I support abortion rights in all but a few cases. It’s not my or the governments job to tell women what to do to their unborn fetus. However, I also believe that there is a legitimate desire to outlaw abortion in most cases because of how horrible abortion is. The goal should be zero need! Democrats need to focus more on being against abortion while still being proponents of abortion rights. They also need to stop calling everybody who is pro-choice a sexist. Being against abortion rights is not synonymous with woman-hating, despite what we all hear from extremist ideologues.
"Elizabeth Warren, increasingly a favorite of the party’s most liberal voters, said Mr. Biden was wrong about the Hyde Amendment on Wednesday, describing it as an assault on the “most vulnerable.”
What?? I don’t think she said this about abortion!!
Here are the facts. Women of color and low-income women are the main victims of policies that limit access to ready, affordable abortion care and contraception. Lower income women experienced a 50% increase in unintended pregnancy from 1994 to 2011, while the rate dropped by 29% for women over 200% of the federal poverty level. Women of color and aged 18-24, are also at higher risk. https://bit.ly/31xtNFg For this reason, the leaders of both US political parties did virtually nothing for decades to talk about or fix the problem of access to abortion care and birth control. They did not protest the Hyde amendment; they voted for it every year. Major national women's organizations did the same. Recently women and girls of color, and lower-income people, are demanding their rights, and reproductive justice, and white allies and politicians are finally speaking up. About time!
I think the article makes a good point, but it gets muddied when the data is inaccurate. Dems favor abortion availability by more than 2 to 1, based on the data shown in the chart. This can be seen quite readily, using the first breakout in the chart.
The 40% number is quite overstated - by my arithmetic, using the data in the charts, you arrive at 68% pro, 32% con to abortion for any reason.
I tried to post on this more extensively earlier, but it is apparently not being allowed in full form.
So - to anyone reading this, please check the arithmetic for yourself in the data chart.
Nate Cohn, if you read this, and I am somehow wrong in my calculations, a Comment explaining how you arrived at 40% would be most appreciated. My own arithmetic:
College educated liberals 156*0.92 = 144
All other Democrats . 278*.55 = 153
Total all Yes = 297
Total respondents = 434
297/434 = 68%
2
@Brian Our estimates differ from yours because they are weighted to account for the fact that college-educated respondents are generally over-represented in surveys (because they respond to surveys in higher numbers). Thanks for the question.
Could you just stop it. Just stop it already.
The excessive Biden coverage, that is.
Be it pro or con, it keeps the man in in the headlines quite without warrant.
Yeah, that's not what this article is about, but the daily Biden article had no comment option.
6
The only people who need to grapple with anything are the women who want an abortion. The rest of us should shut our yaps and mind our own business. Another persons abortion is not your ethical dilemma.
17
The religion choices are Protestant, Catholic, and none? That's it? These choices do not include my religion.
And the race choices are White, Black, and Hispanic? No Asian? No multi/bi-racial? Limited choices, seems like.
3
Where is the ban on Viagra? Where's mandatory vasectomy? If abortion is really the problem, then that's how to prevent it.
11
Just remember that a government which says you can't have an abortion is the same government that can say you must have one if it so wishes. In either instance, the government claims control over your body. It could also force sterilization upon either gender. That's not paranoid or sci fi thinking. All you need is a party in power that wants a legal means of controlling others, particularly others that it doesn't like.
12
"Politicians Draw Clear Lines on Abortion."
News media also draw clear lines.
2
Tragic this is a voter issue. It's a private matter, and one of personal choice. We should be talking about our national health care system, education, climate, economic inequality, the decline of our democracy, and yet every campaign cycle this is wear the conversation veers. I find it insulting that this is what Presidential candidates have to discuss. In some future time are they going to once again be telling us who we are and are not allowed to marry. When does this nonsense stop.
10
Are abotion laws including heath care for the baby's that are saved and nutrition so they can grow up strong and eventually collect Social security and Medicare?
Or will they die in a year without the care and parenting they need. The states need to step-up too!
4
The religion choices are none, Catholic, and Protestant? There are no other religions in this country? My religion is not included in these options.
2
I would like to see a survey conducted only on mothers -- women who have gone through the experience of birth.
I don't care what anyone else -- men, women who don't have kids, gays, lesbians, transgenders -- thinks about abortion.
I see comments diminishing a fetus to a clump of cells. It may technically be so, but surely a mother would not see it that way, no matter what her views on abortion may be.
Let's treat the subject with respect and listen to subject mater experts -- mothers.
4
The "reason" someone chooses to have an abortion shouldn't be relevant because it is a personal medical decision and decisionmaking about one's own body is just that...personal. A woman's reasons are private.
When we start laying down conditions other than gestation time, we are telling women that their bodies belong to the state, not to them, unless they're victims of a crime.
Additionally, criminalizing abortion doesn't reduce the number of abortions anyway.
It's probably not a choice I'd make for myself, but I cannot condone taking away the right of a woman to self-determination or to make decisions involving her own body. It's simply draconian lawmaking to require people to prove a rape or whatever conditions the law wants to slap on this legal right.
4
Many, possibly most, of today's problems, from mass migration to climate change, have one fundamental cause: Overpopulation. At 7.8 billion people today -- double what it was in the 1970's -- and 82 million more added to that each year, mankind has but one hope: A drastic reduction in those numbers.
World war might work, but there's a simpler answer: Requiring a permit to bear a child, at one per woman.
Abortions should not be merely permitted. They should be mandatory.
That's not going to happen. Good bye, dear planet, it was nice while it lasted.
4
What if?
What if, instead of the untold millions (billions by now?) that Democrats have spent trying to make abortion available for American women in red states when most of them either vote GOP or don’t vote at all … Dems had put that money into a fund enabling poor women to travel to blue states when they needed the procedure?
What if, instead of having our politics distorted - no, deformed - by this issue for nearly 50 years, enabling Republicans to consolidate power at every level and every branch of government, Americans had in fact voted “their pocketbooks” instead of on this?
I’ll tell you what if: no Reagan, no three terms of Bush, no Citizens United, no Iraq war, quite possibly no 9/11 and no economic catastrophe in 2008, no trillion piled on trillion piled on trillion dollar deficits, no you-know-who … yes single-payer healthcare, yes balanced budgets, yes honest-to-goodness infrastructure and environmental protection, yes serious steps to address climate change.
After Roe, red states essentially told the rest of us: you want abortion? Fine, but you can’t have anything else. If it means the end of American democracy, so be it.
They weren't kidding around.
3
You decide to spent my tax money on abortions and you just made every publicly-funded abortion my business. Just like every other publicly-funded activity is the business of every taxpayer.
2
This notion of abortion "for any reason" sounds flip. It suggests women are casually and randomly having abortions with little thought or reason.
Women choose abortions because they were raped, because their life is in danger, because they have an abusive partner or because they are not ready to be a mother for emotional, physical, financial reasons. "For any reason" makes it sound like someone ordered a hamburger and they randomly changed their mind to a hot dog. No one is having a abortions for 'not good reasons."
10
I for one am really tired of this dispassionate third party perspective that attempts to analyze support or opposition to abortion. This is a privacy issue. If Nate Cohn and Joe Biden want to parse whether it is ethical for me to have an abortion and whether my neighbor thinks if my birth control fails or if I have unprotected sex and my partner (a man) and I don’t want to have children whether we should be forced to bear this child, I think Nate Cohn and Joe Biden and my neighbor need to disclose private issues of their sex life for us to comment on. For example, Nate and Joe, what birth control do you use? Did it ever fail? Did you ever have unprotected sex? And if so, and your partner got pregnant, what decision did you make? Let us decide for you whether you are making ethical decisions.
You would do us all a favor by covering a story about the research, availability, and use of male birth control instead. If men don’t support abortion then we need to ramp up research on male birth control and men need to use it every time they have sex and don’t want a baby. Men enjoy sex but put the burden on women to protect against pregnancy. Then blame women for ethical lapses and harm to life when women end up pregnant who don’t want to be pregnant.
3
Newsweek magazine said it best, in an article on the subject 30-odd years ago. It said that most Americans favored abortion, but only in special cases: rape, incest, life & health of the mother, serious fetal abnormality, and “my special situation.”
1
It's almost like this issue should be put to a vote because people have a variety of different opinions on the matter . . .
Nah, that would be crazy. Let our 9 super-legislators-for-life decide.
10
Those who are struggling with the moral complexities of abortion should snap out of it and realize that how we treat a fetus is the measure of our worth, as human beings.
12
You write: "They are less educated, more moderate, more religious, more rural, more likely to be nonwhite and to live in the South. "
Well, i'm over-educated, more liberal, almost agnostic, live in a city, whiter-than-white, and out of the South. And I have qualms around abortion as well. When NY state passed their law to expand abortion coverage, it felt like taunting. Yes, I'm sickened by what GA, AL, Ohio and others have done. But that doesn't mean that I'm full-speed-ahead on all abortions.
17
We as country have a standard of separation of Church and State. If for any reason you personally do not believe in a womans right to an abortion you personally are able as a women not have one. Why should all women have to abide by your beliefs? Abortion has always been a part of Women's Healthcare. Women have always had abortions. Legal or not women will have abortions. That women is a life.
21
Half of Americans say they are against abortion, yet when abortion is put on the ballot as a referendum even in the most conservative states, voters choose to protect abortion rights (see referendum results in Mississippi, South Dakota, and Alaska). Also, more than 90% of fetuses diagnosed with down syndrome and other abnormalities are aborted. So, either most "pro-lifers" are lying to pollsters or they just don't really think abortion through until they are faced with the prospect of taking away their own rights.
18
I am a member of several camps on this incredibly decisive issue:
I am pro-choice...
I believe abortion should be legal, rare and accessible.
I believe that the final decision should be between the mother and her doctor. I strongly reject the notion of the state deciding what a women can or cannot do with her body.
I would support limiting public funding for procedures to those affecting the health of the mother.
The most thought provoking image of the piece was how the opinions of Democrats and Republicans have diverged over the past 50 years. Politics, as well as mass and social media have surely contributed to widening gap. But, the most important thing that is not emphasized is that only senior citizens remember a time when abortions were illegal and they may have been aware of a women who had an unsafe abortion that resulted in her being miamed or killed.
We must learn from history and not repeat our mistakes.
19
Women don't "want" abortions. They sometimes need them in difficult circumstances as the least bad option.
