in the womb? Are you willing to foster and adopt any unwanted children, regardless of age or race? Are you willing to hold the men who refused to use protection, and/or abandoned women once they were pregnant responsible?
43
@KMW
Listen to yourself - Brian Simms harassed two pro life teenagers outside an abortion clinic? Across the country doctors, nurses, workers and patients at these clinics have been shot and some killed by so called pro life people. The so called pro life folks seem to be the only ones that doing the shooting and the killing? And you wonder why these teenagers were harassed? The pro choice women in this country do not stand in the way of you practicing your religion or following your conscience. Why do you feel the need to impose your beliefs on others?
18
@KMW
Can I assume that you support Medicaid for all? Paid parental leave? Government-subsidized day care? Better access to food stamps? Increases in the minimum wage? Because if you don't, you're not pro-life, you're pro-fetus and you don't care about what happens after a child is born.
6
In a debate where one side see's an unambiguous issue of morality around the life of an unborn child and the other side sees the world as an unambiguous right of a woman to control the decision to have a child, the positions leave no room for the truly ambiguous issue of abortion. The vast majority of people in this country sit in an uncomfortable middle and reject the absolutes offered by the opposing political positions. To suggest that fetuses are simply cells or on the other side to remove a woman's role in decisions about having bearing and raising her own child are not black and white. I do not see and enduring legal framework that transcends the science and shifting mores of a particular moment in times. We will continue to grapple with with these issues because they are in fact complex
2
@Chris
It's a little easier to explain if one sees the way that a fertilized egg must develop over a long process into a living human being is uncertain. It is. Many conceptions may occur that do not produce fetuses which are developing in a womb. Many fetuses do not survive to be born as babies. It's a long process of becoming with only partial success in resulting in a human life.
Religions like the Catholic Church hold that God decides who will and will not be born and live their lives, and thus man has no right to oppose nor to try to oppose God's will. That pretty much presumes that there is no process of development which may or may not be successful but a certainty known only to God.
You either buy into the explanation that life is a biological phenomena or a physical manifestation of divine will.
1
@Chris There is no answer that will satisfy everyone because it is a personal decision, not a legal one. It is the women's choice, she should have complete sovereignty over her body or else she has no freedom.
7
@Casual Observer - I do understand the biology and the reasonably high failure rate of fetuses. Nonetheless, We ultimately apply a moral decision around issues of life (I happy to be both pro-choice and non-religious). As humans, we assert value to life where today the majority of people choose to oppose the death penalty based the chance of error and irreversibility of the action (I happy do not happen to agree). If the above is an accurate description of the debate we have between us or within us, it's not only understandable but expected that the debate between the rights of a woman, the obligations to raise children financially for men and women, and the rights associated with an unborn child at some point in the pregnancy are up for grabs. Few people other than extremists would consider aborting at time of birth legitimate and few people consider the formation of a clump of cells an irreversible moment of life. So, we negotiate and fight for acceptable middle ground.
"Pro-life" legislators need to immediately create laws that would compel all US adults to be in organ donor registries. If you are matched to someone whose life depends on an organ you would have to give your kidney, part of your liver, your bone marrow, etc. no exceptions unless that put your own life in danger. I'm sure they will get right on this important life-saving legislation.
11
Look, these people don't believe that government should be by the consent of the governed but by some higher authority. If you have any understanding of the people opposing abortion, you will appreciate that they think a divine power determines everything that happens and must be consulted to have just and proper government. Their religion says that man should not interfere with what God has brought, and that is the long and short of the abortion issue. Our notion of liberty is their notion of condoning sin and eternal damnation. They simply oppose the principles upon which our form of government is based, always did and always will.
8
@Casual Observer 100% correct. In a nutshell, they're clinically insane.
1
These abortion restrictions restrict women's autonomy and punish people for helping women. I propose legislation that would subject the man who is the prospective father to the same punishment as the harshest sentence imposed in any abortion-related matter. After all, a man fully participated in producing the pregnancy. Also, any man who does not fully provide for a child of an unwanted pregnancy should be sentenced to life without parole and be forced to continue to pay child support, even while in jail. After all, the mother is sentenced to a lifetime of motherhood. Thus, when rich republican donors pay for a woman's abortion, they will run the same risk as the woman who is getting the abortion. Perhaps then, men will think twice about punishing people for providing a woman with the medical care that she deserves and about compelling a woman to bear a child she does not want to bear.
11
I think that the point of Roe v. Wade is individual liberty guaranteed to every citizen in the Constitution. That is freedom of religion, which is in fact, freedom of conscience and the restriction upon government imposing one group's morality upon everyone else. Abortion is not an issue of the license to kill babies as the "pro-life" people argue, it's about women determining what is right with their doctors given their own circumstances under the presumption that the fetus is part of her body until the law determines that it is not. The "pro-life" people want the law to reflect their religion so that they are not obliged to tolerate behavior which they consider immoral. It's a clear attempt to abridge our liberties to serve the purposes of one faction in our country.
23
The people that supported this bill are not Pro Life. They are Pro Birth. If they were Pro Life, they would be interested in not only the birth of a child, but also its nutrition, the education of its mother, its healthcare, pre K education and education and healthcare thereafter so it could grow up to be a productive member of the community. The people that supported this bill are not interested in any of that. These people, typically Republicans, like to be Pro Birth because it seems so righteous and it caters to the elitist religious right. After birth, they couldn't care less. Instead they provide few benefits to the poor and cut back on education.
