What a moving and clear-eyed think piece, Ms. Oberman. Thank you.
Stateside, the Roe v. Wade verdict is periodically in danger, but never more so than currently. I've never forgotten the Ed Kienholz art retrospective I took my teenage daughter to a few years back, in particular one assemblage titled The Illegal Operation. This is what a back-alley abortion looked like to Kienholz in 1962:
https://collections.lacma.org/node/155448
2
This article speaks the truth, but the religious right does not care ... unless of course they chose to have an abortion.
American Catholics have abortions at rates comparable to the population as a whole. Apparently American Protestants have lower abortion rates -- though this is not controlled for reporting bias, economic factors, and number of children, in the studies that have been done.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2018/01/24/catholics-ar...
2
Despite the hand-waving by the author, there is good, peer-reviewed evidence that restrictions on abortion do lower abortion rates.
See e.g., P. Levine’s 2004 paper in the Journal of Law and Economics: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/380475, his 2003 paper in the Journal of Health Economics: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629603000638, and New’s 2011 study in State Politics & Policy Quarterly: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532440010387397, all of which show that restrictions on abortion lower abortion rates.
Firearms are omnipresent in our society. Shall we throw away gun control laws or homicide laws because someone who wants to kill will surely find a way anyways? What a shallow argument.
Instead, might we have an adult conversation balancing a woman’s desire for autonomy against the life of the unborn child depending on her? The result does not have to be either a dystopian war on poor women or a surrender to widely available killing technology. Every human being has inalienable rights and dignity and worth. The child on the streets, on the border, or in the womb. The mother, rich or poor.
We need paid maternity leave, universal health care, expanded child tax credits, subsidized daycare, and more to combat the throwaway culture of death we have grown in this country.
1
What happens when abortion is banned:
#1: more girls and women die;
#2: wages decrease as labor increases;
#3: the poor create more wealth for the fabulously wealthy because they must work even longer and harder to feed their unwanted babies;
#4: the poor stay poor, uneducated, and ignorant, and thus vote for Republican Party candidates;
#5: crime increases.
14
Why don't anti-choice policies include the provider of a fetus' 2nd set of chromosomes? Males almost always have the ability to step away from the repercussions of the consequences of unprotected sex. I am thinking of the physical, emotional and possible criminal effects on woman. Force men to be single parents, force young men to drop out of school, force men to pay the cost of rearing a child; not just contribute what they can afford, put men, young or old, in jail in case of miscarriage, force men to postpone their dreams for eighteen years.... If governments enforce all of these consequences on women then they must be enforced on men. The idea of forcing men into all the consequences of an unwanted and unintentional pregnancy seems unthinkable and unconstitutional. How is forcing women into the consequences of an unwanted/unintended pregnancy acceptable and constitutional? The hypocrisy boggles my mind, I dont understand how or why the sperm provider gets a pass from anti-choice advocates. If someone can explain their outlook I would appreciate the opportunity for insight into their beliefs.
26
I have been reading these comments and many have an anti-men tone. I know many men and they are wonderful and kind. Not all women are nice and some of these comments prove my point.
I feel sorry for men today as the pickings are quite slim. These women should be careful for what they wish for or they may find themselves alone. The ones who are married should be nice to their husbands or they too may also find themselves alone.
There are men in the pro-life movement who find abortion despicable but in my pro-life work there are far more women taking part. I guess these women who dislike men would dislike us equally or probably more.
We do not intend to stop talking about the evils of abortion. We have made a lot of progress but are just starting. We have many people on our side who find abortion inhumane and cruel to the unborn.
5
So strange, as the rest of the world is going one direction toward women (read Ireland), the U.S. wants to go back to the 19th century. Make America a Third World Country Again. Well, at least we can get those pre-teens married off to their rapists.
16
I'd like to ask the 'pro-life' people this: Yesterday, there was a article in the NYT about girls as young as 13 being married to men who have repeatedly raped them. These girls are married to their rapists when the girl becomes pregnant. The family would rather their teen daughter marry a rapist so as to avoid her having an abortion and embarrassing them. So, you're cool with this? A young teen being married off to her rapist in order to save a fetus?You'd sacrifice a kid to a man who will continue to sexually abuse her? And force her to be a mother at age 13?
20
Do you know what also happens when abortion is limited? Fewer abortions mean more children are born, which means more adults. And in cities like NYC that has >50% abortion rate in the black population, that would mean more "children of color" would be alive.
So why do abortion advocates care so little for people of color?
3
Actually POC women have been targets of forced sterilization, and all other kinds of medical procedures without consent, as a form “population control”, and forced integration, led by ‘well-meaning’ white Christians. So the abortion rights that women of privilege seek, is viewed with legitimate skepticism and something very very suspect.
4
you get a country like the US
3
If abortion is banned in the U.S., one million unwanted babies will be born here each year, mostly to teenagers (mostly white) who haven't yet finished high school, not trained for a vocation, found a job, or formed a household. Taxpayers will be stuck with the bill. Why ruin two people's lives (or even 6-7) so Republicans can get elected? Republican legislation is allowed to be cold, callous and cruel, as long as it gets them elected.
Republicans have been the most destructive force in America for the past 60 years.
One of the known consequences of unavailable abortion is increased criminality as each yearly set of unwanted
children reaches age 14. Impoverished and uncared for,
many will turn to crime and gangs.
Republicans have also walked away from the gun control issue - thwarting every attempt at responsible
gun control since the 1960's. Vote Republican and the chances of your high school child being massacred
rises substantially.
What the nation needs are 50 years of Liberal Outrage.
13
The election of Trump shows clearly that the lunatic fringe anti-abortion crowd is not a fringe at all but is nearly half the country. The sad joke, that for Repubs, life begins at conception and ends at birth, is quite accurate.
12
Gloria Steinem’s quote is apropos here:
“If men could be pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament”.
Food for thought.
16
I would think that most NY Times readers are fairly perspective persons, however their fixation on certain issues blinds them of a reality within the domain of the NYT itself.
A recent op-ed by a Ms. Kelly who "is a Ph.D. student researching the impact of digital cultures on anti-feminism and the far right." probably does not even realize that the NYT is as equal to the "far right".
One would think if an organization takes on issues of equality they would start in their own house, but this is not the case with the NYT. For example, there are 14 op-ed columnists, yet 78% of them are men.
How equal is that?
So keep on bringing up the Abortion issue, to provide you with a false sense of equality from the organization where the same old news is always fit to print...
3
ABORTION IS A PERSONAL CHOICE , l am not for or against it, l have daughters and grand daughters, l am 83 years old man, lam divorced more than 25 years ans l am a single parent for my son and for my daughter, it was not easy but l took my daughter to her doctor and be sure she has THE PILL and l was making sure that she was using it,and she is a married lady with three kids an the responsibllty goes to her husband, with my son point black l told him , if he will be a father before he finish University l will not sport him money wise, and he is married with a child, this is me ,but than religion gets in, well than the person wants a abortion but her religion says NO than she has to say yes or no but not laws, polition using this thing for their use, shame on them
4
I'm curious about the 'pro-life' people commenting here. How do you feel about today's NYT article about girls as young as 13 being forced to marry men who repeatedly raped them because the girl got pregnant? Forced to marry the rapist rather than have an abortion to save the family 'embarrassment." You
re okay with marrying off a 13 year old to a rapist to save a fetus from abortion? Ruin an existing kid's life to save a non-viable fetus? Subject both the girl-mother and her baby to a rapist father?
5
Our freedom shouldn't have to be bought with the blood of our children. We're doing the same thing to our unborn children that men have done since the beginning of time to their wives and daughters. We're just pushing the violence and repression down a level because now, we have the power and the right to kill our kids, just like fathers and husbands had (and in some places still have) the power and the right to do whatever they want to their own human possessions. We haven't won anything. It's all loss.
Bottom line: IT'S NOBODY'S BUSINESS
11
There are also broader impacts on society. In states where abortion is difficult, girls stop their educations to have the baby. But they often don't marry the father - choosing to support two people instead of three. In these areas there are fewer two-parent families.
Even making family planning difficult has some of the same problems. The majority of kids in a lot of these places are growing up in single-parent families as a result. The right-wing approach is what is killing the family in America,
6
Since half of abortions are the "choice" of poor women, this is another issue where economic justice is fundamental. Poverty is coercion.
2
If the evangelical community really wanted to stop abortions they would get behind wide-spread sex education and promote the regular use of contraceptives by women of child bearing age to avoid unwanted pregnancy. However, they can't do this because it conflicts with their religious beliefs that women should not be sexually active before marriage. Their real objective is to subordinate everyone to their religious beliefs, and have no problem employing the legal system to do so and infringing upon everyone else's rights to privacy.
11
The Anti-Abortion (self-styled Pro Life) movement ought to be dismissed outright. It is a zombie movement that will shamble on until we manage drive a wooden stake through its heart. Women ought to stand up and be counted. What is at stake is their bodies and their lives if they are of child bearing age and the bodies and lives of their daughters and younger women.
When #MeToo expands its horizons to call out those who seek to criminalize a woman right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy we can expect progress. Until then, brace yourself for continued, pointless controversy that denies women the right to control their own fertility.
3
Anti-abortion activists refuse to engage on the question of proper and fair punishment for the woman, along with her doctor. And what about the taxi/UBER driver and cooperative bio-dad, too? Banning abortion makes punishing participating women essential; and that would be anathema to the citizenry and help make safe/legal abortions more practical, regardless of the zealots.
2
The scope and nuance of this issue is heartbreaking to me as I read this article, as each time I felt like a solution was self-evident, the circumstances of situations opened up a new way of understanding the difficulties that accompany the unplanned or unwanted pregnancy.
For the woman, that is. And therein lies a more satisfying solution. A fundamental, moral, and dare I say, a religious change must take place in the hearts of men, so that they will love the woman they are having sex with and to love the life that they help produce.
This change is not simply the result of more education, nor is it simplistic. But I firmly believe it must be a spiritual change. Otherwise I do not see any laws or penalties or pharmaceuticals making this issue any clearer.
-- "Rather than ending abortion, criminalizing abortion will merely create new ways in which the state can intensify the misery of the poorest among us."
Rather than? There is no evidence to show that "intensifying the misery of the poorest" isn't the intention of the so-called conservatives who draft these laws in the first place. Everything else they do is anti-poor-people policy. Why would their abortion policies be any different?
7
Abortion will never be completely banned in the U.S. since then it would stop being a wedge issue and politicians would stop getting free votes for persecuting low income women (women of means will always have access to safe abortions regardless of the law).
4
With the modern genetic tools at our disposal, if conservatives truly want to make abortion illegal, it seems only fair that whenever an abortion happens, the man should be punished equally for having contributed to make an aborted embryo. My suspicion is that if punishment for the man is introduced into the legislation, Congress would lower its antiabortion stance significantly.
5
What this sounds like is what the War on Drugs turned into: systematized punishment of the poor and marginalized while the well-off get a very different treatment.
So much that is wrong with society has its roots in inequality. The greater the distance between the top and the bottom, the worse things are by almost every measure.
https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/the-spirit-level
When Colorado made long-lasting contraception readily available, teen pregnancies dropped by a significant margin, as did abortions. The cost of the program was more than justified by the savings elsewhere. But, it's in trouble.
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/09/03/437268213/colorad...
It's not about morality as much as it is about wealth and power: wealth to avoid the consequences; power to impose them on others.
7
A criminology text I read way back in the sixties concluded that the most direct way of reducing crime is to reduce the number laws. The legal system, the legal response, is cold, hard, clumsy, impersonal, insensitive to human realities and complexities. And nothing is more human and complex and personal than a woman and her womb. This is no place for an intrusion by the law.
The law is dividing us, including Christians, when it comes to unwanted or problem pregnancies.
The Christian way is to offer support, concern, to pool resources so that the neediest have their needs met before our wants are satisfied. And there are "pro-life" and "pro-choice" Christians having similar concerns, doing similar work, who are divided by the law: Caesar's way. Instead of a 50-50 divide because of the law, Christians against Christians, close to all Christians could work together offering understanding and support: Jesus' way.
Christina Gebel has written about this from her perspective as a pro-life Catholic public health professional in the May 28 America magazine.
There is one truth about abortion that is overlooked and ignored by pro-life groups: anti-abortion laws are intrinsically unfair to the poor. Wealthy women have always and will always have access to abortion, regardless of any laws. It is poor women that are victimized by anti-abortion laws. Poor women are degraded and criminalized by these laws and the (mostly) men who enforce them. Poor women lose their futures and their economic security without access to abortion. Regardless of religion, or whatever your belief is about when life begins, this most fundamental inequality and bias cannot be denied. I, for one, will never be won over to the pro-life side as long as it perpetuates unfair and unjust laws that unequivocally target only women without means.
8
In order to make abortion illegal the Supreme Court will have to rule that a fetus is a person at conception and that persons rights are more valuable than the rights of the mother that carries that fetus. Imagine the potential legal consequences of that reality. Children would be suing their parents for damages if they could prove that something the mother did during the pregnancy could be harmful to the fetus, like falling down, drugs, food choices, exposure to loud noises, riding on a subway or personal hygiene. Personal beliefs will be negated by legality and the courts will be the arbiters of judgement and justice.
10
I am a pro choice person. I have no objection to pro life people as long as they don't try to force their views on everyone. I don't want to tell women that they have to terminate their pregnancies and I don't want anyone telling me that I can't terminate a pregnancy if I choose to. That sort of decision in an intensely personal one and should be made by a woman following her own beliefs and conscience. It is really no one else's business.
16
When you pass a law, you are imposing your views on those who do not agree with the purpose of the law. It is that simple. The imposition may be clearly justifiable (no alcohol or tobacco for minors because it has been proven to be bad for their health and can create habit) but many times the justification is not that clear cut (as in the case of abortion and you probably know all the arguments pro and against). You make a case for laws based on what you want and what you do not want, which makes a very weak and probably a dangerous way to justify a law.
3
Your explanations only applies to the laws that ban something. When a law allows something, it actually decreases power of people to impose their will on the other people. Legalization of abortion allows people to choose accordingly their views. Legalisation of same sex marriage allows people to marry whom they want.
1
There will be no judicial or legislative actions that greatly affect the frequency of abortion, any more than Prohibition stopped drinking. All that will happen would be a moderate increase in tragedy and a massive increase of hypocrisy.
If abortion is made less available, some women will die; but they will be mostly poor, underprivileged women. They and those who attend them will be mostly ignored, as is now the case. Better-off women will continue to obtain surgical abortions, and they and their doctors will mostly stay under the radar, as was the case before Roe. There will be a great increase of black market commerce in misoprostol and mifepristone, as there is now in cannabis. And the RTL movement, rather than addressing legitimate concerns about mothers and children, will continue its cooptation as a sucker net for the GOP.
13
Does anyone really believe that if men were the gender getting pregnant that abortion would even be an issue? There would be abortion "stores" on every corner and they would be covered by all health insurances, even Hobby Lobby's. There'd probably even be one at the Capitol for the convenience of members of Congress.
18
My only complaint with arguments surrounding abortion is that each woman's own accountability for her actions is never considered. There are so many policies that send the message "do whatever you want and don't bother thinking of the consequences beforehand...we'll clean up after you."
People can't be bothered with responsibility anymore. If a statement begins with "I should" it is oppressive and should be ignored. If a statement begins with "I want" it doesn't matter how destructive or selfish the desire is, because it is inherently good.
I agree that the solution to any problem begins at the root of it, breaching patient confidentiality or throwing fines around as punishment solves nothing.
I will say that the legality of abortion also plays a role in the decisions people make. It becomes okay to be a little careless with sex, because an abortion is an option if needed. Some laws feel more like a failsafe than an upholding of standards.
1
My complaint is that people seem to think preventing unwanted pregnancy is wholly the woman's responsibility and only she is held accountable. Men are half of the equation. Why are women blamed, shamed, and told they must proceed with the pregnancy even though they'll be the single parent, not the man.
And many women who seek abortions are married and already have children, so this idea that only promiscuous women who have 'selfish' sex is also problematic.
24
A person's right to an abortion has nothing to do with responsibility or changes in responsibility. Access to safe family planning lowers the rates of unwanted abortions. As this article shows your concept of responsibility is based solely on economic means. It I am poor, I am denied what may be the responsible option. If I have the economic means, I get control over my body and my choices.
10
A lot of assumptions made. I didn't state that only promiscuous women have abortions, I didn't state that men aren't part of this equation. Additionally, when I mentioned responsibility I didn't place that solely on women.
Carelessness with sex can be demonstrated throughout any class, and perhaps even more so among higher classes due to the increased availability of healthcare.
The only point I am trying to make above is that these conversations about abortion rarely include the behavioral or psychological elements that lead to the increased need for abortion. I agree that economical conditions play a large role but that's not the entire picture.
The answer is change the law, change the policy, change others. Our own fallibility is rejected.
Why must it be 'allow all abortion or no abortion'? Why can a discussion never include the nuance of circumstance essential to this type of issue? I'm not even advocating for anti-abortion, the fact is whether it's needed or not, nobody wants to go through the trauma of an induced miscarriage. How we start to prevent this begins with economical considerations as well as behavioral ones.
Planned Parenthood is about women’s health (which may rarely require a safe abortion for someone). What so-called pro-lifers forget is the terror and tragedy of women who died or were crippled by illegal abortions. Their campaign against women’s choice to make their own health decisions is likely to mean pro-death for many people.
8
I’d suggest that those folks find the terror to be a feature in their quest. If not, why do “right to life” folks line up and scream at women they suspect are going to receive an abortion? Hellfire and damnation - central to the process. Shaming is a part of the process.
4
I'm Canadian. (Like many Canadians, I read U.S. media partly to figure out what's in store for me and mine; it's the old Pierre Trudeau metaphor of the ant living next to the elephant, you know.)
Here's the puzzler I hope some insightful NYT readers can help me with: From what I read, it seems that many speakers/writers/demonstrators/lobbyists on the anti-abortion side would also like to deprive all women of all, or most, kinds of birth control. So by that logic no fetuses should ever be prevented, under any circumstances, and every one of 'em that happens, whatever the circumstances, should get born?
Have I got that right? And then, I guess, all those children should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps because welfare and social assistance are also bad things?
Have I got this right? Or am I being unfair?
29
You could not be more correct in your assessment. Birth control is the same as abortion in the minds of many right to liters. And yes, every egg/sperm has the right to join and form a baby that is entitled to be born. The baby needs to be ready to grab their bootstraps as soon as they clear the cervix because the right to life crowd cannot risk the baby's mortal soul by giving them welfare so they can have food and shelter.
I have often wanted to show up at the Canadian border and request asylum. I didn't want the customs agent to laugh and say no way.
6
Yep you pretty much have that right especially in states with Republican governments like Texas, Iowa, Arkansas, Ohio. Children really aren't even supposed to receive an education about what happens when you have sex, as your not supposed to have it until you are married.
4
Jo,
You got it right.
Women having sex and enjoying it is bad. If women have birth control options available that will only increase their bad behavior. The punishment for all that bad fun is forced birth. When the fetus becomes a taker at birth, the woman especially if she's poor, must be punished along with her unfortunate offspring by denying them social safety nets.
That is Christian Values American Style.
Men get a pass. Unless that poor unfortunate woman can afford an attorney to sue for paternity testing and child support the impregnator walks away scott free.
Only women need be punished for enjoying sex because only pregnant women bear the outward appearance of having had sex. Liliths and Jezebels all are we.
8
I'm pro-choice, but I understand the concerns & position of the anti-choice crowd. What I have no patience with is the crowd that is both anti-choice and anti-contraception, as well as the crowd that is anti-choice and also opposes programs like SNAP ("life begins at conception and ends at birth").
As long as I'm listing pet peeves, I might also point out how ridiculous some conservatives sound when they use incendiary hyperbole like "liberals love (or are "for") abortion". It sure doesn't help advance the discussion in a constructive way.
19
To me the most vile hypocrisy in the whole abortion issue has been the "pro-life" antiabortion crowd's insistence on banning contraceptives as well as abortion. I've long held the view that abortions would be far less of an issue if women weren't getting pregnant in the first place. But the problem with THAT idea is that it makes sex FUN, rather than just for procreation. Our Puritan legacy cringes in horror that people should be having such indulgence. If we can shed that burden, that guilt-driven phobia, we might be able to make better choices all around.
16
I am, and always have been, of the opinion that (as a man) my opinion of how a woman ought to run her healthcare is none of my business, I.e. I am strongly ‘pro-choice’ as it’s labeled. That having been said Roe v. Wade did NOT legalize the abortion procedure in the U.S. but merely found that state laws making that procedure illegal were and remain un-Constitutional. If you’re seeking an abortion prodecudre which is legal you’ll have to come to Canada.
5
One consequence is that men and women would probably act more responsibly to avoid unwanted pregnancy than they do now with the 'fail safe' backup of abortion. Anyone who thinks that does not influence careless decision-making is fooling themselves.
2
Yeah, we continue to see how folks from the party of personal responsibility consider themselves to be exempt. Against the “nanny state” except when they can use rules to tell Those People what to do and be sure they suffer the “consequences,”
2
Why do you think so? Do you have any data to prove it?
Did you not notice the vote in Ireland that just took place?
Abortion will never be banned. To suggest that might happen is nothing more than fear-mongering.
It's obvious why abortion will never be banned: so many have already taken place, often in households where no one will ever admit to having made that decision.
11
Sorry, NEVER is not reality. In the long run Ireland’s decision may also be ours. Until then, the christianist right has joined with the power at all costs GOP to dominate legislatures which with compliant governors are making a concerted effort to chip away at Roe until all abortions are banned. Sure, for some this will be inconvenient (as it was in Ireland with those with legal means being a flight away from a safe abortion), but legally banning abortions - including drugs - is a real goal of those who believe they are the only arbiters and have the legislative power to prove it. Folks who decry sharia law as they act to impose the equivalent.
2
I don't understand this statement: "...the best way to lower abortion rates is to deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place." I'm pretty sure that what causes women to want an abortion, in the vast majority of cases, is not wanting to have a kid. Why does anyone except for the pregnant woman get to "deal with" that? I feel like this author is pro-choice so I'm wondering if I'm not interpreting this sentence correctly, or if maybe it's just poorly worded.
6
Re-read the piece’s part about experience in Colorado. Data are data. Reduction in pregnancy and abortions. Is that “pro-choice”? Perhaps your bias is showing.
I can't make this more plain. A GOVERNMENT THAT HAS THE AUTHORITY TO BAN ABORTION HAS THE AUTHORITY TO DEMAND ABORTION. You would have thought that Christians would have figured out by now that letting the government enforce their religious beliefs only leads to disaster. The "Blue Laws" required that all businesses be closed on Sunday, in observance of the Christian Sabbath. Then the government changed the laws, and now Sunday is one of the biggest shopping days of the week. Marriage was originally a sacrament controlled by the Church; a man, a women, no divorce. Then the government took it over. How long before the government's desire to cut taxes and spending, coupled with control over abortion leads to calls for forced abortions of women who are poor, have too many children or might bear handicapped children? You don't think it could happen? Remember the "Blue Laws".
6
Excellent point. The same folks who rail at any suggestion of “sharia law” existing in the US are pushing their own version - based on their conviction they are right and therefore have the right - and have been acquiring the power to do so. The effect in the future assumes they do not hold the view that we are in the end times, so they need to set things to their ideology now as evidence they are worthy. Yes, there really is a strong theological basis which reason - or our foundational freedoms - can not be allowed to interfere with.
2
If abortion is banned, the same thing will happen when drugs are banned - people will resort to illegal means to obtain what they want. Of course that's not a reason to legalize either abortion or heroin.
But if we are going to legalize either, we should follow the example of Ireland and let the people decide, not the courts. Whether abortion is legal or not depends upon when you think human life begins - conception, birth or at some point in between. I believe that is a philosophical/political decision and not a scientific or legal decision. (Nor is it a religious decision, although some people's religious beliefs may affect when they believe life begins.)
5
I saved this comment in response to an article the Times published several months ago:
"I nearly died from a pregnancy that went horribly wrong at 24 weeks. Why would anyone think they had the right to decide whether I could terminate that (planned, wanted) pregnancy? Women don't have late abortions so they will look good at the beach. This issue may seem unimportant to you, but for some of us it is literally life or death."
29
It's sad when authors like this want to compare the United States to Chile and El Salvador.
How about comparing us to France?
France holds their women to higher standards of personal conduct and responsibility than we do here.
If you are a woman in France and you find yourself with an unwanted pregnancy, you have 13 weeks to make a decision to have an abortion or not. After that, the only way an abortion is happening is if that woman has medical issues that may be life threatening (no cheating by using mental health as a disguise for medical )or fly to Boston, Newark or Miami and have an abortion all the way up until the little thing comes out of the birth canal.
When even the likes of Hillary Clinton says abortion needs to be safe, but rare..this is what she's talking about. Time to step up the game and own your own body vs. relying on the government and progressive politicians & judges to take care of you.
4
"France holds their women to higher standards of personal conduct and responsibility than we do here."
Women do not self-impregnate. A man is involved and men can be responsible for preventing unwanted pregnancies, too.
"no cheating by using mental health as a disguise"
You do realize many women do have significant mental health issues that may indeed make it difficult for them to be mothers, right? And that bipolar or schizophrenia, for instance, are real and not 'disguises.'
And our government does NOT take care of pregnant women or new moms, so you needn't worry about that.
19
This “comparison” omits taxpayer funding
The premise of the article is finding out what happens in a nation that bans and criminalizes abortion completely. That's why the author didn't choose France. Good way to hijack the point, though! I laughed out loud at your "Time to step up the game and own your own body vs. relying on the government...". Great idea! Stop with the already 1200 laws to restrict women owning their own bodies, and we'll have a deal, smug one.
1
I don't really understand the agonizing over this, because the solution to the problem seems to be a simple one. Make the combination of mifepristone and misoprostol that's used for chemical abortions in this country widely available online.
Then pregnant women in conservative states could get around their governments' restrictions easily. If you could get chemical-abortion drugs on Amazon as easily as Tylenol, restrictions would be pointless.
So all it takes is ONE STATE to legalize over-the-counter sales of chemical abortion drugs, or to set up a website where women from any state can order them and the problem is over.
15
Then comes the law criminalizing the purchase of certain drugs over the internet. Especially if that ONE STATE to legalize abortion drug combos is California. States' rights mean nothing to conservatives unless it involves guns.
1
Just came across this in the thickets of my fellow members of the commentariat. It's a keeper:
Shera Bechard: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/theory-playboy-model-had-af...
So Trump hid that he paid for the abortion that Broidy took on for him. And Broidy's reward - wait for it - was a contract worth hundreds of millions with the Saudis.
It doesn't get more murderous than that.
The born are unimportant to Trumpians unless their hero wins. Punters are remarkably hard to undeceive.
Planet and humans going down fast, faster, fastest. So stupid.
11
I would like to share some interesting facts about Planned Parenthood's executives' salaries from The Washington Examiner that was released in an article from March 7, 2017.
Planned Parenthood's HQ's average salary for executives was $389,514.
16 employees made over $300,000
6 employees made over $400,000
I made in excess of $500,000
The increase of CEO salaries at affiliates was 22 percent in the last two years. 33 employees made in excess of $200,000 per year.
The average CEO salary placed those employee in the top 5 percent of the workforce.
This was quite astounding for an organization that claims to be non-profit.
I guess the abortion business pays very well these days. And I thought they were doing this because they truly cared for these women. (Sarcasm)
This proves this is a cash cow for the top employees.
3
Not astounding for an organization that size. Compare those salaries to other large non-profits like Goodwill and you'll see they're comparable. And a lot less than what similarly sized for=profit business pay.
15
Anne,
I think it is immoral for non profits like Goodwill and Planned Parenthood to pay such exorbitant salaries to their employees. The difference with Planned Parenthood is that they terminate pregnancies of poor women while their top staff make hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. That obviously does not disturb you or those who work at Planned Parenthood.
The former CEO, Cecile Richards, who made close to $600,000 when she left Planned Parenthood, lived in luxury while most of their customers barely made ends meet. Please do not tell me that ending an innocent life makes a difference to these women. It does not. It is obscene that they are in the abortion business. Hopefully pro life groups will soon see this killing end. We are working on it.
2
Non-profits pay their employees; this is not scandalous information. The top ranking staff at most charitable organizations get six figure salaries.
6
I am always puzzled by the way anti-abortion people fixate on changing law. I suspect it is easier to attend a vigil instead of dong the hard work of helping fellow humans in need.
Changing law will not result in a world in which there are no abortions. it will only add to the death toll by returning to the days where women die too.
If people want to reduce abortion, it seems to me the way to do it is to improve the world by welcoming and supporting pregnant women, providing for them and their children, providing birth control and factual sex education.
It seems that every anti-abortion person could make a significant change through kindness and compassion. It’s hard work.
I am not pro-abortion but I realize there are instances where it is the compassionate choice.