Also, no wonder survey responders show less support for it “when the woman does not want the child for any reason.”
What child?
An embryo is not a child. A fetus is not a child.
Maybe the clause should be “when the woman does not want the health risk, pain, joy, sorrow and lifelong, all-encompassing responsibility for any reason.”
35
@Monty
You are correct. "An embryo is not a child."
And I would like to add that a baby is not a toddler and a toddler is not a teen. You get the point:
Life uninterrupted is progressive development, and, in my opinion, each stage is deserving of equal respect and protection.
12
@Anne Toddlers and teens are viable outside the womb. Most fetuses are not, and cannot exist independently of the uterus.
2
I cannot believe that this is a political issue. It is not, and it cannot ever be a political issue. Women of both so called parties have had abortions and they will continue to do so.
Why did I walk and protest for women's rights in the late 60's and early 70's.
30
At the very least abortion laws should be proposed by a majority of women (and then voted on by a legislative body). It boggles my mind how legislatures with predominantly male members can pass laws concerning women's bodies. I don't understand how republican women can go along with that.
18
Most people who want to legislate the lives of others do not live those lives - particularly white men. As a psychologist, I have worked with many women who have faced unwanted pregnancies. Some have chosen abortion (all for sound reasons) and some have not. The decision has been easy for no one. I have known "pro-lifers" who have had abortions and often, their willingness to legislate the lives of others has shifted. Our mostly-male government, including Congress and the Courts, will never have the reason to confront their biases in this way.
30
This piece misses another important polling aspect. When you ask people if abortion should be legal, they actually tend to answer as if you are asking if abortion is moral. If, however, you ask them if the government and not a doctor or a woman should determine whether a woman can get an abortion, the answer is no. We don't ask the right questions. Many Americans *ARE* conflicted about abortion on a personal level. However, whether because of a general distaste for government overreach or a commitment to personal autonomy, they are less interested in having the government make decisions for themselves or others around something so personal.
Additionally, we know that people who consider themselves "pro-life" actually also have abortions- when there is a problem with the health of the baby, the health of the mother, rape/incest- but also teen pregnancies or pregnancies that strain the budgets of struggling families. In those moments, you hear people justify their own actions but suggest that other people's motives are less noble. Polls don't capture this nuance. And yet we govern on polling.
My hunch is that as this issue is talked about more and more on the campaign trail, the issue will itself become a code for Republican/Democrat and even support for Trump People with adhere more closely with the partisan coding and any possibility of a nuanced discussion will be lost.
This is a loss for all of us.
19
Rather than focusing on abortion (where there seems to be no middle ground), the less polarizing issue is birth control.
Make birth control free or heavily subsidized.
Same for Plan B.
It's a win-win.
28
The question has to be answered in context. If you exampine the impact of a hypothetical utopian state where every baby's well-being is watched over by a higher power guardian, then you can understand the cleft between conservatives who are pro-choice and liberals who are pro-life.
The pro-choice conservative rejects the intrusion of the utopian state. Unlike their religeous-right compatriots in the Republican party, most conservatives deal in a real world where God does not go around matching unwanted children with perfect adopted and foster parents. In their view, the state is a horrible proxy for such a deity. These conservatives support Roe because the standard involves looking at the outcome for the child in the real world, not a fictitious utopia.
The liberal pro-life voter, on the other hand, is enamoured with the capacity for social engineering and planned optimization by the state in light of it's vast almost god-like powers. In this framework, it is a simple matter of balancing, and while in 1973 the state of medicine was such that you could plausibly say that the mother's well-being was at such risk that she was entitled to have the final say no matter what. Now that has changed dramatically. These liberals reject Roe as they see it consistently used to strike down what might actually be reasonable barriers to be passed over.
In this context, we have pandering Governors on both sides. Winning a Roe appeal in the Supreme Ct. is their lottery ticket.
5
@Gene As far as I know, fetuses are not viable any earlier than they were in 1973. There has been no dramatic change.
3
@Gene - You don't really know any liberals, do you? Liberals protect and defend Roe, which sets the limit at potential viability with certain crucial exceptions. The bills/laws rightwingers have been lying about so egregiously are tweaks to the exceptions. The NY law was to correct a previous law that forced a woman to continue a doomed pregnancy to term, knowing the fetus could die in utero and kill her, or it would die at or shortly after birth.
The VA bill was somewhat similar, also meant to deal with a rare exception. And no, the VA bill doesn't allow a viable newborn to be killed. But if a fatally flawed infant is born but is destined to die within hours or days, or at most weeks, the parents and doctor can decide to do the humane thing and provide Hospice-like comfort care while nature takes its course. There's no law anywhere in the country that forces us to use extraordinary measures on a terminally ill patient, whether it's a senior, an accident victim, or a newborn.
To employ extraordinary measures that doctors know can't overcome a terminal condition is simple cruelty, because those measures cause enormous pain and distress.
2
If Roe is overturned then no citizen, male or female, will have a right to privacy or bodily autonomy. The government can then commandeer all organs for some ‘greater good’ and men can experience the mystery and blessing of having their body controlled against their will.
13
@Anon
Funny, I was thinking the same thing relating to government control of health care!
1
The basic confusion is the distinction between the vague term "life" or "human life" and a person. Is any set of human cells "human life"? In a sense, yes. Human cells that are alive. Not a useful definition. Are they a person? Only under a specific set of circumstances. The very first being they have to be a born living human. At that point they are absolutely a person as they have experience in the world outside the mother's womb.
Before that, as a collection of live human cells, they cannot have any rights that supercede the rights of a person. They do Not have the right to exist. No rights at all. Only a person can have the right to live. (who also has not been convicted of a capital offense in a death penalty state, and is not a warring enemy, etc etc etc).
The poison of religious mendacity likes to frame fetuses as born babies, as persons. They are not. That is logically equivalent to framing living persons as the undead dead. When that transition has not been made, the prior state of being is what it is. Fetuses are fetuses, not babies. Just as people are people, not the undead.
Women, however, are absolutely unequivocally persons. What happens with their bodies, which includes all the cells associated with their bodies, cannot be diminished any more than the rights to bodily autonomy and independence of a man. As a free man, I would not tolerate being told I had to bear a child. As a logical and moral man, I could not demand that a woman accept anything less.
23
@trebor I have come to the conclusion that "personhood" is a code word for "having a soul." It's not birth, and it's not viability of a somewhat premature baby outside the womb. Then the right argues that "everyone must agree" on when personhood begins. Nope. I don't believe that anyone has a soul, whether born or not. "Personhood" is just an attempt to make secular people adopt a religious view.
14
I am a white, liberal, feminist, college educated, New York resident and Jewish Democrat who would not have an abortion. I don’t equate the life of the fetus to the life of the mother, but I am appalled by the trajectory that has made support for abortion rights in any situation the litmus test of feminism and of liberalism. Why do so many abortion rights supporters blame the miserable state of support for pregnant women and for single mothers only on people who oppose abortion? Why is it considered a contradiction to be a feminist, yet not to believe that abortion is an absolute right?
Most people can see that some things are both undesirable and also sometimes inevitable, and that abortion is one of those things. But why does something that is after all about the destruction of a real human life, albeit a life that is not fully developed, need to be celebrated or an absolute right? Why can’t we permit it while also working to ensure that women don’t choose it because every other choice is so unsupported, so expensive financially and emotionally, and to ensure that being ambivalent about an unplanned pregnancy is not presented as an obvious reason to choose abortion? Why aren’t pro-choice citizens out there working to make it easier to carry the pregnancy to term when the pregnant woman is alone, or poor, or wants to have the child adopted?
We might remember that opponents of slavery were once told that if they thought slavery was wrong, they shouldn’t own slaves.
18
I’m not sure which feminists you’re talking about when it comes to not advocating for policies supportive of child-bearing and family life. From readings and personal experiences, it seems like feminists are the most vocal about jobs with living wages and good benefits, including paid parental leave. Feminists advocate for affordable and/or free childcare, healthcare, etc. One can find strong feminist voices supporting a broad array of pro-child and pro-family (families of all types and sizes) policies.
The main issue is whether or not some other individual or some government has the right to control women’s bodies. If one believes in bodily autonomy and freedom of conscience, then choosing to complete a pregnancy or to abort is between individual women and their doctors. It’s no one else’s business.
14
@Kate - The abortion rate has fallen by 40% in the last decade, probably largely due to the ACA and expanded Medicaid. So why all this angst about it now? Is it because you and so many others have fallen for the propaganda and the lies the forced birthers are peddling about it?
3
@Kate
"Why is it considered a contradiction to be a feminist, yet not to believe that abortion is an absolute right?"
Maybe because bodily autonomy is the central tenet of feminism?
Maybe because imposing your own beliefs on somebody - like claiming they're ambivalent/careless/throughtless in choosing abortion - is extremely insulting, arrogant and also goes against most people's understanding of feminism?
There is very little "pro choice citizens" can do to make somebody's life easier when they're pregnant. Platitudes and messages of support don't prevent people from getting demoted at work or fired while pregnant or afterward when the child is born.
They don't pay for the medical care of intellectually or physically disabled fetuses and children.
They don't have to endure the often inhumane conditions of foster care homes, child welfare services or being bounced around from place to place until you reach the age of majority.
It's entirely within somebody's right to not want to go through that, or put anybody else through that. The least you can do is respect that, and have compassion beyond the end of your nose.
3
Just as having a child is a personal and private decision so should having or not having an abortion be a personal and private decision. Early abortions are far more numerous because they are less complicated. Most reputable physicians who do abortions would not carry out late stage abortions without a good reason because those are far more dangerous and the fetus, if it's "normal" can be carried to term. Late stage abortions are usually done when the fetus has died inside the uterus, the woman is seriously ill, there is a serious defect that is incompatible with life but not for frivolous reasons.
Why some people feel that women must be penalized for being able to give birth is the real mystery here. It doesn't personally hurt them if one less pregnancy is completed. They aren't the ones who pay the price for being unwanted or born into a family that cannot support another child. Forcing women to have children they don't want is akin to indentured servitude.
As an adult who was an unwanted child I support whatever decision a woman makes early in her pregnancy. For the latter part, that's really more of a medical call than anything else. But it too is personal and private. The answer is simple: if you don't want an abortion don't have one. But don't force your beliefs on others.