58
The Alabama bill should be seen as a gift to the pro-choice forces. The absurdity of the provisions punishing doctors who perform abortions while intentionally refusing to prosecute the woman seeking the abortion is precisely the same as prosecuting the hit man but not the one who did the hiring.
There is only one logical reason for outlawing abortions: that society agrees that it is the taking of a human life. If that be the case, all who participate...the doctor, the woman, the father (if he consents) and any and all supporting personnel.
The only reason the Alabama bill released the woman from responsibility is either they consider women to be too weak and emotional to be held responsible for such a decision or they understand the optics of holding the woman criminally culpable. I suspect the latter is the case. How much support would there be from those who simply don't like the idea of abortion for laws punishing women equally with the performing doctor.
It is time to force the anti woman religious crusaders to own the consequences of their proposals. We can argue ad infinitum the morality of misogynistic, paternalistic religiosity, as we have been doing since before Roe, but we must open a second front, highlighting equal treatment under the law and what that means in relation to any proposal criminalizing pregnancy termination. It should be, even for the currently constituted SCOTUS, a non case, given the inequality of treatment for all participants.
13
@Ray Harper
I think you're wrong. They are concentrating on the professional licenses of those who can perform the procedure. I'd like to see some billboard promoting birth control.
2
@Ray Harper
I guess it should be inferred from the context, but the end of the second paragraph should read "(...), must be prosecuted."
I agree with all that is said in regards to the heinous, anti-female actions being taken by Alabama and these other states. My reaction, though, as to what I can do (except for designating Planned Parenthood as my charity to receive money from my Amazon purchases), is to never, ever, set foot and/or spend a dime in a host of states that are taking this stance.
42
@mary
Suggest you send a note to the government/chamber of commerce/tourism boards of such states and tell them so, whether it's true or not.
6
Georgia: Population: 10,154,747 Number in Poverty: 1,517,702 as of 2018. 24 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19 in 2016 and ranks 32nd. 21 Percent of children under 18 in related families who had incomes below the poverty line in 2017 ranking 39th. 15 Percent of youth ages 18 to 24 without high school degrees who were not in school or working 2016 ranking 37th. Clearly Georgia politicians need to channel more of their energies towards caring for children that are currently suffering and less energy on arresting doctors.
104
It is time for a national lottery where every anti-abortion vote buys you a ticket. If you're number comes up then you become legally responsible for a child that is the result of a denied abortion. Time for these legislators to put their own skin in the game...
42
@Michael - I would settle for legislation that puts failure to pay child support on a person's credit rating.
22
@Michael
I'm waiting for the organ lottery. Forced pregnancy will result in cardiomyopathy, renal failure, liver failure, etc. When this happens, the woman automatically gets a fresh organ from a living "donor" selected at random from those who are a match. Everybody registers for the lottery, except people who can get pregnant. When you register, your blood is HLA typed so the pregnant woman gets her organ quickly. If you are unlucky and have to donate heart, that will hard. It will also be hard on women who suffer complications from forced pregnancies.
12
Shouldn’t all people have the same right to life as a fetus? I’m thinking of everyone waiting for an organ donation....all they need is s piece of someone else’s body. Since women are responsible for the right to life of every fetus, all men between the ages of 14 and 50 who match for an organ donation should be required to provide it.
7
Whether it not these laws can survive or prevail in front if the Supreme Court, can SOMEONE please point out any anti-abortion law that was actually "effective"?
I ask but I'm not hearing anything in response.
The fact of the matter is that abortions have been used to help control unwanted pregnancies throughout history - regardless of religion or any laws.
We owe it to our society to allow SAFE abortions where a womans' health not compromised. I would not ever need/want an abortion at this point, but if a young woman in my acquaintance made the decision I would support her.
To eliminate the need for abortions would be a vast undertaking covering government and business to address the causes and reasons why an abortion could be chosen. That is something these state legislatures are too lazy and cowardly to work on.
These states have produced badly flawed laws with little hope they would "work". They will be challenged, expensively, and should be overturned.
16
@Margo
The point appears to be to enact impossible laws to get the whole thing up to the Supreme Court, with the "hope" that Roe v. Wade will be vacated in some way, and then the regulations would default to the states. These people are clever. Too bad they're not taking the time to take care of their genuine business in the state and for the people.
7
All of us are annoyed when others do things of which we do not personally approve but that does not authorize us to force them to do our bidding. Personal and private decisions such as engaging in homosexual acts (once illegal), and what we choose to do about our own bodies do not lend themselves well to the forced morality marches of the self-righteous. Unless Republican men can get away with putting a monitored device on every uterus, to make these laws is simply a cruel waste of time. Abortion bans hurt only the poor and those without power and connections. The others do what they have always done: they have a sanitary and private abortion procedure. Vile and cruel "laws" like the Alabama one choose to punish little girls and women who are victims of incest or rape by forcing on them the "penalty" of giving birth to an unwanted child. Absolutism of course does not prohibit these "men" from being enthusiastic about capital punishment which they will argue is not murder. Science thankfully, moves on apace. Soon there will be very safe and reliable medicinal means to safely and privately end a pregnancy without the government or some church looking over a woman's shoulder. We ought to use all means such as universal and free birth control, and yes, moral suasion, to reduce the incidence of abortion, but it is well to remember that one can be anti-abortion and pro-choice at the same time.