9
Everything the author says is true, none of it matters to the far right wing forced birth crowd. And you can be sure that theocrats like Pence, Sessions and the rest will find ways to prosecute both doctors and patients if an illegal abortion is suspected. After all, Pence already jailed a woman for 30 years for having a miscarriage because he claimed she had an illegal abortion.
13
We have an excellent idea of what will happen: Poor women will risk their health resulting in potential permanent damage death or actually having the fetus, bringing a child into the world that is unwanted (and if you want to see what that is like, look up ICE and immigrant children). Rich women have always had access to abortions, either by going to the hospital at great expense for D&C's or flying to another country for one. This is a war on women and in particular, poor and minority women. Make no mistake, a country that places no value on the teachings of Jesus isn't waging war on abortion in the name of religious values - it's waging war on abortion because that is a proven and effective way to control women and keep them as second class citizens. To focus on misoprostol is myopic. How sick and sad that Gloria Steinem's statement remains relevant to this day: If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
10
If abortion is illegal, then miscarriages will again be investigated as crimes. All the women in my mother's side of the family have had a miscarriage for their first pregnancy All of them - my mother, grandmother, sisters, and niece. In 1947 my mother was questioned if she had "done anything to herself" while the blood was pouring out of her at the hospital. It took my father threatening the doctor and her collapsing to get her help. Dear Lord, do not let us go back to those day!
21
I think Democratic candidates should pledge to providers of surgical contraception, contraceptive pills, abortions, and abortion prescriptions an amount equal to 20% Republicans raise on their political campaigns. Though it would deduct from Democratic ceaseless (wasteful) political advertising it would be calibrated to amount Republicans raise for their ceaseless (wasteful) political advertising.
Beyond that I would wish that 30% of this funding be provided to charities operating in poor countries who try to provide these services even after having all their funding cut off even for their other lifesaving activities by US government due to US war on women rather than fighting against an overblown military industrial complex pitted in hopeless battles against exploding populations in countries that don't have land or money to pay for their individual underdeveloped country's 6 children per family norms.
2
Imagine a time machine that takes us back to the 1950's when women have no say about whether we can have access to birth control never mind abortion. Mad Men are ruling and brainwashing many women along the way. Back to days when women are having pregnancy after pregnancy no matter what, whether they are unhealthy, poor, uneducated, with birth defects, with RH negative factor, whatever. Really!
6
I will never understand why any man thinks his opinion on abortion should be validated for any reason. If the day ever comes when they can get pregnant then their opinion might be worth considering. And to the rest of the "pro-life" people out there - how many unwanted babies have you taken into your homes?
17
I hope you'll reconsider this undemocratic perspective, Susan. Is an unemployed person not allowed to have views on corporate taxes? Is a thriving middle class family not allowed to care about safety net policies?
1
My grandmother is now 83 years old. She grew up as a Catholic in New Jersey surrounded by family. She has told me stories of conversations she would overhear of her mother and aunties "using knitting needles" to ensure they wouldn't have any more babies, as they each already many. Illegal or not, women will find a way to do what they need to do. I am not sure what drives some people to be so deeply invested in an unborn fetus and the sacredness of "life", and yet care not for the life of women, and in many many cases, the life of mothers. Because the truth is many, if not most, of the women getting abortions are already mothers with previous children.
11
Our nation’s cemeteries are filled with young women that have died of miscarriages and abortions after, perhaps, bearing four, five, six or more children. Heretofore men generally had two or more wives in their lifetimes due to women dying in or shortly after child birth. It seems to me that one of the ideological bases for opposing abortions is to perpetuate male control over women and their bodies. No one makes the man responsible for unwanted pregnancies. Men have their way with women and move on in their sexual lives. Women bear the brunt of the consequences. Efforts starting in the 19th century to help women avoid unwanted pregnancies gained the antipathy of male clergy in pulpit after pulpit. I think this is rooted in interpretations of the Fall of Adam and the emergence of Sin as a control on human society. The Bible is filled with misogynistic stories debasing women. Jesus taught respect for women, enlisting them in his mission to help the less fortunate. As unfortunate as abortions are, they are most unfortunate for the women involved. Those who pass judgment on them violate one of Jesus’s cautionary admonitions: judge not, lest ye be judged. The jury is still out on whether Jesus had sexual relations with women during his life time. His “virgin” birth is a tenet of faith among Christians but there may be a darker side to what happened to the Virgin Mary – a girl in her teens that may have been sold into a marriage as so many girls were and still are.
7
Needless to say abortion is a complicated topic and I have very mixed feelings about it. I do not think that it is good to have an abortion but the woman who is pregnant should be the one to decide whether to have one or not. The government should not tell a woman that she has to carry a pregnancy to term and have a child. Each woman and her doctor should decide. The need for abortion should be going down and contraceptives should be made more widely available to limit the need for an abortion.
Abortion will never become completely illegal in this country. Some of the red states (such as Arkansas) would love to make it illegal and even if the Supremes overturn Roe V Wade, there would be many blue states that will continue to allow abortion. You would probably wind up in a situation where the well-to-do would travel to New York or California to have their abortion while poor women in red states would turn to methods discussed in this article.
I am not sure that the republican Christian right actual wants to get rid of abortions completely. It has been a tremendous political issue for them to campaign against (to activate their base) and to raise campaign contributions. If they really wanted to limit abortion why did they not support family planning and the use of contraceptives. As it is, they campaign against it, pass restrictions, the courts strikes them down, the cycle continues. All the while raising campaign funds.
7
In Canada, we have chosen the rights of women over those of fetuses. The Supreme Court in Canada also decided that equal rights for women and men was contingent upon each individual woman having control over her own body as a basic human right. With that decision, the issue of abortion has ceased to be a political football in this country, with the understanding that such intimate decisions are private matters, and forcing our politicians to focus on legitimate public issues. As Pierre Elliot Trudeau said when he was the Minister of Justice, “The State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.” I believe that sentiment should extend to the uteruses of the nation.
17
Republicans cannot afford to ban all abortion. They would lose all those single-issue voters in a few election cycles when those voters take off their blinders and see the broken healthcare system, the economic injustice, anti-worker and anti-consumer laws and rules, the unnecessary wars their families are called to fight, the worsening effects of climate change and the deep and rampant corruption of government under one-party rule.
4
This is about a woman's power over her own body. The tenth amendment reserves power to the states and to citizens that are not given to the federal government, and no state ought to have power over what happens inside a woman's body.
The pro-choice position protects a woman's right to have a baby if she wants. The state cannot tell her that she must NOT have a baby.
5
One thing the article fails to mention is the women that are forced to keep an unwanted pregnancy that are already under the poverty level will be more dependent on the welfare system. Which conservatives detest. They want to protect the unborn then disregard them after they’re born. I argue this often with my ultra-conservative friends and they never have a good answer. Also i dont believe you or anyone else has a right to tell me or anyone else what we can do with our own bodies. That would be like me telling you that you cant masterbate because it kills potential people.
7
It would be so gratifying if the so-called "pro-life" groups were truly as concerned about saving children as they pretend to be. But, as many, many critics have pointed out, their concern stops when the child is born. Meanwhile, there is an epidemic of child abuse going in the US, with millions of children who could use the support and care of those who claim to love children, but do not receive it. Over the past 10 years, more than 20,000 American children are believed to have been killed in their own homes by family members. That is nearly four times the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The child maltreatment death rate in the US is triple Canada’s and 11 times that of Italy. Millions of children are reported as abused and neglected every year. The United States has one of the worst records among industrialized nations – losing on average almost five children every day to child abuse and neglect. If only those who profess their love for children would devote their time, money and political action to those already alive and suffering, a difference could be made. Instead of forcing women to have more children, help them learn to care for the ones they have. Volunteer with prevention programs that target at-risk new parents and support families in times of stress or with basic child care education. Every city has these organizations that need your help. Keep fighting to end abortion, if you must, but don't neglect the kids that need your help now.
7
I would direct your attention to another effect. In Costa Rica, a community doctor was arrested for forcing women to perform sex acts in exchange for abortion inducing pills. Outlawing abortion puts women (mostly poor) at the mercy of abusive partners and others who take advantage of women in desperate situations. From doctors, to abusive partners and families, to peddlers of fake medication, to increased poverty, the banning of abortion has real victims and they are always female and poor.
10
This article points out in detail how abortions would continue to be practiced, even if the courts were to overturn Roe; a bet I would not take. Abortions will continue whether they be legal or 'illegal'.
As a male, I stand firmly that this decision is solely up to a woman to make. As an American, I stand firmly this decision is solely up to each female to decide. What is unacceptable is that the 'state' be used as a tool of the religious to insert itself into the decision of women. It would be a cruel violation of the Separation Clause that we must demand not be allowed by the courts.
7
I wonder if the "pro-Trump" anti-abortion people commenting bothered to even read the article. Many clearly have swallowed the lies told by the "pro-life" side about Planned Parenthood. They also seem to approve of the GOP gutting the social safety nets so now poor women will be forced to give birth and have no help paying for necessities to raise the child. Add in the lack of birth control that will be available if PP goes away and the GOPs apparent belief that birth control is akin to abortion and you create a real problem that the anti-abortion folks refuse to even think about. Not surprising since many still, and foolishly, support Trump and don't care one wit about honesty or facts, preferring political commentary that confirms their fact free biases.
6
I attended Penn State in the early 60’s.
I lived in a dormitory that was part of a high rise complex. After several months I woke up late one morning and dashed off to class skipping breakfast in the dining building located in the center of the dormitory complex.
When I arrived at the dining room for lunch it was abnormally quiet, students were at tables as usual, but huddled close together speaking in hushed voices.
I asked, “What’s wrong?” The reply: the students who came to breakfast had witnessed University staff hosing off the remains of a female student who had jumped from a high rise to the concrete walkway below.
I immediately thought of Randall Jarrell’s poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.”
I never ate breakfast again at Penn State again, hosings occurred about once a month and were never reported in the University’s otherwise robust student newspaper.
That moment entering the hushed dining room and the horror of the Randall Jarrell poem remain seared together in my brain.
The result of banning abortions was often suicides and cover ups.
10
This is very depressing. I never had the need to have an abortion. But, I will stand for another woman's right to consider and follow through.
I do not understand why people think forcing a child into the world will give that child a good life. Most of time there is a very compelling reason and usually is it economical or rape.
We are spiritual beings first, humans in physical bodies, second. I believe that all souls decide when and if they want to enter the physical world. A soul hovers over the mother until quickening and may decide on its own not to enter.
If birth control were allowed everywhere, the answer would be simple. More healthy women and babies who are truly wanted.
To have women and their doctors criminalized over this is a
travesty. Isn't there enough heartache in the world?
6
I never thought of this until I read this article... Why are so many unplanned pregnancies occurring in the first place? Are there no contraceptives in Latin America? Or does anti-abortion politics *encourage* men to be irresponsible? Irresponsibility that CAUSES more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions.
5
"This practice is endorsed by today’s anti-abortion movement, which with virtual unanimity proclaims that women are abortion’s “second victims,” deserving compassion rather than punishment."
This sentiment is offensive to women, because it essentially makes the point that we are too stupid and weak to make any decisions. It implies that we lack agency and that we are incompetent.
It's also an attempt to put a pretty exterior on facets of complicated issues for which conservatives cannot justify their positions. It's akin to anti-abortion billboards that depict a pretty, healthy, white baby who would most certainly be adopted. The sad truth is that white (because they more often have the means) childless couples in this country are not lining up in droves to adopt minority and/or disabled babies. It would be interesting to see a convincing billboard promoting pro-birth values that represents any one other than the former group.
12
This question and also the next for the American Women, what will you do when they ban birth control? As they attack abortion they have also chipped away at birth control. The average American woman just does not understand the future risk of her disinterest in politics. Educate women of the risk and watch them vote for a woman's right to control her future.
10
Our ancestors left the old world to escape the horror of religious intolerance and dogma.
13
It's time to self fund Planned Parenthood and no longer take dollars from the government.
3
I am not sure I understand this comment. How should Planned parenthood be self-funded without government help?
You're against Medicaid spending its money to treat STD's and provide Pap smears, contraceptives and pelvic exams for poor women? It's the same care they'd get in a doctor's office -- if they could afford a doctor or find one who takes Medicaid patients.
5
It is a sad fact of life that women have to end pregnancies sometimes and this has been true for centuries. It is cruel and torturous to make a woman endure a pregnancy she does want not or cannot endure. It is especially cruel knowing that these rules about abortion essentially emanate from men replete in their Catholic garb, who clearly prefer the company of other colorfully garbed men - all of them not even remotely familiar with the havoc a pregnancy can reap on a woman's life, let alone what an unwanted child can do. Bring on the abortive drugs, just like they do with Viagra.
6
You are right. Tough anti-abortion laws may make poor women's lives much more miserable, but they do not prevent abortions from taking place. Besides, massive voluntary sterilization has been the answer to extremely restrictive, or coercive, legislation.
I assume that the fast fall of total fertility reates in most of Latin America is, to a considerable extent, due to voluntary sterilization. One rapid procedure, and no more political rhetoric to cope with.
2
Yes, if abortion as a backup were to be banned, there would IMO be a big demand for female sterilization, probably after birth of a first or second child. Few can afford more than that but at this time, keep their options open. Women who are paying attention to the bad news and thinking ahead might want to go ahead with tubal ligation sooner rather than later.
I don't think outlawing abortion will revive 'traditional' marriage (husband works, wife stays home) no matter what the religious right longs for.
6
What Happens When Abortion Is Banned? Girls do not get to kill their babies! If the child is actually born, then it would be called MURDER!
2
So you want all women who have abortions arrested for murder? What do you envision exactly?
7
Actually, you can read about exactly what happens when abortion is banned. BTW, it was very hard to get abortions in Victorian England. It was also quite common to discover the corpses of newborns floating in England's extensive canal system. I suspect you could have found such remains at the bottom of every disused well or mineshaft in the country. Even those who survived often ended up in so-called "baby farms" with average mortality rates of 90-100%. I think safe, legal abortion would have been infinitely more humane.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/world/americas/zika-virus-abortion-br...
9
Abortion keeps women down. I know that is counter intuitive. But abortion helps obviate the father's already diminished responsibility. The choice that women should be concerned with is whether or not to have coitus to start with. (defect, rape, incest etc. terminations not included). So the weakest suffer the most. As it always is.
3
That is not the point, what "should" happen. The subject at hand is what actually happens when abortions are made illegal. Abortions still happen when illegal. How will they happen - (ordering pills online/ taking them at home without medical supervision) -and how they are punished (arrest the woman or not? How do you catch them in the first place?) is what you should be discussing.
6
"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." It's an old saying, but still true.
5
The answer is simple. We finally admit that the religious right has won control over all women, kind of like in the Bible you know. Women no longer have the right to determine what can or can not be done with their own bodies. If some evangelist tells them to give birth to a deformed fetus inside of them they must give birth to it an nurture it, even if it doesn't have legs or a brain or any other condition physical or otherwise that would make life absolutely miserable for the poor woman who became pregnant. Because that's what God wants. That's how we know that God is a man, because no woman would wish that kind of misery on all women. The evangelists talk to God all the time by the way and He tells them everything and then they tell us.
2
Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for due to unintended consequences. People are increasingly disgusted and abandoning their (to my mind) foolish religious beliefs. I wonder how bad things will have to be before the forced imposition of white Christianity on the public will finally be rolled back.
3
Abortion bans are not about saving zygotes. It's about a herring issue along with gays, guns and weed to keep the "religious" stirred up and voting against their own interests.
9
How many pro-life racists would prohibit abortion to the very races they do not want to multiply?
I have witnessed upper class girls taking a week
off from classes for a short vacation to Japan
or Switzerland, years ago. Now they might go to
South America. Or Ireland?
Isn't our species over-populating the globe? And
aren't more and more white, middle class women
deciding on one, or no, children?
Men remain boys over this issue.
It is a class "thing."
3
Decades ago in most Australian states abortion was illegal.
Clinics and doctors and midwives that provided abortions could be prosecuted under a variety of statutes. However the police found that providers of illegal abortions could be blackmailed for protection money. it will probably never be known how widespread this corruption was, since only in Victoria was there a serious investigation.
Making abortion illegal, or heavily restricted, will only create a new criminal enterprise - or perhaps revive an old one. That might be what some of the people seeking to change the law wish for.
The availability of modern drugs will only open new avenues of extortion for the criminally inclined.
It would seem that those who seek this state of affairs are willfully blind, terminally stupid or intend to profit from it.
7
Want to see a return of back alley abortions and women in prison for miscarriages? Then continue voting for the Republican party ladies. The plan to dismantle Roe v Wade was inacted when Justice Scalia died.
6
Unwanted children are the result and this is a shame.
4
My god says that we must trust women just like we trust them with everything else they handle - especially raising our children. My god also says women are very important in staying alive to take care of themselves and their families, not to die because of some botched procedure or because someone else's demands they carry full term when they shouldn't. My god also says - mind your own d**n business.
5
Thank you for an excellent article Ms. Oberman. I have been expressing this for many years. Technology has passed this argument by as not only is there misoprostol, but also alprostadil, methotrexate and for mid-pregnancy a stiff dose of cocaine will do the job. White suburban teenaged girls know that they can use cocaine to induce a still-birth and if they know that, they know where to get the cocaine.
The other issue is that when a product or a service is prohibited, the demand does not go away. The result is that the black market takes over and the government loses control. The original Prohibition is one example. The more recent partial prohibition of raising the drinking age to 21 is another where high risk consumption went from 40% to 55% of the respondents surveyed.
But this prohibition is worse because in the zeal to stop legal abortions, basic female health care is cut also--less family planning, less prenatal care, less testing for STDs (men and women) all lead to greater morbidity and mortality. Not to mention that the christian right wants to eliminate SNAP and WIC. The great state of Texas now has a maternal mortality rate of 56/100,000 pregnancies that is higher than many Latin American countries. There is our future.
6
When a product is prohibited the demand will not go away. You can use the same arguments about anything--including gun control. We can illegalize anything, but those who want the product will still find a way to get it.
In the United States, abortion should be a state issue.
If you live in a state where abortion is prohibited, then you're going to have to suffer the inconvenience of travelling to another state to have the procedure.
2
There is one thing worse than an abortion, and that is an unwanted child. Forget all the religious claptrap, I have no knowledge of Jesus ever saying that women have to bear babies whether they want to or not. But I can guarantee you that an unwanted child rarely grows up to be an asset to society. Today's youth in most countries is under-educated, and he or she has little hope of finding a good job... nigh impossible if you are black from the projects. Robots are replacing the factory line worker.
7 billion people on earth are overstretching resources and destroying the environment. We humans are born with sentient brains. Why must we anesthetize them? Women who do not want an abortion are not required to have one; but they should stay out of other people's private business, and be grateful that some women prefer to abort an unwanted pregnancy; we do not need to keep increasing the population.
8
I'll be waiting for some Iowa police to be arresting women, particularly white, well-off and Republican, returning from having abortions.
i expect to wait a long, long time.
9
The more things change, the more they stay the same. In 1960s Vietnam, birth control pills were essentially banned, abortions were difficult to obtain, and it was near impossible to get your tubes tied, even as a mother with 2 kids already. Yet, my mother and her peers had little problems: they were wealthy and could afford to fly abroad, seek out another doctor, buy certified meds on the black market.This atmosphere made my mom and my aunts feminists even though that was a word they did not even know at the time. I grew up with them telling me no doc (I am one now) or person had a right to my body.
6
The religious right and their crusade to ban all rights to abortion in order to score points with their god smells a lot like the Taliban wrapped in right, white and blue, especially considering that more men are driving this issue than women. I'm terrified of what happens next when they get their way on this one, women will be required to cover themselves? You don't have to support abortion to support a woman's right to choose. I don't smoke, or own a gun, but I wouldn't dream of taking away the rights of those who do.
3
Well, we know that miscarriages would be investigated. Perhaps there would be punishment for doing anything that could endanger a pregnancy such as continuing to work, attend school, exercising and so on.
3
Why is it so difficult for people to not see that abortion is murder of an innocent in the womb no matter the type performed. You are ending the life of a fetus who was never given a chance to live. Those who say it is a woman's choice over her body are neglecting to see that there are two involved in this choice and one is killed in a barbaric manner. Have these people no conscience? Their reasons for aborting babies is lame and selfish. Their reasons are maddening and very upsetting.
1
Our country forms rules and laws based on consensus of what’s permissible behavior. Often that consensus is driven/informed by Christian ideas due to cultural history, but religion alone is not enough.
There is no consensus on when an embryo, fetus, baby in the womb becomes a person with rights. There is no scientific or fact based way to determine it either. As such we should not have laws about this. It should remain a personal decision in accordance with one’s own beliefs.
7
'These people' such as myself believe bodily autonomy is a basic human right. You cannot force blood or tissue donation even if by doing so the would be recipient would die. You cannot even take organs from a corpse without permission. Do you propose to override this basic human liberty ONLY for pregnant women?
13
I am not "neglecting to see" anything. I simply came to a different conclusion about what I saw and considered every bit as carefully as you did. I put the beginning of life at the start of organized, continuous electrical activity in the brain, just as I put the end of life at the cessation of that activity. The upper brain -- the source of all consciousness, emotion, awareness and thought --starts working at about the beginning of the third trimester, when the fetus can survive outside a uterus. At that point, abortion is already limited to compelling medical reasons. Why can't you see that an early fetus is like a brain-dead person on life support, and in such cases, we should give the decision power to the next of kin?
5
The United States was created as an enlightened secular country, with freedom from Bronze Age fairy tales. Religious fantasies should never “trump” secular rationalism.
8
Rich women, evangelical women, conservative women have no need for abortion. Their doctors perform much-needed D C's.
Most other women aren't fortunate enough to have a doctor on retainer, and thereby rely on abortion. Millions of women.
In its war on minorities, the poor, women, the hijacked GOP is closer each day to making safe abortions unavailable.
Fourth of July is coming soon, the birthday of our democracy. Before people dig into hotdogs and coleslaw, ask "Will you please raise your hand if you've ever had an abortion?" A surprising percentage of women will answer by their faces turning red as watermelon.
The GOP with its state religion will always respect, deep in their cold hearts, their only indication for abortion: If it's MY unwanted pregnancy.
5
It's amazing to me that the Times never asks a medical ethicist, or a panel of ethicists, to comment on this topic. It's almost as if the appearance of any kind of formal expertise or authority would be a taboo.
There's an entire profession of people whose job it is to analyze the ethical questions that arise in the practice of medicine. Wouldn't it be interesting to see how they lay out the different ethical principles involved, how they weigh them and how they arrive at their conclusions?
Whether I agreed or not, I would find that much more interesting than just hearing the same repetitive and weak pseudo-consensus bouncing around an echo chamber for decade after decade.
2
An interesting parallel can be made between a ban on abortion and a ban on alcoholic drink.
3
Or a ban on anything. People will find a way around the ban.
1
So long as whites are afraid of becoming a minority many are going to insist that women get and stay pregnant, no matter what. These same people do not care about the women involved except to increase the numbers of whites. A much smaller group really cares about the unborn life, they also don't care about the women...wake up guys women are half the human race and you should not treat them except as you would want to be treated. I have yet to meet a woman who says that she wants to be forced to have children.
3
The goal of the GOP is in fact to cause as much misery among the poor as possible. The rabid anti-choice advocates want to punish. How do we know this? Because they are also against distribution of condoms and other family planning methods.
7
I had an anti-choice activist tell me that women who have abortions deserve to die, so he didn't care about the effect of illegal abortions on us. "That is the belief," he said, of "most of us when you discount the pretend sympathy for the murdering women." Women need to understand that to these people we are wombs with two legs, nothing more. They want us breeding or dead - at least a portion of them.
9
It’s seriously time to stop presuming anti abortion people have humane motives. Some probably do, but a good deal don’t.
9
So American Evangelicals have crucified their testimony for nothing?
Thank you! Very informative.
1
Instead, it would be better for the males to get rid of their nukes, wars and weapons. Frankly, male brutality is sickening, often rationalized and dressed up as defense or patriotism. Let the women take care of themselves, thank you.
7
As a Catholic woman, I am also pro-choice. Women should only have children on their own terms, and it is inhumane to support abortion bans, especially when the result is so much more pain and suffering for all involved. The most loving and compassionate thing that we can do is allow women to freely obtain the healthcare and counselling they require. It is not up to us to judge their choices, but it is up to us to treat others the way that we would like to be treated. It is time to respect human rights and to end unnecessary suffering, when we know that we can.
8
What a surprise, dictating morality to the people leads to immorality. Sort of like how banning alcohol in the US lead to a massive rise in organized crime. Sort of like how the Spanish Inquisition's attempts to get people to live according to the bible lead to torture and terror. Sort of like how ISIS's morality police don't so much follow the tenets of Islam as beat, stone, and kill hapless victims.
When will the 'pro life' crowd learn ... you can't stop people from getting abortions, just like you can't stop them from drinking, smoking pot, or having sex out of wedlock. Government must stay out of the business of dictating morality. We all have slightly different moral compasses. Don't try to force others to live by yours.
5
Let Mike Pence decide what's right... :)
Heck, even the Bible, in Numbers, provides the recipe for abortions.
3
I will support abortion, when Planned Parenthood performs mammograms at their "clinics."
They do.
7
yes... but why are you so outspoken about what women do with their bodies? Did you not get the memo that you have no say about a woman's body?
3
Sorry Suze, they don't.
I have always thoght it very illogical for GOP to say 1) no abortion and 2) no birth control. When they accidentally get a woman pregnant there is often an abortion paid for to make it go away.
So: We must stop buying that neocons value life. Also they seem not to care at all for the life once it is out of the canal.
I ask my friends, how are they so illogical? And they say,
“The GOP wants to control women’s bodies.”This always wows me because isn’t it enough work to take care of one’s own body?
But also to answer my own question. It is a wedge issue from the days of Nixon. When people were protesting the Viet Nam War,
Nixon’s men were like, “Well how can we group them? Oh I know.
It’s blacks ad hippies.” What do they have in common? Voting Democratic and smoking weed so let’s jail weed smokers, hence
War on Drugs. But I digress. From Nixon also:
Nixon’s Southern Strategy. “Coopting conservative southern democrats to vote republican. Well let us see what are some wedge issues we could create? Well, they hate the blacks. Let us use that. 2) They’re nuts about Christianity. Let’s make Abortion an issue, a political football. Drive ‘em nuts about it.”
I literally saw a documentary of this drawing board playing out.
Ok that’s the why. The solution. “Safe, Legal and Rare.” Legal but let us have less of it with proper birth control. Nobody Wants an abortion! But if some women don’t, it will kill them or ruin their lives.
5
Figured... JK = no post...
Is it that good a thing to shut down every abortion center in Ohio and replace it with a half-dozen opioid recovery and counseling centers - or was the 2016 just speech that good...
Women in the US who miscarry already are being incarcerated for fetal homicide. See the 11/7/14 New York Times piece Pregnant, and No Civil Rights. (Totally chilled my blood, reading it.) The authors were at the time of publication, respectively, executive director and president of the board of National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
6
Women who think they are more moral than their pro choice sisters will discover, if abortion is banned, that ANY miscarriage will be investigated. We can infer this by observing what already happens in countries such as Honduras and El Salvador. Every year women there are sentenced to prison merely for having a miscarriage. Possibly other poor pregnancy outcomes would be criminalized as well. Premature? Low birth rate? Certain birth defects? Maybe you didn't take your vitamins and go on bed rest?
7
What happens when abortion is banned?
1. Unborn children have an opportunity to live.
2. Hopefully people take personal responsibility not to have an unwanted child.
Thank you.
4
Take personal responsibility just like you did when you knocked up some poor woman and then you used abortion as a get out of jail free card, eh, Southern Boy?
6
Really? You think that if abortion were to be made illegal tomorrow then all abortion would cease? Honestly?! Even though that has never been the case? Abortions happen whether legal or illegal. The question to ask yourself is "When an abortion happens, should it be under medical supervision or not?" Philosophical debates are not the subject of this article.
8
@C's Daughter,
Yeah, exactly, that was then this is now. I have changed my mind. I have a right to change my mind. I also have s right to express my opinion so long as I am civil and not ad hominem. Thank you.
Here's a way to think about this - and John Kasich, lookin' squarely in your direction...
Until close to cord-cutting, a fetus is as much a part of a woman's body as is an arm...
There're reasons an arm may need amputation – though chances are she hasn’t thought much about it before an urgent need to do so suddenly arises...
Even then – she deliberates, understanding the decision’s profundity...
Her arm is part of her...It has a pulse, and she can feel its movement...
All things being equal - She'd like to keep and cradle every arm God or nature or life ever sent her way...
And when she decides - operative (entendre unwanted) word being "she" – she’d appreciate competent and dispassionate clinical care being available...
Afterward - would appreciate people not looking at her any differently than before...
Though it's still her - a part of her has died...
Not a murder – a tragedy…
She’d like to be able to mourn and seek comfort in her church…
when abortion is banned, poor women die and well off women get discreet and private healthcare services
5
We end up with the cursed likes of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.
I am sure it is no coincidence that Latin America is predominantly Catholic.