50
The Democrats have made a strong case for abortion access using the legal and healthcare arguments. Nevertheless, as this article and many studies suggest, many Americans have a more nuanced position on this matter and would prefer to model our society on a European democratic model. I think the Dems have just handed the election to Trump. I sincerely hope not.
9
@Kate People are absolutely welcome to make their own moral and medical decisions. That is the point of *choice.*
2
I find it extremely worrisome that there is not majority support for women seeking abortions because they cannot provide financially or already have the number of children they desire.
A new child who is viewed as a burden by their own mother is a fraught situation for the entire family, and it usually doesn't "end up just fine."
22
As a professional counselor who counsels people and their significant others about pregnancy decision-making I agree with the premise—but only to a point— that many Americans hold ambivalent views about abortion though a majority wants it to remain legal. The lived reality of people considering abortion is that one’s views are hypothetical and abstract until they are pregnant. Then, reality abruptly kicks in. The decision is no longer abstract. It’s here and now. Thoughts and emotions and values rush in. The typical “composite” client I see doesn’t “believe” in abortion, views herself as selfish and irresponsible, and is disappointed in herself for not living up to her expectations of herself as a good person. Yet, they have decided that parenting is often not a realistic or responsible option. And they usually choose abortion (adoption is rarely chosen as it’s not the panacea that that pro-lifers portray). My job is to help them clarify for themselves all these internal and external conflicts, provide nonjudgmental support, and point them to a path where they can make peace with and accept their decision. And hold their heads, not in shame, but in self compassion. Almost every person I’ve counseled chooses abortion because she cares about the potential life she’s carrying or the impact on her living children. Many people who haven’t had to make this decision will scoff and judge. Thoughts and prayers to them.
27
Late last year, a doctor in my grand-nephew's medical practice prescribed Plan B pills for a patient. The pharmacist invoked his religious rights and refused to fill the scrip; this is within the law. (It is also within the law for him to not offer advance notice of his beliefs.) He also refused to let another pharmacist fill the scrip and refused to refer the patient to another drugstore. That is not within the law.
Unfortunately for that devout pharmacist, he lives in a state that mandates electronic prescriptions. All 16 doctors in my grand-nephew's medical practice re-directed their scrips--all their thousands of scrips--to another pharmacy. The devout pharmacist still has his religious principles; he still has his business--but not for long.
If a doctor, or druggist, or a nurse refuses to perform a medical service because of their religious convictions, that is their legal right. It is the patient's legal right to let everybody know that that doctor, or druggist, or nurse is a preacher pretending to be a medical professional. In other words, a fraud. Frauds should be put out of business.
99
@camorrista doctors don’t dictate where a patient fills a prescription- those are factors determined by patients’ convenience and insurance. And refusal to participate in an abortion is not fraud, it’s upholding an oath to do no harm. Medical professionals and others with no religious beliefs at all oppose abortion.
16
There is a huge push for e-prescribing where the patient gives the physician his preferred pharmacy info in advance. When a pescription is needed the doctors system sends the script electronically to the needed pharmacy.
It would not be impossible for the physician, or someone in the practice to update the patients records or simply change the target pharmacy for each prescription.
If this were to happen to me, I would expect a reason to be given by the office.
5
@JR what about the harm that's done to the woman seeking the abortion? What about the harm that is inflicted upon an unwanted child?
3
I give myself the luxury to not become an expert on abortion issues except that I know it should be legal because people are going to have and need abortions anyway. So I donate to Planned Parenthood and work to elect politicians like my governor, whose vetoed of antiabortion bills have kept us from turning into Alabama. I push to keep it legal.
And I believe it did not become a super hot button political issue until Republicans realized that they could team up with the religious right and get votes by pushing the abortion issue as a defining single issue for voters.
50
@Anne
It became a politically hot issue when New York, for no other reason than to pander to extreme liberals, passed their reprehensible "abortion at any stage" law which does not even allow babies that survive abortions medical assistance.
I believe the states that foolishly decided to pass restrictive abortion laws did so in response.
3
I think the Democrats have sabotaged their own agenda. I believe most Americans were accepting of, if not entirely comfortable with, "safe, legal, and rare." But no. Being accepting wasn't enough. We had to embrace it, shout it, celebrate it, with illuminated skylines and standing ovations and Instagram posts of Miley Cyrus licking the "Abortion Is Healthcare" cake. Stop forcing us to be enthusiastic or glib or irreverent about an issue most Americans clearly take very seriously. It should have remained safe, legal, and rare. Now we don't even have that.
209
I think it is important to understand that pro-choice “stridency” is a reaction to the anti-choice stridency as well as people in the middle tiptoeing around the matter altogether. Most people would prefer to not have to talk about it but when we our country is on the cusp of losing choice lines are drawn. No one is asking anyone to be enthusiastic about, celebrate, or like their abortion. That is a matter for each person to decide (including Miley Cyrus). Abortion and contraception simply needs to be legal, safe, and accessible. And for that to be the case choice needs to be defended loudly. Because silence has gotten us to this point.
66
Acceptance of abortion means accepting that not everyone will consider it a tragedy. Abortion is simply healthcare. Don’t mandate that people feel shame for a healthcare procedure they are legally and morally allowed to obtain.
58
@Anonymous: I am pro-choice and I agree to a point. But the other side is just as extreme: no exceptions for rape or incest or the life of the mother. Both sides have polarized. I would like the pro-choice folks to focus on safe and legal, too. I'd like to see both sides come together and focus on ensuring sex ed for all kids, easy affordable access to birth control, and ensuring men are held equally responsible for preventing unwanted pregnancies. And very few people 'celebrate' abortion. They may (as I would) celebrate the right to control my own body, but that is different than celebrating a medical procedure.
33
Compulsory pregnancy and mandatory childbirth -- punish women, especially poor and women of color -- that's where the religious extremists are taking the nation.
They're far more interested in controlling women's sexual behavior than in caring for their health, well-being, human rights -- much less once children are born and actually living.
If they actually and truly cared about children, families, women, we as a nation would have:
• high quality free medical care for women, children, families;
• we would have fact-based health-sex-life-relationship education with abundant access to pregnancy prevention and contraception -- for both males and females;
• we would have living wages / basic income for families to support the children that are actually born and living here now;
• we would have free education/vocational/job/career training that actually serves the needs of human beings and their communities (not everyone needs to go to college, but every capable adult needs to be productive -- that means paying women and caretakers for all the UNPAID LABOR that is done for their families, children, seniors, disabled that they are overwhelmingly responsible for and never get paid for, losing out on retirement savings, social security earnings and any real economic security in their later years.
And many other supports for women, children, families, workers ...
But instead we have evangelical hypocrites & compulsory authoritarianism headed toward totalitarian theocracy.
217
So you missed the part where 51 percent of Democrats don’t support it. Legal and rare. Lots of people other than religious ones don’t support abortion. It’s not a 1 percent issue.
13
If Americans thought holistically, it would be better off.
Abortion is a medical and health matter that is a strict doctor / patient issue. If you don’t believe that, then we need to add another amendment modifying “church & state” separation. Why? Because those wishing to pass laws to restrict abortion based on the notion that life begins at conception are using religious arguments and not necessarily scientific.
This is why late term abortions are restricted. Scientifically, we know children are viable at a certain point in time.
Doctors also need the flexibility to make health decision without having to call a council in some state capital.
Also, if we want fewer abortions due to non-health reasons. A holistic approach would seek to find out why women have abortions for non-health reasons and develop non-coercive policies to help women make alternative decisions.
For example, if women are concerned about their finances, develop policies around income support, stricter laws on holding men accountable for money and time, expand free childcare. Maybe create an affirmative action program for single mothers.
Pass extended leave for maternity. Pass more stringent laws preventing discrimination in the workplace and mitigate the impact to career for taking time off for children.
Republicans are narrow minded and are being fueled by religious convictions. You cannot run a free country on religious convictions. You run a free country on facts and rule of law
24
@Practical Thoughts
Free access to IUDs which used to cost $500 and other long term highly effective contraceptives would allow both unmarried and married women to have sex and also have the number of children they want when they want.
Conservatives preach that this is wrong and limit education and access to contraceptives.
If contraceptives fail, should we force women to have those children ... even if we do provide the safety net you suggest .. or is it OK to not have them .. by terminating a group of cells that has no human characteristics.
I am not sure I want people having more babies ... 8 million humans should suffice .. and my genes or the genes of my European ancestors are not better than the genes of someone else. If population numbers stabilize, countries can stabilize, immigration can serve good purposes for all involved, from increasing diversity everywhere to providing for more opportunity or maybe a less stressful rural life for everyone.
6
If R v W is repealed, then I think the states that continue to permit it should allow it only for women who have lived there for a year, unless then can show that they qualify for Medicaid. This will stop abortion tourism from no-abortion states.
1
And how could this be enforced?
2
@danarlington: Getting a medical procedure is not tourism. Nice way to further control and restrict women's bodies.
2
@danarlington That is just cruel.
3
Maybe some other questions should be asked to enlighten the public - should a hospital be forced to wait until a woman is dying from a miscarriage before performing a D&C to complete the miscarriage. (Waiting too long killed an Irish woman a year or so ago). What about forcing a woman to defer cancer treatments ?
Should a woman with an ectopic pregnancy be forced to wait until it bursts, likely killing her?
Should a woman be forced to carry a pregnancy to term if the resulting child will be severely disabled? And provide examples - maybe with photos and descriptions of the impact on a family.
Describe the draconian procedures that would be required to enforce a ban - criminal investigations of miscarriages, still births, birth defects, premature births. Would OTC pregnancy tests be banned? Would every pregnancy be registered and monitored by the State?
27
@Cal What a scary thought and very good examples for commercials that could be used. Do you think the Democrats will ever learn the importance of having a unified message and sticking with it?
2
@Cal the Catholic Church for one does not maintain that pregnant women who are sick must forgo treatment. If the death of a baby in utero is an unintended consequence of life saving treatment for the mother that’s one thing. However intentionally snuffing out life in the womb to “save the life of the mother” is something altogether different. In cases of preeclampsia it’s understood that induction of early labor might be necessary and that the baby might not survive. That’s very different from a D & E. Same with an ectopic pregnancy. It’s impossible for a pregnancy to continue in a Fallopian tube and it’s understood that it’s necessary to do surgery so the woman doesn’t suffer a ruptured tube or worse. I’m unaware of any religion that would force a woman to continue an ectopic pregnancy until the inevitable happens.