13
@Mary Melcher
You are implying that abortion is a moral issue.
It's not.
It's a medical issue.
And deprivation of the right to abortion is a political and civil rights issue.
There is nothing wrong with abortion.
Of course it's better not to need one, as it is a physical invasion of the body, like any other procedure or operation.
But making it a moral issue is trying to guilt-trip all those women who had no hesitation about abortion and were relieved to have one.
2
Isn’t the men’s Final Four scheduled for Georgia next year? Come on NCAA - move those games!
187
@JCAZ
Why, exactly, should the NCAA move the games? Because progressives believe overwhelming that abortion should never be illegal under any circumstances? Talk about out of touch.
2
@AACNY
Your attempt to sound uninformed is unsuccessful.
You know full well how draconian this new bill is — forcing girls who are victims of rape and incest to carry an unwanted fetus to term.
That unmentionably cruel law is plenty of reason to boycott the state.
9
We have been drifting along - every moment of the news is Trump and his corruption, his packing the courts, the DOJ, environmental, consumer protection with incompetent political hacks - but we're doing OK: "How does any of this affect me?"
Well, at some point, it's inevitable: it will affect you. You may have a job, but this great economy is a chimera. Uber and Lyft drivers make eight bucks an hour and Trump's functionary at the Labor Department has just issued an edict from on high: "They are not Uber employees - they're contractors."
That simplifies everything: no benefits, no money, no union, and a company that wrecked the taxi industry, where people used to be able earn a living. And Uber's been losing a billion-plus a year. That's an economy? That cannibalism.
Gerrymandering, abortion, global warming, trade wars, tax policy, infrastructure, education, border myths, human rights abuses, civil rights abuses, lying, cheating, swindling, blind faith - felonies?
"O say can you see...by the dawn's early light..."
44
@Imanishi Kentaro
And then they came for me.
2
@Imanishi Kentaro This has been the most disheartening, to realize so many people are ignorant of disaster in the open, all those sampled Americans who answer “don’t know” or “no opinion” when asked about issues. Well-meaning people excuse this phenomenon with lame statements like “People are busy with their lives. They have kids...” as if that didn’t make everything MORE important. Short of going door-to-door sharing developments beyond the 2-3 monthly stories they hear in passing, I don’t know what more to do. Protests have lost impact beyond energizing the participants. Billions of words online become chatter. When something breaks through, it’s amazing to see so many people truly can’t be driven to care, that their empathy is very small outside a very particular kind of person. Even fellow Americans treated unjustly evokes apathy unless it’s *a certain kind of American.* I can’t grasp it; even if you feel nothing, don’t the implications create unease?Don’t you worry if your safety, your constitutional rights, or your basic humanity violated, nobody would help? It suggests the slippery march from bad to worse is irreversible. Fight uphill, but everyone else is still trudging down, head forward, staunchly tuning out the chaos.
This seems to have broken through, shaken people out of their haze. There is resistance to the abortion bans. I hold my breath; if despite a rare union of passion and attention, the courts uphold the ban, it proves another exit is locked.
2
What bothers me to no end is that the same people pushing for this nonsense would rush their daughters out of state for a quick stint in a clinic for a "nervous breakdown" if they happened to get pregnant.
Abortion bans is just a way to keep poor people poor, limit social mobility, access to higher education, etc. disguised as a religious good deed. Goes hand-in-hand with the lack of support systems post-partum, lack of sensible sex education, etc.
105
@JG
You are absolutely correct! If there were any reliable ways in which some legislators-in-high-positions could be outed (proof that they paid for abortions, proof that the "products of conception" were theirs, genetically), this entire farcical hypocritical situation would come to a very quick halt.
2
How do duly elected representatives vote to disenfranchise half of the population ?
Worst, this law will only apply to the poor.
32
As Republican men continue to curtail abortions, making them more and more difficult to obtain or making them illegal, it is a good time to revisit the Jane Collective. The recent bills in OH, AL, and GA are simply the most recent and most egregious of this anti-choice legislation.
Women will not return to back alley abortions or self-inflicted butchery. The Jane Collective holds lessons. I learned about Jane from my girlfriend in the early 80s; she had been a member. Jane was an underground abortion providing service in Chicago. In the 4 yrs before the passage of Roe v. Wade, they provided over 10,000 abortions.
The women of Jane were mostly white, many radical feminists. They created a secret pipeline to get women to drs. who preformed the abortions in apartments. The drs. were men, but soon many women trained and performed simple procedures themselves, Dialation & Suction, and Dialation & Curettage. Word got out and all sorts of women took advantage of Jane’s services. Women paid what they could, but $100 was the general charge. For many of the women of Jane, this was the most important work of their lives.
The women of 2019 are not the women of 1968. It's been 50 yrs. Now, many MDs are women, and there are large, well-financed orgs for women’s rights and reproductive health. This time, when women need to create the new generation of Jane, it will be a whole different thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Janes aren’t already active in parts of the country.
23
Big corporations who claim to espouse progressive values, where are you?
You threatened to pull out of North Carolina once before when the state wanted to put a backward bathroom law permanently on its books. The state, in the face of severe job losses, caved. It worked because money is the only thing these politicians care about.
Time for mass boycotts of, and corporate relocations from, all states that pass these draconian bills.