4
This isn't a struggle for freedom or anything alike. Or anything right, legal or moral for that matter.
This is literally a fight for the right to murder unborn children in the womb which is sick and needs to be banned.
Those who support it need to be mentally evaluated as well.
Women do not have the right to do this and need to stop avoiding responsibility. The line has to be drawn.
Rapes and incest does not give one the right to murder another human being. They're matter too.
Every human born and unborn has the right to live.
"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" remember?
Also, no one in South America is going crazy to have an abortion.
Take it from someone who has family down there.
So don't expect women "dying in the hospitals" for it.
Abortion is actually spit upon in many parts of South America and is considered sin because it is. It's murder.
Abortion is being banned little by little until this crime against humanity stops and you're left with the option of taking responsibility or a prison cell. Justice must be done for the babies.
Abortion is not only murder, it's genocide.
Selfish, evil, sick and just flat out crazy.
You know society is upside down when a baby Bald Eagle's life is illegal to kill and punishable by federal prison if you do while a human unborn baby is perfectly legal to kill and as you see in this article, encouraged and actually fought for.
Today I say to you, you are some sick and twisted people who need Christ.
4
What gives you the right to make that decision for me & or to force your religious beliefs on someone else for that matter.
5
Ahhh yes, "taking responsibility." Punish those women for having sex, amirite, Sergio? Force them to face the consequences of their actions! Can't think of a better teaching tool than an episiotomy, can you? That'll show them. /sarc
You're welcome to gestate all the rape babies you become impregnated with. I will not.
6
Sergio - it's very easy for men like you to pontificate about the sanctity and rights of the unborn. you will never have to spend 40 weeks of your life living with what are often terrible symptoms of pregnancy, which could result in the woman's death. you also will not have to deal with the consequences of having a child you may not be ready for or can afford. no one wants to legislate who has a right to inhabit your body for 9 months. leave women to decide what is best for them.
5
I suppose you can argue that the Nazi's were going to
exterminate those they thought less than fully human
and there was no way to stop them before they had
killed 90 % of their victims - so why even fight World War II.
90 % of Abortions are elective.
It is not a question of the mother's life being in danger
or the baby dying in the womb or being maleformed.
The real article that needs to be written is:
Why are healthy mothers aborting their own children ?
Adoption rather than Abortion - whenever possible.
5
John: Or men could assume full responsibility for being primary caregivers when they cause an unwanted pregnancy?
9
We can also fund better birth control instead of abstinence programs that only promote ignorance
5
"Why are healthy mothers aborting their own children?"
Well, first of all, the woman having an abortion likely does not see herself as a mother to this unwanted fetus. Second, she is aborting a pregnancy, not a child.
Third, she obviously doesn't want to have a child. That's why she's having an abortion. Where did we lose you?
Adoption is a solution to an unwanted child, not an unwanted pregnancy. You're welcome to gestate and give birth to any babies you want, John, and give them to other people. I'm not a broodmare, though, and will not be forced to gestate a fetus simply because someone else wants a baby.
9
When abortion is banned, women will have to think more about who they are having sex with, why, and what the implications could be. Like duh!!!!
Did you read the article? Thousands of women ARE having abortions in countries where it IS illegal.
Why is that?
You would think that women would be more careful about becoming pregnant in these counties, but they're not.
The only explanation I can think of is their partners, a great number of men, are bing extremely irresponsible.
4
First, many women who get abortions are married and already have kids. Second, men can choose to be more selective sexually, too, and take precautions to avoid unwanted pregnancies, yes?
7
And that contraception is difficult to get in many places.
https://www.girlsglobe.org/2013/11/13/latin-americas-contraception-crisis/
Eight years ago here in Cairns a young couple were prosecuted by the cops for procuring and using an abortifacient. A jury of their peers acquitted them. Since then QPS has not prosecuted anyone else for using abortifacients.
When it comes to abortion, Queensland is far behind the rest of Australia as it is on most issues. In 2018, for all our progress, we are still a state of rednecks and Christian right-wing fanatics.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-29/queensland-abortion-laws-review-un...
6
What happens? Women will die.
8
Yes, especially the poor and/or uneducated. That's why every woman of reproductive age needs to know what misoprostol is and how it is obtained and used.
If I had a young daughter between 14-21, I'd obtain long-term contraception for them, regardless of their reported sexual history or the donning of a 'purity ring'.
3
Gay sex prevents abortions.
7
Whether banned or not, abortion is still the murder of children to turn women into pornography and relieve men of responsibility.
Psalms 106:37-38 (KJV) Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,
And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.
Genesis 9:5-6 (KJV) And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man.
Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
Proverbs 30:14 (KJV) There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.
Psalms 94:6-10 (KJV) They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless.
Yet they say, The LORD shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it.
Understand, ye brutish among the people: and ye fools, when will ye be wise?
He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?
He that chastiseth the heathen, shall not he correct? he that teacheth man knowledge, shall not he know?
2
Can we please keep religion OUT of others heath care decisions ! Your religion is not mine & should not affect my health care decisions !
6
I'm fascinated by your bizarre statement that "abortion is still the murder of children to turn women into pornography," followed by Bible verses that reference blood, but not abortion.
We are, happily, still a secular republic, so your biblical quotes do not, and never will, have the force of law. That leaves us with your fixation on pornography, which seems to has gotten the better of you. Seek help.
7
We are not a theocracy. I've no problem with you living by your beliefs and promoting them. But the problem comes when you write it into law, decide that every Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Atheist, Buddhist must obey your Christian beliefs.
10
This article is a mishmash of assertions and statistics. I couldn't follow.
1
As a male Catholic, I have a continuing personal dilemma regarding abortion. What is never spoken about is what happens to the souls of the millions of aborted babies. My religion teaches that life begins at conception so when the innocent child is aborted he or she is immediately received by God in heaven. An unrepentant mother however, is condemned to hell. What is rarely preached about is what happens to the souls of those who so strongly rail against abortion from the alter, but fail to so strongly and actively call for social programs/funding to assist the otherwise desperate mother who determines to have her child. Christ has mandated that we feed the hungry and clothe the poor. Such a public linkage between anti-abortion and the duty to take care of the mother and child is rarely seen or heard. Indeed, it would seem that God would want such anti-abortionists to put their money where their mouths are regardless of their otherwise contradictory fiscally "conservative" beliefs and corresponding lack of action in helping poor mothers and their children. May God help and forgive us all.
1
Rather than honoring "the sanctity of life," many abortion opponents believe that pregnancy is the punishment for having sex without the purpose of procreation. Whatever they can do to force a woman to bear the "true" consequence of her (and only her!) actions is justified--the baby be damned.
14
Any successful effort to block abortions is inherently hypocritical and discriminatory because it only affects women of poor economic status not able to afford travel to other states or countries to get the medical services they need. In this, Republicans encourage underground, sub-par or even dangerous treatments, endangering women while a promoting criminal enterprise.
A relevant factor about prohibiting abortion is that if the parents do not want the child, it is likely that if the choice is removed, the child will suffer the ill will of the parents, reflecting in varying degrees of substandard care and attention which most often ends up in costly adulthood justice-system and social-services interactions. Some parents with this initial outlook will learn to love and accept the child, but the many will not. That’s reality, and reality is where laws should be focused, not upon wishful thinking or the idyllic.
If the state imposes its will on the free choice of adults, made in consultation with doctors and other support partners, then it is obligated to accept the burden of exercising that power: provide funding to the mother, or the personnel and facilities needed for the child to be raised and cared for, to adulthood, by the state, because adoption will often not be a probable outcome. To do otherwise is both immoral and negligent.
Faced with this obligation, conservatives who are not hypocrites (any?) may wish to more closely embrace their tenant of “less government.”
4
I escort at a clinic which provides pregnancy terminations. When all abortions are banned (which is the aim of the anti-abortion groups in this country), then that means victims of rape, incest, and those women with medical conditions for whom a pregnancy would threaten her life, will be forced to give birth. It also means that a woman carrying a fetus with horrible birth defects, which will mean nothing but a life of misery for the child, will have no choice but to bring a child into the world to suffer.
We have had a child of 11 brought to our clinic by social services with her mother's permission to have a pregnancy termination (the child was the victim of incest). In order for a woman with disabilities who was a rape victim to avoid protestors, the clinic was opened before regular hours. Further, clinic escorts have comforted women who were seeking a termination because of medical reasons, because of the heart rending choice these women were having to make.
Whatever the reason for a woman to seek an abortion, that choice should be hers and hers alone to make, not a choice dictated by someone else's religious views. Ireland just freed itself from the dictates of the Catholic Church concerning a woman's right to choose. In this country, we are now inching ever closer to allowing the evangelical Christians to negate that right. We need to enforce separation of church and state as was the wise intention of the founders of this country.
12
It is hard to believe that Roe v Wade passed 45 years ago. It is even more difficult to fathom that 60 million innocent fetuses/babies' lives have been ended by this legislation.
What a terrible pity that these millions upon millions lost to abortion were never given a chance to live. The lost potential that they might have achieved will never be known and what a terrible loss to our society. Some might have become doctors or scientists that could have discovered a cure for a medical condition that might have even saved more lives. We will never know the greatness that they could have reached due to their unnecessary deaths. This is so tragic and we must not let more innocent lives suffer this terrible fate.
2
Maybe these women who had abortions can now go on to become doctors or scientists who can discover miracle cures because the weren't forced to drop out of university to have an unwanted baby.
I'll put my money on the existing woman rather than assuming that the unwanted child likely born into harsh economic circumstances to a single mother with truncated education is gonna cure cancer.
9
Yes, and most would have become rapists, drug addicts, and/or criminals. At best, dependent on the state.
Unwanted children don't tend to thrive, in case you hadn't noticed. A considerable decrease in violent crime rates coincides very well with the coming of age of those who would have otherwise been born into poverty and neglect in the '70's and 80's.
2
Just what the world needs, another 60 million, most from low-income/teen/low-education parents, vying for shrinking space, resources.
What's religion's answer for that? Pray? And abstain?
Conservatives' answer? More inequality? Less safety, security, health? Defund Planned Parenthood, and other organizations which try to prevent unwanted pregnancies and use no government funds for the abortions with which they do assist? Some wars?
The answer is to use every agency and tool available to educate and provide contraceptive measures to prevent pregnancies, leave choice alone, but take from the one-percent to pay for mothers or states or foster homes to properly keep and raise children to adulthood, and refusing the balance and no-choice obligation of that, abortion.
2
The issue isn't really about abortion at its core. Women will have abortions regardless of legality. That was the case before Roe v Wade and it would be the case again if we make it unavailable. The real issue is control of women and their bodies.
11
When abortion is illegal, punishment should depend on the circumstances, just as it does for breaking laws we already have. A woman suffering serious post partum depression who kills her infant should not be punished as heavily as a woman who aborts a fetus with Down syndrome, because the former is not as capable of controlling her actions and the latter is killing out of discrimination. If you look at it this way, well educated and affluent women would actually be punished for abortion MORE than poor women in desperate situations, or than those who are pressured by parents or partner to abort. Would there be problems enforcing the law fairly? Of course, and we should speak out against that. But we already have huge problems with other laws being enforced fairly. Should we make drunk driving, for example, legal because white drivers are not pulled over as often? Another point I would like to make is that when prolifers are accused of not caring when women die from botched abortions, that is completely ignoring the fact the prolifers are the ones trying to convince women NOT to have abortions in the first place! And finally, if you really want increased access to birth control, don't tie it to facilities that provide abortion. The conflict of interest is glaring.
3
I am so glad you have all the answers that the rest of us lack so glaringly. You and God. No make it you, God and all the great pillars of society who so righteously tell everyone else how to behave. As for me, I support unfettered access to SAFE procedures so that the person or persons most affected by the situation can make the decision, then if God finds their actions wrong, he/she/it will take proper action at the proper hand. My very personal faith trusts in a power far greater than me.
9
Oh, where to start? Planned Parenthood is about family planning, meaning people have children when they are emotionally, physically, and financially prepared to be parents. Birth control prevents unwanted pregnancy. Abortion is also a means to terminate an unwanted pregnancy if birth control fails, if a woman is sexually assaulted. etc. They go hand-in-hand. They are about women's reproductive health and choices.
13
I don't believe that great pillars of society are needed to agree on a moral code. Neither did I mention God. Your response seems to suggest that people who are disenfranchised don't have morals. My neighbors are poor and not influential, but they still know right from wrong. In most cases, there is more common ground than we think. There must still be some basic morals we can ALL agree on...aren't there??
For those among you who will applaud the overturning of Roe v Wade, try to keep in mind that it may cut both ways. The government that forces women to bear children can also force them to not bear children.
5
When abortions are banned only outlaws will have abortions. -- no wait, that's guns.
Of all deaths by guns, 62% of gun deaths are owners turning the gun on themselves. The NRA is pretty effective. Not providing comprehensive reproductive healthcare, lifelong, and having it cheap, local, affordable, shame free is the way to have fewer abortions. The ACA made birth control mandatory insurance coverage, and -viola! the lowest teen pregnancy rate ever. Most women who have abortions already have children. Who makes the choice for what stays or goes inside your body? you? your partner? your doctor? or some rule maker far removed from your life? This isn't a debate, its an assault. Want to create more abortions? make it illegal.Make teens ignorant. Make contraceptives taboo. The morning after pill? nope. Teach abstinence and shame, shame of being assaulted sexually, by family, shame of correcting 2 AM mistakes from loving married parents that both have two jobs and 6 kids between them. Not the government's job to legislate what goes on behind closed doors.
4
What will happen is that women will die! It’s that simple and that cruel. They will die from medical complications due to pregnancies gone wrong and they will die from backroom abortions. Many of these women will be mothers and wives leaving families behind but, never mind, the high priests of morality will be happy...the blood price will be paid.
That is America. Theocracy on the rise and kleptocracy firmly entrenged. Cruelty in place of reasonable public policy while the religious right sings Hosanna to a man who worships self before all things. God, it’s depressing.
12
I cannot fathom abortion and feel it is a scourge on our society. I do not understand how anyone can agree to this atrocity. We have reached a new low in our world when we agree to murder the least among us. These are defenseless babies in the womb who should be given the right to life. Those of us in the pro life movement will not stop speaking about the culture of death.
4
Do you hold men equally responsible for avoiding unwanted pregnancies?
Do you support comprehensive sex ed for girls and boys?
Do you support easily accessible and affordable contraception options for all women?
DO you support universal health coverage that will help a low-income woman ensure she has good prenatal care, birth care, and after-care for herself and her child?
Do you support programs that ensure the mother and baby will have adequate food, diapers, and other basic needs met if the mother is low-income?
Do you support programs that will assist the mother if her child has a disability and needs additional assistance?
Do you support maternal and paternal parental leave even for low-income people who work minimum wage jobs?
Do you support free or very low-cost childcare for all parents who need it?
Do you support aggressive actions taken against men who father these children and then refuse to help financially?
Do you support the man who impregnated the woman being forced to be the primary caregiver of the child?
19
if you were being honest, you would say what you really mean - that you are not "pro-life", but "pro-birth". once that baby is born under untenable circumstances, where are you people?
5
Can you really, truly not understand why a woman would not want to be forced to have a baby against her will? Why people like having abortion as an option?
You seem very capable of imagining the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of a non-sentient embryo, and yet you can't imagine why a woman would be relieved to know that she did not have to sacrifice her health for a child she did not want, or her education, or her financial future, or the ability to get out of a bad relationship?
You cannot fathom why someone wouldn't want to go through childbirth when they didn't want a baby? You can't fathom why a woman might be thankful that she doesn't have to let her rapist's baby grow in her body, making her ill, changing her body, and then having to go through 30 hours of labor to push it out of her vagina?
You really can't fathom that?
9
No doubt about it, if men bore children, abortion would be totally free, legal, available in each state, county, city in the U.S.
This is about subjugating women, pure and simple. The state telling women what they can and cannot do.
If we really are against abortions, give ALL women free, long term contraceptives. AND teach sex education in schools! Parents aren't doing it, porn lies, and the culture continues to degrade women and their needs. Teach boys that they are EQUALLY responsible for averting unwanted pregnancies.
Oh, and give men over 55 vasectomies! Who wants a 70 plus y.o. parent at high school graduation?
19
If I were a young child bearing woman today, I would take the pledge of #newfeminism and close my womb completely. Too bad there isn't a quick, inexpensive, over the counter to render oneself permanently sterile. Without insurance the procedure for tying your tubes is $6,000. Some smart entrepreneur would set up a 10 year payment plan, or $50/mo. It costs about $50/mo for contraception. Same diff. Except that, if you forget your contraception, you may also end up having to pay for diapers as well. #Newfeminism would, I think, render the abortion debate completely moot.
3
We need to inquire why the wealthy and powerful want poor, ignorant, uneducated females to make babies. Is it not because the babies they make will grow up poor, ignorant, and uneducated, making still more poor, ignorant, uneducated babies and so on, generation after generation? What do the wealthy and powerful profit from this endless lineage of misery?
9
It could be a remnant of agrarian need for laborers in the fields, and military need for soldiers, As we shift labor to machines, we will need fewer people, and the deep-seated compulsion to promote fecundity ought to fade.
2
The pro life movement's consideration of the matter ends with the saved fetus. They don't take any responsibility for the consequences of that. For example they cheer policies that prevent discussing abortion in places like Africa. Then they just sit idly by as thousands upon thousands of people starve to death, horribly. And they cheer on Trump who feels we should not be taking care of the rest of the world because we never get paid back. And if Planned Parenthood were put out of business they would cheer. And ignore the poor women suffering and dying from reproductive cancers they might not have faced if they had a place to go for screening. So to all of them I say: as you watch the mass starvation on TV or see the reproductive cancer deaths rise, pat yourself on the back. You've saved some lives today. But you also own the collateral damage you have caused. Time to own up to it.
8
The anti choice movement targets doctors and women. What about the men who impregnate these women? I don’t know of any church, outside of the Mormons, that makes any real effort beyond lip service to teach sexual responsibility to their own men, nor to American men in general. Since a lot of sex is initiated by men, it seems they are a huge part of this equation. Instead, like all religions and cultures, all the responsibility for the acts of two people are placed entirely on one of them.
11
The term "anti-choice" is so silly. What would you call someone who wants to regulate the ownership and use of hand guns--"anti-choice"? Anyone who wants to regulate abortion in any way is called "anti-choice"!
1
Everyone who wants to "regulate" abortion wants to take away choice—end abortion, ergo, "anti-choice. Quite accurate. Also accurate if instead called "Republican conservative," who preaches for "less government," except where it can be used to impose his/her beliefs upon others.
'Dilation and cuterage' was the label given in some of the best hospitals for abortions for the richest women in the days before Roe Versus Wade. No law will ever block the wealthy from access to abortion. It will always be just a first class airline ticket away.
But what about poor women and girls in similar circumstance? Let them be abused, beaten and raped and, with the connivance of the 'moral' enforcers, jail them and hunt them down like dogs .
America the Beautiful at work.
12
I agree with everything you said. I want to add that D&C is a surgical procedure, it is not restricted to abortion. It is most usually performed for diagnostic purposes or in association with gynecological surgery. There is another abbreviation currently used on OR schedules to denote abortion but I won’t name it here.
1
Perhaps it is time to stop fighting the incredibly stupid and intrusive abortion restrictions. Maybe then the poor will start voting. That happens, a slew of things gets corrected...
2
Trouble is, the poor are so pressed to maintain survival, they have little if any strength left to attend to government. Perhaps compulsory education in civics would help.
3
And the poor's voting rights are suppressed by the GOP.
A reasoned argument, but still a tad too theoretical. Anti-choice forces genuinely believe that God speaks to them and that women remain chattel. The abortion battle is but a prelude to turning the clock back to pre-birth control days. Women are the targets of these anti-choice fascists who view women as the property of men, and whose lives must be dictated by men to serve the traditional (to them) role of gender.
Sometimes I think abortion is just the symbol of the war on women's person-hood and status as an independent person.
Where is John Brown (or Jane Brown, maybe) when we need him/her?
6
The abortion wars are really about sex. Extramarital sex. It is not about poor little babies. The teenage abortion rate for instance is ridiculously high, because instead of sex education lessons, teenagers are told to abstain. Good luck with that! When you block programs that would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies your agenda is clear.
6
The quick and correct answer to Ms. Oberman's question is that there will be a million more babies, former human fetuses, born into a world that formerly destroyed them. It ought to be a cause for joy. But there are still far too many women who think their own body is also the body of the baby they carry. Like it or not, the baby has the same right to life as its mother does. Let's give pregnant mothers all the help they need to give birth to their baby, and more help, when needed, afterwards. It's time we stopped killing our own kind.
6
There is way motto it than that
1
"But there are still far too many women who think their own body is also the body of the baby they carry. "
No. There are far to many anti-choicers who don't understand pro-choice arguments. The argument is not that the fetus and woman are one body. The argument is that the fetus does not have the right to use the woman's body against her will. You do understand, a woman's body is required for gestation.
"Like it or not, the baby has the same right to life as its mother does."
Sure. And no one's right to life includes the right to use another person's body to sustain that life. That's why abortion is permissible.
"Let's give pregnant mothers all the help they need to give birth to their baby, and more help, when needed, afterwards."
I always wonder what anti's would do to "help" someone like me. Are you going to prevent my firm from putting me on mommy track and killing my partnership prospects? Gonna go talk to the partnership's executive committee and advocate for me yourself, are you? Are you going to cure my hypermeisis gravidarium that prevents me from doing my job and providing for my family? Are you going to solve the fact that I may not want to co-parent with the father of the fetus?
There is no amount of help you can give to a woman who simply doesn't want to have a child. Nothing you can do will make me willing to go through childbirth for a baby I don't want.
5
Pro-abortion ideology is rampant but wrong in its dogma that a mother has no natural and normal duty to nurture and care for a little daughter or son in her womb.
A mother is not simply or primarily a "host' to her child--a mother has been intimately instrumental in bringing her child into existence in her womb. A mother's body has made a home for her child.
Now the rights of a mother are by their very nature intertwined inextricably with the duties of a mother towards her child.
We are social human beings and Article 29 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins: “Everyone has duties..."
Nurturing and protecting a new little daughter or son in her/his mother's womb isn't about "hosting an unwelcome guest"--it is about a mother's responsibility, a universal human rights duty of one human being towards another more vulnerable, more needy human being intimately related to her and temporarily dependent on her. Every mother has a fundamental duty of care towards her child "before as well as after birth".
There is no "human right" for a mother to have her child killed. There is, however, a human rights duty for a mother to protect her child from lethal harm.
Abortion laws were never about the morality of abortion or the protection of the unborn. They have always been about who has the power to control and scapegoat women, minorities and the poor. How else do you explain a Republican Party that simultaneously works to cut CHIP & WIC programs and to repeal a woman's right to have an abortion. Evil is as evil does.
11
Rich, and self-righteous, women will still be able to get their abortions, elsewhere, and poor women will die in back allies, as has been the usual case, in this wonderful country, of "equal treatment for all."
3
The most obvious way to reduce the need for abortion is for sex education, free contraceptives for everyone and a change in societal norms. Birth control is the responsibility of the TWO parties who engage in the sexual act that results in pregnancy. Thus BOTH parties have the obligation to use birth control BEFORE they have sex.
Did our society manage to change for the better with the "Don't be a litter bug" and "Buckle up for safety". We can do it with "It takes two to prevent an unwanted pregnancy by using contraceptives BEFORE sex."
6
Maybe a group of mostly female politicians should pass a law that if a man causes an unintended pregnancy, he'll be fined a large amount of money, serve 6 months in jail, and have to undergo a vasectomy.
(See how ridiculous these types of laws are?)
9
As Oberman points out, the only logical outcome in a society that bans abortion is complete control of women. If even a miscarriage is suspect then every action the woman takes must also be suspect. Any woman who plays sports, has a drink, drives a vehicle, serves in the military, or puts any potential fetus into someone else’s death fantasy must be controlled.
6
One only has to look at the war on drugs to see what chance the pro-life movement has, none at all.
5
The abortion rights battle is a patriarchal war over power and control. As many commenters have written here, the anti abortion-rights crowd is generally unconcerned with the well-being of children or the rights of the fetus. Their concern is primarily with giving women power over procreation (the ultimate power). As we’ve seen time and again, when a woman demands power and control, even over her own body, the misogynist radical right will go into hyperdrive to prevent her from obtaining it.
7
This may seem simplistic but if abortion is banned women should start a "Boycott Men" movement.
3
Dont tell the private prison industry - they love poor people accused of breaking the law, customers i think they call them...
5
The fact that this will deepen the suffering in the already hard lives of poor and minority women isn't a bug in the banning of abortion (and birth control), it's the design. This is punitive targeting of those women.
I recommend reading the book Bronx Primitive by Kate Simon. She writes that when she was a young adult, her mother disclosed to her that when the author was young, she'd had thirteen abortions. She went on to say that in the early 20th century, that was the average number of illegal abortions for women in that community. Even sharing birth control information was illegal.
The anti-legalized-abortion crowd knows this is the reality they'll impose on women.
5
Women have aborted unwanted pregnancies for as long as men have been impregnating them. So, if prosecution is the supposed solution, it need be applied to all parties involved.
Frankly, until male contraception becomes accessible, the most effective abortifacient to address irresponsible sperm donors remains vasectomy. Until this solution is routinely employed, females will continue to manage their reproductive function by any and all means available.
2
Male contraception is available: vasectomy. It used to be that the procedure was irreversible. But now it is mostly reversible, therefore a valid form of male contraception, with none of the dangers of hormones and side effects.
2
Ms. Oberman's "People of good faith on both sides of the abortion war" is like Trump's good and bad people on both sides in Charlottesville. Anti-abortionists are of bad faith. For nearly two millennia, Christianity did not much concern itself with abortion because it was rare and usually fatal. For almost one millennium, it defined life as commencing at quickening (or, as it called it, "ensoulment"). Now, all of a sudden, the Catholic Church and Christian fundamentalists latch on to gains in medical science to try to coerce others to live according to their beliefs. They live in the bad-faith, Animal-Farm world: all people have freedom of religion, but some people have more religious freedom than others. Good faith? No: some are rotten with a corrupt desire for power over others in the matter of abortion. If they win this battle, what will be their next one?
8
Abortion kills. Why is this so difficult to understand. When an abortion is performed you are stopping a heart from beating and terminating the life of an innocent child. Life is precious but that is contrary to what the pro abortion folks believe. I think they do not cherish life and feel it is disposable. That is a tragedy.
3
We understand that abortion kills. We also understand that that's not the end of the inquiry as to whether abortion is morally permissible. It's troubling that this debate occupies so much of your time, WPL, and yet you still don't seem to understand the pro-choice arguments.
I vehemently disagree with the anti-choice arguments, but at least I understand them.
4
The vast majority of abortions take place well before beating heart stage. My body expelled three much wanted pregnancies. Very sad, but hardly as sad as a stillbirths or later-term miscarriages.
I think the US should have a national vote on abortion just like Ireland did. Roe v. Wade bypassed the normal legislative process to effect a change in the abortion laws and it is time to put it to a vote.
1
We already have too many children in parts of the world. Children that the world is unable to support.
Why would we want to bring more unwanted children into the world?
5
My mother had a back ally abortion in the 50's - then a hysterectomy and mental breakdowns afterwards - not a good ending at the age of 40! We are still fighting this?! And will.
7
This article assumes a male world view that harkens back to the Inquisition. Why wouldn't we ever ALSO prosecute the SOURCE of the unwanted pregnancy - THE MAN. Sperm sprayers operate with impunity and assumed entitlement and innocense. How about a ban on viagra? I can think of a mandatory sperm registry for all males, so the male "criminal" source of the abortus can also be identified and prosecuted. How's that for true equality and justice? May abortion drugs continue to be made widely available to keep women safe from a forced pregnancy and from posturing hypocritical politicos of this patriarchal system.
6
Keep politicians and religious zealots completely out of women’s reproductive sphere.
This is a private and intimate matter.
Whatever decision a woman must take should be protected by a reliable and safe healthcare system .
Pregnancy termination ,alias abortion , has always existed and always will .
The rich can fly wherever to obtain one , if abortion availability should be precluded by this new administration.
The poor will be forced again to back alleys.
For Gods sake, go out and vote this coming November.
6
Thank you to the author M Oberman for conducting incredibly important research, sharing insight & writing this fact- driven piece. Such a clear eyed view is absolutely needed. The irresponsible smearing & warping of the debate on this subject by shame & ignorance has continued for far too long.
3
Being poor in America not only goes against the cultural grain, male patriarchy becomes institutionalized.
Religion loves patriarchy.
In fact, religion is fundamentally patriarchal, so much of human behavior becomes an issue of crime and punishment. Religion is the problem.
It hauls 90% of the world back to the caves and tribes we live in.
We don't really care if women die. Their purpose and duty is to ensure that as many boys as possible are born into cultures that are fundamentally based on the dinosaur of punishment.
Americans especially don't like hearing this, but men hate women. And men hate children, too.
It is almost always the woman who has her child ripped from her arms by border and cultural guards and gatekeepers, and they are always men.