Gals, we need to get into government at every level and the next time this issue comes up, we'll pass laws forcing men to get vasectomies when they help create an unwanted pregnancy. After all, guys, equal treatment under the law.
25
The graph embedded in this article shows that only 52% of self-described "moderates" support a woman's right to abortion "for any reason".
That's a frighteningly Orwellian definition of "moderate". Anyone who would deny any woman the right to control her own body (regardless of her reasons) cannot be described as a "moderate" by any stretch of the imagination.
To the contrary, anyone who would, by force of law, deny half the humans on the planet the right to control their own bodies (and thus their own most basic destinies) has zero respect for basic human rights.
Here in the 21st century, such people can only be described as "reactionaries".
18
Whatever else you might think abortion, you have to admit that laws against it are almost completely unenforceable, to the point that they make a mockery of the very concept of law.
13
There has never been a law that could control abortions. There never will be.
@Gabe: “the laws against abortion are almost completely unenforceable “—
Alas, I wish that were true. I live in Missouri, where if the TRAP laws (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) aren’t strict enough to prevent all abortions, they add new laws.
TRAP laws are the real choke point in abortion access, not repeal of Roe, though that will likely occur after next election. TRAP laws give the appearance that abortion is still available when in actuality it is not. Laws in MO are so restrictive (72 hr wait, mandatory untruths designed to talk women out of abortion, mandatory unnecessary sink, TWO mandatory pelvic exams, clinic can’t see pts after 4 pm, and of course only one clinic) that abortion access, though theoretically possible, is impossible
There’s no law against purchasing a Ferrari either . . . but it’s not an option for most.
2
Many of these comments hew to the absolutist, extreme view (i.e., it is the woman's body so she is entitled to an abortion at any time for an reason). That is out of step with a majority of Americans. Likewise out of step are approaches to prohibit abortion after 6 weeks, etc. NPR recently analyzed survey responses in a more nuanced and comprehensive manner. That analysis confirmed that a majority of Americans want abortion legal but with restrictions, such as limited to the first trimester. Indeed, Roe v. Wade didn't find an unfettered right to abortion. Instead, the state has a compelling interest after viability to prohibit abortion. Insisting on the right to abortion at any time under any circumstances will drive away voters and provide fodder for Trump.
Here is the NPR analysis:
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-to-keep-abortion-legal-but-they-also-want-restrictions
11
@James: WOmen who are not getting abortions as early as possible are getting later abortions because they didn't immediately know they were pregnant, they had a bunch of barriers to overcome to getting an abortion (wait periods, traveling a long distance, etc.), their life was in danger or the fetus was non-viable. If people want women to have abortions in the first trimester, they should ensure they're readily available. And they should understand that few women have late abortions for any reason other the the life of the mother or that the fetus will not make it anyway. There appears to be this idea that a woman who is 8 months pregnant wakes up one day and decides, on a whim, to abort. That is not happening.
14
Most people think there is no common ground among those on the two sides of the abortion debate. Those against abortion think of pro-choicers as morally wanting. Those in favor of choice think of pro-lifers as religious fanatics. But many who are pro-choice are deeply moral. And many who are pro-life are not particularly religious.
Two-stories:
I knew a young South Dakota woman whose unplanned pregnancy was, first and foremost, about her shame in having had premarital sex. It was about community values, not evangelical religion.
And my own shame was in not caring enough about my pregnant girl friend to consider anything but abortion. My support for abortion was actually anti-choice.
If the ideologues would back off, we would understand that abortion is a multi-faceted subject with far more than two sides.
7
Missing yet from every anti-choice legislation is requirement that identified male parent be made financially responsible / liable for child's support through age of majority.
14
Many women’s groups do not want universal DNA testing of children and men because it would settle the question of paternity.
2
That already is the law. Unless the state terminates your parental rights, you're on the hook for child support.
@vishmael Let's not forget a vasectomy. How many of these religious men would support abortions if they knew that they would have to get a vasectomy for being part of an unwanted pregnancy? The pro-life movement would disappear in record time and women would never have to deal with this ridiculous issue again.
1
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of abortions peaked around 2008 and has been declining ever since (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/ss/ss6713a1.htm). In 2015, the last year for which complete CDC date is available, the decline was about 29% from the peak. Why don't NY Times stories and opinion pieces cite this decline? Why, for that matter, don't Democratic candidates for congress and the presidency cite it? We are having heated debates about a problem that is gradually, or perhaps inceasingly rapidly, solving itself. Let's talk about expanded access to birth control pills. Let's talk about the problem of climate change. Or inadequate training and retraining for 21st century jobs. Or problems with our K-16 educational systems. Or inadequate oversight of the safety of newly developed airplanes.
10
@Professor M, Bravo. Thank you for shining a light on a dog-whistle issue.
1
I refuse to vote for President if the Democrats nominate Biden.
2
Politicians on both sides want us to think, "who knew abortion would be such a complex issue?"
It doesn't have to be complicated.
Anything that reduces overpopulation and eases the stress on our planet and natural resources is a good thing.
Leave it to the parents to decide on abortion .. keep the government off people's lives.
Anything that infringes on our constitution is not a good thing.
Overturn Roe v. Wade .. keep the government off people's lives.
There, solved it. You are welcome.
7
My impression is that public opinion about virtually all politically contentious issues is far more complex and nuanced than what the parties espouse or what most news media report.
9
@Cromer My impression is that individual cases are so nuanced that the government should stay out of this decision, leaving it to the woman and her doctor.
5
If a Joe Biden is going to move this far to the left, and become indistinguishable from the rest of the field, there will be no reason to vote for him. Ideology being equal, why vote for the oldest, least fresh face in the field? Joe made a mistake caving to a Planned Parenthood, they are not going to support him anyway.
I am a life long Moderate Democrat, but I fear we will end up with 4 more years of Trump. Until the Democrats free themselves from the shackles of Planned Parenthood, organized labor, and the socialists, they will lose in 2020.
12
Because Joe is lucky that the battleground states that matter (Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin) are states where he appeals to swing voters and African Americans.
Joe Biden will probably flip Pennsylvania and price very competitive in the other battlegrounds. The other candidates have to prove they can win there as well. Dominating California makes no difference.
If California, Utah, Massachusetts or Alabama were the key battlegrounds with a lot of swing voters, then maybe Biden wouldn’t be seen as so viable.
Taking rhetoric aside, if one can’t win those battleground states, they can’t win the election. That’s a brutal truth. And those states don’t fit neatly into a pure left vs right. That’s why they are battlegrounds.
3
@MaryCatherine Fearful and outdated thinking never leads to a better world. Time to embrace universal health care and income equality. That's where the future is headed and if older people don't lead us there, the younger generation will.
10
@MaryCatherine It's astounding to hear you lump Planned Parenthood (a women's health clinic, with abortion only a very small part of the health services they offer), organized labor (perhaps a history class will help you understand why unions were so badly needed in this country), and "the socialists"---whatever that means to you---these three separate organizations into a collective, oppressive force in this country. Amazingly flawed. What am I missing?
1
Presidential candidates are forced to cater to the fringes of their parties in the primaries because they are far more likely to vote. AOC won her primary by securing a total of fewer than 16,000 votes. Once one candidate locks up the nomination he/she shimmies towards the center, hoping that the fringes won’t kneecap him/her in the presidential election.
The problem the Democrats have now is that the left fringe is espousing policies that are pretty far from the mainstream of even registered Democrats. Mr. Biden has no choice but to tack left, or he’ll be out of the running before he can blink.
The writing is on the wall for Democrats. The candidate will be unelectable.
10
I remember in 1971 a girl from my HS died as a result of her BF and his father performing an abortion at a local motel. Yes with a wire coat hanger.They were never charged, but she lost her life.Seriously,abortions will always happen, keep them legal and safe. If you don’t want one, then don’t have one.How about funding birth control and education?
291
@Nora. How about we already do?
1
I was raised Catholic and admit that I still have that Catholic guilt when it comes to abortion. I am glad that I personally was never faced with the decision to terminate a pregnancy. But you see it is not about my personal philosophy. My private thoughts are just that, mine. What I think is what I think. It should not dictate one way or another how another individual should think. When we dare to judge or legislate what a woman MUST do with her own body, that is a violation of her human rights. For those who think that ending a pregnancy is immoral, I say to them: To rob a living person's ownership of her own body and soul, well, THAT is immoral. I appreciate these statistics. But we should not be swayed one way or the other by them. It is interesting data. However, that is the extent of it. We have to honor our Constitution, right? Within it is the concept of separation of Church and State. We have got to make a choice it would seem. Do we want a democracy or a theocracy? I certainly know what I want and what works for me, my daughters, and my many "sisters" throughout this nation.
236
@Kathy Lollock
As suggested in the article, most folks reject the idea of the binary: abortion-good/abortion-bad and get confounded as to when it should still be legal to terminate a pregnancy.
That question is not religious - it is biological.
When does " a living person's ownership of her own body and soul" get supplanted by the other person growing inside of them.
13
@SteveRR
What’s wrong with: Woman chooses before viability, after viability states can decide to limit abortion as long as there are exceptions for health and life of the woman. Basically, Roe.
3
@SteveRR When the other person is *born*. And even then, not *supplanted.* Women are not less equal, or less intelligent, or less moral, just because they can have children.
6
Anti abortion supporters always cite religious reasons for their attempt to legislate morality. How is that even legal? Why are we tolerating this religious intrusion into our legal and health care systems. Here is Missouri we are quickly sinking to third world status when it comes to women’s health care. Just call us the state of Gillead.
266
@Jean Sims
"Anti abortion supporters always cite religious reasons for their attempt to legislate morality."
Really? I don't. I think anti-abortion laws are based on the Declaration of Independence ideal of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", plus pro-abortion laws have been based on removing issues from democratic control.
9
@Charlesbalpha
What about a woman’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
12
This is patently false. Most people that oppose abortion do it on moral grounds not religious grounds. Certainly not “always” due to religion or even close to it.
I’m not religious at all but oppose abortion with the obvious exceptions of rape, incest, or health of mother. Rational, decent people can have opposing view points.
As for “how is that even legal?” Everyone tries to legislate morality.
4
The position needs to be that those who oppose abortion should not have abortions. And they should work day and night to help prevent unwanted pregnancies, thus bringing about a whole array of positive change. As far as the moral question, I am against much of American foreign policy, and a number of other policies. I am under no illusion that it would be possible to simply end all clearly non defensive military action, for example.