71
@Josa
Millions of American support abortion but with very clear restrictions. Why would corporations anger their female customers who are pro-life by taking a liberal stand, which is a minority position when it comes to restrictions?
2
@AACNY
A majority in the United States support the right to abortion.
The new law doesn't place "restrictions." It criminalizes virtually all abortions, with unprecedented cruelty.
8
@Jerry Engelbach
You are mistaken. Read the bill.
1
One of the reasons Roe v. Wade legalized abortion was the testimony of medical doctors, often emergency room doctors, who had seen young women die unnecessarily from illegal back-alley abortions, hemorrhaging to death in seedy motel rooms, or with punctured internal organs or gross infections. Those who did not die were often rendered sterile or disabled. Many of the dead women already had children and left orphans behind. Make abortion illegal and once again many young women will die horribly and unnecessarily.
Legal abortion is safe and protects women's health. Indeed, in the USA, the mortality rate for legal abortion is less than 1 in 100,000, while the death rate from childbirth is 26.4 per 100,000.
With universal sex education, access to contraceptives, and access to RU-486, surgical abortion could become rare. Teaching abstinence is a way of assuring unwanted pregnancies.
The GOP Supreme Court hates women and will likely issue a ruling that results in the deaths and disability of many young women. Men who are responsible for the unwanted pregnancies will suffer no consequences. Some might think that this violates the 14th Amendment's equal protection of laws, but in patriarchy, men count while women are expendable.
Too bad American women are so brainwashed and oppressed by patriarchy that they do not have the solidarity to implement a Lysistrata strategy, one that would deny all sex to males until the laws protect women's lives and liberties.
25
These re all great ideas. I’m a clinic escort and give regularly to abortion funds. Help is always needed.
11
Votes like this and all across the south, where the average Republican voter reads at a fourth grade level, force me to my modest proposal: rather than ban abortion, it should be mandatory.
33
Shame on anyone, male or female, who believed that their precious vote should be squandered on a man who bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women. I hold a particular level of antipathy for certain Hollywood actors who trumpeted loudly, during the election, that Hillary was worse than Trump. Such vapid rhetoric was espoused freely with no foresight regarding the Supreme Court. So here we are. My family has the luxury of relocating from the US, where we are all life-long residents and citizens, to another country, our young child in tow. She deserves a better environment and we intend to give her one. If another four years is in the cards, we will go play bridge elsewhere. This is simply too much to bear.
27
@Gigi
Who were those Hollywood actors? I'm curious.
@Gigi
How about all the millions of women who (a) voted for Bill Clinton who didn't talk about it but, in fact, actually sexually assaulted women and (b) voted for his wife who set up a "War Room" to go after his victims.
Trust me. Anyone who has ever voted for either Clinton is in no position to lecture anyone.
1
Gratuitous cruelty to women ,children, and families. Heartbreaking.
7
And guess who made this possible? The majority of white women who vote for Trump.
24
@ad And those who just couldn't vote for Hillary. Or vote at all. I wasn't wild about Clinton but I worried about the Supreme Court. And I was right.
10
In theory all women would leave Alabama immediately so their men might attempt some self reflection. At a minimum women should refrain from having sex with men in Alabama. That would put the kibosh on this law pretty quickly. Unfortunately there are enough battered women in Alabama (physically and/or spiritually) that are fine with the government in their hoo-ha or those of their sisters.
11
I hope this anti-abortion garbage does not spread to TN as these religious zealots try to subdue the will of the people.
Sickens and infuriates me that any State or Local government would attempt to have control on what a woman wants to do with her body. We have so many more problems to solve in this country but access to abortion is not one of them.
4
How the heck can you produce an editorial on "extremism" and fail to mention that NYS now allows abortion without any restrictions at any point?
2
@AACNY
I'm sorry, but that is an outright lie. Here is the law.
'... women may choose to have an abortion prior to 24 weeks; pregnancies typically range from 38 to 42 weeks. After 24 weeks, such decisions must be made with a determination that there is an “absence of fetal viability” or that the procedure is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” That determination must be made by a “health care practitioner licensed, certified, or authorized” under state law, “acting within his or her lawful scope of practice.”'
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/02/addressing-new-yorks-new-abortion-law/
4
I would not set foot in Alabama if you paid me. Perhaps the Alabama legislators are now planning to revisit “Separation of Church and State” as well and make teaching the Bible and “creationism” mandatory in the public schools. I feel sorry for children, particularly girls, growing up in such a misogynistic, backward state.
17
What is telling about the Alabama law is that it holds the woman free from criminal penalties. if she were the driver in a felony homicide she'd be tried along with the shooter. Why not with abortion?
3
I do not understand.
If they want less or no abortions just fund Planned Parenthood. Fund it like actual lives depend on it. Crazy fund it. Make it available 24/7 to all women and men everywhere.
Duh.
128
And make Medically Accurate Sex Ed mandatory in ALL schools, including religious ones.
4
All need for abortion is caused by men. Why don't we legislate their ability to get women pregnant? Or masturbation? (A waste of potential life!)
Oh right, then we'd skip the misogyny.
12
If 25 or so white male Republicans decide to prohibit abortion even in cases of rape or incest, at a minimum, they need to legislate a strong prenatal to 18 years+ safety net, a top tier education system and an excellent daycare for all Alabama children. To do otherwise is a mean spirited and short sighted conspiracy to keep poor people in perpetual poverty.