There is no evidence to suggest that there is any hope for change. There is a lot of evidence to more than suggest, the poor are kept in their places that -- surprise -- the aristocracy "colludes" with the collected antipathy of abhorrence and abomination.
Religion is the malevolent venom of revenge.
5
It's always an easy ploy to play the religious prejudice card.
However, it's not religion now but science and reason that represents the greatest obstacle to continued tolerance of elective abortions on the present scale.
The multi-million dollar abortion industry continues to structure its propaganda to ensure that each newly pregnant mother is told "It's all about me". This lie is revealed when ultrasound pictures confirm that there is a little daughter or son moving about in her/his mother’s womb. Live pictures tell us that it's not all about me--there is another little person to love and protect.
It is the crazy mixed-up anti-scientific reconstruction of the fetus by an aging ideology that lures women into being irresponsibly subjective. This whole silly phenomenon of pretending to believe in childless pregnancies is rapidly fading.
1
This attempt on the part of the anti-abortion forces to control completely the reproductive life of all women has long struck me as a form of totalitarianism. It represents a mindset that strives to control the total woman and deprive her of her humanity, and it's frightening just how widespread this mindset is.
8
Now you know the answer (when you realize that the "anti-abortion" crowd is largely Republican and/or conservative) why Republicans so easily and hypocritically prostrated themselves for Trump after they realized he is a totalitarian, like them, except more so, and now, classless, also like him.
1
The right of a woman in this country to have an abortion was firmly in place at the time of the founding of this country. The subsequent criminalization in 1821 was unlawful. The only way abortion could be made illegal in this country would be by constitutional amendment. If you're a so-called "pro-lifer," then move to amend the Constitution. Otherwise, mind your own business.
6
One way to lessen abortions among poor women is to guarantee support for babies and mothers and young children AFTER the baby is born. Our employment laws punish mothers and AFDC no longer exists, thanks to WJC. Another way to avoid abortions is that all women in the USA should go on a sex strike. No sex at all until the law gets off of our backs. I know, it sounds extreme. Another idea: any man caught with his reproductive organs inside a woman not his wife should have them removed. If the government can control women's reproduction, why not men's?
4
One problem is that widely available sex education and contraception, which should be a winning strategy for both sides is being defunded in favor of abstinence training which only causes more pregnancies and exacerbates the problem.
5
About a dozen years ago, a woman miscarried in our public health maternity clinic. When we called an ambulance to take her to the hospital for follow up the police also arrived. They interviewed and interrogated doctors and nurses, as well as following the woman to the hospital and questioning her there. It was a terrifying experience for her, and for other women in the clinic. The police came marching into the clinic as if they had a right to be there. And this was in Virginia. It frightens me what would happen now.
9
Unfortunately, what is going to coming from this is that either police drug labs or medical examiner/hospital toxicological labs are going to tasked to develop blood assays for the common abortion drugs and then a warrant will be sworn for for the taking of blood in every "suspicious" miscarriage for testing. Once word of this practice gets out, no woman will want to go to the hospital after a miscarriage.
5
I doubt that the investigation you describe would be confined to only 'suspicious' miscarriages. More likely, any miscarriage coming to the attention of medical personnel or law enforcement would be investigated as a routine matter
2
I had a second trimester miscarriage last fall and it threw into stark relief - once again - how necessary comprehensive women's health care is. The baby was wanted, the experience was traumatic, I was so thankful I was able to have the remains of the pregnancy removed instead of waiting weeks for it to naturally exit my body. It allowed my family and me to start recovering. But if some of the abortion ideas being discussed today were law, I could have been investigated for murder. I don't like to think about how much more stress and trauma that would have put my husband and me under. The process of growing life is amazing, but things go wrong all the time and at it is all within the woman's body. We need to be able to decide what we need. After the experience, what struck me the most was how many of my friends and colleagues reached out with similar experiences. We do not want to do this to the women in our lives.
18
The debate about when a fetus becomes a viable human being will never be agreed on between the pro-choice, or anti-abortion camps.
Induced abortion is a medical procedure that must be preserved and not chipped away at by religious pro-life groups. It is commonly used when women are miscarrying to prevent infection. We need to keep this vital procedure available to women. Irish citizens denounced the anti-abortion laws after a young woman, in the throes of miscarrying, was denied access to the procedure that would have saved her life.
The abortion rate has steadily gone down in the US and is at an all time low, except in places like Texas, where abortion laws have become more strict and rural women's clinics have been closed down. In some places the abortion rates have risen close to 200% after these pro-life policies were implemented.
Often the same groups that are anti-abortion are also the same ones pushing policies making it as difficult as possible, for women to access birth control under their medical plans.
If one truly believes that abortion is taking a life, then please work towards making birth control accessible and free.
12
I write as a past president of NARAL's education branch in Ohio. I am a committed feminist. One goal has always been to make abortions rare and unnecessary. Restrictions on birth control and/or punitive measures against those who have or provide abortions, including making them hard to obtain as well as possibly criminal are becoming law. They hurt women with less money and fewer resources. For those of us with money, an airplane could take us or our child to where a safe abortion could be obtained. Perhaps, now Ireland would be the destination spot as it is also quite an interesting country with real castles to look at before and after a procedure. For those without resources, including children of wealthier people who are adamantly against abortion or against pregnancy preventative means or both, more dangerous abortions or unwanted births take place, harming the "fetus/person" and the mother. Compounding this damage is the rush to reduce availability to all medical care by cutting the means of funding such care available to those with limited resources. Thus, this "fetus/person" has its life protected in the uterus only so far as he/she/they cannot be prevented or aborted. As to medical care to ensure the best possible health in the uterus and when the child is born, as well as mental and physical health care for the mother, forget it. Everyone should be on their own. Can't pay for it out of your own pocket or job insurance, too bad, so sad. This is wrong!
10
very good comment. The Supreme Court will not outlaw abortion. It may permit States to outlaw abortion but there will be many States that will not. Abortion was legal in some states before Roe vs Wade and the fact that the rich would just fly somewhere to have an abortion was an inequity. It would just compound the existing inequity in our health care system. Rich people in the U.S. get the best health care in the world, that is why rich foreigners fly here for health care.
2
Data that half of abortions are by women who live below the poverty line must be inaccurate because people who live well above that line can get abortions without any risk of it being reported. "It's who you know," as well as how much money you have. Sometimes women choose abortion for economic reasons, and sometimes women choose abortions because they do not want a child.
5
Conservative hypocrisy rears its ugly head yet again. How many times have you heard conservatives say that regulations on guns are useless because "the bad guys will always find a way to get a gun?" Yet in this case, they're all-in for laws against abortion. Same principle applies, doesn't it? Yes, of course it does... Women who want an abortion will find a way, despite the laws, whether it means using a coat hanger, or a pill. But the hypocrite conservatives ignore their own arguments and pass these laws regardless. Disgraceful, to use the favored term of our so-called president.
16
Hypocrisy or truth?
What happens when abortion is banned? Well, then millennials would be having more children, and that is a scary thought. This clearly must be prevented.
That may sound cynical, but it may also actually be the best way to convince social conservatives to keep it legal, heh.
1
Not so, DA. There is the belief on the right that women of color are popping out babies at alarming rates so they can live off the government. That hasn't incentivized conservatives to make birth control free and easily available, or stop their crusade against abortion. It has only incentivized them to shred the safety net in the belief that that will curtail the birth rate among women of color.
2
Here’s an additional scenario. If abortion laws become too restrictive, contraceptives will become even more important. We are on the cusp of transformative changes in the world of male contraception, with RISUG in India in late clinical trials and Vasalgel slowly making its way to trials here in the US. With a single shot, RISUG offers the potential of being near 100% effective, non-hormonal, lasting up to ten years, easily reversable, and inexpensive. When it is released in a few years, the concept of family planning will be revolutionized. It may also mean lower birthrates for men who have access to insurance. The bright side is guys who want to be both fathers and husbands could be in short supply, making geeky men like me more desirable as mates. Yea. In any case, prepare for some seismic changes!
A side note
the case of El Salvador, is not the only one in the region...Nicaragua has also one of the hardest abortion laws in the world.
there is a film called "A quiet Inquisition", it is a documentary about a doctor in Nicaragua that has to face the choice of helping women, or risk go to jail...it is interesting because we don't heard often the position of doctors in this scenario...
Honor the Hippocratic oath above all, or have the real prospect of jail due to laws implemented by your government?
it is a cautionary tale of what this country can become... we are not that far off...
10
What business is it oif men to stick their noses into a woman's business? Take that anyway you want, but there is no reason beyond control why any man has any say in what a woman chiooses to do with her body.
The absurdity of the idea of men controlling women at any level let alone this most personal one is straight from the Middle Ages.
What's next burning at the stake?
21
You're a man. It is hypocritical of you to write this comment. You are doing just what you criticize other men for doing. Why don't you practice what you preach.
Women will never have equality, economic or otherwise unless they fight for control of their bodies. Women, activate your daughters, the most passive generation in my lifetime.
14
Ms. Oberman writes that we must "deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place."
I've never met a woman who wasn't pregnant say that she wanted an abortion. So, I'd guess that it's pregnancy that's just about always the cause.
What we might concentrate on is dealing with the many scenarios in which we women are impregnated when we don't want to be/shouldn't be/cannot afford to be/are forced to be pregnant. And cease criminalizing us when we fail to be perfect.
10
"targeting the poorest, most marginalized women"
Result: no political downside.
6
Abortion should be encouraged.Then.
Abortion will show substantial decrease,if there is no opposition to abortion.
Once opposition to anything ceases, then the continual write up over an non existent issue will die an non existential death due to indifference & readership wariness.
What’ the fuss about abortion.
I mean what’s the issue or the problem for the bystander if a woman decides,she ain’t holding up & delivering one more stress on this finite & highly stress ridden world.
Women should feel free to close the account of life as and when she wishes to do so,no questions asked.
It’s like going to the bank & closing your bank account.No Q asked.
From time immemorial abortion has been going on,legally or illegally.
In this times,the news coverage of abortion ties with President Donald Trump for top spot in explanatory information.
Time to get past abortion & onto making life happy for those who have made it through either the V Canal or C Section.
2
It is effects of poverty putting women in the hospital in the first place. Women of means either know the right doctor or can jump on a plane. The Sisterhood, take heed and care for one another.
8
The ultimate goal of the anti-abortion crowd is to return women to the chattel status they’ve enjoyed throughout history. Women are to be silent, breed and serve the patriarch.
That said expect the next goal to be the reversal of Griswold vs Connecticut. Don’t think so? Look at all the legislative efforts being made in Red States to limit women’s access to contraceptives.
I suggest that Margaret Atwood’s description of the future is very possible if not likely.
14
FYI, Women never “enjoyed” chattel status.
The efforts to dominate and control women never seem to end. As women have become more emancipated and powerful, the louder those determined to exert control over us howl. This article tells the truth. Abortion will never disappear no matter what. If these people who would control women's bodies would direct their efforts to preventing unwanted pregnancies through real sex education and free access to long acting contraceptives, we could reduce unwanted pregnancies to minimal numbers. The fact that this isn't happening just reinforces the truth that this all about power and control, not about "saving lives'.
10
Pregnancy is a risk to the woman who becomes pregnant. Some of the issues are trivial like stretch marks. Complications like prolapses of the uterus and/or the intestines can show up years after the pregnancy. Other complications can be life-threatening.
This is a list from CDC that describes some of those risks:
Anemia
(UTI) Urinary Tract infections
High Blood Pressure
Mental Health Conditions
Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM)
Preeclampsia.
Obesity and Weight Gain
Infections and complications related to HIV, viral hepatitis, STDs and TB
Hyperemesis Gravidarum (Morning sickness)
"Severe maternal morbidity in the United States
Maternal morbidity includes physical and psychologic conditions that result from or are aggravated by pregnancy and have an adverse effect on a woman’s health. The most severe complications of pregnancy, generally referred to as severe maternal morbidity (SMM), affect more than 50,000 women in the United States every year. Based on recent trends, this burden has been steadily increasing."
Modern medicine has reduced the frequency of death from pregnancy, but it is still a possibility. That is why I believe no one should be able to dictate to a woman that she must assume the risks of being pregnant.
I do think there is an issue about respect for life in late pregnancy, but even then I'd prefer to allow women to make the decisions.
10
Unfortunately, Professor Olberman’s argument, that attempts to punish suspected violations of draconian anti-abortion laws will fall disproportionately on poor and marginalized women, will fall on deaf ears. The very Bible-belt states where these laws are proposed are the heart of Trump country. Extreme dogmatic religion, bigotry, and hatred of the poor go hand in glove together. Those pushing for these laws never think of the poor or marginalized as being people like themselves, so they will not care if those people are victimized, just as they did not care about the consequences of the so-called War on Drugs until the number of white opioid addicts became too large to deny.
8
The scenario in which a woman finds herself facing criminal prosecution for having a miscarriage is obscene.
9
Those who are chasing the abortion ban are not concerned with the consequences. Their mission is not based on practicalities, but on the surety that they are doing God's work, saving babies.
And I hate to say it, but we will chase the total ban in this country right up to the point at which we have more poor people than not, and more people of color than not. Because the only certainty that might wipe out the knowledge of doings God's work is the possibility that we change the color, the culture, the way the country looks, in a manner that doesn't square up with our current definition of nationalism.
People will suffer, people will die. ERs will be investigated and investigators. We are likely to develop a very profitable black market for drug dealers in abortion pills. But at least some will remain sure that they are right.
5
Putting the police to work at solving moral religious problems is just such a bad idea. But people think the law is a magic wand. Ban it and it goes away. We ban drugs, we still have drugs, but we get gangs in the bargain too. It's such a tempting thing to believe, that banning things actually makes them go away. When will we give up on this magical thinking at last?
6
A woman's right to have an abortion if she alone so chooses is absolute. It is an inalienable right. The same applies to a woman who does not want to have an abortion. End of discussion.
15
I am 70 yrs old and thought that when Roe v. Wade was decided by the SCOTUS that a great step forward had been made. We are the land of the free...our Amendments were enacted protecting our individuals rights. Yet somehow the Evangelical Right and the "Pro-Lifers) (in quotes because the only lives they support are the ones that haven't happened yet) are courted for their voting power, and impose their beliefs on others. No one is going to force a woman to have an abortion. Haven't heard of anyone being forced to take Viagra, or any other medical procedure. In an ideal world, abortion would not be in the realm of government control, either for or against. It should be in the realm of medical procedures. I don't see legislation that protects against teenage girls getting breast augmentation, or "Botox" clinics. We really need to take medical care out of government control. Perhaps another amendment to the Constitution that prohibits big pharma and healthcare companies from raping our pocketbooks so that only the wealthy can stay healthy? And those opposed to abortion should help pay the medical costs of children born with extreme health conditions, those who are born into poverty, and those whose parents cannot educate them or abuse them.
4
The worst flaw in this article? The assumption that misoprostol would be readily available through the mail HERE just because Chileans and Brazilians have managed to get hold of it.
The second flaw? Women in the US are already having their miscarriages scrutinized for signs of abortion. Women are already prosecuted and sometimes jailed for 'harm against the fetus.' It isn't a theoretical possibility. Its actually happened already - Florida, Georgia, Idaho and more.
11
Over Christmas break in college decades ago, I was raped by my good friend's older brother. I had known him since I was 10 and there he was, pulling down my pants and raping me - while his girlfriend was in the other room.
I discovered I was pregnant a couple of months later.
Abortion was the only way I saw to get out of the situation and on with my life. I was humiliated, angry and scared.
To this day, I have never told anyone - I made the arrangements with a clinic about 100 miles away and got a friend of a friend to drive (I told him I was going to get birth control pills).
Despite the fact I was raped, I never confronted the guy, his sister or anyone else to tell what happened. A pregnancy - no matter the circumstances - was the fault of the woman.
Best to keep your secret and move on.
I am so grateful that I had access to a safe place and that the staff took good care of me for the 2 hours I was there. I remember the woman who held my hand during the procedure.
How different this might have been if I been left up to using a coat hanger. The only person holding my hand would have been my mother grieving over her dead daughter.
12
It is a shame we’re looking at the issue this way. We ought to be viewing the abortion “war” as an attempt by the right wing to subvert the constitution and install a theocracy. Abortion access is the law of the land and a curbing that right into non-existence should concern anyone with a democratic bone in their body. The right has always enjoyed subjugating poor people and forcing them to believe and live certain ways, in certain places. In a true democracy we need to have the humility and presence of mind to accept that freedom consists of things we like and some things we don’t.
5
It isn’t only the “right” that is trying to subvert the Constitution. Ask anyone who is being deprived of their Second Amendment rights or those who see them slowly being abridged by the “left.” Law of the land, indeed!
You shouldn't ban anything without a healthy fear of unintended consequences. Banning something does not eliminate demand. You're only changing the nature of human behavior. You'll dissuade certain individuals. However, the predictable outcome is greater risk for the remaining consumers in both consumption and legal recourse. Sometimes the supplier faces greater penalty but we wouldn't need to talk about black market suppliers if the product wasn't illegal. Think prohibition.
This is the nature public economics. Banning any product or service carries a public cost. The public benefit needs to outweigh the cost in order to justify the ban. Heroine is an obvious example here. Alcohol ended up somewhere in the middle. The cost of drunk driving is still publicly intolerable. If you want a more controversial example, consider Nevada's legalization of prostitution. Prostitution exists in every state but prostitutes in Nevada are by far the healthiest.
Abortion by contrast obviously doesn't meet the threshold to justify any ban. The only justification is moral, specifically religious morality, and I'm sorry but personal morality doesn't make good policy. Abortion bans do more harm than good. If I can help more people by not banning abortions, that's moral justification enough for me.
5
Those who have means will always have access to an abortion. That was true here prior to Roe vs Wade and we've seen the same trend play out in other countries such as Ireland where those who could afford to go abroad for an abortion did so.
If you don't want an abortion don't have one. But we don't need to go back to the days when backstreet abortions happened and desperate women lost their lives. The Jane network couldn't get to everyone and there were some predators who preyed on desperate women and caused a lot of unnecessary damage and even deaths.
If pro-life advocates really want to stop abortions they should support birth control and things like universal daycare and other pro-family programs. An ounce of prevention and support does much more to reduce abortions than criminalizing abortion ever will. That we're still having this conversation is ridiculous.
6
Left unsaid are the women who need an abortion to save their lives. In the old days, it was the baby who was allowed to live at the expense of the mother's life. Not fair!
Also in the old days when abortions were banned, there were lots of orphanages who took in the unwanted babies and found homes for them. Those orphanages are now gone. What will happen to these unwanted babies if abortions are banned once again?
In those days, the rich went to Sweden to get an abortion. Perhaps that is where they will still go should the anti-abortionists make this the law of the land.
In many respects, I view abortion bans as not only an infringement on a woman's right to choose but also an infringement on religious grounds. I resent the religious right forcing their religious views on me or any other woman.
9
Another bad thing that happens, as compellingly presented in the book Freakonomics, when abortion is banned, the murder rate goes up dramatically in subsequent decades. It's an unfortunate consequence of too many more kids brought up in a world with very little family or economic support.
9
The other unmentioned factor in all this is birth control. If the country wants to see fewer abortions, birth control should be readily available, particularly to young people. The fact that this administration is advocating abstinence in sex ed programs is evidence of the hypocracy of their entire stance on abortion. Particularly coming from a president who clearly had few, if any, experiences of either abstinence or birth control.
11
Abortion itself, under this misbegotten administration, falls into the "do as I say, not as I do" category. Last year, Donald Trump engaged in an elaborate charade, using an executive seeking political access as a beard for Trump's sexual affair with Playboy model. Trump, married and in office, impregnated the woman, Shera Bechard, and then arranged for her subsequent abortion. On the same day last month when this news broke, the anti-abortion Susan B Anthony List named Trump their "Pro-Life Hero 2018."
So the rich and powerful once again enjoy unspoken privileges that could put most Americans in legal jeopardy.
At the same time, unconstitutional anti-abortion legislation championed solely by Republicans turns unwillingly pregnant women into felons, while never addressing, much less criminalizing, the males who impregnated the women. By refusing to acknowledge that it takes both a man and a woman to initiate a pregnancy, and absolving the males from any responsibility for the unwanted pregnancies, these bills display horrendous bigotry against women, and only women.
But as long as the hypocrite Trump is in office and the Republican Party has the power, this disgracefully unbalanced and anti-woman situation will continue.
11
The whole premise of ending abortions through criminalizing abortions makes no sense whatsoever.
I’ve often thought, with abortion illegal, women will still have abortions... illegally!
With abortion legal those women who do not want abortions needn’t have them and those who have abortions will have access to legal safe abortions.
Everyone in society gets what they want with legal abortions if they mind their own business!
5
what happens is abortion rates go up. prohibition is counterproductive and always backfires, makes people want to do that which is prohibited. never take away a person's free will.
3
What is so frightening about the anti-abortion crowd is that they just could care less if women die having a botched, illegal abortion. Pretty strong claim to make, so how do I know this? Because the system they want has already existed. The system we had before abortion was made legal resulted in hundreds of deaths of young women every year: Our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, and our friends. It HAS happened and it WILL happen again if abortion is outlawed or restricted. That is just a fact and reality.
So when an anti-abortion opponent tells you that abortion needs to be outlawed, keep in mind that they are making that statement knowing full well, but just don't care, that women will die. It is that realization that makes me double down in my effort to never let them succeed.
11
On September 2, 1989, I was fortunate enough to live here in Massachusetts when a planned, wanted pregnancy went terribly wrong. The thought of strangers having any place in that awful experience gives me the chills. It is nobody else's business.
7
The fight has always been mislead. The right to choose is important and crucial, but we also need to focus to avoid those pregnancies that will look for abortion as a solution. We need to be clear and honest about sex, with our girls and our boys. Talking about sex does not mean encouraging it, but to have them informed on the act and the consequences; that is wonderful, but that biologically is to bring children, and if you are not ready to confront these consequences, you must protect yourself or decide not to do it. This is, I think, the more important decision of all before to decide on abortion. The fight to choose must be fought in all fronts.
8
When pregnancy stops being a political football that is exploited to keep the Republican Party in power and religious fraudsters flying in multi million dollar jets, it will rightly be a medical matter between a woman and her physician. Until then, if a woman wants an abortion she will have one, one way or another. Abortion is legal in the United States and those who seek to make it illegal do so for evil reasons and not because they care about what is best for women and their children. As a woman, I ask other women to join me in opposing any candidate for office who opposes abortion as part of their platform. They are entitled to their own opinions, but when they seek political office on the basis of knowing what is best for us and our health and well being, then they are signaling that they are not fit to hold public office and are only in it for the money and power.
25
What causes women to have abortions in the first place is primarily premarital relations. Of course as many people have turned away from God (and many churches are reluctant to teach abstinence) these causes will continue. In reality premarital relations (or adultery) is one of mankind's most damaging sins, but their is little acknowledgement of this truism. It's interesting we honor the Pilgrims during Thanksgiving but want to pattern our lives like theirs not at all.
2
The above is why both comprehensive sex education and easily-obtained contraceptives need to be commonplace. People will have sex outside of marriage (statistics have shown that over 90% of people are not virgins when they marry): preventing pregnancy is the only sure way to reduce abortions.
8
And what should someone who has never been chosen as someone's mate do in his or her life, Mr. Gottlieb? Fall back on that other naughty-naughty sin? Be forced by the courts or churches to couple up whether or not folks like each other? Grin and bear it through all the years of miserable abstinence?
No wonder the world is slowly but surely turning away from the ridiculous.
9
ROLF! Your false construct is not mine and never will be. This comment strikes me as the apotheosis of the immorality of Christian dogma. We have way bigger societal ills than abortions. If you’re so interested in telling people what they’re doing wrong (let alone actually helping out your fellow”man”), I suggest you target something that would actually make a meaningful difference to addressing those ills. I reject Christian dogma—it has no place in our government. Thanks for making my skin crawl before I’ve even finished my first cup of coffee.
6
If I understand the debate correctly, Ms. Oberman is arguing that outlawing abortion won't actually decrease abortions. Rather, we should address the social forces that cause (mostly poor) women to need an abortion in the first place. While I am inclined to believe her argument and to trust her research, I find it striking that this is the same argument made by Second Amendment advocates in response to calls for more gun control to prevent school shooting incidents.
1
I see no relationship between gun violence and unwanted pregnancy except that mostly they are both caused by men. (I realize in some rare cases women can be the perpetrators of gun violence.)
2
touche.
The current choir ADVOCATING a political merger of church and state may be proven to be hypocrites by a wave of women officeholders. Their emphasis will be SUPPORT, so as to provide A REAL CHOICE for disadvantaged or abused women who, otherwise, would be unprepared for pregnancy.
Suppressing information to teenagers and repressing government assistance WILL BE ASSESSED as secondary and counter-productive to the AVOWED GOAL: bringing wanted and healthy babies into this world.
Democrats will humanize the women targeted by Republicans for forcible deprivation of choice. Once it's settled that mother and child have tangible human needs, then we'll see if we CAN START FIRST with no-strings-attached, non-judgemental, heartfelt, meaningful, comprehensive support.
I really hope the Pro-Life movement can FIRST FIND resources to back-up their commitment to the unborn. THE POTENTIAL of the here-and-now can demonstrate society's responsiveness to mother and child (since the loss of a woman's right to decide would be the consequence of society's decision).
This "overturn Roe v Wade" issue will always be devisive, but until it occurs (or not), the shared dynamic of assisting mother and child can be exploited to it's full potential.
5
“People of good faith on both sides of the abortion war know that the best way to lower abortion rates is to deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place.“
What, Ms. Oberman, causes women to want to abort in the first place? It is not just economic. Nor should women have to give a reason for an abortion, any more than a man is required to give a reason for any egregious motive he might act on. We live in a “free” country where nobody has a right to question our motives unless we act with criminal negligence.
Of course, abortions might be criminal in the future, but as you you point out, charging women with criminal, drug-induced abortion, will be impossible to prove (because there is no way to differentiate it from miscarriage), although that won’t stop prosecutors from trying (and succeeding as they already have in some places).
7
Two stories.
1st. When I was teen, when abortions were illegal, my neighbor became pregnant. She used a coat hanger and drank poison. At 16 she destroyed her ability to ever have children, even as a married woman.
2nd. My neighbor, an evangelical who fought loudly against abortion found out her sister - pregnant with her fourth child had to make a choice. Terminate the third trimester pregnancy because the baby would not survive outside the womb or the sister would die from her body rejecting the baby. The sister was a mother to 3 other young children. My neighbor came to talk and cry about the situation to me since I was pro choice and the only person she felt safe with. We talked about the choices and her sister made the decision to terminate the pregnancy. It was a harrowing decision, but kept her other three children from losing their mother to an Unviable pregnancy.
Abortion is gray - not black and white. Each case is different and a choice between the Dr, mother and family; my evangelical friend finally understood choice and stopped fighting against illegal abortions. No woman wants to have an abortion. We are genetically wired to give birth. It is a difficult day to have to make that choice.
26
I've met quite a large number of women -- in the U.S. and in Europe -- in my 80 years who did want to have abortions, DLdi. I, too, wanted mine. We may be "genetically wired to give birth" -- don't know what that means, exactly -- but we also have minds to help us make our own decisions.
4
There is not an epidemic of doctors reporting the illegal activities we see daily, from regular heroin use to rape to domestic violence. (We are mandatory reporters under very limited circumstances.) The doctors inclined to criminalize miscarriages should abortion become illegal would find themselves pariahs in their own emergency rooms. No one will trust a doctor who so easily turns on a patient.
11
Dr. Meh: That is very nice to hear.
Clinton had it right when she said abortion should be safe, legal and rare. The best way to accomplish this is through programs like planned parenthood
Teen pregnancy prevention programs that focus on easy(and free) access to birth control have been shown to reduce pregnancy rates by 50%.
32
"People of good faith on both sides of the abortion war know that the best way to lower abortion rates is to deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place. Rather than ending abortion, criminalizing abortion will merely create new ways in which the state can intensify the misery of the poorest among us."
I am Catholic. I am pro-life. I am conservative. And I do not hesistate to say I agree with this. I find the US anti-abortion movement as hypocritical, and at times, anti-life. Most Republican abortion policies, do nothing to limit abortions and only put the mother in greater danger. A ban on abortion is not a solid solution. It's time for the pro-life movement to recognize that abortion is an issue of social justice (see America the Jesuit Review). Indeed it was Pope John Paul II that recognized the socioeconomic reasons for abortion, questioning the morality of a capitalist system that allows for unwanted pregnancies and limited options.