163
@Suzy I don't like drinking alcohol, so I don't drink it. It would be totally unrealistic to try to prevent all Americans from drinking alcohol simply because I don't like it. We've been down this road before, we know where it leads... to the cul-de-sac of failure.
46
@truthwink Beverage preferences are not equivalent to your "likes" on the forced birth movement.
10
@Emily One word: Prohibition.
2
Mr. Cohn is absolutely correct in stating that the choice issue is quite complex. I believe that life begins when an egg and a sperm form a zygote. I also have had two early-term abortions, flanking the two planned pregnancies that I carried to term. They were by no means easy choices, but being a mother, I know how difficult it is to raise children properly, and therefore, I am soundly pro-choice. Was I careless to get pregnant when I was too young, or too poor to parent a healthy and happy child? Yes. But it doesn't mean that a mistake should have resulted in life-long misery for all involved. I know people who have had several abortions because they use the procedure as birth control, which is wrong. Do I condone late term abortion after "quickening" when the mother can feel her baby inside her, usually between 4 to 5 months? No. However, no one has the right to tell another person how to live.
In this day and age of human overpopulation, and the tweaking of creation of life in myriad labs all over the world, it seems anachronistic to concern ourselves with "sacredness" of life. Perhaps we should think more about quality of life, not only that of women and children, but of all living beings.
153
@Shadi Mir, I think you raise excellent points. Historically, quickening was the determining cut-off point for legal abortion in this country prior to the women's suffrage movement (when suddenly abortion became a political issue). However, as a healthcare professional, I know there are humanitarian issues for late term abortion: mental illness, late-stage cancer, anencephaly (no brain development in the fetus leading to suffering and inevitable death), and a host of other disasters make a late-term abortion a humane choice. Every woman I've seen who chooses it knows it is a Sophie's Choice, and the day she has to make that choice is the worst day of her life.
30
It’s real simple.
1. If you don’t like abortions don’t have one
2. Access to safe legal abortions in a human right issue
3. Keep your religion out of my government.
300
@Prudence Spencer,
Applying your standard.
It’s real simple.
1. If you don't like Alex Jones don't listen to him.
2. Access to free speech is a human right issue.
3. Keep your intolerance out of my life.
How does it sound?
16
@Prudence Spencer
As a physician, do I have to provide abortions if asked if I provide obstetrical services?
Do I I have to tell people where to go to get one or provide pre-operative services to facilitate abortions, ....
...even though the path I took forbid abortion.
As a nurse, do I have to assist?
As a taxpayer, do I have to pay for it?
As a purchaser of health insurance, do I have to pay for it?
22
It’s the woman’s body. Don’t you see the difference?
26
There's a good chance the Supreme Court will not overturn Roe but rather will continue to approve the hundreds of harassment provisions that red states think up to make it difficult or impossible to obtain an abortion in their state.
That is the point at which large companies should permanently withdraw (aka boycott) their business from those states. They should do this because that is what their customers and skilled employees (those college-educated people in the polls) want them to do.
8
As a public service to provide fuller information about the current state of the abortion debate in this country, the Times should collect and disseminate information about prominent politicians who publicly oppose abortions, but who have had them, paid for them or helped other people to obtain them.
A good place to start might be with President Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/02/donald-trump-marueen-dowd-interview-abortion-past-partners
11
Not even one pro abortion bill was introduced in Congress last year or this year by Democrats. Big talk, no follow through.
3
This is not a democratic thing or a republican thing. It is not a Christian thing or moslem thing. Simply put - it is a personal thing.
13
If men required abortions, they'd be available on every corner. The grotesque male patriarch is always hypocritical and couldn't care less.
13
Do you American's ever get past abortion and guns ?
60
@Amsterdammer
Only when we are obsessed with race.
Sigh.
4
The perverse twist in American Thought....
1. the so-called "liberal" advocates abortion rights....and in the next breath defends the sanctity of the life of a criminal sitting on death row.
2. the so-called "conservative" advocates a faster processing of the deaths of hardened criminals.........while defending the lives of the unborn(or the undead...or the un-something or other....anyway....its life is precious)
6
A pregnant girl or woman is the one who has to undergo the terrible ordeal of childbirth, in which a large being rips its way out from between her legs or is removed surgically.
She's the one who has to live with being a mother or giving away a child to strangers.
The woman and her doctor are the only people who need to be involved in this.
Anybody else who wants to tell her what to do with her womb and vagina is arrogant and power-tripping.
19
It's time that all politicians "draw a clear line on abortion." After all they swear an oath to the Constitution and its "rule of law," one of which is Roe v Wade. Moreover, the Founders also were wise in recognizing the religious diversity of the nation by including in the 1st amendment that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Abortion is and always has been a religious position advocated by the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian denominations. The draconian anti-abortion laws now proliferating in the states of the Old Confederacy amount to the enslavement of women and not only violate existing law, the 1st amendment, but the thirteenth amendment as well. It's shameful that politicians cannot adhere to their oath of office and to champion religious tolerance that is fundamental to all true religions and is at the heart of the 1st amendment.
15
Thank you for this cogent summary, Mr. Wortman. Since all you say is true and known to all politicos, one must look to their range of vicious ulterior motives in staging such travesties.
2
1. As long as the fetus is attached to the mother.....its part of the mother and not a separate entity....abortion, like all other medical procedures is a right and is protected by the US Constitution, so says the Supreme Court.
2. Planned Parenthood is a Political Organization that funnels money into DNC political campaigns and legally has NO right to funding by the US Govt.
3. The red-tape fiasco that YOUR congressmen and women have made out of medical funding of hospitals, clinics, and doctors....is the real reason why medical costs are skyrocketing.
4. Its time to repeal everything we currently have in place regarding abortion. Everything. Abortion is a medical procedure and a protected individual right. Abortion funding has reached ridiculous levels of political corruption and should be repealed.
5. New legislation will be introduced to help the indigent afford the excellent health care(including abortion) that this nation currently supports....albeit too expensive.
4
I will never understand why some people are so concerned with the private decisions of others influenced by complex factors of circumstance, finances, potentially fatal health issues, etc. There are actual children suffering and dying all over the world. Why don't these folks concentrate on them?
24
Pro-abortion is not only pro-life, its pro-better-life. For the parents, the unborn child and the families affected as well. Even society.
For whatever reasons the parent or parents decide the pregnancy is unwanted or they are not able to support a child's basic emotional, financial or other needs; not able to provide a good childhood that every child deserves. It's better not to make further mistakes. Its better to not carry on with the pregnancy. Its not an easy decision to make, there are consequences but surely better than the infinite misery of proceeding, despite this?
If we are that concerned about destroying life by abortion, a still theoretical, not fully actualised life; should we not be more concerned about the children who are already born but are neglected, abused or lack basic needs, lack a good childhood? Their lives literally being destroyed? Should we not address and end this current active problem first, before debating abortions and future lives? Before adding to the number of future miserable children?
Would you want to be that child that is not wanted by parents or not being able to have a good childhood? Born to suffer, because you were forced to be born? It is suffering, even if you try your best to overcome it.
12
Which is correct and which is incorrect terminology?
Pro-choice, pro-abortion, pro-abortion rights, anti-choice, pro-life, anti-life, anti-abortion, anti-abortion rights?
I am in favor of a woman getting to choose what happens to her body. I am still not sure about my personal opinion on abortion but I do recognize that it is a personal opinion and that forcing others to do things according to your personal beliefs is wrong.
20
Mischaracterization and misconception 1: A zygote, embryo or fetus is ‘just a clump of cells’ that does not have an independent agency. In fact, at conception the zygote formed by the meeting of two gametes initiates a cycle of growth that is independent of the direction of the mother’s body. A woman does not ‘make’ a baby.
Mischaracterization and misconception 2: A zygote, embryo or fetus is ‘just a part of a woman’s body’. In fact, it has its own DNA that is different from that of both the man and woman who supplied the sperm and egg that comprised it.
Mischaracterization and misconception 3: A zygote, embryo or fetus is ‘equivalent to a brain dead person,’ and can therefore have its growth terminated without moral or ethical consequence. In fact, there is a radical difference between the two. The zygote, embryo or fetus is in a state of development and growth while the brain dead person is in a state of stasis or decline.
14
@Thomas thank you for this distinction- if the fetus were not alive, there would be no growth and differentiation as ITV develops complexity. The sloppy arguments of the most vociferous pro abortion advocates sometimes beggar belief.
4
@Thomas An embryo does not have agency. It has no brain, no thoughts. If the embryo/fetus did have personhood, the woman would still have the right to remove it. NO ONE can be forced to use their body for another's survival. See McFall v. Shrimp.
2
@Thomas, Some small corrections here:
1. A zygote is a clump of cells and does not have an agency independent of the mother.
2. I agree with your fact about the zygote's unique DNA. So? Not sure where you got this "just a part of the woman's body" argument. It's irrelevant.
3. I've never heard such harsh quotes before. Clearly you are not drawing from science or responsible healthcare organizations. I think you are locked in a fringe-meeting-fringe debate. And if you haven't figured it out by now, that kind of rhetoric never leads to light.
4. Seriously minded, thoughtful people spend little time on fringe dialectics.
5. So let there be light. Demagogue-type arguments only divide us, not move us forward.
Several commentators have discussed the abortion issue in terms of Catholics and their Church imposing their morality on others. But murder, theft, and perjury are also condemned by the Church, yet laws against such crimes are not seen as sectarian impositions. The fact is that laws restricting abortion, like all other laws, are enacted by federal and state governments (legislatures, governors), and not imposed by any ecclesiastical authority, in a nation where Catholics are in a minority. Protestants too see abortion as a moral issue.
It's worth noting that states with the highest percentage of Catholics (e.g., Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut) are not the states attempting to undermine the rights recognized in Roe v. Wade. One state that recently enacted a law restricting abortion is Georgia, only 9% Catholic.
10
@Charles Chotkowski 50 years ago in Massachusetts the private insurance provider Blue Cross would not pay for abortions, which were illegal in the state. You could not buy birth control medications or devices. The Catholic Church dominated such things. This gradually changed.
4
@danarlington:
There was a similar situation in Connecticut. The 1965 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut voided the Connecticut Comstock Act of 1873, which outlawed contraception. It was named for Anthony Comstock, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Such laws were enacted in the 19th Century under Protestant auspices.