12
Presumably, prosecutors in Alabama will also charge the men who got these women pregnant with being accomplices to murder and then, once they're convicted felons, deny them their voting rights, no?
10
Sweet home Alabama
Where rape is OK
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, white males win the day
9
In 1973, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. That was 46 years ago. The Democrats had a total lock on Congress, both houses, more or less, from 1973 to 1997.
Since then, with several Democrat leaning Congresses, and presidents, controlling Washington, Congress never bothered to push through a bill to legalize abortion. And, conversely, the Republicans, with a Republican President and GOP dominated Congress, never did either. Why? Because they continued to use abortion as a wedge issue.
Excuses were that the Senate "rule" would prevent either party to get their way.
Well, that changed, when the GOP changed the rules to allow appointees to be approved by a simple majority. the GOP passed large tax cuts, as well. The Democrats pass the ACA in the same manner.
Now, states are pushing for "state's rights" to limit or ban abortions. They hope it end sup in a conservative Supreme Court, so Roe v Wade is overturned.
Congress constant deferral of issues to the Supreme Court, has finally come back to haunt them.
If Roe v Wade is overturned; the blame should fall on Congress fro not doing their job of legislating. Roe v Wade was a way fro Democrats to get elected, without Congress getting their hands dirty. GOP couldn't say candidate x voted for abortion.
Overturning Roe v Wade will send a message to Congress that they need to address all legislation. And, that they need to put the needs of the nation ahead of politics and trying to hold on to, or gain, power.
5
@Nick Metrowsky
"Congress never bothered to push through a bill to legalize abortion."
Roe v. Wade does legalize abortion. And it forbids the states to put undue obstacles in the way of it.
Some state legislators have chosen to violate their oath to protect the Constitution and have deliberately passed bills to flout it. They deserve to be impeached.
3
@Jerry Engelbach
Reread my post. Congress passes bills into law. The president signs bills into law. Roe v Wade was made legal by the courts; and it can be made illegal by the courts. This is why states are testing the legality of banning abortions.
Roe v Wade is classic legislating from the bench. And, Congress never used the legislation process to make sure there would not be another test, in the court system. They didn't, and now Alabama and Georgia, at least, are testing Roe v Wade.
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade; blame both parties and Congress.
1
@Nick Metrowsky
The affirmation of constitutional guarantees is not "legislating from the bench."
Congress can pass a separate federal law, but it would be just as vulnerable to challenge as the decision in Roe.
You used the word "legalize." A constitutional guarantee is legalization.
3
How come these states don't pass concurrent laws requiring the immediate garnishment of the father's wages to support these unwanted families?
15
@SarahTX2 Because conservative men are entitled to unprotected sex--consent be damned--with zero consequences. Didn't you know?
2
I called their Gov's- Kay Ivey- office from Colorado- they need to hear from everyone else. I actually got someone the first time I called.
198
@KMW It's really none of your business to decide how women should deal with their pregnancies. You don't know anything about the decisions women have to make: the fetus may not be viable, leaving a grief stricken mother to deal with not only with her grief but your critique of her decision; a mother's life may be at risk carrying a fetus to term; the father of the unborn child may be a rapist, sadist or otherwise unfit to be a parent. Try walking a mile in her shoes, it would be educational.
57
@KMW, no babies are ever harmed in any way in a safe and legal pregnancy termination. All babies, ever, have already been born.
32
@KMW I fixed your comment for you:
We need to do this more than ever because womens' lives are at stake. We have already lost far foo many women and girls from the horror of misogyny and it must be stopped.
34
Can the NYT please publish the names of all Alabama lawmakers who supported the bill? How many women voted for this immoral law?
9
THIS is what happens, when you Vote for ANY GOP candidate. Or, when you can’t be bothered to Vote. Or, when your pretty pony is not the nominee, so your stay home, out of spite.
Congratulations. And grow UP.
36
@Phyliss Dalmatian I sympathize with your point of view. But sarcasm doesn't change hearts or motivate action. I feel we really need to not perpetuate the toxic tone of discourse in our society. Try friendly persuasion. It will accomplish more of what you want to happen, I promise.:) And I wholeheartedly join you in your dismay and pledge to protect and restore women's right to choose!
3
The fact that there's no pregnancy prevention programs sponsored by these conservative legislators speaks a lot to the opinion that they do not actually care about the unborn. Many states that submit anti-abortion laws also shut down sexual education and birth control programs. You'd like to think it's simple religious fervor but it's probably a lot worse. They want to keep women in the bondage of motherhood and they need a constantly refreshing workforce since they're also trying to keep the immigrants from working here. Parenthood keeps many people in poverty, family planning is a luxury.
34
@Jsuis - Yep. When is the last time we heard a Republican politician talk about the necessity of funding good pre-natal care?
22
As the Times covered well in their piece "What happens when abortion is banned?" the landscape of abortions has changed dramatically in the 45 years since Roe v. Wade. As in S. America, where abortion is illegal, the mail-order industry for abortion drugs will flourish, women who want abortions will still have them, and worst of all, the state will start investigating women having miscarriages to see if they were violating the law or not. It'll be a complete and utter disaster for both sides.
7
@John "women who want abortions will still have them"
Especially middle and upper class women. Too poor to travel or find a sympathetic doctor? Tough.