If the unborn child is so precious, then why do we deny it healthcare access, during and after pregnancy? If family life is so important, then why do we separate immigrant families, who often have stronger values then most native born Americans? It's time that the pro-life movement become consistently pro-life. It's time for Christians to remember that "by this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
71
It disgusts me that in this day and age we still can't accept the fact that it's a woman's right to choose. Abortion will continue to happen, regardless of any laws attempting to stop it. We should focus on the things that matter: ensuring women are safe should they choose to have the procedure. As a man and a father, I find it odd that men are even allowed to weigh on in this discussion as we will never comprehend the mental and physical trauma women are put through when giving birth. All I could do was hold a hand and say, "love you," which is as useless as aspirin after a compound fracture. Please, for all that is good in the world, recognize both abortion and birth are tremendously taxing on a human being, and should not be simply judged by old men who have no clue. I have no clue and will happily let them decide what is best for them.
39
You are a man in a million Unclemilford. In a hundred million. Thanks.
1
What if, hypothetically, DNA testing was commonly and reliably used to identify fathers of unborn children of single, pregnant women, and responsible fatherhood was enforced (not just financial contribution, but providing care for, and being present for the child) throughout the father's entire lifetime?
16
Having more fathers take responsibility would be wonderful, but please remember that a large percentage of women seeking abortions are married, and that many already have children. Also, your “solution” would not help the women who have health-threatening complications or those who learn that their fetuses are not viable, or will be deformed. The bottom line is that a woman’s decision to have an abortion is no one else’s business. The government does not belong in our bedrooms or our doctors’ offices, period.
5
What if, "hypothetically," said father is abusive, a rapist, or otherwise unfit? No woman should be legally required to tether herself to such a person for 18 years. What you're advocating is just one more way for the state to exert ownership over women's lives and bodies.
3
What is the pregnant women didn't want the "fathers" in their lives?
As an adopted child separated from a dead birth mother and 3 blood relatives forever, I've been told numerous times how virtuous my new parents must have been (to have taken me in) and that I should be grateful for having been given the opportunity to live. Has anyone even asked a large sampling of children of unprepared birth parents after the child lived in an orphanage, experienced seeing their adoptive parents return "unsuitable" adopted siblings, or realized that adopted children have a 4x higher suicide rate than nonadopted children? Does anyone presume that forced existence somehow negates the loss of the original parents, sense of belonging, and oftentimes lack of access to one's own family medical information and sometimes adoption information? Before anyone presumes that any life is better than no life at all, take time to ask a large sampling of children forced into existence how they feel about their unprepared parents lack of access to safe pregnancy termination. You might be surprised what you learn. Don't ever assume that you know what is best for every unborn baby over the unprepared parents who had to make the decision. You don't know as much as they do. Please don't make multiple assumptions about what kind of future life the unprepared for baby will have. And please don't tell me I have a bad attitude. Unprepared for children forced into existence are already blamed for that a lot, usually by people who never ask them any questions.
80
Crickets.
SH, thank you for your comment. You understand the issues far better than most.
3
This is a very good article, although the premise is wrong. I believe the pro-lifers know these consequences, and it is a part of their war against poor people, and specifically poor women.
Access to abortions was always a wealth matter, and if we are not careful, it will become so more than ever.
36
As an aside in this controversy, I note that the same argument the author makes about poverty being the driving motivator to abortions is made by others with regard to race and violent crime generally. It’s argued that, proportionally, such crime is perpetrated at much higher incidence by poor males of color. So? If a crime is perpetrated, must it be ignored simply because the offender is poor or not white? Kumbaya would be an ineffective solace to the mother of a murdered husband who was killed for the paper in his wallet.
Then, there is a discontinuity in the author’s argument: if more than half of abortions are undertaken by poor women below our southern border, why is it odd that doctors, forced by authorities in jurisdictions where abortion is illegal, report mostly or even entirely poor women as possibly having committed the crime?
Southern American cultures have their own religion-induced challenges. For us, banning abortion would be a dreadful and simply wrong curtailment of a woman’s basic rights of self-determination. This is why Roe has survived, because it brilliantly protects such rights, for any reason, until viability of the fetus, at which point the state is empowered to regulate abortion more aggressively, allowing it to place greater weight on community values and interests over those of the individual. It’s not perfect, for EITHER the individual OR the state, but it’s become a workable compromise that doesn’t ignore the legitimate rights of either.
6
Abortifacient drugs will become ubiquitous. We learned a lot about imposing draconian penalties against a population for behavior that can’t be stopped. We enacted then repealed Prohibition as an abject failure; and we are laboring to come to grips with the monumental failure of our “war on drugs”. I don’t believe that abortion will be banned here – indeed, it can’t be banned anywhere absent an overturning of Roe, and that would precipitate a holy war here. However, its allowable periods of gestation MAY be curtailed by state legislation which will not affect its incidence, among the poor or anyone else; but it will have no practical effect. If in a nation of about 6.5 million, El Salvador only “investigated” 192 cases (no numbers on convictions were given), it doesn’t sound like an immense social problem.
It’s an unfortunate reality that some Americans regard abortion as an ordinary decision that falls within the rights of every woman to make while other Americans regard it as a crime. And it’s VERY unfortunate (to me) that some of our states might declare some of their residents to be criminals for such a decision, regardless of their economic conditions. But such disagreements have existed forever, and laws respect those differences by BEING different in different communities. Sometimes they matter and sometimes they don’t.
Such laws are unlikely to prevent a single abortion. And we’re not going to lock up women who exercise a right recognized in most of our country.
4
I think the point is that, when it comes to drug and abortion laws, we really only want to enforce the laws against poor people. We look the other way for people with money. We don’t want rich people in jail. So, it becomes a law against poverty.
25
Andy:
And I guess my point is that it's always been the case that laws have been targeted at the poor, but in this case it won't make any difference -- it doesn't in Chile or El Salvador, given the numbers that actually are pursued; and it won't make any difference here.
If you can't stop a widespread activity that doesn't harm others (assuming that an unformed fetus is not a human being with all the rights of a born human), then making an unenforceable law against it is just dumb.
As a person who cares about women, I am harmed by the anti-choice mentality. I have a daughter and know other young women who could be affected by this.
Abortion affects everyone, but only a woman should decide what to do about it.
22
As a child who was unwanted and abused I'm all for abortion. I think that forcing women to have children they don't want, cannot care for for any reason, or children that will be seriously handicapped is wrong and an intrusion on a decision that is private.
People who say that having a handicapped child can be a wonderful experience are speaking for themselves. People who tell me that I'd be missed if I weren't around forget that no one would know the difference, not even me. What would have made a difference in my life would have been being wanted, loved, cherished, valued, and not being forced to pretend that things were fine. I think that the government, churches, and politicians saying they care have no idea what they care about.
They do not care about the results of being unwanted. They do not deal on a daily basis with feeling less than human because of how they were treated as children and young adults. They do not experience the complete lack of trust in others that adults who were unwanted experience. Their world is never as hostile as ours was. I wouldn't wish my existence on anyone.
If abortion had been legal back in the 50s my parents would have had happier lives. I would have not been born. I would not feel like an alien pretending to be human. I think that any person who feels abortion is wrong should spend a week being unwanted. Maybe that would change their minds.
94
hen3ry - I hope that you will find people who will admire the compassionate thoughts you express here. So much of our society is intolerant, but there ARE wonderful people out there, albeit, often few and far between. I know the pain of being abused by those who should be our sanctuary. But since you are here and have survived, I hope for you that there is a rainbow at the end of your personal storm.
4
I was wanted, but only by my father. My mother who was a stay at home mother hated me and let me know every day of my life that I was ugly, fat, stupid and lazy. My father was the breadwinner and, although he loved me, he never protected me from her. Even when she punched me in the face on Thanksgiving, in front of the entire family, he went to her and left me bleeding on the fancy oriental rug.
I understand your desire to have never been born. I struggle with many of the same issues, but I have finally reached a modicum of peace. It turns out that I have a skill that is respected within my profession as well as by my clients. I still sometimes feel like a fraud, but more than 25 years into my career, I can get out of bed in the morning and feel good about my work. However, I’ve never had a relationship because I loathe myself in every other aspect of my life outside of work.
I hope that you have some moments of peace and I wish that they become more frequent. I read your comments avidly as you write with great style and demonstrate reason and compassion. I would miss your comments if you stopped, so please keep posting and I’ll keep reading.
9
I always look forward to your comments here, hen3ry. Love them. Love you for writing what you write.
Hugs to you.
7
As others have said in these comments, the pro-life movement in the US is largely about suppressing female equality and restoring patriarchy. Much like the War on Drugs is largely about giving the government the authority to persecute and jail people the American oligarchy wants to silence. In both cases, the claimed goal of protecting and promoting the general welfare is not the real goal.
37
Michelle Oberman contributes important information to the US debate about abortion in the US. When we look at other countries, they are dominated by one religion which does not allow women to participate in its most sacred rites nor hold its ultimate positions of power. Women are used as unpaid labor, good enough to do the work of religion, but never good enough to be given power which is naturally conferred on males.
If the US follows the path of countries whose laws must pass a "religious" test, all voters who belong to other religions or to no religion are effectively denied representation. Thus the "Establishment" clause in the US Constitution.
Allowing the US to become a theocracy is both horrifying and at this moment in a Trump presidency, unbelievable. That a man who has no personal religion, who breaks the commandments of nearly all the major religions in the US and was not elected to turn the US into a theocracy would do so, is beyond the comprehension of most voters.
To regard the Evangelical coalition of organizations as solely interested in one or two issues is dangerous. Banning abortion through the Supreme Court is just a beginning of their agenda. McConnell and Trump are responsible for a new era of government intrusion into the most personal of human activities while allowing corruption by a favored few including Trump and his family to spread.
It is time to wake up to the danger Evangelicals pose. It only begins with Trump's take-over of courts.
10
"People of good faith on both sides of the abortion war know that the best way to lower abortion rates is to deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place. Rather than ending abortion, criminalizing abortion will merely create new ways in which the state can intensify the misery of the poorest among us."- Michelle Oberman. Professor Oberman is correct. If we want to end abortions, then end the need for abortions rather than criminalizing women who need and seek them. We all know that abortion is not a birth control method thus let us have good birth control/pregnancy prevention in the first place. We know that babies born to those who cannot (don't want to or don't have the means to) take care of them end up abused. Abortion is a very personal and complicated issue that criminalization does not end but merely causes mental and physical harm to those who are desperate for whatever reason. We need to find a better solution for this rather than criminalization.
7
Thank you so much for this article. The consequences for criminalizing abortion are truly dire. Do we really need to prosecute women for making a private decision? Should medical personnel be banned from providing the best advice and practice through governmental overreach? Aren't the prisons sufficiently full? The lived experience of women in Latin American countries should provide a wake up call for all who want to outlaw abortion. Courts should be guided by the best medical and legal advice.
27
Lethal child abuse is never "a private decision ".
The direct and deliberate of small defenseless human beings in the 'privacy' of an abortion clinic is everybody's business.
Privacy cannot be invoked to conceal human right abuse of children, including violations of their rights to prenatal care, survival and development. Human rights law has consistently rejected the right to privacy as a defense against human rights violations by adults in positions of power over children in positions of dependency.
No human being has ownership and killing rights over another human being, no matter how small, or dependent or troublesome or 'unwanted'.
3
What possible good would come of turning a miscarriage into a crime scene. We already have too many people in our jails. Why don't groups who feel called to involve themselves in this issue, support effective, inexpensive and easily accessed contraception? Even at 'crisis' pregnancy centers, they try to dissuade women from using contraceptives. We can all see this inconsistency.
1
Fetus inside a uterus is not a child.
The uterus belongs to the woman. The uterus does not belong to the fetus.
Abortion is not child abuse. It is a woman making a decision about her body.
A woman has ownership of her body. It does not belong to the state, the church or a fetus.
I would like to read a "What happens" analysis that shows how women can adjust their lives and maintain autonomy and dignity when their fundamental human rights are taken away. Maybe if could draw from the experience and courage of enslaved races. One thing women can do, obviously, is withhold sex from non-violent partners and husbands until they are ready to bear a child (or another child.) Sexual intercourse is not a necessary function of a woman's body. She won't die if she doesn't do it. There's that. Then there's child support and custody. Let it be known to every sexual partner that if a pregnancy results, there will be no illegal abortion and he will be sued for support for 18 years. If married, the mother could sue for divorce and give up custody and the father will be responsible for the 24/7 care of the new baby. All of these are extreme and emotionally wrenching actions for women that few very brave or desperate women would take. There is also voluntary sterilization as the only sure contraceptive measure, assuming it is a legal right for all females of reproductive age, married and single. Let's explore these "What happens when abortion is banned?" possibilities too.
14
Didn't we just do that? if the abortions will be illegal, every miscarriage will be suspicious, and the woman will have to prove that she didn't take the drug. Is that what you want?
3
Actually I do think the number of women who would seek to be sterilized would greatly increase, if abortion were to be completely banned.
Roe v Wade should be overthrown anyway -- it give the right to decide to the "woman's physician," not the woman herself, and relies on the concept of viability, which is becoming less and less relevant as we understand what happens early in pregnancies.
And medicated abortions, plant and chemical abortifacients are as old as mankind. We have lost the knowledge of how to use plant products, but as recently as fifty years ago, women in Appalachia were using Queen Ann's Lace (you had to know where and when to harvest it, how to prepare it, and how much to take, a considerably bank of knowledge) to control their pregnancies.
Our policies are both outdated and lacking in understanding of the way medicine has worked over thousands of years.
3
Why do you think decision by the doctor is better than decision by woman whose body the fetus is actually using?
What happens when abortion is banned? Maybe a woman will decide to have her baby instead. We in the pro life movement have not always given the support and help these pregnant women have needed but all that is changing. There are many good people out there who not only help before the pregnancy but also assist after the birth with mother and child. They give these women more than diapers to get started on their way to motherhood. There is aid with housing, jobs, job training and anything these women may need to get a new start for themselves and their babies.
Some have told us that they had no where to turn until the pro life people showed some interest and concern. This is all they needed to change their minds and have their babies. They have told us that they have never regretted choosing life and that they are happy we came into their lives. They know that someone does care and that they are not alone.
If we expect these women to not abort, we must be there for them every step of the way. Life is precious and we must prove to them that both lives matter theirs and their baby's.
5
This commenter keeps referring to all the financial support some anti-abortion organizations promise to provide when they are trying to browbeat women and girls into bearing children they don’t really want. But she never provides any supporting figures?
It costs roughly $300,000 to raise a child to age eighteen. How much of that do these organizations typically provide? $1,000, $2,000, $5,000?
She says there is aid with housing and jobs. Do they guarantee affordable, adequate housing for eighteen years? Do they guarantee meaningful, reasonably well-paying jobs even if the (mostly poor) women and girls lack skills, education, and a support network? Do they pay for long-term childcare?
If they do not meet all the essential financial needs of these women and girls, where does the rest of the money come from?
And what about the children? Those who grow up in squalor and poverty, ignored, resented, or abused? When and how do the anti-abortion fanatics step in to make sure those children have decent, productive, reasonably happy lives?
Given your experience, you can reduce abortions without banning it, giving women a genuine choice to terminate or continue the pregnancy. If support can enable some women to carry to term, What more do you want from a ban?
3
Who, exactly, is they? Most of the assistance disappears shortly after the baby appears.
2
There is another possible outcome if the US permits states to re-criminalize abortion. Big businesses will not tolerate such laws. As with LGBT bathroom laws, some were passed and quickly repealed due to intense business pressure, and some states like Texas gave up before it could even pass a bathroom law.
So if big businesses could do that to LGBT bathroom laws imagine what they could and would do to new abortion bans, which probably affect a far greater percentage of their employees and customers than bathroom laws ever would.
I doubt the US will ever again see more than a handful of states ban abortions, if that.
7
That would be excellent, James..... but, sadly, in this country Corporate America is no friend to women on any reason. It swipes 20% from every paycheck of every woman that it employs. It refuses to help either men or women on child care facilities. Everyone knows a real career-stopper is to have a child. And assistance for women on birth control or abortion? Ever heard of the Green Family that owns 'Hobby Lobby'? The Supreme Court has decided that "corporations are religions, too"! and all of us will do whatever corporate America decides.
I suspect that you are thinking of all of the support that gay men receive from corporate America.
The women?
Not so much.
2
I doubt it. misogyny is ingrained in our culture.
2
Although I believe Hobby Lobby was wrongly decided it applies only to private closely held companies. It did not stop big business' war on bathroom bills. I maintain my optimism.
The author is further threatening Women's reproductive rights by insisting on the economic motive. I've had 2 children & 3 abortions. In not case was my choice primarily an economic one.
9
Yes, Ms. Wolf. The decision to have an abortion belongs to the woman who is pregnant. She should not be asked why, ever. "Motive," here, is an ugly word.
2
America has not learned its lesson from prohibition. The self righteous indignation comes from those who are incapable of compassion towards those who do not fit into their world view. America is becoming a dangerous place full of hate and intolerance. Our only hope is that the millennials will take over soon and teach the power of compassion for all beings.
26
If the goal of the anti-abortion movement was actually to make sure there were as few abortions as possible, they would be doing everything they could to make abortion unnecessary -- family planning, free contraception, sex education, honesty. But they fight all of those things.
Whether in actual intent or simply in practice, the effect of fighting abortion access, limiting effective family planning, making contraception harder to get, shutting down sex education and spreading misinformation about all of it, is simple: to ensure that if a woman has sex, she is forced to bear a child. Or put another way, the effect is to punish women, especially poor women, for having sex.
Of course, it's no punishment if a woman seeks a child and has the financial and emotional capacity to care for it. But married women with children who lack the ability to care for more have no more recourse than single women, in a scenario where abortion is unavailable.
Naturally, wealthy Republicans will never actually do away with their own ability to procure abortions for their mistresses and girlfriends. But they are always happy to continue and amplify the misery of the poor, including the unintended children who grow up in poverty and may well go on to continue to cycle anew.
57
Right. If your pro-life, then your first job is to make sure contraception is widely available to all. Otherwise, it's just about the deeply pathological need to control women's sexuality.
4
Abortion has existed as long as women have been able to get pregnant. It wasn't considered a crime, or even a problem, until relatively recently in human history. There is no such thing as "banning abortion," only banning legal abortion. Women aborted themselves with herbs before modern medicine existed and knowledge was passed from woman to woman on how to do it - which herbs to take, how much and when, etc. So if anti-choice folks think that overturning Roe vs. Wade is going to stop abortion - I frankly find that adorable. Stop something that's been going on for hundreds of thousands of years of human history? Please. The woman-to-woman networks will reactivate. People will travel, order pills by mail (or drone delivery - this already happens in Central America), retreat into the back alleys - they'll do what it takes to maintain their choice. Unfortunately, women's lives will be lost in that pursuit, if it comes to that.
The only sane way to look at abortion is to look at it from the lens of: prevent abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancies; when that fails, give women a safe, assured alternative. Anti-abortion laws won't stop abortion. It's been with us longer than the Bible has.
30
In a democratic society, laws rejected by even a substantial minority of the electorate rarely prove effective, as our experience with Prohibition demonstrates. Professor Oberman's op-ed piece graphically shows that efforts to ban abortions would achieve equally miserable results. When coercion and force become the main instruments of law enforcement, either the law in question becomes a dead letter or the society loses some of its freedom.
But this principle cuts both ways. Any effort to restore public funding for abortions would arouse a storm of opposition, which helps explain why abortion- rights proponents have not made public financial support a major issue. Our society remains too deeply split to achieve any kind of consensus on this matter.
If the SC does overturn Roe, the states would be wise to repeal their restrictive laws. This being America, however, and the GOP having lost its senses, a number of legislatures will probably do not such thing. Then Oberman's predictions will face a test, one they will almost certainly pass. How much suffering and contempt for the law will Americans have to experience before the GOP either comes to its senses or loses at the polls?
5
As a person who is pro choice and pro woman, the points made by the author and some of the commentators are spot-on. But for the love of Pete, when are we going to start talking about the men who are the other part of the equation? Given that a male partner is necessary to impregnate a woman, aren't men also complicit? I bet if men were punished for getting women pregnant, we wouldn't even be discussing who to prosecute for abortions.
33
Of course poor and marginalized women are targeted. Being poor is a sin in this country. Being poor and a minority is criminal.
19
If anti-choice people succeed in reversing Roe v. Wade, perhaps women could band together in solidarity and consider a Sexual Moratorium for a certain period of time. It may help people who are insistent in the "my way or the highway" approach to stop and listen, and reflect on this most coercive demand upon women. Hopefully, it would get people's attention. And probably make them cranky, but reflecting.
18
Men don't listen to no.
When denied by choice, they will take by force.
3
Whereas I disagree with abortion maybe a compromise can be reached to make it illegal for a woman to have an abortion twice. I think it's quite irresponsible to have multiple, unlimited abortions, so it must stop somewhere. I understand that criminalizing it would have unwanted consequences but at the same time, there has to be a message that tells people it's not okay.
Well, on average the Empire State Building gets struck by lightning 23 times per year. So, if we're going to set a limit, it probably needs to be greater than 1.
6
Controlling fertility over a reproductive lifetime is no small task, especially if you are not able to use birth control pills, the most reliable method. And
yes, there are women who can't take them. IUDs and methods that use hormones all have side effects. Failure is not always the woman's fault.
A friend of mine has had four miscarriages. They were all wanted babies. Again: what doctor can really tell the difference between an abortion and a miscarriage? The better solution is birth control, health access, and economic security.
1
Asking anti-choice activists to think about the real-world implications of their religious beliefs being enacted into law and enforced by the government is a dead end. They don’t think about it and never have. It detracts from the moral satisfaction their opposition to abortion makes them feel.
They have enough political awareness to know that police prying into medical records and throwing women and doctors in jail is politically toxic to their cause. Ergo, they say they’re against it even though it’s the most logical outcome of the policy they say they want.
11
A grim picture indeed, and it only gets worth upon closer inspection.
In today's world, the men so passionately railing against abortion are starting to be exposed as abortion advocates when it is THEIR economic/political future on the line. The promiscuous nature of so many politicians is almost taken as a given at this point and conservatives seem to have made their peace with that, but what of the implications? Either these men are extremely committed to using protection or some other method of preventing unwanted children is in play. I wonder how many pro-life politicians willing to punish women would risk a sworn public statement that they've never encouraged/financed an abortion themselves? In a world of leaks, forensic accounting and smart phones, such a question would narrow the field pretty quickly in many GOP primaries.
In fact, if Trump supporters in particular believe abortion is murder, then one has to admit the truth of Trump's assertion that he could kill someone in broad daylight without losing their support. He approved of abortion of all types once upon a time. He is a serial philanderer. He is infamous for trying to buy his way out of scandals. Do his supporters look that in the eye and say he would pay hundreds of thousands to keep women silent about mere affairs, but not pay to have anyone terminate an unwanted pregnancy? If so, that's between them and their God... their all-knowing, "your sin shall find you out," "vengeance is mine" God.
12
We have to stop looking at this as a woman's issue: we know what causes abortions. If there are any criminals in this scenario, it's the men who get women pregnant with unwanted/unplanned/unaffordable pregnancies. Abortion is not the issue, sex is the issue and sex by men who don't think first.
This is an opportunity for men to step up and take responsibility: don't have unprotected sex unless you are willing and able to be a parent. Sex & unwanted pregnancy is an issue for both genders. If you want to legislate someone's body, start at the source: women do not get unwanted /unplanned/unaffordable pregnancies without irresponsible men.
Men, it's way past time to stop being so immature, take responsibility for sex.
Legislators, mind your own business and leave personal issues to people.
25
I do not know how the laws are Stateside but in BC if a male fathers a baby even if deception was involved they are liable for child support until said child is 26 if the offspring wishes to obtain advanced education. However collecting may be a problem. There is a government apparatus to collect child support from withholding tax refunds to blocking driver's licence renewals.
2
I was raised in an upper middle class area and I remember back in the late1950s our neighbor's daughter committed suicide because she became pregnant, the boy refused to marry her, her parents were mortified, and abortion was illegal. She didn't have a chance. That memory never left me. I always thought that we came a long way out of ignorance, but now there are people who are trying to push us back in time. Not only would banning abortion make women completely vulnerable, it would also open up a huge black market specializing in illegal abortions.
31
As soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned, the United States will have the opportunity to grow into a place where life is valued over real-estate or professional success, and where children are once again nurtured and cared for.
2
There is no evidence to support your claim. Unwanted children generally grow up in poverty and many are subjected to all kinds of horrible abuse.
16
please explain the sequence of events that you foresee after banning abortion that could possibly lead to such a result?
13
That time period has NEVER existed. Every policy endorsed by this administration makes it more difficult to have a child. No health care, no paid leave, no child care.
2
Kristof did a piece on El Salvador's "Abortion Lawyer" (9/12/16). I’ve never been able to get it out of my mind. A civil and social disaster of the first order, and completely predictable and unnecessary. And all because a love of Belief is more alluring than the warnings of unintended consequences. It should also be noted that the Catholic church in El Salvador has rightly paid a price for evangelizing such a costly and perverse public policy. There are no winners when 50% of the population are disenfranchised, either economically or legally. When the legal rights of women--rich or poor--are predicated on their having ovaries, they become second-class citizens. The US has a long and bloody history when it comes to second-class citizens!
They are treated hardly better than farm animals. In addition, it should be noted that nowhere in the world is there a patriarchy that isn’t also either a failed state, a narco state, or a petro state. In fact, the very idea of sacrificing the rights of the living for the abstract ‘rights’ of the unborn inside them--especially when the distinction between conscious and natural termination of a pregnancy can never be 100% accurately determined after the fact--is as wholly incompatible with democracy, as a the story 'A Handmaid’s Tale' so handily illustrates. These are our sisters, mothers, daughters, and wives we're talking about here. Religious fanaticism is not known for its restraint.
15
Not wanting to bring another life into a world already full of suffering is an honorable cause, worthy of the commensurate sacrifice necessary to fulfill.
12
If anti-abortionists would adopt an unwanted child, and promise to care for it and educate it, the problem would be solved. These so-called "savers of life" care nothing about what happens to these children or their mothers. Thank you for a well written article.
16
No, the problem would not be solved. Treating a woman as an incubator as per Handmaid's Tale, is inhuman.
4
If men were the gender to get pregnant, believe me, they would scream if the government tried to control their bodies. Women have been second class citizens for most of history (his story). This fight against legal abortion is a fight against women's equality. And the poor always are treated the worst.
A vote for a Republican is a vote against women.
75
Even though they’re not, maybe the government should be screaming at them anyway. Do something useful for once.
And a vote for a third party is a vote for a republican.
3
Excellent article, but an important fact was left out. Abortion not only didn’t end in Latin America with prohibition, it increased.
The self styled “pro life” folks not only oppose abortion, they attack contraception. Less (or harder to get) contraception means more unwanted pregnancies. Over time the birth rate (and therefore the pool of child bearing age women) increases. The result is more abortions.
If you go to the Guttmacher website you can see all the data. While countries like the US that legalized abortion but promote contraception are experiencing a decades long decline in the number and rate of abortions, Latin American countries are experiencing the opposite trend.
The pro-life propaganda is every fetus is a life and every abortion you stop saves a life. So what is it when your policies create more dead babies?
29
This is why I don’t support any restrictions at all on abortion in the US. In our cultural climate and religious landscape we lack good faith actors who actually care about the health and well being of women. We are not in the same environment as say Germany which has restrictions but without the religious and anti sex backdrop.
If we start giving in we will see miscarriages criminalized, care denied by fearful doctors, and emboldened culture warriors who will turn their sights on birth control next, and any self determination for women later on. We will become South America.
1
There have been politicians who admit that their wives have had an abortion but now they see the light. Even though it was their choice, other women shouldn't be able to have one. Then there are the countries who are still under the thumb of the church. In some countries, that is the Catholic Church and in ours the evangelicals, even though we have separation of church and state. Of course, a life is sacred only in the womb, after that it can starve or die of some malady which doesn't disturb right to lifers. What will it take to change this? Someone in a very high office whose daughter needs to have an abortion. Maybe then, the politicians will wake up to reality.
5
"Trump Immigration Policy Veers From Abhorrent to Evil" by Nicholas Kristof: When it comes to immigration policy, the so-called "pro-life" movement is overwhelmingly PRO-DEATH.
18
Honestly, I love my husband but I am so tired of men generally. I think the only way women can regain control is to simply deny men sex for a period of time. Like, maybe for one election cycle.
46
Let’s see what lawyers can do with a reverse rape case. Abusing sex is still sexual abuse anyway you look at it. Once down this path there’s no going back.
Love this idea. It would work, too.
2
Most of these countries are democracies with women's forming some 52% of the population due to the fact women live on average longer tha men. So if women were united, no antiabortionist politician would dare pass such laws that target women and more importantly poor women. I am a fiscal conservative but on this issue I absolutely do not agree with GOP and happily vote for Democrats if they are committed for responsible fiscal policies.
6
What the author says makes sense, but in no way will it persuade those in the Christian Right to reconsider their crusade to outlaw all abortion. These folks presume poor women (and their men) have loose morals, and enforced pregnancy will compel them to reform. If the religious conservatives can’t eliminate abortion by outlawing it, they’ll at least have as a deterrent the threat of exposure and punishment for women seeking care. What’s more, there will be some women who won’t receive care, because health care professionals in conservative parts of the country may refuse to provide care, based on religious beliefs. For those women who have bad outcomes, it will be regrettable and unfortunate, but a consequence of sin.