3
Over many decades, I fail to understand the political fixation on the abortion issue. The claim is it is about protecting life. I will not walk into the conundrum of what determines life. Ova and sperm are alive. Yet that is not the point. If politicians and advocates were truly concerned about life, especially that of infants, they would not tolerate war. They would not tolerate poverty and malnutrition. The same people of "faith" allow and advocate for the right of states to execute a human being. Rather, I suggest its a ruse to instill a government that enforces their ideology on others as a theocracy. Lest we are reminded the Declaration of Independence was about renouncing a theocracy, and the Constitution was written accordingly.
11
@Rick B My guess is that the abortion issue was manufactured by a smart political consultant to create support for Republicans. The same is probably true of climate change.
2
I think that one thing that we are seeing in this part of the country is that nearly 50 years of the court taking onto itself the the final say on this matter has enabled state legislatures, on whom questions of this sort historically rest, to legislate irresponsibly as an act of expression rather than serious lawmaking. The latter always requires an amalgamation of compromise of principle with reality, even while upholding the former. It is possible for one to support law that differs somewhat from one’s personal principles without hypocrisy.
2
I'm always baffled by the people who vote for the legislators who pass these ant-abortion laws because they are the same legislators who do nothing to help poor mothers with health care coverage, early childhood programs, etc, If the only goal is make sure that a child is born and then do nothing or as little as possible afterwards, it seems blatantly hypocritical.
Indeed, one could say that it is very un-Christian.
12
Pro-life groups are clarifying the issue by attempting to make personhood at conception the basis of civil and criminal law.
Allowing the states to define personhood makes no sense from either side of the debate. Imagine a newly pregnant woman bearing a cluster of cells the size of a walnut in her uterus. She lives in a personhood-at-conception state. That embryo is legally a human being with legal rights. Now, she crosses the state line into a state that freely allows abortion. The embryo is no longer legally a person, no longer has rights. But she's not there for an abortion. She buys groceries and returns home. As she crosses the state line, the embryo becomes human again.
Ultimately, if the Supreme Court makes a decision recognizing an embryo as a person from conception, it will likely end access to abortion for every woman in every state. That is why the lines have been clearly drawn. No more fudging, no more compromise is possible.
There is no secular / scientific basis to justify giving a cluster of cells that doesn't have a brain the status of a human being. Only if you subscribe to the religious doctrine of ensoulment at conception does it make any sense. Can that doctrine be made the basis of American criminal and civil law? Or does doing so violate the establishment clause of the constitution?
4
It’s the size of a DOT at conception. Not a walnut. Sorry folks that’s not a baby.
In this country we get one vote. I would like to, though I can’t have your vote too. We all get “1” that’s it. I will not tell you what or who to believe in. Don’t tell me.
6
Some people believe drinking alcohol is immoral, others eating pork or dancing and still others interracial marriage. Morality is personal and it is supposed to ground our own choices and decisions. As Americans we must offer the same freedom to others to live according to their own conscience. The Constitution protects us from involuntary servitude and you cannot force girls and women to continue pregnancies against their wills that can rob them of health, livelihood and even life. We don’t reduce other human beings to no more than a means to some end, even if we believe that end might be “good”.
As for the Christians who are anti-choice, Jesus said go take up your cross, he never told you to go around foisting crosses on others
18
Life begets life. A pregnant woman is not being "robbed" of life or livelihood unless she has a particular medical issue. In contrast the awe of creation enhances our profound experience of what it means to be alive and part of life processes over generations. It is a mystery which can be revered and which the female carries.
5
@glorybe
The US has the worst maternal mortality rate in the developed world. If you’re not religious there’s no “awe of creation” or “mystery” there’s merely a biological process that can be explained by bio 101 that may of may not lead to offspring.
10
@glorybe
Under His eye.
How to make a nation ungovernable? Respect religion.
2
Anyone else find it funny that the poor are the least in favor of abortion, but the Democratic candidates all push abortion funding to benefit the poor? Maybe listen to the people?
2
For those who consider abortion only to be a matter of personal choice, should it be my choice to kill my children if I determine they are negatively impacting my lifestyle? I mean, why should anyone else have a say in what I do with my family, my life? Right?
6
You are not allowed by law to cause undue physical pain to people. Embryos don’t feel pain. They are not people. Get the difference??
7
@C interesting. Is there evidence that embryos do or do not feel pain? What is the source?
2
@Bill Killing children after birth is murder. An abortion is a legal medical procedure. A fetus is not equivalent to an already existing person.
1
Seriously, Nate - no gender breakout?
3
I would suggest, based on what you say here, that any politician with extreme clarity on the issue is in fact out of touch with most Americans. By the same token, a politician who clearly struggles with their position and sometime reverses it is experiencing the same struggles as most Americans and, as such, is arguably more in touch with voters than opponents might seem to suggest.
1
“But the most straightforward interpretation may be that the polls aren’t clear because for most Americans, abortion is a difficult, even wrenching issue that is not easily resolved for themselves, let alone the country.”
This is precisely why the decision to have an abortion needs to be left to the pregnant person. Interference in this decision is interference with bodily autonomy. No individual has the right to choose for another. To consider the pregnancy/fetus itself to have rights above those of the pregnant individual is unethical.
36
@Judith Johnson:"Methinks she doth protest too much; me thinks!"ABH is all for the spaying and neutering of 4 legged creatures because there would be no one to care for the offspring, but re choice and abortion on demand, disagree that it should be left up to the woman who is pregnant. If she has the means to care for the child, she should give birth, or give it up for adoption, and if she is carrying life within her body, and decides on an abortion, even in some cases when the fetus is living and breathing on its own, then pro choice and abortion become homicide.Mark Thyssen, a conservative analyst but by no means a radical, has called the Dem.Party the "party of murder,"because of precisely the right now demanded by fanatics on the issue that pro choice now extends to the right to abort a child even after it is out of the womb. Why do you think all those women were applauding Gov. Cuomo when he signed the abortion rights bill, and ordered Empire State Building to be bathed in a pink light? Were all those women not projecting?God gave YOU the right to bring life into the world. Make the most of it!Where would you be if your parents had decided on abortion?You wouldn't be here.
3
In my present state of information, I wonder what I would have done had I been given the choice to live or not as a fetus. It hasn't all been a bed of roses.
My father was 24 and my mother 20 when I was born. Very young by today's standards. My grandfather challenged their determination to bear the burden of raising a child by offering to fund an abortion. They committed to the long and winding road. It is good to be a wanted child.
5
@Steve Bolger ... the choice you refer to continues throughout life. The choice is in your hands, life or death. The fetus/unborn child has no such choice.
1
@Steve Bolger
I feel for you. Those thorns pricking are the feeling of being alive. Our bed of thorns has a few buds and for that we are grateful. When no buds are found, we embrace the thorns as life itself. Sounds crazy but it pulled me back from the edge.
@Steve Bolger, I'm glad your parents made a difficult choice and as a consequence you were wanted and valued. Not everyone goes down the same long and winding road though. There are a million variables going into difficult life choices. Life is not a template, though sometimes we wish it were.
abortion is a difficult, even wrenching issue that is not easily resolved for themselves, let alone the country.
Many of the Democratic candidates only prefer to discuss reproductive health as if all women suffered from fibroids. That’s one way to avoid the issue, I suppose, but it shows that there are lots of ways to unwrench this issue.
1
@John Doe
John, how do you know what kind of issue it is since as a man it’s a choice you’ve never had to face.
11
@Anon, because I’m married to a woman whose had both. I’m not going to apologize to you for what I was born, like El.
Clearly, most people are in favor of letting women decide for themselves. You have have to wonder if this so called democracy is really what it pruports.
24
@Gary: It isn't. This festering nest of lies does not even comply with "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. All religion is excluded from legislation by the first amendment.
This nation scoffs at its own most important laws. Hypocrisy rules here.
5
@Gary, recently here in California we were asked to vote on a ballot initiative if porn actors should be required to wear condoms when they were being filmed having sex, somewhere I’m sure the founding fathers envisioned taking us. I hope there’s a limit to what I have to consider purporting as I didn’t really feel that was for me to decide either.
1
@Gary, recently here in California we were asked to vote on a ballot initiative if porn actors should be required to wear condoms when they were being filmed having sex, somewhere I’m sure the founding fathers envisioned taking us. I hope there’s a limit to what I have to consider purporting as I didn’t really feel that was for me to decide either.
And we wonder why fathers feel so removed in this country due to decades of dumb legal decisions? Anyone read the book "Fatherless America" decades ago. What has changed.
You reap what you sow.
3
@Michael S
So unless women are reduced to unwilling broodmares men feel no responsibility? Good grief.
13
Thank you for this piece. This issue has become so divisive that it’s difficult to imagine a consensus. But I suspect that many people struggle with both the personal and political implications of their position.
My take is that when life begins is fundamentally a philosophical question that requires more than the science (and politics) of the day, to answer. We’re wrestling with the rights of women’s bodily autonomy versus the rights of a would-be child. We do a disservice pretending we have all the answers and insisting “the other side” is flat-out wrong. Humility is needed. As is common sense.
Aa such, the most honest political stance I can take is that overall I would like to live in a society in which abortion is rare (and safe) when it is needed, and I would like to see it less needed. And that means greater access to birth control for all women regardless of income, and critical all-encompassing sex education for young people starting in their pre-teens. But also, affordable access to quality healthcare, quality childcare, and quality education. Indeed, a fairer more equitable society leads to less abortions, especially those obtained for non-medical reasons. Just ask the Netherlands.
52
@MMB: There is no doubt when infusion of and adaptation to culture begins: at birth.
1
@MMB
Maybe the best path would be laws that would make the most people unhappy.
4
@MMB: There is only one solution, and the original colonies implemented it as the very first amendment they demanded before ratifying the Constitution. If it is a religious belief, it belongs only to the believer. The believer can not apply it to everyone else by legislating it and enlisting the government to enforce it.