4
I think it’s a losing battle in these conservative states. They are dug into their position. Any chance will have to be imposed on them because of the voting dynamics in the region. Women in the these states also vote a certain way.
Liberal and moderate states have to lead by example when it comes to civil rights and social policy. They will win in the long run as they always do
9
This is the ultimate example of the axiom that elections have consequences. It should serve as motivation for anyone who opposes President Trump from sitting on the sidelines in 2020 if their particular Democrat doesn't get the nomination.
25
@Sam Kirshenbaum I assume you include the possibility that Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren could get the nomination. I hope you will support them wholeheartedly.
2
@Francesca
Absolutely. In particular Senator Warren.
I've never been more glad to be a NARAL clinic escort.
340
@Katharine
Thank you.
13
@Katharine, thank you!
9
@Katharine I signed up today. I'm so mad right now.
3
I suppose the Alabama courts will have to decide what to do about the stillborn and miscarriages under this law if it is signed.
Perhaps they might seek counsel from myriad Fundamentalist preachers in that part of the nation. For example, if the Divine will generates no mistakes, will it be culpable and prosecuted under the new law? This may prove quite interesting.
9
This years "Right to Life" legislative initiative is about getting conservatives to the polls next year. Always has, always will be. Anyone who thinks the men who introduce and promote anti- abortion issues really care about right to life vs choice is deluding themselves. All they care about is the political impact. Its the touchstone issue for the Republican "base," the ones who vote in GOP primaries. Get out front on this issue and you lock in the base's vote.
32
Where is the responsibility of the men to GET women pregnant? It is not a solo activity, yet the current draconian laws apply only to women and their doctors. The answer, of course, lies with the nature of those who introduced and passed these laws: white men acting under the cover of religious notions that men should have control over EVERYTHING.
144
@arjayeff
The relationship between pro-choicers and men seems almost manic. It swings between the position that men should have no voice and should just shut up to holding them fully responsible.
1
History will not be kind to todays Republican Party!
25
@Cancun Charlie You would hope so, wouldn’t you? But it’s been kind to them so far. Due to a weird combination of factors, a lot of the textbooks used nationally are published out of Texas under the purview of their state educational requirements. They say history is written by the winners, but lately it seems like history is won by the writers. In the late 60s, far-right ideologues began a systematic, long-term, carefully designed plan to not just win elections for their fringe candidates, but to change the ideology of the American people, punping out rhetoric that soaked into the national consciousness and reframed America as an objectivist, hyper-capitalist nation. Their political alliance with the evangelical Christian movement was meant to further this goal; it’s impossible to pick out causation here, but it is noteworthy that religious groups in this alliance adopted “prosperity gospel” language, which goes directly against the historical and widely held narratives of Christian theology. And that’s how they locked in their base support for candidates who promised to restrict the rights of women, using the single-issue voters to guarantee the support for these GOP nominees would never waver. Convince enough of them that nothing else matters and you can bank on Republican control, quite literally.
I hope history is honest, but it never has been.
I’d be more inclined to believe all their spiritual passion if they had actually adopted a child that needed a home.
As long as there is a single child left to adopt or be a foster parent to, I consider these zealots to be hypocrites and acting out of self righteous vanity.
25
The thing is, the majority of people in deep-red states are A-OK with all of this. Not just men, the women as well. Not just people over 50, but all generations. I live in Tennessee, so I know what I'm talking about. This is what the majority of southerners want, period, end of story.
Before other southerners jump in to tell me I'm wrong: I'm not. We don't need to have a big debate about it, it's just the way it is--look at the Tennessee election for US Senator, Bredesen vs. Blackburn. That wasn't gerry-mandering or the Electoral College or anything else; that was the majority of TN voters voting how they voted, i.e., backwardly.
Just like a majority of southerners didn't want equal rights for black people until the federal government pushed it on them, a majority of southerners don't want equal rights for women (because for men to have bodily autonomy and women to not have it--by being forced to allow another human being to live of inside them and use their organs against their will--is a clear demonstration of lack of equality). There's no amount of voting in local elections, talking to friends and family, etc., that will help.
This is the south. The majority is OK with Christian shariah law.
731
@LWib As a fellow TN citizen I agree with the most of your comment and assertions but have to stop short on the equal rights issue and the Bredesen Blackburn election. If Phil would have campaigned more heavily in Eastern TN he would have won but instead he stayed in the comfort zones of Memphis and Nashville. He was a good governor during the first term and so so during the second term but overall he was way better suited to serve on the Senate than Marsha.
Having grown up a multiracial atheist in TN and KY I experienced the same bullying as any kid did but always felt accepted in all circles regardless of color.
The bible belt's heart and congregations are losing strength daily and that is a good thing for everyone regardless of religion or lack there of. It is the final howl of a dying beast before it sinks beneath the surface.
I look at these laws as regressive, snide, and something a third world back water country would attempt to do but yet I still have hope. Hope for a better society where women can be free of persecution to make their own best choice on abortion.
113
@LWib You're right. It is CRAZY to think a woman would support and measure or law that decries women's rights. It's mind-boggling, especially considering Alabama's stance on rape and incest resulting in pregnancy. The USA is teetering between batshitcrazy and total insanity.
141
This comment, while very eloquent, is one of the most depressing and frightening things I’ve read today.
98
So much for neutrality, NYTs. It is a shame that so few news organizations are objective and neutral anymore.