8
Criminalizing pregnancy? Turning doctors into the uterus cops? Eroding trust? Driving poor women away from hospitals? Sending innocent women to jail? Turning women's bodies into heavily-policed public utilities?
If you think the right wing in America will see these as negatives, you understand nothing about the right wing in America. Reading this, they will be dancing on their toes in glee. They can hardly wait. This has always been the goal. They don't love the "unborn babies." They love authoritarianism. They don't hate abortion. They hate women.
109
Yep. And they love cannon fodder for their endless wars.
You are mistaken.
It is the direct and deliberate killing of utterly defenseless children in their mothers' wombs that we "hate".
We love both the mothers and their children and try desperately to help them in their need.
Work each mother's problems--don't kill her child.
I have supported women I have never met in person online as they take abortion inducing drugs on their own, usually because they're too far away from a clinic and fear retaliation from their families or even their partners. All I can do is urge them to go to a hospital if their bleeding or pain gets too severe. In 2018. Jesus Mary and Joseph.
26
Let's be clear. Anti-abortionists are not pro-life, they're pro-birth. After birth, these people could care less about the welfare of Mother and baby. Republicans, especially Paul "hammock" Ryan, go out of their way cutting or eliminating funding for programs that assist parents and children in need of financial support.
Pro-birthers care more about a thumb-size fetus than a child. Sad!
50
I think they're just anti-woman--including the female pro-birthers. Internalized misogyny is a thing. Otherwise, just don't get abortions if you think they're wrong and let other women control their bodies.
16
Further, they're against birth control, the best means of avoiding abortion. So: make a mistake and get pregnant, you have to have the child. And once it's born, you're on your own, Pro-life indeed. What hypocrisy!
2
When abortion is illegal, a lot more women die for no reason.
What further rationale is there?
22
There's the rationale that too many American children in their mothers' wombs have already been killed by abortionists since Roe v. Wade--over 59 million have died "for no reason" as you put it.
The killing has to stop.
1
When abortion is banned, the minorities will continue to make babies. Despite grievous hardship their population will grow. Well-off white ladies will continue to get easy abortions. Money pays but their population will decrease—exactly what white supremacists don’t want—ironic
Underground abortion will flourish in the hands of criminals and be available for the desperate. The anti-abortion laws will be ignored the same way liquor prohibition was ignored in the twentieth century. The law will also prove unenforceable, impractical and hated.
From a political standpoint America should legalize
abortion as most European have. Such would save lives and money. Anti-abortion laws are stupid and the prolifers are ignorant if they don’t realize the caos such absolutely useless laws would cause.
Abortion will not go away.
19
In this world, we have 7,000,000,000+ people. Countries like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Congo, Brazil are hugely burdened by sky-rocketing birth rates. Animals are disappearing - we will see the elephant, giraffe, and many top-end predators disappear before 2100. How many more people do we need? The ethos of "every life is precious" is no longer true. Every life is not precious. Every new life is a burden and an increased problem. We must find a way to make abortion easy and cheap. We must find a way to make contraception more and more certain. If we are to have children, make them wanted healthy children.
19
Anti-abortionists don't care about the welfare effects of the laws they push for -- effects on both individuals and on society at large. They consider abortion to be murder, and the extremists among them consider sex outside of marriage, and abortion, to be sins for which the women involved should be punished.
Whence such beliefs? IMHO it is easy, very easy, to sympathize with the murder view. As pro-choice literature says, "nobody likes abortions." But beyond this near-universal, inherent, gene-promoting feeling is religion, specifically Catholicism. Once again, the enemy is religion. Mumbo jumbo ruins lives, kills, and then tells us about some kind of loving God.
Thanks a lot.
11
More responsible sex ed and birth control means fewer abortions. It’s a message the RC church and evangelicals have yet to absorb.
31
Not to mention the RC church and the evangelicals also don't get the terror women experience when confronted with the prospect of supporting a child when they can barely support themselves and any children they already have.
9
Now what was the line from that song from the “roaring twenties” - “Ain’t We Got Fun?” Oh yeah, I remember-
“There’s nothing surer,
The rich get rich and the poor get children....”
There has never been a better theme song for the current GOP and their anti-choice zealots.
34
You are mistaken. Susan.
It is pro-abortion ideology that peddles with quasi-religious zeal the false dogma that all pregnancies are childless and all abortions are victimless.
Pro-abortion ideologues have reinvented the old fairy tale fiction that a Stork (named ‘Reproductive Choice’) brings the baby whose existence is instantaneously affirmed only at the moment of birth.
The irony is that this fiction has been invented and continues to be propagated at a time in history where we have never had so much detailed scientifically verifiable knowledge of the humanity of each child who is taken to the abortionist to be “terminated”.
Through an ultrasound window to the womb, each mother is able as never before to see her child; she can hear a heartbeat that is not her own.
1
For anti-choice people, there is only one end game: reverse Roe v. Wade. That's it; once that is done, they can go home, pat themselves on the back and pretend like all is finally a-okay. None, or very few, will pick up the unwanted child to care for, feed, nurture, clothe and educate. This has always been the way.
19
Seven plus billion humans and counting. The oceans are dying, and yet humans are never satisfied. I’m glad I didn’t bring a child into this paradise.
24
The source of all anti-abortion law is found in religion, the Christian version in particular. The other two Abrahamic religions are a bit more enlightened on the issue. (Imagine that, Islam will behead you for blasphemy but, with some limitations, permit an abortion.)
Ban Christianity. It would be a good start.
11
Prostitution has been illegal for centuries, I don't see it ending soon.
9
Freedom from religion!! I just said my good byes to a good old friend who now only want's to be allowed to die. Oregon is a "right to die" state, but it's not as free as I thought. It's hard to get permission, hard to get the pill. This is the second friend this year who wanted the pill. The first was never allowed to have it because the doctors could not agree that she only had six months to live (this is a requirement). So three months into her agony she died naturally. Now another friend, who three months ago was in far better shape than me, was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor. Now he is paralyzed on one side and might lose the other side too becoming a quadriplegic. If that happens, if he is unable to put the pill in his mouth and swallow, then he won't be allowed to have it.
The conservative Christians of this country no nothing of compassion for anybody.
18
The policies of Trump, Pence and rightwing America:
*intend to criminalize women
*intend to criminalize doctors
*criminalize medical procedures
*invade privacy
*intend to control people's sex lives
*intend to control women through forced childbirth
*intend to remove women from the workplace through forced pregnancy & motherhood
*place women's lives in danger by denying them medical options
*denigrate women as breeding animals - not human beings with a right to their own destiny
*assert men's 'right' to determine women's role in society through denial of reproductive freedom
17
Many years ago I pulled up behind a car waiting at a stoplight. I noticed one of those plastic stickers in the back window.
"if you can't trust me to make the right decision about abortion how can you trust me to raise a child?"
That said it all to me.
25
As in every tragedy the poor are left to suffer, and the culprit is religion.How ironic how religion and law enforcement go hand in hand & the victims are the poor.It’s been this way since the monarchies ruled the world.
5
The best way to lower abortion rates is to make contraception free and widely available to all women of all ages.
22
But the zealots and others want to stop women from being sexual, including in marriage (Catholics anyway). They want sex occurrence to go down and don't really care about abortion. At least, I'd say the vast majority are anti-sex before they consider the fact of abortions.
5
Oh, but that would encourage women to have sex ... can't have any of that, you know.
There's an old snarky joke that's timeless:
Q. "Why are Baptists against sex standing up?"
A. "It leads to dancing."
The wealthier people are, the fewer children they have. The more money you have, the more expensive a child is.
3
Since punishing women for exercising sexual and reproductive autonomy IS THE WHOLE POINT, this isn't a big so much as a feature.
(Rich white women have always been, and will always be, able to access abortion.)
9
Two observations:
1) The criminalization and increased misery of poor women is a feature, not a bug in the right's anti-abortion crusade. Republican politicians have been shown to avail their own mistresses and family members of abortion with no compunction whatsoever.
2) Canada allows abortions at any stage in a pregnancy, no legal restrictions whatsoever. It's not a moral cesspool. Trust women and doctors.
29
The abortion issue is not about pregnancy or lack. It is about power. Some voters simply want to have power over women. And, some politicians see it simply as a vote getting tool.
19
Abortion pill prosecutions have already happened in America. In August 2014, Jennifer Ann Whalen, 39, a nursing home aide from Washingtonville, Pa., pleaded guilty to obtaining an abortion pill for her 16 year-old daughter from a European website and was sentenced to 12-18 months in the Montour County Jail. The state law she broke required abortions to be performed only by physicians. The daughter had bad cramps and bleeding after taking the pill and went to the ER at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, which reported her to authorities.
27
In a humane society, there should be no place for "pills" designed intentionally to poison a tiny new human being already at home, being protected and nurtured in her/his mother's womb.
Chemical poisoning of a new human life is utterly barbaric.
Administering poisoned medications to a little daughter or son in our power and under our care can never be justified..
Chemical poisoning of even the smallest child is never 'necessary'.
A mothers' personal and social needs can and should be met by compassionate non-destructive means.
1
Horrifying, like living in a police state.
2
This should be ONLY the pregnant woman's choice.
I read about this years ago. Abortionists discovered how to make abortions safer back in the 1960s. When they talk nowadays about illegal abortions being unsafe, it's a scare tactic to manipulate women into supporting Roe vs Wade and keeping abortionists out of jail.
What are talking about? Did you even read the article?
Illegal abortions will be unsafe if women aren't sure who's properly trained to assist and who's not. And it won't be safe if there are complications and they fear going to an ER.
Women are manipulated into supporting Roe V. Wade; we fully understand its importance.
11
Said the man with no uterus. Didn't know that incels read the NYT.
4
That should have said women are NOT manipulated into supporting R v W.
No doubt about it, if the cons and MAGA types can further demonize, and make life more miserable for, the poor, they're more than happy to do that.
12
The far-right never addresses the understandable (and moral) reasons girls and women choose to abort: Poverty, lack of health insurance/access to medical care, lack of education/ living wage employment, domestic violence, rape, incest, severe fetal defects that will result in painful death of the fetus shortly after birth, serious threats to the pregnant woman's health. The only way to end abortion is to address these issues by eradicating unwanted pregnancies.
12
What will happen when abortion is banned in the United States?
There will be a political backlash against the Republican Party on a national level that will make the entire country look politically like California does now.
And the country will be a good deal better off.
15
Dear Ms. Oberman, your first mistake was to think that the anti choice crowd gives a flip about the women who will suffer except that they think women should suffer and, if one is honest, die. There are very, very few people of good faith on the anti choice side of this debate. Look at the leaders who posit things like: women who have abortions should be given the death penalty or women who get pregnant by rape should see it as a silver lining or women should be subjected to state sponsored rape by an ultrasound sound wand if they seek an abortion or if you need an abortion for a medical reason,e.g., you are carrying a dead fetus and you are dying of sepsis, you should just shut up and die! Good faith? I don’t think so. Ultimately anti choice legislators and fanatics want control of women. Really rich women will continue to have abortions as they always have and the bishops and cardinals and pastors will visit them in hospital as they always have. Poor women and middle class women will languish, die and some may even be prosecuted and made an example of.
As to thinking about the consequences, these people don’t care. Never have never will for them life begins at conception and ends at birth. Full stop. No need to think any further. As for the impact on women both short and long term....my dear who cares; they are just women!
37
Lower abortion rates? Hmmm.. We are always talking about women, women, women.... Despite the usual jargon to the contrary, I have never met a woman who "got herself pregnant". Last I checked, it tales two to tango, and to start a pregnancy... It would be fascinating to imagine a world where women finally decide they are tired of the imbalance in bearing the burden of responsibility of conceiving, and just systematically opt not to have sex. Now THAT might give some male lawmakers pause !!
14
Aristophanes Lysistrata ... though that was to stop a war,
1
We already tried banning abortion. Before Roe v. Wade, well to do women often had a "d&c" that was really an early abortion. And poor women used a variety of folk remedies and practices to abort. By some accounts, the numbers of abortion were are high as now, maybe even higher.
7
If you are against abortion then you should be for free and readily available long-term contraception starting in high school; and effective sex education/parenting courses starting in middle school. I don’t want any woman bringing a child onto this earth unless she is willing and able to properly raise and care for that child. I don’t want any child being born into a situation where he/she will be beaten, raped, neglected, starved. I would rather that child not be born than suffer that way. Nothing good can come of forcing someone to have a child they don’t want. In fact, there are so many women I wish would choose to abort rather than have the children they or their boyfriends end up tormenting, who then in turn torment their own children and/or society.
15
What happens when abortion is banned is that we will once again have illegal abortions. Like we used to, before Roe v. Wade. Most of the illegal abortions will be had by poor women, because women with means with have very convenient D&Cs, done by a medical professional. Like they used to. At age 71 I've been around for both situations. Legal is better - for everyone. But this is not and never has been about the 'unborn'. This is first and foremost about control over women's bodies and lives. This is the last gasp of old white men who've seen their power eroded over time, and who hopefully will all be dead soon, as I will be. And I hope my children's generation and the one after that will handle this subject differently. For all of their sake.
17
This has to do with money and autonomy.
The gains women have made since the advent of better forms of contraception and continue to make are very disturbing to some people. Despite the increasing automation in the developed world, some see a decline of marriage and births as an 'problem' to be solved. There is no more effective way to derail a woman's life and hobble her than to force her to have children she does not want and cannot feasibly support.
2
My question to the pro-lifers is simple. What measures and actions are you going to put in place to support women who are denied their choice and carry a child to full term? Until I see a well organised structure and system in place to support mother and child, I will always oppose this.
Since this is a lifetime commitment, church and state had better be ready with a plan. No plan and the self righteous actions are unacceptable and hypocritical.
Under the evidenced based reality which Michelle clearly explains, vilifying, incarcerating and punishing women, doctors and healthcare workers with no organised system in place is vicious. What tithed income and taxes will be put to lifetime support? How many pro lifers will volunteers their time for hours, days, weeks and years on end? How many? Not enough to cover the cost borne by the woman.
It could be mitigated by better family planning and universal and free contraception but the GOP don't like that one either. So what is the pro-lifer solution since I've not heard a tweet so far?
Of course, they could start building orphanages, get women doing the laundry, forcibly adopt the kids and bury those that die from disease and abuse. Ireland committed these crimes for decades and got away with it. Meanwhile Jesus hung his head and wept.
11
There is no need for abortion if we outlaw sex. It takes two to tango so what we need is to outlaw sex and punish both parties equally with a 2 year sentence in some corporate workhouse. Being pregnant is an admission of illegal sex.
The exception being that that married white native born evangelicals couples residing in red states who are not registered Democrats could apply for a 60 day sex license from the department of sex control for five hundred dollars plus a contribution to the GOP. The right wing does not say it but that is the result they want members of congress excepted.
11
Interesting, but I doubt this will influence many of the anti-abortionists. For them, being anti-abortion is an essential element of their identity. They do not see abortion as a difficult personal choice some people are forced to make. They see it as killing babies.
11
Christians, and those with connections will still be able to get Abortions, the poor and the women who actually need one will not.
Did the Republican party just fund an Abortion for a party follower?
5
Here's what happens when abortion is banned:
Women with means still have them performed, either secretly in the U.S. by a qualified doctor or outside of the country.
Women without means and those with means who are too afraid to tell anyone their pregnant have two options:
• Pay for a back alley abortion that might leave them infertile or dead
• Have a child that they cannot (financially or emotionally) care for.
The legal system is undeniably stacked against women. Let's consider terminating a pregnancy because of rape. How does the victim prove the rape in a matter of weeks so that she can still terminate the pregnancy? The child would be in kindergarten before there was a ruling.
7
RU-486 (medicinal abortion) manufacturers should provide the medication for free. Women will become people again (and, a bonus, anti-abortion activists' heads will spin). We women deserve that much.
10
Inflictng "misery among he poorest among us" particularly if they are non-white, is hugely popular with the Republican base. The GOP is only too willing to oblige, using cruel policies as a distraction, while they loot the Treasury, serving their rich donors with tax cuts that will impoverish future generations.
8
"People of good faith on both sides of the abortion war know that the best way to lower abortion rates is to deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place. "
Unfortunately, very few of the people in the anti-choice camp are of good faith. Most of them are in fact against "life," in their opposition to things like health care and anti-poverty programs, and their support of war and anti-immigration policies. The more cynical among them—the politicians—don't give a hoot about abortion, but have been using it as a wedge issue to gain political power for decades. Don't expect any of this to change.
7
I was stuck in traffic behind a monster SUV sporting a 'Trump Pence' sticker, that I gave serious thought to defacing by changing the 'P' to a 'D', and the 'e' to a 'u'. The license plate said 'Choose Life'. I'd just read this excellent piece, and wondered just how much 'choice' would be involved, if this driver got her way.
"In the internet age, trying to stop abortion by closing clinics is like trying to eradicate pornography by seizing magazines." Oh, this and other Trump supporters should have no trouble watching what you order on the internet, their zeal for 'life' knowing no bounds...
9
"women are abortion’s “second victims,” deserving compassion rather than punishment"
And doctors should be punished! Religions is not supposed to be logical but this just boggles the mind. If abortion is murder how is the person that pays for it and asks for it not a murderer?
How long are humans going to allow their governments to be affected by this kind of stupidity. Either a fetus is a citizen whose death is equal to that of any citizen or it is an unformed potential human, of consequence primarily to the person carrying it.
If God has put a soul in a fetus the moment of its conception than I'm all for protecting it, but could you please provide me with convincing proof. Otherwise you are just trying to force your religious beliefs on other people.
18
Since women want control of their bodies, why don't they take responsibility for being pregnant and do something about it right away? There should be zero need for abortions in the second trimester. Zero.
I agree, abortion facilities should be readily accessible with appointments available in a reasonable time after a woman and her doctor decide to request one.
But instead we have whole states with one or two clinics to speak of, with multiple visits required with days long waits in between. No it’s not reasonable to expect every woman to figure out she’s pregnant (confirmed 6 weeks in) and manage the expense and logistics of traveling in the remaining six weeks. And that doesn’t even allow time waiting for the appointment.
13
Jim,there are medical emergencies that occur after the first trimester, that will kill both the mother and the child, without an abortion.
There are also gross birth defects that guarantee the fetus cannot become a living child. Forcing a pregnant woman to carry further is cruel, and may be dangerous.
15
Women do not spontaneously become pregnant. A man is involved, and men can take responsibility for ending unwanted pregnancies too. Wear condoms; get vasectomies.
6
Professor Oberman-- This is the most cogent, illuminating discussion of this issue I have seen since I was in law school. Thank you!
17
"...the best way to lower abortion rates is to deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place. "
I so wish all the people involved in legislating this issue would get this. In a way, it's like dealing with illegal drugs - unless you deal with why people want or need something, you will always have a problem. As long as there is a demand, someone will supply it; making it illegal just means the supplier can make a bigger profit (and the people who need it are just put at greater and greater risk).
16
When I had a miscarriage, some people thought I'd had an abortion. When my pregnancy started going wrong, discussions of babies, pregnancy, names, showers, etc, etc started to make me miserable. I told people I was close to what was going on, but I didn't discuss every ominous symptom with my coworkers and acquaintances, some of whom noticed that I was not happy about my pregnancy. It took 2 weeks from the first unexplained spotting to the end of my pregnancy.
I later heard that some of my coworkers concluded I'd had an abortion. Perhaps it was a logical conclusion to draw from what they saw -- woman unhappily pregnant, suddenly not pregnant. If abortion had been illegal, would someone have reported their suspicions? Would I have had to cap that miserable miscarriage with trying to find proof that it wasn't an abortion?
43
First of all, abortion opponents do not truly oppose abortion on a universal level. Wealthy people will always have access to abortion. Opponents don't care. Evangelicals want only to cover the tracks. Many evangelical men provoke their mistresses into having abortions. It's really a form of class bullying, rich religious conservatives who wish to make life miserable for their political enemies.
10
Great article, Ms. Oberman. We need more research like yours -- it's a sadly under-research and under-funded field.
Would love to also see something comprehensively describing the situation in Africa, where education/awareness of misoprostol and medication access is very different and women continue to die of botched abortions in unsanitary and unsafe circumstances. I suspect conclusion would be similar, as you can always travel or find safe clinics that will provide an abortion if you have money in most countries on the continent, and it's always the poorest that suffer.
4
Great article, Ms. Oberman. You could expand it to include the Trump's administration's attempt to ban contraceptives and to restrict sex education to abstinence. Contradictory policies don't seem to bother them.
JD
22
They are not contradictory. The main points of forced birth ("pro-life") are the same as banning contraceptives/restricting sex ed: forcing the poor (especially poor women) to suffer, and increasing the number of serfs who will serve the rich, fight their wars, and (because of necessarily poor education) fall for their propaganda and vote to keep them in power.
4
"Criminalizing abortion will merely create new ways in which the state can intensify the misery of the poorest among us." Which is exactly what Trump and the Republicans want. They want the rich to be richer and the poor to be more miserable. They consistently favor increasing the government's power to throw more poor people into jail. Abortion laws, immigration laws, taxing the poor more heavily than the rich, voter suppression, you name it: it's all of a piece, and it's all about keeping the poor down.
26
"People of good faith on both sides of the abortion war know that the best way to lower abortion rates is to deal with what causes women to want to abort in the first place" That is the crux of the problem, the pro life people largely are also anti sex, they see the threat of a pregnancy as a 'deterrent' to women having sex outside marriage, that having abortion means not having 'consequences for their sinful behavior'. If they did, pro life people (and some do, mind you) would be pushing for comprehensive sex ed and easy access to birth control, but instead they promote "abstinence only". Making abortion illegal is part of a larger strategy of religious conservatives trying to turn the clock back to a (mythical) age that never existed.
I predict that if abortion is allowed to be illegal, it will stage even bigger battles, something other countries haven't faced because they don't have our system. Iowa might ban abortion, but what is to stop a woman from going to New Jersey for it? Congress could theoretically step in and require NJ and other states to only perform abortions on their citizens, but that would be challenged, and it could lead to even worse fighting if a woman got an abortion drug from NJ..and I am sure the GOP will have the post office checking for these drugs going to states where it is illegal, gonna be ugly.
6
When abortion is banned poor people suffer. The wealthy and upper middle class simply go on with their lives. Women at all economic levels need access to safe abortion procedures. They deserve the right to control their bodies. If abortion is made illegal, only poor women will be banned from safe abortions. It is that simple.
14
Banning abortions is a cruel way for men to assert control, if not justifying outright misogyny, blaming women for an unwanted pregnancy...when we men have usually been so eager to participate in the process. Let women make the decision, as they are the one's that get pregnant. The right thing to do is keep abortion legal, safe, affordable, available and, hopefully, rare. This, while promoting preventive measure we all can live with. We are sexual beings; suggesting that women ought to abstain instead of participating in the joy of sexual activity is stupid if not cruel, hypocritical and nonsensical.
18
Let's also admit that if we overturn Roe, every woman with means can travel to Canada, Mexico, and Europe for surgical abortions. And given the prevalence of heroin and meth in every town in America, policing abortion pills is impossible.
5
Banning Abortion will not end abortion. We will simply go back in time to the way it was before Roe v. Wade. Desperate women will seek an abortion whether legal or illegal. Years ago some totally untrained people performed abortions. Some women wound up with infections; some women died.
Women with enough money could always find a doctor in the U.S. or could find one in another country to perform an abortion.
7
If abortion is banned we would not go back to pre Roe. Due to the availability of miso every miscarriage would have to be investigated. Perhaps neighbors with a grudge would report a woman to the police. Women who were not even pregnant might be 'reported' and forced to defend themselves.
All of this is happening because of the disease called religion. As the late Carl Sagan said, there is no such thing in nature as a "right to life." Religion places humans outside of, and superior to, nature without a shred of evidence. If we had half the compassion for animals that we do for human embryos, this would be a radically different planet, and a better one.
22
Getting rid of legal abortions and punishing those
that get illegal ones by pill or coat hanger is just
the elite putting as many nails as possible on the
coffins of poor women. Poor white men who
helped cause unwanted pregnancies somehow skate
free again. I am past the reproductive age, but of
course I expect some similar punishment for being
a not rich old woman coming my way from the
conservatives. If you are poor or middleclass, and female
or black or brown, this land is not our land, it has been
made only for those who are wealthy, well white wealthy
men first and the black wealthy are kinda safe, as long
as they follow the white rules. But for the rest of us
it does not look good.
15
Vote as if your life depends upon it! Vote in every election for which you are eligible!
Making abortion illegal does not stop women from having them. It just means more of them will die. Can our politicians accept an increased death rate? Would they want their daughters to be unable to have safe abortions if their embryos were malformed, or their condom broke? The extremists must be asked these questions. Make the issue personal to them.
Also, the term 'pro-life' should only be applied to people who care about babies after they are born as well. Extreme abortion opponents, who want to rule every woman's womb, should not be called 'pro-life' but merely 'pro-embryo' if they also are in favor of hurting access to health care, food stamps and other family services.
News Flash: Abortion has been around for thousands of years- the ancient Romans practiced it. It is never going away, no matter what anyone wants. Let's make it safe for all women.
21
Facts are irrelevant in the United States. At least in today's flawed and divided U.S. Which is a tragedy, because the people who oppose abortion have the tools in their hands to stop most abortions, assuming the author is correct, and she IS correct. And the root cause of most abortions is economics. The circumstances driving abortion have been shown time and time again to be economics - e.g. poverty.
But the reason why it is not accepted by the so-called "pro-life" movement, and I use the term in quotation marks because they are decidedly NOT pro-life, is because we live in a nation of growing poverty. And the same people who want to eliminate abortions also want to eliminate taxes. And you can't have both poverty and low abortion rates. What they call it is "personal responsibility" - the poor are responsible for being poor, and they are responsible for the problems that go along with being poor. So they should just stop being poor, and the problems of poverty will go away too.
This is what sickens me about the anti-abortion movement. Normal people would understand that to solve a problem, you begin by attacking the root cause. In other words, taking a logical approach based on facts. But the anti-abortion faction isn't driven by facts. They are driven by misguided ideology. 'Save the poor little unborn children.' But once they are here, just shove them in a corner and starve them to death - slowly.
I do not favor abortion. I favor life. For all.
19
They know this already. The question of abortion has long since moved out of the real world of logical debate, evidence, and verdicts. Now it's about emotions: visceral pride, fear, parochialism, and power. Repealing Roe would be illogical, useless and politically catastrophic for the people who insist they want to protect the unborn; but then we've seen people who think like this trample reason before in pursuit of rageful vindictiveness. The same blind animus fired on Fort Sumter in defense of an indefensible position. The same mania for control prohibited liquor, denied women the vote, denied dignity to minorities. Our whole history as a nation is this periodic maniacal war between reason and fury. The real losers here will be the Republicans who would rather go down in vanity instead of changing their minds in favor of realism. Let's hope they actually try this. It will kill the GOP.
5
What happens when abortion is banned.
There are the same total number of abortions.
There are less safe abortions but more back alley coat hanger butcher jobs where the expectant mother hemorages to death.
The sum is the same.
I am old enough to remember the pre Roe days where these types of deaths occurred all too often.
Do we want to go back to those days.
12
In this case, "right to life" is a thinly veiled euphemism for "right to control".
And no matter how much someone believes it to be true, an acorn is not an oak tree.
My biggest problem with the GOP "right to life" crowd, is their moral inconsistency. I didn't hear a peep out of these people when Bush created a war out of thin air that directly resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 innocent children.
75
Over 59 million American children while in their mothers' wombs have been directly and deliberately killed by abortionists since Roe v. Wade.
The killing must stop.
Each one of these tiny victims was a human being--nether an acorn nor an oak tree--a distinct human being.
Science can identify that each human being targeted for extermination is a daughter or a son, the child of a mother whose relationship to her child can be established scientifically and accurately as the mother of this child, and a father who can also be verified through scientific testing as the father of this child.
To argue anything else is just opinionated anti-scientific nonsense.
In my experience, the people (and they are both men and women) who want an absolute ban on abortion also
1. Openly despise women and girls who become pregnant out of wedlock
2. Do not want teenagers to know about birth control
3. Are opposed to Medicaid in general, especially as it provides prenatal and obstetrical care
4. Are opposed to public assistance, SNAP, and WIC for single mothers "because they just pop out one baby after another"
5. Are opposed to subsidized day care
6. Tout adoption but don't want to adopt the children who are hard to place, so that some children spend their whole lives in foster care, being moved from one "home" to another and kicked out of the program when they turn 18
7. Want the pregnant woman or girl to marry the father of the child, even if he is terrible husband material, for whatever reason
8. Think poor women should support themselves with full-time jobs (but see #5) and that middle-class and upper-class women should stay home at least until their youngest child is in school
Look, I have a deep sense of unease about abortion, but if you want to reduce the number, you have to make life easier for women with unwanted pregnancies. The countries that provide sex education, birth control, universal health care, generous parental leave, low-cost day care, and monthly child rearing allowances have lower rates of both single motherhood and abortion than the U.S. does.