7
The data is confusing because people understand the issue is has no clear, easy answer. If an embryo were walking around on its own, killing it clearly would be a kind of murder, but, inconveniently, it's housed inside another person, whose life, rights, and agency must, equally, also be respected. And many Americans are old enough to know making abortion illegal doesn't stop abortions--it only results in women have dangerous illegal abortions. (My grandmother, in the 1930's, ran an underground railroad for women seeking abortions.) Instead of pointless and cruel laws, we should consider the carrot instead of the stick. Since the vast majority of abortions are for economic reasons, we should offer pregnant women far, far, more support: birth subsidies, two year paid maternal leave, free child care and health care, and raising or subsidizing the minimum wage to something a single mother or working family truly can live on, i.e. at least twenty five dollars an hour. These steps alone, along with hugely increasing research into better birth control, would probably bring the abortion rate down to almost nothing. Why haven't abortion opponents proposed these obvious, non-harmful steps? Because they are primarily interested in punishing, dominating, and terrorizing women, not in saving embryos.
30
@Cyntha: Why do people who struggle with an issue want everyone else to take their solution for it?
3
I find it astounding that there is discussion going on in 2019 America about whether or not a woman can control what happens to her body or her life or the lives of her children that are actually here, living & breathing. If I am a citizen with equal rights to men, you cannot tell me I can’t control my own body.
There. Case closed. You’re welcome.
78
@Elizabeth Grey Here's my viewpoint.....its a free country. I dont live in Alabama (any more), so I really dont care what laws they enact on themselves in Alabama. I fully expect Alabama to experience a crime wave in about 16 years, tho'. Actions have consequences. No body in the rest of the country likes it when hypocritical NYers start preaching their own personal philosophies about how to run other parts of the country.....we'd really prefer that NY clean up its own act first......then maybe we'd listen to ya!
3
@Elizabeth Grey: I think men must have forgotten what it is like to have the government own their bodies since the draft was abolished.
20
And it is also the case that In the GSS a majority of Americans oppose abortion on demand, which accounts for around 96-97% of all abortions.
5
I am one of those Americans who is opposed to abortion at all stages and for any reason. Life begins at conception and ends at natural death. I feel life is sacred and must be cherished. I have always felt this way and public opinion will not sway me one bit. Pro life I am and will remain.
I will never condemn a woman who has an abortion as thIs is not my right. But I feel abortion is atrocious and inhumane. I am not afraid to voice my opinion in my mature years.
12
Nobody is forcing you to have an abortion
20
@KMW
Please explain why anyone should care what you think about abortion.
And why you think your opinion on the matter is more important than that of someone on the other side of the issue.
3
@KMW, I am glad that life has given you a gift of clarity. For most of us, though, we have to muddle through moral dilemmas. Is it humane to give birth to an ancephalic child who will only suffer for a few hours and then die? Is it humane to give birth to a child with no corpus collosum, who screams for months and months on end until she dies? Is it humane to give birth to a child into a drug-infested, violent home without a hope of a better future? You are one of the lucky ones, who has no idea what this moral choice is about. I wish everyone was as fortunate as you are.
2
When abortion comes to the Supreme Court, the catholic justices should recuse themselves.
47
"Over all, 94 percent of white, college-educated liberal Democrats say a woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion if she wants one for any reason. But the rest of the Democratic Party is split. Just 55 percent of all other Democratic-leaners, according to the General Social Survey, thought women should be able to obtain legal abortion for any reason she wants. Black Democrats were split 50-50."
White, college-educated liberals are the future of Democratic party.
4
I personally hate abortion. Yet I wouldn't for a moment try to put my feelings or beliefs onto someone else. It is none of my business what you do with your body. This question ought to be incorporated into any survey or poll. "Do you believe government or society has the right to dictate what a woman can or can't do with her body"
29
@Michael It's really not that simple. For some others, your sentiment of hating abortion is the sole reason why they don't want to support it at all. For these people, it's more like this question: if you saw people being murdered with no repercussions, wouldn't you try to stop it?
People nowadays fail to acknowledge the oppositions actual arguments, which is why nothing ever happens.
4
Abortions are about as much of an ethical question as stepping on an ant or pulling a tooth. Ponder it in your head in a philosophy class sometime, but then come back to earth and realize that a clump of cells is inconsequential.
17
@Claudia Gold The question, of course, is whether a fetus, at some point in the pregnancy is just “a clump of cells” ? This is the crux of the problem.
National Abortion Rights Day.
Hundreds of women from all parts of the US come to DC for a rally and then a legal abortion.
Police are unable to arrest 10,000 women.
Heavily televised.
Film at 11.
2
The voters are smarter than the politicians
2
It is interesting that majority support for abortion disappears as conditions within a woman’s control are added to the question. It is irresponsible for media outlets to report only the results of the general question without also addressing the results of the deeper questions. I have similar concerns about “70% of Americans support Medicare for all” when those same polls found no majority support when loss of employer-provided private insurance, increased taxes, and the possibility of long waits for basic medical treatment were added to the initial question.
3
"40 percent of Democrats say they oppose legal abortion if the woman wants one for any reason"
"differences here may also reflect that many Americans struggle with the complex moral and ethical issues at stake"
Nothing is complex with the moral and ethical issues - 60% are right, 40% are wrong. Even if it was 50/50 - only those 50% that consist of good people would be right.
1
Abortion isn't the moral and ethical problem, it's religious groups that spin it that way. If you're a voter and you feel that pressure, take a step back and consider pro choice. You may not totally agree with the LAW, but why take away the reproductive rights of others? Keep abortion legal. Keep women's reproductive health care in their lives, without government and religious interference.
54
@merchantofchaos. If you have an abortion, exactly what are you “reproducing “?
The fact that human life exists prior to exiting the womb after 9 months isn’t religion, it’s science.
8
What about the woman’s life? Does she count?
8
Yes, American attitudes on both sides are more extremist than in much of Europe. In France, where I studied for years, the right to abortion is largely supported in that a secularized country. Yet many French people I've talked to are stunned when they learn of the liberal laws of some U.S. jurisdictions. (The current efforts of New York's governor are often shocking.) In France, abortions are illegal after 12 weeks, period. The much looser laws in some U.S. states are every bit as appalling there as Alabama's recent legislation to effectively outlaw abortion.
13
Twelve weeks? That short a window may work in a country where terminations are readily available and the women aren't required to travel because local providers are constantly under assault. Besides that, a fetus at twelve weeks cannot feel pain and is in no way a person. I'm in favor of limits -- with exceptions for the mother's health - but at a later point that's arrived at through consideration of science and fetal development.
11
@Topher S. Your inference that French women "accept" a limit of 12 weeks because they don't face opponents outside clinics is speculation and, I believe, total deflection. The French are no less appalled at such attitudes toward abortion after 12 weeks. For me, your reply is simply more proof of the extremism of some U.S. progressives.
3
@Mason
"In France, abortions are illegal after 12 weeks, period. "
That's not true. In France, a woman can have an abortion after 12 weeks for medical reasons, such as the pregnancy endangers the mother's health, or if the fetus has severe deformities.
This distinction may not matter much to people who oppose elective abortions, but it is very important for women in high-risk pregnancies.
14
The reality is that by dismantling of RvsWade, the GOP is simply going after economically disadvantaged women in red states who can't afford the choice of traveling to a blue state for a safe abortion. In contrast, the GOP donor class of the top 1% will keep bankrolling their politicans while continuing to have access to safe abortion.
31
A big problem is that anti-abortionists spread the propaganda that being pro-choice means that a baby can be “executed“ at any time during pregnancy. However, as Roe clearly states, an abortion at will by choice of the mother is only permitted during the first trimester. States are permitted to restrict abortion, if they so choose, during the second and third trimesters based upon whether or not the health of the mother is imperiled. A third trimester abortion is only allowed if the mothers life is in acute peril.
14
@LAM. So those states that allow abortion up to delivery aren’t executing a baby that survives?
3
@LAM - That's not entirely true. When the mother's life is at risk late in the pregnancy, every effort is made to save the fetus. It's more common for a late-term abortion to be performed when the fetus is considered non-viable, to be developing with such fatal flaws (such as no brain, or with brain and/or internal organs developing outside the body) that it's not expected to survive birth, or if it survives, to live only for a few pain-filled hours or days.
9
@Jackson
Do you have examples of full term abortions?
7
I'd like to see the poll results if the question were phrased like this: Would you pay monthly dues longterm to a respected organization dedicated to the support of children whose mothers are too poor to raise them but chose to have them anyway, in accordance with your pro-life beliefs?
28
The fathers should pay. Women don’t get pregnant by themselves.
What would men now say about the law?
5
@Sue - The fact is that the fathers often don't have enough income to pay any meaningful amount of child support, and there are many ways for fathers to evade paying child support at all. 50% of single parents don't collect a fraction of the child support they're owed.
4
@Sue The abortion debate is full of shoulds. Such talk is cheap. The point is whether people put their money where their mouth is. If required to contribute personally to the cost of raising a child, especially special needs children, what would pro-lifers actually do?
7
See, the way things work, is that you can't inject your morality into laws. For example, someone may say that they only agree with abortion in cases of a mother's physical or emotional health or in economic circumstances. How do you measure these things? If someone is raped, how do we prove it? We already have a problem with rapists getting away. How do we measure if someone is "poor?" What if they make a decent income but are in debt, paying alimony, etc.? If we say you need a salary of $x, what happens if you have $x $1000? The cutoff would be arbitrary. What if you used birth control and still got pregnant but they weren't ready for it? You may agree with some people's reasons for abortions and you may disagree with others, but abortions either have to be available or not. The restrictions will always be arbitrary. And if they're not available, you're naive to think they wouldn't happen. People would still do them anyway, albeit in an unsafe manner.
16
I think Hillary Clinton summed it up best when she said abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. As a sexually active straight man, I’m eternally grateful that to the best of my knowledge none of my romantic partners has had to face that the crisis of unplanned pregnancy during our time together because it is truly a Sophie’s choice.
Forcing a child on someone who is ill prepared to care for it, is a recipe for misery for all involved, and in this era of planet overpopulation, we need fewer births not more. That said, it seems clear that at some point prior to birth a fetus is truly a living thing, but pinpointing exactly when is a messy and unclear conundrum.
What I can’t understand is why we don’t all do more to promote the use of birth control to preempt unplanned pregnancies in the first place. Guys, ask before you get busy and if she’s not on birth control use a condom. Girls, if you know your IUD has passed its effective date, get it replaced, and for the love of god if you know you’re not on birth control don’t just hop on it...
11
@JP,
It was Bill, not Hillary.
2
Or males could finally take responsibility for their penis and unfettered use of it to create so many unwanted pregnancies, criminal rapes and the truly disgusting, reprehensible incest of young girl relatives.