2
This is an OPINION column, @Simon. NYT's opinion columns, like those in every other newspaper, are not neutral. This doesn't mean that the whole news organization is not objective and neutral.
18
@Steve Allen
Board positions should be neutral with the exception of very rare circumstances (e.g., 9-11).
2
@Simon This is clearly marked as opinion. The Times is of the opinion that abortion rights need to be protected, as am I.
7
it has just been announced here in missouri, where i reside as an elderly lady, that legislature is now being introduced that would ban all abortions at 8 weeks. my entire state is in the hands of spineless republicans who will posture the issue for higher influence. it does no good to "write to my representatives:, as they are all cowtowing. this is so despicable, it turns my stomach. how dare they legislate using my body for their disgusting purpose.
56
@buskat If writing doesn't work - call them!
Why aren't pro-lifers up in arms over how we incarcerate minorities or capital punishment? Where are they when the child becomes an at-risk child and after a troubled youth ends up in prison? How many pro-lifers have walked passed the homeless or hungry? How many have neglected the old and forgotten?
Yup, there's more to being pro-life than ranting about the unborn. Being pro-life is a position of responsibility, yet too many fail to go that extra step to help a fellow human being, a neighbor in trouble.
114
@wihiker
This is a straw man that doesn't reflect the reality of Christians and voluntarism.
1
Interesting that they aren’t out on the front lines fighting for gun reform and school safety after mass shootings. They only care about a fetus before it’s born. Once the child is out of the womb, it must fend for itself.
15
@AACNY
Sadly, it does reflect the reality of "Christians".
6
Simultaneously, states like NY (passed) and IL (pending) are effectively eliminating any restrictions on abortion at any time during pregnancy. Imagine that, state legislatures making law instead of judges. It's almost like 10th amendment federalism or something.
7
@Matt Annnd, without the federal taxes coming from states like New York, Alabama and Mississippi would slip further into irrelevance and destitute. SO glad I'm a New Englander--where rational and morally sound thinking is applauded.
9
@Matt - Says the guy who will never be pregnant.
Do you really think any woman goes through several months of discomfort only to decide to go through a horrible surgical procedure just for the fun of it?
11
@Matt
Sorry, my friend, but that statement about New York is just not true.
Here is an excerpt from the New York law:
'... women may choose to have an abortion prior to 24 weeks; pregnancies typically range from 38 to 42 weeks. After 24 weeks, such decisions must be made with a determination that there is an “absence of fetal viability” or that the procedure is “necessary to protect the patient’s life or health.” That determination must be made by a “health care practitioner licensed, certified, or authorized” under state law, “acting within his or her lawful scope of practice.”'
4
Is it too late to let Alabama, Mississippi, and some of the other former slaver states leave the Union?
Without them, we wouldn't have had the last two disastrous Republican Presidents, and the last Iraq War, and terribly, a possible Iran war.
They will always be a haven for hate and racial politics.
Hugh
178
@Hugh Massengill Economic pressure has worked before. Look into who's headquartered in these states and stop buying their products, don't travel there, etc. Money talks
16
@Hugh Massengill This is untrue and there are many...many good caring people within the borders of AL and MS. Many of color and many of white skin pigmentation if we must separate people in the de jour of identity politics these days.
Those whom like me support freedom of choice and see no reason that any government should have control over a woman's body. When the states were "slaver" as you said it the party is power and promotion were the Democrats.
2
And blue state tax dollars would stay with blue states.
Editor’s note: This comment has been anonymized in accordance with applicable law(s).
16
Can someone explain why Governor Kay Ivey, a woman, would sign legislation that is so horribly cruel to women is beyond comprehension.
Can someone explain why ANY woman would be so cruel to another woman regarding this painful, personal decision of abortion. At least I can understand the stupidity of patriarchy.
If your religious or moral beliefs are in opposition to this legal, clinical procedure that's fine. It's your right as a citizen of the United States. But why must you force your personal beliefs on others. Isn't your god supposed to be the final judge. Not you.
80
@GM - Some women will go along with men in order to try and have a place at the table. Men aren't the only ones who are eager for power and money.
24
@GM
Enough with the sexist stereotypes, please. Women are pro-life.
1
@GM
Read Andrea Dworkin's book titled Right-Wing Women, which explains how some women choose to be allies of misogynistic men as a survival strategy and to get whatever crumbs men will throw them.
17
I guess we're back to wire hangers in a back alley.
What is America becoming? In an era where knowledge is so readily available, why are we growing less enlightened?
And perhaps my powers of comprehension have gone a-begging, but how in the heck can you get an abortion before you know you're pregnant??
503
@Bella S.
We should all remember Gerri Santoro.
If you don't know who she is, time to look her up. Wikipedia is helpful.
I understand that activists, such as the Alabama Senators. do appreciate having enough information on paper mailed to their offices such that they can wallpaper with it. Photos of Gerri Santoro might be appropriate. If you agree, you might consider printing out the wikipedia article and snail mailing it to the good Senators of Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio -- any place that is working similar deeds.
15
@Bella S.
all of those ultrasound machines aren't going in the trash. we've come a long way since then-- pills will be used more, and more nurses will be trained to do procedures. will it be illegal? yes, but only for care providers, and i can tell you that there are many of us who are already preparing for a worst case scenario. No more wire hangers. Ever.
26
@Bella S.
"In an era where knowledge is so readily available, why are we growing less enlightened?"