90
I am old enough to remember reading about women who were well off taking trips out of the country for abortions, while the poor went to the back alley. I wonder how many women would support these highly restrictive laws if they thought their daughters might go jail for ending a pregnancy? Even now, what legal basis exists for prosecuting a doctor and not the woman? Isn't this like prosecuting the getaway driver and not the bank robber? It is all about political power and single issue voters.
9
With the advent of science - yes, *that* science - and technology, opinions are changing. It hardly looks like it did 45 years ago, when it was impossible, for example, to perform surgery to save the life of the unborn. To those who believe strongly in a woman's right to an abortion, I would suggest some deep soul-searching and a recognition that a different (more modern?) approach is necessary. They cannot simply claim it's "settled" and shut down debate. They are, literally, fighting the advent of science. Not a winning strategy.
3
There is no cure for unwanted pregnancy except abortion.
There is also no surgical treatment for severe hydrocephaly, anencephaly, sirenomelia, trisomy 21, or Tay-Sachs among many horrific birth defects and genetic disorders incompatible with life. I suggest you need to do some deep soul-searching on why you think it is ever appropriate or acceptable to force someone to be pregnant against her will.
16
Well, it should be settled. At least within the United States where there is a Supreme Court case giving women the right to choose. I would suggest some deep soul searching to you. Search your soul for compassion and empathy for the women who choose to abort. They are living, breathing human beings with opinions and the ability to make decisions about their bodies on their own behalves. You would do well to inform yourself as to their stories and experiences, rather than those of an unborn fetus.
3
I don't see your point...how do advances in surgical techniques fix the issue that many women have to seek abortions because they cannot afford to raise a child? Do you think that people get abortions for the fun of it? No, they get them because they think it is the least horrible option out of a selection of horrible options. The anti-abortion side is free to debate whenever they'd like; but instead they focus on pushing bans and throwing eggs/red paint. They'd be well-advised to try to address the underlying problems that cause women to seek out abortions instead of just shaming them and calling them murderers. Or, to put it another way, they could try to show compassion for people outside of a uterus.
5
The alarm bells are ringing ever louder. This essay portrays the dystopia that is surely coming. The banner story in The Guardian today is "Trump is appointing judges far faster than Obama did – and the white, male-dominated crop could be his most lasting legacy". I would clarify that synopsis: the differential velocities of judicial appointments are attributable not to Trump or Obama, but to the differential eagerness of the majority party in Congress to process appointments. The same cabal that delayed those appointments under Obama is now greasing the skids.
Is anyone really surprised by any of this? As even Obama was fond of saying, "elections have consequences". The time-worn proverb warns us: "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".
Sorry, it's too late for prevention. The die is cast for the reproductive lifetime of anyone over 20, and maybe longer. So long as Americans remain immune to learning from the electoral mistakes of the past, and alas they are, future mistakes are guaranteed. All of the battles that were fought decades ago will now have to be re-fought, again and again. Welcome to the world of Sisyphean futility.
The progressive nonvoters who allowed this to happen are hiding in ignominious anonymity, where they will remain, safe in the knowledge that no one will ever know: "Whew, dodged that blame!"
American women will soon have to travel to Canada, as Irish women had to travel to the UK before they won their recent electoral victory.
34
I propose a solution to the argument that never ends:
Tens of millions of pro-choice voters should switch to the Republican Party. We can effect profound change from the inside, not only with reproductive freedom but also social safety nets and the environment. As Republicans-- with the gerrymandered districts in our favor-- our votes will count once again.
We can't change the people but we CAN change the party.
13
I suggest a different progressive approach to fertility.
Every child should be planned and wanted.
We support sex education because young women need knowledge and cultural support to plan pregnancies when their life is prepared to love and care for a child.
We support providing all women access to birth control because every child should be wanted.
We support meeting the needs of poor women so they can welcome and care for their children.
Abortion is not the goal. In fact reducing abortion is desired.
The fact that abortion pills will still be available for early pregnancy allows us to move to a more nuanced stance. We need to be concerned for the health of our children. Mother's who plan stop drinking alcohol if they might be pregnant. They take vitamins before pregnancy. These are issues that can cross political divides.
21
This well-researched, informative article, a virtual plea for common sense, compassion and compromise on this controversial issue, will probably have no impact on Republican lawmakers intent on riding this issue to electoral victory while self-righteously posturing as moral crusaders. That strategy has worked so well for them during past elections that they have little incentive to stop repeating the same old talking points.
23
In my opinion, the ability to evade anti abortion laws is the reason such laws remain on the books. Americans of middling income in red states support restrictions in their states with the knowledge that they (or their spouses or daughters or friends) can obtain an abortion in New York if it comes to that. Same situation with Ireland and the Irish ability to fly to London.
If anti abortion laws restricted the practical ability of people of means to get abortions they’d be lifted in a minute. They are meant to fall on the poor and resourceless only.
49
If those people who march around waiving “pro-life”banners also supported publicly funded healthcare for all Americans, I would begin to believe that they were truly pro life.
81
Considering the problems plaguing this country, and who is in the White House, again the "wedge issue" of abortion floats to the top: Pro-life vs Pro-choice.
This is like a broken record, that keeps playing over and over. And, an issue, that works very well between Democrats and republicans.
Never the mind, that we have school shootings, cop killings, urban murders, various forms of discrimination, racism, elitism, redistribution of wealth, out of control health care costs, scandal at various levels of government, daily revelations of another sex scandal, a crumbling infrastructure, cutting social programs, giving tax cuts to where they were not needed, a way out of touch, inept, incompetent as president of the United States., etc.
But, yep, here we are debating the tried and true abortion issue for the umpteeth time, as it is the only issue that is the most important. And, trap is going to snare Democrats and keep the GOP in power. Hey thsi has worked well, since 1973, right about the same time the decline of the middle class, and wage disparity, begun. A gift that keeps on giving to the GOP.
14
Thank you for mansplaining all this.
14
Well Carol, you just made my point; including your rudeness and your outright hared of men.
It is the perfect wedge issue; 45 years and counting.
When people finally realize that both parties have been duping people for nearly 50 years, and that the politicians continue to be successful with using abortion as a wedge issue, then maybe we will not get people, like Trump, in the White House.
As I mention, since 1973, the politicians have done a great job dividing the country, on this issue, and many more.
By the way, my view on abortion is; it is none of my business, it is the business of the person and their own conscience
1
If you were a woman you might recognize this issues is just as valid and important as the other issues you mentioned. Some women DIE because they don't have access to abortion.
(In fact, you don't even have to be a woman to get it; many men understand why this is such an important issue.)
7
For the gazillionth time, a law banning abortions will not end abortions. Ever. It will only make abortions less safe and more expensive, particularly for poor women.
146
Mifepristone may render anti-abortion laws moot for women who want to terminate early in a pregnancy. And HIPPA will protect doctors and their patients (for now).
Unfortunately, women who need abortions late in a pregnancy will be shut out. These women, whose lives may be at risk, or whose fetuses are profoundly damaged, will have to travel to other states or even countries to obtain a medical procedure they desperately need.
The old saying that abortion should be safe, legal and rare will be replaced with safe, illegal and common. Except for these women.
41
Are we to believe that pregnancies are caused by the pregnant females themselves?
I am waiting for the charges to be brought by females and their lawyers.
We need an actual law on the books that states firmly that no female may be assaulted by any person without her witnessed consent.
I can't believe the conversation could come to something like THAT!
14
It may be time to face the reality that the battle for reproductive justice as we know it in USA is unsustainable. Unless there can be major systematic restructuring to the movement and a hyperbolically renewed grassroots energy, this op ed will be our very near future. We need to know-Why does the reproductive justice movement, including Planned Parenthood, always seem to be able to achieve little in the political arena other than living to fight another day?
18
Living to fight another day is all that is needed. Giving up because things aren't perfect and we can't convince everyone is the path to defeat.
5
I'll tell you why. I'm old and have seen a lot. It's mostly coming from the churches, or at least their influence. It permeates American culture. So much for the First Amendment.
9
Counter thought, with control of both houses, judicial and a puppet pres. don't the god botherers abolish Roe v Wade? Why don't they end stem cell research?
Because the issue isn't about little baby's, they couldn't care less about, or want. It is a cudgel to beat opponents over the head with and whip their base into a frenzy as needed per election or distraction. Its about power and keeping 1/2 of our society under thumb.
3
Amen Michelle -- today"s trends in conservative state-legislated abortion restrictions are sending US women at all levels of society down a dark path without any long term understanding of, or regard for the consequences of these restrictions. Your research is thought provoking and represents a line of debate in which we must engage at a national level. Among other consequences we also must agree that these restrictions will fall squarely on the shoulders of the poor, from whom these states are incrementally removing other safety nets.
37
Perhaps an effective strategy to help anti-choice activists understand the unforseen consequences of their rigid thinking would be to point out that if they succeed in making abortion illegal, they should be prepared for a tax hike to support the increase in the need for mothers of infants to receive food stamps, Medicaid and Welfare. An additional tax could be added onto their tax return after identifying their anti-choice perspective, similar to the fee that used to be imposed for refusing to purchase health insurance.
52
The same people who want to force women to have children also want to end all support for them. They oppose food stamps, Medicaid, and Welfare, not to mention maternity leave and childcare for single working mothers. They don't actually care about the welfare of the child, they just want to make sure that the women have no choice.
19
Antichoice believers are driven by their belief in their moral ethical superiority on this issue as directed from their higher power, whomever he may be.
There is no intellectual context in which various viewpoints or perspectives can be discussed, debated or resolved.
My wish is we both, pro and anti choice believers, could just agree that neither side is going to win this argument completely, convincingly or in a manner which will allow the debate to end. Therefore, let's declare a truce on trying to eliminate the other side, and stop trying to push the line of legality either direction.
Alas, this is not likely.
Come on people...neither end game will be achieved, so how can we stop the war?
PS - I know -as long as we can raise funds and rally votes, we'll continue the war.
11
Thing is - we started at the compromise.
If you look at Roe v Wade - you see a compromise. It's a good decision. Roughly - first trimester, the woman's rights are key - abortion for any reason. Second trimester, limits may be placed requiring a reason. Third trimester - only for severe issues - risk of death of the fetus or mother.
If the anti-abortion crowd were open to compromise - they already had it at the start. And it's still the law of the land.
11
No, we are driven by the belief that a fetus is a person. Try re-reading the article replacing "abortion" with "eliminate 1-year-old child" and see how thin and silly the arguments sound. Instead of stopping the war, let's stop the mass murder.
Bart, your "belief" that a fetus is a person is just that, a belief. It's not supported by science or fact. In Roe v. Wade abortion is legal until viability. I'd like to hear you explain how a fetus that cannot possibly exist outside a woman's womb can be a person. It has only the *potential* (with no guarantees) to be a person.The fact is that until an entity can exist outside of the womb, it is not scientifically or legally a person.
Yet, you want to legislate based on your beliefs and despite the fact that others may not share your beliefs, and that science does not support your beliefs. That's called authoritarianism.
Try to imagine a woman pregnant with a one year old child and see how silly that sounds.
1
Why can't we have a vote, like Ireland, on whether or not to make abortion legal? Is there a reason why we, the people, can't vote on it. Let the people, not the politicians, decide.
31
As far as a national vote there is a little thorny thing called the US Constitution that declares that Congress shall make all (national) laws. It is extremely difficult to amend, c.f. the Electoral College.
4
YES! That is true democracy. Have the people vote for an issue. Brilliant idea.
1
I believe our system is set up so that this sort of move would have to come from the legislators in congress. It's time to show them what their constituents want. And there's more of us than there are millionaires. Let them know it's a useless act to continue this abortion debate. The churches have joined with the money lords, and this violates our first amendment. They're playing us, using this essential part of womens' lives.
3
Thank you for this article, I had been wondering about the role of abortion drugs if abortion was made illegal.
I still suggest that women of childbearing age move to blue states where their rights will be protected.
20
Outstanding piece on a delicate topic that is poorly thought through (or not at all) in our current society, creating havoc. If only enlightened, evidence-based reasoning ruled our government!... But we are instead regressing under our fearless (if ferocious) leader.
4
I'd like to make two disparate comments about this piece and the other comments.
1. As usual, a lot of women have written in to complain that the essential issue is the insistence of the "patriarchy" on oppressing women and punishing and controlling their sexuality. You need to hear from men that many of us agree with you 100%.
2. The gun-nut lobby often argues that the latest mass shooting would not have been prevented by whatever gun-control legislation is lately being proposed. They don't seem to realize that they are making a very general argument that no law can prevent all the crimes it addresses; the obvious conclusion is that nothing should be illegal - not murder, not jaywalking...and not abortion. Thanks for helping, conservatives!
49
If you pay attention to those countries where abortion is most likely to be illegal, the one thing they all have in common is that they are known to have populations/societies where religion (i.e., Catholicism) plays a key role. Religion has NO place in dictating/influencing local governments in how to 'police' their own citizens, many of whom may in fact NOT be religious or adhere to the sexist rules of any religions practiced by others among them.
As far as the US goes, the Constitution clearly talks about the separation of church and state, so how is it that we are enabling the church to dictate to government??!!
120
The fight against abortion is merely a wedge issue by the Republicans. It is not about morality. They have shown they have none.
102
For 60 of my 75 years on this planet, first as an observer, then as a sexually active female before moving on into motherhood, and finally being an RN who dedicated 32 years to women's health...and happiness, I still can not believe that here in the USA, as well as around the world, this remains an issue for my granddaughters. Maybe ( and that is, sadly, a huge maybe) by the time my 3 year old twin great granddaughters enter into their teens....a compassionate world for all women will have emerged.
101
As an RN in Seattle in 1969, I worked in the OR, where we frequently had to clean up after back alley abortions. These terribly sick women, often septic by the time they got to us, we're so desperate to not have another child, they risked their lives to go to an abortionist. What surprised me was that most of these woman were married, already had several children, and were taken to the abortion and brought to our hospital by their husbands. Illegal abortions are what happens when legal abortions are banned.
304
Tragic indeed, Nurse Susan. Equally tragic and horrific is the mess that needs to be cleaned up after the abortion.
Actually, there's an altermative to this tragic mess: Deliver the baby full term. It's a more sensible choice, as one is harmed. Our role is to provide more help to all pregnant mothers before, during and after their pregnancy as needed. Illegal abortions don't have to be what happens if abortions are banned. Choose life.
I saw the same thing when I was a medical student at the old Cook County hospital in Chicago. Every Saturday morning we would arrive to find at least 10 women on gurneys waiting for care after their 'back alley' abortion attempts. These were poor women who were in desparate conditions. It is my hope that we never return to those days but Iowa and Arkansas seem to have headed that way.
As someone who is involved in reproductive healthcare and stays current on the politics of the forced birth movement, I find it questionable to say that there are "[P]eople of good faith on both sides of the abortion" debate. Those that murder and injure abortion providers and staff workers, sabotage clinics, and fight persistently to restrict and outlaw reproductive health are not good people, period. And while you're correct that they know "that the best way to lower abortion rates" is birth control, they however fight to outlaw this as well.
A majority of these folks are irrational, rigid, controlling misogynists - some are murderers and criminals - not people of good faith.
220
The only good faith people on the other side are those who say "Being opposed to abortion, I would never have an abortion myself, but I respect other women's right to make that decision for themselves, too"
35
Except if you agree to a woman's right to choice, whether you would ever personally have an abortion yourself, then you are not "on the other side."
I really struggle with this, but can someone make a persuasive non-religious argument when a fetus becomes a human being? Prior to that abortion while not desired is a personal choice after I am not sure.
6
I remain pro-choice, but the science is clear on the question of when the fetus becomes a human being. A fetus is a human being in its earliest stages of development.
I think the answer you might be seeking is when does a fetus become "a person." I don't know the answer to this, because we can't determine yet when this developing human being develops consciousness. Obviously babies are born with consciousness, so this momentous change takes place before birth. Very young children often report memories of being in the womb, or provide startling details about their birth, so awareness and even memory almost certainly develop prior to birth, but we have no way to gauge yet when this happens.
3
How about when it becomes a life worth saving -- that is, worthy of a medical intervention to sustain it? How early do medical procedures now occur in utero? The problem is considering it a "life" only when the mother wants it. When she doesn't, it becomes a blob of cells (some refer to it as a "parasite"). That's not a very persuasive argument either.
2
From the moment of conception, the fertilized ovum is a human being--not a person, not a baby--but a human life. This is not a political point; it is a biological fact. It also does not alter the pragmatic fact that abortion restrictions cause more harm than good, and the burden falls almost entirely on poor women.
5
Criminalizing the poorest and most marginalized women seeking abortions is exactly what the pro-forced birth crowd wants. They have fetishized birth as a means of strengthening the patriarchy, a system which is obviously misogynistic but also operates in tandem with white supremacy to uphold racism. Since a large portion of poor/marginalized women identify as women of color, the pro-forced birthers get to slake their hate twice: by punishing women for their bodies and also for their skin color.
And they do this under such a well-crafted guise for their twisted fundamentalist ideology that dupes even moderate or progressive women (like those claiming to be anti-abortion and still feminist. Nope, girl. Never the two shall meet). I'm in my 30s--I've lived my entire life thus far knowing that Roe exists to protect women's lives, but I am amazed at the sheer number of women who don't know what life was like pre-Roe. Last year was the first time I heard a woman openly discuss helping her friend recover from a back alley abortion. The pain and terror--and the anger that followed--that she described was so palpable, it cut me to my core. If we have any humanity at all, how can we return to a time that treated women like that? It's enraging.
88
As an eight-year-old I became aware of the news stories about women dying gruesome and lonely deaths from back alley abortions. It was one after another.
I wondered what was wrong with people in our government who maintained laws that created such desperation and risk for half of the population. I also could not understand why the desperate need to terminate an unwanted pregnancy was ANYONE else's business.
5
It is enraging to think that people in this country think that making abortion illegal in this country will stop it. It is also enraging that anti vaccine activists espouse false beliefs about vaccines. It is also enraging to think that rolling back environmental protections will not create problems with the air we breathe and the water we drink.
It is not enough to know women have done died horrific deaths. Or we have history of polio epidemic which killed people daily. Or we had Three Mile Island or Love Canal.
Unfortunately, it has come to the point in this country that people need history repeat itself in a catastrophic way, right before their eyes, in order to believe the truth.
5
That is actually false. By a very wide margin, most poor women are WHITE. Most poor people are WHITE. Most people on welfare are WHITE. Most unwed mothers are WHITE. Most illegitimate children are WHITE.
Also as this article made bluntly clear....nobody will ever have a back alley abortion again, not even in the third world, because of RU-486.
1
I suspect the Republicans already know it and that why they never fulfilled their promise of total abortion ban and risk losing a major issue to excite their base during elections.
22
"criminalizing abortion will merely create new ways the state can intensify the misery of the poorest among us." If Professor Oberman hasn't noticed that has never been a stumbling block for Republican office holders. When they refused to take advantage of the money provided by the federal government to expand their medicaid roles under Obamacare, that misery was what they were counting on. In the 45 years since Roe v. Wade legalized abortions there have been opportunities, when the Legislative branches and the Executive branch housed Republicans, when the laws could have been changed but nothing ever comes of it. During the Bush years, they passed a cynical piece of legislation (banning all abortions even if the life of the mother was at stake) that they knew would never pass muster in the Judicial branch. The Republicans feign interest in this topic but they know it would be political suicide. So they string the gullible along so they can keep a hold of those one issue voters and then use their power, when in office, to pass tax cuts for rich people which is the only issue they have ever really cared about.
68
As another commenter notes, this issue is not about abortion or abortion rights (which are two separate issues that, unfortunately, are frequently conflated), this issue is about Republicans gaining votes. In the 1970s, the Republicans decided amongst a list of potential topics which might be played to the public to win votes. Abortion rights, which could be reduced simply to “Abortion” (no one is “for” abortion (“for” preventing pregnancy, yes, and “for” the right to have an abortion if preventing pregnancy fails)) was deemed a winner. It was a product Republicans could brand and market, that is all. It was also cheap, because they could beat the drum against Abortion (as a procedure, rather than a right) so loudly that they could drown out questions like “what about funding for prenatal care, child care, preschool, jobs for single moms” etc etc. One of the key problems with this issue is that those who are battling on either are not even talking about the same issue. One has been targeted with a very successful marketing campaign which engenders unquestioning emotional support and the other which itself does not seem to understand that this has been Republican vote-getting scheme from its inception and also seem to get themselves into the position of being “for Abortion” rather than always using the term “Abortion Rights” which is what they actually mean. (Journalists conflate these two all the time as well). Words matter.
40
I do not use the word "abortion," which implies stopping or truncation of a process. I use "tissue removal," which is really what it is for the overwhelming number of women who seek to have something removed. It is not truncation unless one thinks of the tissue as something separate from the mother, which is the position of misogynist religious groups. The tissue is part of the woman. It is completely her choice as to whether she wishes to keep it or not.
3
Absolutely correct! Trump used to be pro-choice after all.
1
It's abortion of pregnancy. Pregnancy is a process. (Just like how the term "spontaneous abortion" is the technical term for miscarriage.) Abortion is the proper term, but the anti's have popularized the phrases "abortion of the fetus" or "abort the baby" and so on so that abort becomes synonymous with "kill." The focus remains on the fetus that way, and not on the meat sack that surrounds the Precious Baby (sic)(er.. woman) who is required to gestate said Precious Baby (sic).
This article is clarifying for sure.
Meanwhile, as Republicans control every facet of state and federal government, what have they done about Roe vs. Wade? Nothing. They need it hanging out there every 2 and 4 years during election season. They will probably do the same with the ACA pretty soon.
20
Intensifying the misery of the poorest among us seems to be a goal of Trump and the Republican party in 2018. #VoteThemAllOut
140
Why do we still call anti-abortion folks right to lifers? A more accurate description would be “right to birth” because most right to lifers don’t seem to care what happens to babies after they’re born!
109
Too true! But I would add that they don't even care about them before they are born either. Consider they do not support either food stamps or Medicaid for pregnant women let alone Planned Parenthood. Both would help ensure a healthy baby, but as long as the woman's choice is removed they just don't care what happens to the baby.
13
Anti-abortion is not the “right” to anything. It’s oppression.
4
Anti-abortionists are pro-forced pregnancy.
1
"The risk of being accused of a crime injects fear and distrust into the doctor-patient relationship, leading some women to postpone or forgo necessary care."
That is the goal state of American conservatives, so if this article predicts it will happen then we can conclude that conservatives are honest people earnestly working toward goals which come from their true heartfelt values.
Bad goals. Bad values.
22
I have thought for a long time that the landscape would look different this time around if abortion was outlawed. The proliferation of abortion drugs is one factor, because enterprising women will find these drugs and create their own private abortion. Another factor is the ability of women of education and means to fly to other jurisdictions to obtain surgical abortions.
However, a third factor is the dramatic difference in public attitudes toward out-of-wedlock childbearing. That is, many women prior to Roe v Wade desperately sought out dangerous back-alley abortions because of the crushing social disapproval heaped on women who became pregnant without marriage. That powerful social disapproval has largely dissipated. The result will be that women who don't have the education or funds to figure out how to get a safe abortion, will simply give up and bring unwanted babies into the world. It's happening already. No doubt the anti-choice activists will see this outcome as their great victory. But take a close look at the lives of these mothers and children over the next decades and you might conclude it was not a victory for them.
47
Orthodox Christianity, Islam, and Judaism abhor recreational sex. The sole justification for sex within those ideologies is procreation. So anything that interferes with that, or that facilitates recreational sex, is an anathema.
Consequences include bans on abortion and birth control (you can't convince me that a church that supported crusades and inquisitions cares about 'life'), persecution of homosexuality, female genital mutilation, and stoning and burning of fornicators.
If we weren't sexual beings, none of that would be necessary. But we are, and religious institutions profit by denying us our nature.
45
This is not true and it’d be nice if people learned something about comparative religion before blithely making such sweeping generalizations. Christianity is the only religion that sees sex as inherently sinful. Rabbinical Judaism believes it is a religious duty of a husband to satisfy his wife sexually regardless of the possibility of conception. Islam sees marital sex as a positive good. Both religions allow abortion before the “quickening”, in whatever way it is defined. The fact that both Orthodox Jewish and Muslim communities are misogynistic has little to do with their theology. Theological misogyny is reserved for Catholic and Calvinist churches.
1
Would someone please explain to this outsider why the US is so hung up on abortion. Is it because it is a country where many still cling to the outmoded prop of religion, or is there some other explanation? Enlightenment would be appreciated.
31
For the most part religion. There are some men who think embryos should have protections too, even without religion but they are far more of a minority than the right-wing religious.
There are plenty of good religious folks too, who support women's rights.
6
Current abortion law is anti-democratic. For 45 years the Supreme Court has forbidden the electorate to vote on abortion law. Their success at doing this has emboldened the court to issue other anti-democratic rulings, such as Citizen United, which makes it easy for the wealthy to bribe government officials. Ironically, the very people who cheered Roe vs Wade were outraged at Citizens United, even though one led to the other. We need to return the US to a system where laws are taken seriously and are not routinely voided by unelected judges.
Enlightened now?
1
A partial explanation is that our country is governed by men, for the most part, who are biologically and emotionally incapable of understanding the plight of a woman who does not want a pregnancy. If our elected leaders were predominantly women, we would not be having this conversation again.
6
The facts are that Roe v. Wade opened the floodgates on the abortion issue and no laws any where in the world will stop it now for 3 reasons : medications, televised medicine, and the internet. The battle over abortion clinics is becoming as outdated as fighting the Castros in Cuba. Rich or poor, if a woman wants an abortion there will be a physician who will prescribe the proper meds even if she finds him online or over a TV screen at a clinic. What are neoconservative politicians going to do ? Ban computers and TVs at every emergency room and health clinic in the United States ?! Ireland's vote last week to legalize abortion should be a sign to the rest of the world - artificial laws to deny reproductive healthcare to women will NOT work long term regardless of the false moral beliefs of politicians most of whom who do not argue when his wife/girlfriend/daughter/sister/friend need an abortion.
28
There are so many ways in which laws and their enforcement seem bent on "intensifying the misery of the poorest among us."
Making abortions more difficult--or even impossible--to obtain is just one of the more recent assaults on the poor.
40
"This year, it is estimated that 365,000 women will die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. A great many of these deaths are preventable. For every woman who dies, 20 others suffer injury, infection or disability."
https://www.policymed.com/2012/05/merck-for-mothers-initiative-to-end-ma...
If a woman dies, or is crippled in childbirth, perhaps society should considering prosecuting their newborns, and the men that impregnate these women to death?
49
our legal system is different. we have womens groups who will go after anyone who tries to jail a woman for having a miscarriage. if they seize her computer and find a link to an abortion pill they would still have to prove she took it. talk about invasion. talk about government controlling our lives. if a woman goes to jail or prison for having a miscarriage or abortion i hope the court sees fit to charge her partner as a co conspirator. i think that would break the back of this whole scheme against women. its not always the woman alone who doesnt feel ready to start a family. these anti choice people act as though having a child is what good women do. and its only bad women who should be punished because they chose not to. who is leading the fight to separate babies and young children from their mothers right now today ! republicans. they have no shame while trying to shame women with inuendo and religious fakery. they rely on ignorance and fatigue. a child is forever. it needs to be wanted. it needs to be safe. it needs someone who is ready.
35
The leading cause of abortions is poor sex education, lack of modern contraception, Bible Concussive Syndrome, and conservative thinking.
The way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions to provide affordable long-acting reversible contraceptives, something misogynistic conservatives, patriarchs and religious fantasists are vehemently opposed to.
People would have some respect for anti-choicers if anti-choicers had the slightest respect for sex education, modern contraception, women's bodies and modernity....but they don't.
And so we remain stuck in a world still poisoned by medieval religious 'thought' and nincompoopery as 7.6 billions abort planet Earth as the idiotic 'be fruitful and multiply' morons refuse to adapt to modernity and continue to take out their religious spite on the world's poor women.
We have enough people.
What we need is fully functioning human brains free from religious brain damage.
401
Absolutely. This is why Planned Parenthood deserves respect and credit as the leading group in America reducing the need for abortions. They provide health education that encompasses how bodies work, healthcare services and tests, and access to affordable birth control. They are true heroes who deserve permanent government funding and protection..
92
Socrates, there isn't a single birth control method except for abstinence that is 100% effective. My married daughter got pregnant with an I.U.D. Doctors thought that she would spontaneously abort but she carried the baby to term. Even though this pregnancy was unplanned she chose to have the baby. The key word is choice. Not all women who have an unplanned pregnancy choose to abort but the option should be available for any woman who feels she is not able to care for an unwanted child. Even Sarah Palin confessed that she contemplated abortion upon learning that her son had Down's. Hypocritically she claims she is pro-life when in actuality she is pro choice. She chose to not have an abortion as countless other women do. I could never bring myself to abort a child unless the most dire of circumstances but that is a decision that I believe only the woman has the right to make. Not her mate, not her doctor, not her church and certainly not her government.