Gimme that old time religion,
it's good enough for me.
17
Why are you not wanting to protect your own children from getting killed?
4
@Albert
We are. That's why we want to ban the sale of guns and end senseless wars abroad.
11
@Brad Adshead
And why leave abortion out then, that has killed more than gun incidents and senseless wars combined?
No children have ever been harmed in any way in a safe and legal pregnancy termination.
All children, everywhere, have already been born.
3
"WOMEN in Alabama would be forced to carry unwanted or nonviable pregnancies to term"
NYT, even more traumatic is the number of GIRLS---16-, 14-, 12-years old---who would be forced to carry rape/incest fetuses to term and birth them. Their uncles', their brothers' their grandfathers', and their fathers'.
192
Has anyone considered the viability of counter-legislation? It's far fetched, but what if there were laws requiring mandatory DNA testing to determine paternal responsibility (one blood test pales in comparison to the invasive medical procedures often needed over the course of a full-term pregnancy); paternal wage garnishing to financially support the mother/unborn child for the duration of the pregnancy; custody automatically transferring by law to the father, if the mother declines custody after birth; in the case of rape or incest, taxpayer dollars are allocated to fund mother/child support (including all prenatal healthcare, mental heath care for the mother, and safe housing where the mother is in danger of abuse); etc. If men and/or conservative legislators were actually held accountable for the safety, financial security and futures of the unwanted children in whose interest they are supposedly passing anti-abortion laws, perhaps they might reconsider these draconian measures that place 100% of the burden on women, thereby denying them control over their futures and autonomy over their bodies.
410
@elisabeth mtrSome of these ideas are already imbedded in the ridiculous Georgia law: people can demand child support for a foetus, and claim said cells as tax dependents.
3
@elisabeth mtr - Currently failure to pay child support doesn't even impact a person's credit rating. That needs to change.
38
@elisabeth mtr
As a man, I say "Hear! Hear!"
5
"Anti-abortion lawmakers did not used to be so overt about their intentions to upend Roe." Yes, they did. You weren't paying attention. And the somnolent patience of your counsel is just as unrealistic. This is "still largely a state issue for now"? That's not so.
You give sleepy, qualified advice in a crisis. Alabama's gesture isn't sleepy or qualified. They want their wedge to split decades of legal precedent and societal custom. It's an attack.
If they get this, they will have created a new class of citizen--the potential American--with protections at the expense of the protections for the real ones. The linchpin of their law is knowing that the new citizen exists inside a woman's body. The only way they can achieve that, and thus the only way they can make their law effective, is compulsory reporting by every woman of age on her sexual activity to an authority, wherein she proves that she is not and was not pregnant since the last report and thus that she has not murdered anybody. Said authority must the able to compel a physical exam; the premise of this law is that women can't be trusted. Short of that, the protections that Alabama seeks to grant to these pre-natal Americans are just a gesture. And it's likewise a gesture if this doesn't become a Constitutional Amendment. There is no "for now" here.
That's how bad this is. You need to say it. This "continue to talk about this issue" is dishwater when we need your best thinking.
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Unfortunately the majority of abortions today come from people that don't want to take responsibility for their actions.
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@Frisco
Actually, having an abortion is an example of taking responsibility for your actions.
Forcing a person to gestate a fetus into a child, then failing to provide that child with adequate food, water, clothing, shelter, emotional support, and access to healthcare is the example of not taking responsibility. Rest assured, these state senators will take no responsibility for the children born to unwilling mothers who tried to save them from that fate.
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@Frisco - I'll bite. Where's your source for the "majority" claim.
btw, it takes two to create a pregnancy. Check out the stats sometime on men who leave their families and then check out the stats on the number of men who don't pay child support.
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@Frisco You base that judgement on exactly what?
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It's time for individuals and businesses to boycott Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Mississippi for their dark ages assault on the reproductive rights of women.
Don't travel in these states. Don't buy products or food produced in these states. Contact national companies that operate in these states and tell them you are going to boycott their company unless they censure and/or make plans for leaving these states.
Do something. TODAY. It's their rights today, your rights tomorrow.
Don't let this stand.
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@Colleen I agree with you. However, I never travel to Alabama to begin with and, when I looked up major companies in Alabama that I could boycott, I realized Alabama doesn't contribute anything to the rest of the country and hasn't in a long time.
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@Katharine How about Georgia? Do you drink Coke or want to buy a new Mercedes? Do you watch the Walking Dead? Time to let these companies know why you won't spend your money with them.
(And there are plenty of cars built in the union-unfriendly South, tell those makers you won't be buying their products, and why)
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@Katharine
College football. You forgot college football. Without college football where would we learn ethics and sportsmanship?
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These bills should go unchallenged. Let the Republicans wallow in their legislative cruelty. Especially when they try convicting a patient or doctor for 99 years.
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I'm surprised that there is no mention of an economic boycott of states that pass these cruel and restrictive laws against women. I go to Alabama every year to play golf for a week, but as long as this law is on the books, I will not spend a single penny in the state.
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@RER A scientific panel should rate states on their level of enlightenment, which ratings could then be used to make various decisions.
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@RER even if they didn't pass this, you should boycott them until they can manage prison reform. the situation is so bad that if they don't clean up their act, the DOJ is going to take over.
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@RER
Will people also boycott New York? Should they? Of course, if you don't support Alabama's laws, you don't have to go there, right?
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