63
"Poor sex education" is a polite way of saying women don't use the birth control they have. Guttmacher Institute acknowledges this and refers to it as their having a "poor relationship" with birth control. It's not an access issue. It's a take responsibility issue. Many women simply cannot. They are mentally and/or emotionally incapable of using birth control regularly; hence, the success of the IUD, which doesn't require the women to act beyond its insertion.
3
What will happen if abortion is banned? It will happen anyway. Why do they think banning it will stop it?
25
Besides, Republican mistresses need their abortions, too.
228
Their goal isn't to stop it. They don't even bother to claim that is their goal.
Their goal is to shame and disparage those who engage in recreational sexuality. Criminalizing abortion is perfectly aligned with that goal.
31
It's all about getting votes. Most politicians don't care at all about abortion (especially if their girlfriend gets pregnant) it's just an issue that gets some groups to the polls.
10
Abortion by people with consciences represents an exercise of freedom of conscience. The act is not done because life is not respected but because life requires it. Too many children can mean want for a whole family, a dangerous pregnancy can mean death for fetus and woman, both. Carrying the child of a rapist means retaining a relation with the rapist and possibly raising another rapist. The pro-life label is deliberately misleading, excused by the presumed good ends. In reality, pro-life means living with hardship to satisfy the religious beliefs of people who care not at all about the pregnant woman nor the fetus but only seek to make all live and to confirm the truths of their religious beliefs.
We live with uncertainty, it is the normal condition of living things, but since humans can tell, they have a craving for being certain, which all religions satisfy. Religions remove uncertainty with the sacred revelations of people who have gained knowledge which is eternal and absolutely certain. Just do as they suggest because life adheres to the rules of the religious doctrine.
19
When I argue with pro-lifers, I like to ask them exactly what they envision and I often use Ireland (now just Northern Ireland) and Central and South American countries as examples of what happens when abortion is illegal. And I ask them what exactly they envision happening here. Of course, they never allow that prosecuting women is what will happen, even though that's already happened here.
41
These are insightful thoughts, but they don't ultimately justify the author's thesis: "our battle over legalized abortion seems misguided." Laws are more than mere policy tools; they're reflections of our values and ethics.
The author makes a compelling case that 1) abortions will always happen regardless of the law thanks to widely available abortifacient drugs and 2) criminalizing abortion will lead to unintended consequences like the erosion of medical confidentiality.
Yet we have many laws that are both difficult to enforce and not expected to eliminate a behavior. Many well intentioned laws also carry unintended side effects.
I imagine that progressive economic programs, real sex education and other policies would be more effective at reducing the incidence of abortions than criminalization. But that's different from the moral question of whether abortion is right or wrong and whether it should be legal or illegal.
5
You are spot on about “real” sex education and other progressive programs to help people with family planning. Yet Beloved Leader would have us use ABSTINENCE as the best and most acceptable type of birth control. Like he is such a shining example of how well that works - five children by three different women and who knows how many abortions he has paid for. Hypocrisy at its finest.
6
A very good article, which seems to confirm what I have long suspected. Banning abortion will not end abortion - merely the means by which it is accomplished.
I have read many articles on this issue, the majority of which discuss the culpability of a woman or her doctor, but seldom mention the role of men in any of this. After all, women do not (barring in vitro fertilization) spontaneously become pregnant, and yet, few seem to want to place blame on the men who are co-equally responsible for an unwanted pregnancy. Perhaps if men were held to the same legal standard as a woman or her doctor the abortion debate might take a different turn.
182
Well said, Scott B, well said. Thank you! Would that there were some way to bring this into the public eye as a serious discussion.
25
What in the world will the GOP do if abortion is re-criminalized? Fold their tents and go home? This has been their leading "issue" for the past two decades. For many of them this will be a case of "be careful what you wish for." I know of a lot of people who, if this wasn't a strongly held religious belief, would vote for more moderate and liberal candidates....
30
A little bit longer than that. Nixon was pro-choice. It was really Reagan who got into bed with religious right and made their priorities his priorities, and then Bush Sr. jettisoned his (supposedly) pro-choice position to grab the brass ring of the VP-ship. I blame Bush, and I haven't had respect for him since.
21
Totally. The GOP has no interest in a actually overturning Roe v. Wade. If it ever happened, all those single issues voters would fall away. Then what would the Republicans do?
3
@Clyde: They've already moved on to birth control.
5
The whole anti-abortion movement, begun by the Catholic Church in earnest in the 1960s, in response to Roe, has always been about controlling women. As long as a woman, rich or poor, cannot control her own reproduction, she cannot function equally in society with men. Criminalizing doctors and women who persist in finding ways to help women control their reproduction is just another step to insuring the patriarchy continues. This is, indeed, the exact "outcome anyone is looking for."
223
Roe was decided in 1973, so the Catholic Church couldn't have been responding to it in the 1960s. That being said, what keeps right-wing groups and religious organizations from succeeding in their quest to end all abortions is that the Evangelicals hate the Catholics too much to unite and conquer.
2
Not that complicated. It's simply about breeding more Catholics.
4
Your piece highlight the insincerity of the pro-life movement. Surely they now realize that punitive measures will not stop abortions. Their only effective recourse is to address the many, many social issues that may effect a woman't decision such as affordable healthcare and childcare, paid family leave, and unfair labor practices. If they would use their considerable politcal clout to tackle some of these issues, we would all benefit.
42
indeed, this is spot on: these same points are true in Nicaragua, which also has a full ban on abortion but rarely receives the same attention as El Salvador, Guatemala, or even Ireland. as professor oberman notes, women and girls with resources (money, connections in urban settings, etc) are able to access relatively safe abortions, while women and without those resources pay a heavy price. https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/07/31/nicaragua-abortion-ban-threatens-hea...
19
Of course, in the United States there will be another way for women to get an abortion that discriminates against poorer women: Travel to another state that has more liberal policies on abortion.
49
This already is happening in states that have forced clinic closings and put in place restrictive laws on a federally legal procedure.
30
Theoretically congress under the authority of the interstate commerce act and the full faith and credit clause could make that illegal, if I understand the constitution correctly (and given the makeup of the Supreme Court these days, I wouldn't count on Anthony Kennedy coming down on the side of people seeking abortion). As this is interstate commerce, congress has the right to act, and under the full faith and credit law congress is the arbiter of which laws of another state another state must follow; so for example, a GOP congress could rule that if Iowa bans abortion, a clinic in NJ or California cannot perform abortions on people from Iowa, that they have to respect Iowa's ban, and I doubt Scotus would rule against Congress. It could also lead to all kinds of retribution, states that allow abortion could retaliate against other states laws, refusing to recognize their laws, it could get messy. Then again, we are talking conservatives who support Donald Trump and like him have no sense of consequences, they only see an opportunity to try and force their religious beliefs on others, and don't understand the law is a sword that can cut both ways, in ways they can't anticipate.
5
If she can afford it.
3
My understanding is that the GOP's only concern here is votes. So, from their perspective, draconian abortion laws, do achieve the desired result.
If the GOP was actually "pro-life", they would do something to help the 2,500,000 homeless children currently living in this country right now. Instead, they do everything in their power to not only not help them, but, in some cases to directly hurt them.
Along with their embrace of racism, I think this is one the most morally contemptible aspect of the modern GOP.
611
"Pro-life?" Hardly, since Republicans also tend to be pro-guns, pro-pollution, pro-economic inequality, pro-discrimination and pro-broken healthcare. The hypocrisy and ethical decrepitude of today's so-called conservatives is truly mind-bending.
234
Yes. And if they cared about children, they wouldn't be separating immigrants parents from their infants, toddlers, and young kids. It's horrifying.
47
Chicago Guy: I disagree,but for slightly different reasons. The GOP and it's radical evangelists must finally make a decision. After we get rid of all the "illegal immigrants" in this country there will be a need to define who has the right to be born in this country. Which woman should be permitted to get an abortion.? Nah,it is not the woman who was raped,or carrying a pregnancy due to incest,or malformed embryo that should attract the warm hearts of the pro-life folk.
I think they need to come to grips with the fact that healthy white babies are much more welcome in this country,as opposed to the "you know whats ". The pro-life crowd has no interest in being "pro-life" 30 seconds postpartum. Because that's going to cost money-and they see it as THEIR tax money.
My modest proposal is that abortion should only be restricted to white women of a certain social-economic class. The rest of pregnancies,those of the black and brown persuasion, should be encouraged to have an abortion-or,maybe "persuaded".
This concept of who is of greater social worth, is firmly embedded in the GOP talking points. Why not be honest for a change, and take a little heat?
1
I would love it if logic were part of the abortion debate in this country. Sadly, it is not. The conservative patriarchy in our country will continue to legislate to perpetuate the problem because the manipulation of poor people keeps them in office. They don't answer to logic, only to the oligarchs who get richer by reaping bigger tax cuts by manipulating the uneducated people...who are often poor... and the cycle continues.
66
Spot on! Most of those men in congress really don't care about abortion except to use it as an emotional wedge, driving people to choose a side – because there is no middle. This is one issue where no amount of logic or science will move the needle.
(Does anyone seriously believe the current resident of the WH ever gave it a second thought before finding out how it resonates with his base?)
18
Yeah, when he helped procure them for his mistresses. A real religious hero. The hypocrisy is staggering yet so ordinary.
2
What makes you think incarceration of mostly poor Women is NOT what the
" prolife" crowd is aiming for ??? Remember: " there must be some punishment for the Woman ". Trump, responding to questions about abortion. Nothing more needs to be said, or understood. Period.
247
No matter what Trump says, I would bet anything that he has had numerous liaisons in his life that resulted in abortions. Stormy Daniels said that he did not use a condom with her -- and he himself said that fighting STDs was his personal Vietnam.
So, hail to the hypocrite-in-chief! It is mind-boggling that his supporters cannot recognize this.
7
Thank you for this. Frighteningly powerful. Last line is amazing.
Thank you again.
33
A good move for the US would be, like alcohol, to allow "dry counties" (yes, for want of a better euphemism); allow individual counties, but not whole states, to opt out of abortions in their medical facilities. There never would be an instance of every county in the state opting out, in Texas for example, the big city counties would vote to keep it, and very likely a great many others. That way the pro lifers could have their victory and the issue static pressure would drop by about ninety percent. It would also be a very useful metric for political strategists on the prowl.
5
There are already huge swaths of 'dry' areas where rural women cannot easily access an abortion. Many have to travel quite far (overnight) to a larger city. If you're a low-income woman with a constantly changing work schedule then the time-off, gas, and hotel costs are prohibitive. So, this is already a problem.
40
It won't be enough for them.
11
So why don't pro-aborts set up charities to help the poor women reach the abortion clinics in the big cities? No, they want government-funded abortions, which isn't going to happen.
Michelle Oberman's research illuminates the two major issues mitigating against outlawing abortion: Women with resources will be able to get and use drugs, but will end up doing so without medical supervision, and innocent women who suffer miscarriages at any stage in the pregnancy may be prosecuted as criminals.
In an extremely emotional debate, both of these facts support trusting women to decide for themselves whether they can manage a pregnancy, as people in Ireland have just voted to do.
156
Who are the"people of good faith" of any prominence on the anti-abortion side? Asking because I genuinely cannot think of any. Most are not supportive of effective sex education, increased availability of contraceptives, or support programs that would make raising children easier and more attractive. It often appears that the opponents of abortion care more about controlling female sexuality than protecting fetuses.
797
Not only controlling women's sexuality, controlling women's bodies. And not only controlling women's sexuality, but most of the anti-choice crowd also condemn and wish to curtail the rights of the LGBT community.
125
I agree, Max, but rather than controlling 'female sexuality' they seek to control all sexuality.
Religious institutions have learned that, by controlling sexuality, they can control populations. Sacrifice increases devotion (such are the consequences of cognitive dissonance), and curtailing sex (e.g. limiting it to procreation) would, for most of us, be a significant sacrifice.
58
Justin-
By controlling sexuality and sex, by for example making it all about procreation (the standard Catholic party line that still lurks below the surface, decades after the Church finally admitted it is a powerful force in holding a marriage together), by making it a sin, you are creating guilt, because sex is a powerful drive on many levels, so if people fail (and they will), the guilt is there, and the church can use this guilt to gain power over people, both $$$$$ and also political control. One of the things about churches is that they often are as much about power in the secular sense as it is about spirituality and worshipping God, and guilt is a great way to control people.
I continue to hope that in my lifetime, the war on women's bodies/health will eventually cease. Sadly, we still have a long way to go.
292
People conveniently forget that many women are against abortion. They don't view themselves as being at war with their own gender, but rather being at war against godlessness. When and if they decide to favor science rather than forcing their beliefs onto others, things will finally change.
36
aem: I agree but think the issues are intertwined. Religions tend to be patriarchal and controlling of women's sexuality so many faith-based women think it's 'god's will' that women follow-through with all pregnancies while also, I think, internalizing what is often religious misogyny.
aem – true, but many women who may be against abortion are NOT against other women making up their own minds and controlling their own lives.
The idea that any gov't body, especially one that's overwhelmingly male, should presume to interfere with this very personal aspect of anyone else's life is simply appalling! It is no different than when China had a practice of forcing abortions for second children (esp. if the fetus was female). Sickening!
There is no 'good' or 'responsible' way to limit abortion. There are always bad and/or unintended consequences.
No one is in a position to tell a woman whether she is physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially prepared to go through a pregnancy, give birth, and care adequately for a child except for the woman herself. If she is not prepared to be a mother for any reason, she should have the right to a safe legal medical procedure.
And if you're against abortion, then support comprehensive sex education and ensuring birth control options are readily available to all women.
1077
And be supportive of a social safety net, since, as the article suggests, many of these women and their children will need financial support.
181
It is amazing how many anti choice politicians (they call themselves "pro-life") care only about the fetus and refuse to help women after they give birth.
11
You are right to draw attention to the comprehensive nature of our human rights duties.
Irrespective of our political preferences we all must meet our obligations to all children.
Protecting human lives of children before and after birth is not an either/or option.
We must do both.
1
If abortion is a crime, the woman seeking it IS the criminal. This whole 'second victim' is a way to put a more pleasant face on anti-abortion laws - rather than prosecuting a poor mother of 3 who just had an abortion to avoid losing her job and causing her children to starve - we'll go after the doctor. It's so much easier to avoid these tough realities when you pretend the woman is the hapless victim, the incubator who doesn't have the intelligence to make her own choices, not really.
It's our bodies, and our choice - until we get pretty far along in the pregnancy - that's the only way that works. It's a good thing that the drugs make it harder for these countries to force women to be incubators, but it's not a solution.
417
Michelle Oberman identifies a serious issue with the current approach to outlawing abortion: threatening doctors with criminal charges. If doctors can be held criminally liable for either providing an abortion or supervising a woman while she self-administers an abortifacient, or for not reporting women who appear in their offices or an E.R. with complications resulting from self-administered abortion drugs or an attempt to self-abort, women will die rather than seek care, and doctors will report innocent women who suffer miscarriages to ensure they themselves aren't prosecuted. That's very concerning, as women will continue to get and use abortion drugs, but could effectively be shut out of the American healthcare system.
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Overturning Roe vs Wade would basically return the law to its state before 1973. Women were not prosecuted then, so why would they be prosecuted now?
3
Details - You are correct. If abortion is really murder, then hiring a doctor to perform an abortion on oneself would be the same as, say, hiring a hitman to kill one's husband.
But the anti-abortion people know there would be an uproar if they tried to prosecute the women, so they continue the inconsistencies.
25
Hey, how come no one mentions the other half of the equation in the whole conception bit. Why is it only women are targeted and not men. If the man was held equally accountable I would bet the laws would change in a heart beat. Why is it he is not facing prosecution, a fine and maybe jail time. At least one would expect that a whole new and different attitude would happen and a subsequent change to laws all over the country. This is what should be looked at very carefully and seriously.
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As I have always said.....if men got pregnant, abortion would be legal and free!
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Thank you! Failure to pay child support doesn't even go on a man's credit report.
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I read an article just yesterday about a young Australian man who had travelled 250 miles to have a one night stand with a woman he'd previously never met in person. She became pregnant and he, upon learning this, insisted she have an abortion. She refused and had the baby. Eventually she approached the court requesting child support, and won. The young man is outraged. Even though both parties evidently knew she wasn't taking birth control and he didn't use a condom, they went ahead and had sex anyway. Now he's upset and says his life is ruined because he did not choose to have a child. She selfishly went ahead and had the baby so it should be her sole responsibility. Most of the commentators replying to his story were also angry that he should be put in such a position. He just wanted a one night stand, not a child. He said he had no choice in the matter of the baby being born, doesn't want to meet the child, and now he will have to "suffer" for approximately 18 years.
I believe if you need to have sex so badly you'll go ahead without protection, you ARE making a choice, while willfully ignoring the real possibility a baby may be conceived. Especially in your young and most fertile years. Both are responsible.
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Whenever this discussion is held, let us never forget that we are talking only about poor and lower class women. Most middle class and all upper class women will not be effected by any law that is passed. They never have and they never will.
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So true. Living in a conservative, religion-polluted state I constantly see billboards advertising "pregnancy crisis centers", usually depicting a woman looking ashamed and confused, and a man, presumably her partner, looking confident and assured. My daughter recently started asking me about this. Because we are fortunate enough to have enough money, I find myself telling her (and myself) that none of this nonsense will ever apply to her. No man will ever control her body.
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This is the absolute key point - thank you.
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sjs
If abortion is illegal, yes, many middle class and upper class women might very well be affected. There would probably be a search for a doctor in the U.S. or elsewhere.
5
Ms. Oberman, I commend you for writing a thoughtful, albeit harrowing, article of what actually happens in places where abortion is criminalized.
The thing is, anti-abortion activists don't care about any of this. In their view, let's make abortion in any and all cases completely illegal. Once that's done, then we'll just keep criminalizing people until there's no one left to persecute.
Something tells me that since anti-abortion activists care nothing for the women's right to choose, they will also care nothing for the doctor-patient relationship; the burden that outlawing abortion would place on doctors and law enforcement communities; and the issues (largely economic) that drive women to have abortions in the first place.
No, what anti-abortion activists are after is complete and total dominion over female morality AS THEY DEFINE IT. It is not, and never has been, about the well-being of women or children. Such arguments are lost on the anti-abortion folk.
Since American women continue to elect large numbers of anti-abortion politicians into elected office despite the fact that approximately one of our three American women will have an abortion in their lifetimes, I think it's inevitable that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned in the near future. And when that happens, Americans will be taught that they should've been very, very careful what they wished for.
But I remain hopeful. As Ireland has shown us, out of the gravest of injustices grow the most sacred of rights.
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The due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments Rothe Constitution should, I think, protect the physician-patient privilege from the prying eyes of the State. But I would not want to test this theory in a blindly anti-abortion state like Arkansas. God help us!
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Armand --- your hope for the future hangs on the word "should." In other words, don't bet on it.
What anti-abortion fundamentalist, however much they might profess to believe in the Constitution, is going to say that doctor-patient privilege trumps the rights of the unborn?
I would add to your second paragraph that the one common trait noted about anti-abortion activists is that they are not pro-life; they are ONLY pro-BIRTH.
Well written article and response.
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I have read often that anti-abortion voters will excuse every bad thing Trump does in order to pass laws that would prevent the worst thing of all, in their minds, which is the murder of unborn children.
I wish they would educate themselves to what this article says: outlawing abortion will not stop abortions. It didn’t stop them before Roe v Wade, and it never will. So, they are sticking with Trump and all his destructiveness of our democracy only for the sake of an empty gesture --- trying to make abortions illegal --- which will make them feel good but do little or nothing to actually stop abortions.
If they truly feel women are “the second victim” then the most effective thing they can do to slow down the abortion rate is to 1) ensure that poor women have access to free birth control and 2) increase economic support and opportunity to poor women.
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Of course, outlawing abortions doesn't make them go away. Contraception was illegal in France until 1967 and abortion until 1974. Every woman I know old enough to have had sex before 1967 had at least one illegal abortion. I was 17 in 1967 and few friends my age or younger have had one.
57
They will do neither. They don't see women as a victim. They see her as someone who should be shamed and pregnancy is her punishment for engaging in sex. Abortion has nothing to do with the value of life and everything to do with controlling women.
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JENNY
Re abortion: I am pro-choice.
But it is time to stop tearing down the President of the United States.
The President is not destroying our democracy. He is doing many very good things for America.
1
If you are a woman who is against abortion, don't have one. If you're a man who is against abortion, don't impregnate anyone.
But don't dictate what other women should do with their bodies. Birth control sometimes fail, and women are sometimes sexually assaulted. Some women struggle financially or with mental illness or with addiction. It's not anyone's job to tell these women that they HAVE to be a mother.
And it's especially galling when men would disallow abortion as a choice. Because we all know, most women end up as the single mother caring for children when the pregnancy is unintended. Rarely, does the father become the primary caregiver in these situations.
1023
When it comes to 'choices', we women have every right to choose what political party we will vote for, what job we will do, what friends we will make, what we will have for breakfast.
But none of us has a right to abuse another human being in our power and under our care.
No human being has ownership and lethal disposal rights over another human being, no matter how, small or dependent or 'unwanted'.
"Choice" is never a valid excuse for deliberately consigning another human being in our power to a lethal medical 'procedure'.
7
Rita: I disagree. The fetus is not a viable self-sustaining human being; the woman is. The fetus is dependent on the woman's body. The woman's rights and needs outweigh the needs of a potential life. It is between a woman, her body, and her 'God' (whatever that might be), to decide what's best for her.
13
As long as a fetus is dependent on a woman for its existence and survival, she has a right to decide not to participate. No one can be forced to lend the use of her body to another person. We are not incubators without agency. Our lives come first.
10
As a pro-life woman, I voted for Donald Trump because he promised he would support the pro-life cause. After seeing eight years of the Obama Administration supporting Planned Parenthood, it was such a refreshing change for President Trump to place restrictions on this organization. They have been receiving millions of tax payer dollars which is the largest abortion provider in the country. They have performed over 325,000 abortions every year and that is outrageous. If they want the money, they can get out of the abortion business. Plain and simple. Millions of Americans like myself do not want to support an organization that makes the bulk of their profits from abortion that is tantamount to murder.
34
WPL repeats the old canard about Planned Parenthood (PP) "profiting" from abortions. She and other anti-abortion voters refuse to acknowledge that 90+% of PP's activities are totally unrelated to abortion. She obviously didn't read the article and seems more concerned with former President Obama than with women's health issues or the economic environment of poor children in this country.
The so-called "Pro-Life" voters are oblivious to the issues raised by Ms. Olberman. To them it's more about religion than American women or children. Once they succeed in outlawing abortion, the pro-lifers will find another issue in their never-ending quest to establish a right-wing evangelical theocracy in the USA.
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Great, you have a clear moral stance that abortion is evil.
BUT - what is more important to you, preventing abortions or punishing the doctors who perform them and the women who receive (or want to receive) them?
If you care most about the punishment, then you need to look around the world and recognize that this tack will NOT actually stop abortions from happening, they will simply compound the suffering of the mothers involved.
If you care most about preventing abortions, then you should look around the world and see where and when abortions are rarest: in places and times when women (and men!) get good comprehensive education about sexuality and birth control methods, and have easy and stigma-free access to the methods that best suit their individual needs.
120
I guess you didn't read this article.
67
We have a pretty good Idea what will happen. Women will turn to basement abortions. The writer mentions clothes hangers which is a common way abortion are done once they’re banned in the clinics or medical settings. In Richmond Virginia one abortionist charged $300 to jam dirty popsicle sticks into the uteruses. His sales pitch was that the sticks would cause an infection which terminated the pregnancy. It did and put women into the hospital with life threatening infection. Maternal deaths will rise. Once abortions are banned, birth control pills and IUD are next on the claim they prevent implantation. But there is another group that will always be able to have an abortion. They have money, status, and insurance. They go to the hospital for a D and C under the diagnosis "Abnormal uterine bleeding." " Oops, she must have been miscarrying. I'm glad we ahead on this." Or incomplete miscarriage. "She has miscarried, I'm just taking out the part she hasn't passed." We don't have to go to South America to find out what happens with a ban. We just look at our own past when it was banned but actuality didn’t apply to everyone.
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You missed another alternative if it will be so dangerous. Leave the U.S. and go to these other countries that do not value human life.
It's a somewhat subtle issue in that it does take two to tango.
People perhaps should sign a contract before a sexual encounters or use two forms of birth control to ensure that conception does not take place. (Even tubal ligation doesn'y always prove effective initially.)
After three months, except in the case of danger to the mother or a badly malformed or otherwise incapable of more or less normal life fetus, IMO, there should be no abortion.
Abortion should not be criminalized.
16
Well, no one should force you to have an abortion if you don't want one. That's why its called choice. Abortion is LEGAL and it should continue to be legal, safe and rare. Women need to be trusted to make these private medical decisions for themselves. The belief seems to be that we just decide when we are 6 or 7 months pregnant with a healthy pregnancy to have an abortion. That is not how it works. The ignorance about this just stuns me.
12
It takes two to tango. Smartest comment I’ve ever seen.
2
I've never had an abortion, but I did have to use "Plan B" once. It's the medication you take as quickly as possible after unprotected sex, and it essentially triggers a hormone surge and unscheduled period, so it's extremely difficult for a viable pregnancy to take hold.
It's exactly the sort of medical innovation that horrifies some people. It sounds like casually flushing a possible pregnancy rather than using a condom.
In my case, though, it wasn't "unprotected sex" that led to it - it was being drugged and raped. I didn't pursue legal action about the crime because I was confused and horrified and didn't think I'd be taken seriously. I was a college student, so I was probably right. But I thank God I didn't have to prove what happened in order to obtain that medication. Every time this topic comes up, I think about how nonsensical the typical American "except rape and incest!" clause is. According to who? Under what circumstances?
I know I'm hardly the only woman that has experienced that exact scenario - which means the only way to ensure victims aren't further victimized by forcible pregnancy is keeping all of these safe methods of pregnancy termination legal and accessible.
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This author's reasoning is flawed in two major respects: 1). if it were just as matter as taking a readily available pill in the U.S. women would already be doing that as it is cheaper; and 2). what causes abortion is people having sex and refusing to live with the natural consequences (rape occurs in less than 1% so save this non-issue).
Given that the left seems to advance the lack of natural consequences for potentially destructive behavior (i.e. treatment for drug use instead of incarceration / abortion for sex) I am not surprised by the statement, but a fellow attorney (especially a law professor) should be able to come up with a better argument then this "article".
11
Rape is not a non-issue for the women who do become pregnant through sexual assault. (What's your source for your stat anyway? I do not believe it's true.)
25
If the right is so concerned with consequences, DO explain why you elected a serial, proud, and admitted sexual predator while ALSO attempting to elect in Alabama a molester of children?
People have sex. The end. Go adopt some children.
Children are NOT a consequence of sex. Funny how the right acts as if women will pregnancies into being without any assistance, because while the anti choice movement drools at the thought of punishing women, they shrug off the idea that men should face "consequences" as well.
Fully one third of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.
Abortion is none of your business unless YOU are pregnant.
You: my religion says I can't do this.
Fine.
You: my religion dictates that YOU can't do this.
Your desire to punish addicts rather than treat them says it all.
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I am 72 yrs old. I have known many women who have had illegal and thanks to roe vs wade legal abortions. Women who are against this law are hiding behind their misguided moral/religious beliefs without any thoughts of freedom to let a woman decide. No one forces them to give up their believe. However they have no right to tell a woman( not even knowing the circumstances) to not have an abortion. It is cruel especially since it is the poor young girls who would have to make a cruel choice. In 1965 friends who were wealthy had no problem. Friends who lived alone in NYC at that time had a difficult time finding a doctor who had mercy at the risk to him/herself. These politicians have no idea and only look for votes, supported by radicals religious fanatics of all religions so it seems and of course by their male Pope, Imam, Rabbi and other leaders.i won't say here what I and friends feared as single girl. We eventually did get married,. I had two lovely daughters who married and have two children each. Just enough to replace themselves in a world that is becoming increasingly overpopulated on this limited life supporting planet. No true God wants to have this beautiful planet we call earth inhabited only by humans. Now 7.4billion and ever increasing. These fanatics are very short sighted in my humble opinion.
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Anti-abortionists are a narrow minded group. Not because of their views, but because of the futility of their efforts. Very little will stop a female from attempting to, or aborting an unwanted pregnancy. England and other countries even had the death penalty for later term abortions. Did this stop abortions? Absolutely not. Old Testament mentions abortion and its ramifications. Aristotle wrote about abortions. Females have always had the final say over their desire to give birth, or not.
Legal efforts to ban abortions will lead Joe Blow's moment of pleasure directly to the medical practice involving kitchen tables and garages. The female gentry, as ever, will have access to private arrangements to rid themselves of unwanted encumbrances.
Laws can be written--evangelicals can rant, bu nothing will change a female's right to choose motherhood or not.
58