24
The question is, with all the hoopla about an issue that should be a given right, will more anti-choice think and cross over, or will more pro-choice think and cross over? I suppose it all depends on what they read, and in this day and age, it's a crap shoot.
1
Compliments to Nate Cohn on a well done article about a very complex topic.
Full disclosure: I do not support abortion. I suppose some will say that this is not a surprise since I am deacon in the Catholic Church. I see it as the ending of a human life based on the philosophically and scientifically supportable argument that a person is a human in process (potentia) from conception to natural depth. However, that is not what I want to address here.
What I find most interesting is how the very point of the article is tellingly in contradiction to its own lead, which states that abortion "is one of the most polarizing issues in America."
What is different today is that the opinions, attitudes and beliefs on abortion are far better represented as a complex set of overlapping circles than simply two poles. It is antiquated (going back to when feminism was a fight, not a given) to suggest there are clearly two camps and that these align in any way with the the two political parties.
People often hold differing views on abortion successfully within a family, let alone within a party. People also don't always vote their conscience.
It is this complexity that is given rise to the discomfort with supporting abortion at all times and in all situations. The external human is coming to terms with the reality that we know what we know. The heartbeat is a rallying point for this; hopefully, some day it will be the moment of conception.
8
@Patrick Moynihan - 50% of pregnancies in the US were unplanned. Providing better access to birth control is only one tiny factor, because birth control fails, often. For a woman never to have an unplanned pregnancy means her contraception must work 100% perfectly every single month for the entire 35 years of her reproductive life. That's why 1/4 of American women have an abortion by age 45 (not long ago it was 1/3).
There are also many other circumstances those who focus solely on the fertilized egg/embryo/fetus, don't think about or are totally unaware of. When a developing fetus has been discovered to have fatal anomalies that mean it could die in utero, endangering the mother's life, or is expected to die at or shortly after birth - suffering for the entire short time it survives after birth - it's sheer cruelty to both the family and the infant to insist it be carried to term and suffer before nature takes its course.
That's just one of the many reasons abortion should remain legal. Roe limits it to the period prior to potential viability. That's the compromise position. Those who want to turn this country into Romania haven't spent a single second thinking about, or even aware of, the many complications of pregnancies or of real life, nor do they stop for a second to consider the fate of an unwanted child born to a mother who'll resent it, neglect it, sometimes abuse and even torture and kill it.
8
Life begins with the first breath. The living breathing woman is who you should care about
7
@Patrick Moynihan Women do not lose their civil rights when they are pregnant. The rights of the already living woman always take precedence over a potential life.
In addition, if you really want to reduce abortions, make it mandatory for all males to have reversible vasectomies.
1
This should not be a political issue, period! The only reason it is is because it is used by Republicans to distract from REAL problems and issues that Congress and the President urgently needs to deal with.
As a former Republican, I blame this on Republican's decision to court and include the Evangelical christian right. Barry Goldwater once had a famous quote related to this subject that still applies these many years later.
61
@Bobcb, You nailed it. Thank you!
If the choice is framed as should a woman be subject to an illegal and potentially life threatening surgery versus one that is legal and regulated by law we must respect the right of every citizen to health care that is of the highest quality.
30
Thank you! Democrat, church-going Episcopalian, liberal, who favors some restrictions on legal abortion here. Tired of this issue being painted in binary terms. It is nuanced and it is time that our political structures realize this.
34
It’s not nuanced. Life begins with the first breath. The decision is between the doctor and the women. It’s not the business of the state
24
Elizabeth Warren is wrong. The Hyde Amendment is not an assault on the most vulnerable, that would be abortion. You can’t want the government out of the decision yet ask the government to fund it. Democrats, to which I more and more reluctantly belong, have sabotaged access to healthcare for all by a deranged insistence that abortion on demand at any time for any reason is healthcare. I can’t vote for Republicans but if the Dems keep it up you’ll all be looking at 4 more years of Trump. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
20
But that is exactly what abortion is. It’s a decision made by a woman and her doctor. You and the state have no say in that decision
26
It’s a shame, but the Democrats really don’t want you in their party anymore. (Don’t feel bad: neither party wants me either.) Abortion on demand has become their litmus test, as has an abortion ban for Republicans. There’s no room for principled nuance anywhere anymore.
11
@JR Warren's dirty little secret is that she (along with other Democratic prez hopefuls) voted for spending bills that contained the dreaded Hyde Amendment as part of their language. Voted repeatedly. Didn't say a word. Nor did she carry a bill repealing it. Too many Catholic voters in Mass, I suppose...
2
A woman should be able to have an abortion if she feels she needs it; I hope she makes the choice as early as possible in the first trimester and I hope she gets the person who impregnated her to pay for the procedure; if not the person who impregnated her, them her love ones are free to pool their funds for the procedure as we all had to do before Medicaid.
7
Being a good Catholic, Joe let his religious upbringing dictate his actions-whether he realized it or not. I believe he is a good man who truly cares about others, but that anti-woman thing which taints the Church also affects his thinking. He is certainly not the misogynist our president is by any stretch of the imagination, but his actions concerning Anita Hill and the abortion issue speak to a deep seeded belief that men know better, and women should listen. You’re a great guy Joe, but we need a leader for all people, not just someone who needs to shore up his political base by coming around to issues women care about because you need the votes.
25
Sorry, but politically, it’s really not that difficult an issue anymore if abortion is that important to you as a voter.
If you support the pro-choice position, you are not welcome in the Republican Party anymore. Period.
If you support the pro-life position, you are not welcome in the Democratic Party anymore. Period.
This is a sad state of polarizing affairs. I used to know pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans. But this is the new reality.
So, get used to it and choose your party accordingly - or better yet, pick another one.
8
You can be against abortion but you can’t force your belief on another woman. No one who is pro choice is forcing another woman to have an abortion
24
1) Have the studies investigated the sentiments regarding "natural" abortion, stillborn and miscarriages? 2) Have these studies or other studies examined a woman's right to make her own medical decisions with the advice her doctor? 3) Missouri has just sanctioned state sponsored sexual harassment by insisting upon doctors manipulating a woman's genitals if she requests an abortion! This order was issued by the Missouri State Health Director Dr. Randall Williams, who in a similar position in North Carolina encouraged residents to drink and use the water out of their wells even though Duke Energy's coal ash pits leached, leaked into the ground! What level of arsenic is safe in your drinking water? 330 wells were affected. Besides old white men in Missouri's Republican Party, who trusts this doctor to give good advice ? This last point illustrates the perversion of the right-to-life movement. On the one hand the insist upon the right of the fetus to mature and be born. On the other hand they diminish the rights and integrity of the woman to make her own decision. Its a violation of human rights. Have these studies investigated the violation of human rights originating from these restrictive abortion laws?
14
According to NPR, Three-quarters of Americans say they want to keep in place the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal in the United States.
19
So if, as the sub-headline to this article states, many people grapple with abortion's "ethical and moral complexities," then why is it that state legislatures -- mostly (still) made up of white men -- can enact restrictive new law substitute their morals over a woman's? Who appointed these legislators to play God?
21
@PaulB67
According to the graph and article, "abortion-wary Democratic voters . . . are more likely to be nonwhite."
2
Try adding a follow up question— who should decide? A man? A group of men? A jury of her peers? Who gets to force her to be pregnant for 8 months?
76
Roe will more than likely get overturned.
Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are itching for the opportunity to 'stick it' to those liberals. From what I see, the only thing at the Supreme Ct (SC) that might save Roe is Roberts. He might do what he did with the Affordable Care Act, and conclude that upholding it is crucial to the SC's legitimacy.
Because I think Roberts sees where this is going. If he allows the SC to overturn Roe, the next battleground will be term limits for SC justices.
If abortion becomes illegal in the U.S., evangelicals will be euphoric, thinking they've finally won on this issue. But you want to see an issue that will truly cleave the country apart? That would be if American women lose their reproductive freedom. Despite what evangelicals think, most Americans will not accept that, and will NEVER stop fighting them on this.
The remedy is via term limits for SC justices. This law change can be accomplished with a Democratic president, House, and Senate. And if Roe gets overturned, the national rage would probably lead to this Democratic sweep. We could then get extremists like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh off the bench.
Checkmate, you cruel evangelicals. Don't celebrate too early. Because the joke is on you.
It's time for term limits for SC justices. Life terms are un-American. There is no doubt anymore that SC justices do the ideological bidding of the president who appointed them (with rare exceptions). They ARE politicians. It's time they were treated as such.
20
@Josa - I believe the most the Roberts court will do is return the decision to the states. I don't believe they'll overturn Roe completely. Too politically risky, and it would destroy the reputation of the court for 40 years.
3
It’s a difficult situation if you decide to make your beliefs someone else’s. In my state the politicians decided to restrict actual rights for restrooms and the LGBT people. The state lost millions of dollars. After much ado about nothing they conceded. Now people are trying to politicize the rights of a woman’s body. You are welcome to your opinion, not anyone else’s. We are not anyone’s property, we do not restrict men’s rights to procreate. People choose and they answer to their god or not. Not you, not the government. Enough.
24
Too many liberals frame this as a simple choice. You are either pro-abortion or you want to control women’s bodies. I lean pro-life because I am not sure when life begins. It is a question that is messy and complicated and difficult to answer.
28
Yes.
Too many conservatives frame this as a simple choice. You are either pro-life or you want to kill babies. I lean pro-choice because I am not sure when life begins. It is a question that is messy and complicated and difficult to answer.
The vast, VAST majority of us are in this same somewhat conflicted, uncertain place where we understand that “the truth” is not and will never be a simple, universally supported absolute. It’s a shame that we can’t at least be in absolute agreement that absolutism on this issue is unproductive, and work toward SOMETHING that does SOME good for the people who find themselves in difficult situations, facing difficult choices.
42
@Jennifer
According to science a fetus is viable (by which they mean it has a 50% chance of survival) if born at 24 weeks or later. Only 1% of abortions are done after 21 weeks and those are due to either the health of the mother or birth defects that would mean a stillbirth or death soon after birth.
All other metrics on when life begins are based in religious beliefs and as such have no place in the creation of laws and restrictions on abortions. The separation of church and state has been paramount since this nation's founding.
Your religion doesn't get to overwhelm my bodily autonomy.
127
This is a silly argument if your goal is persuade anybody. It has nothing to do with when the fetus becomes "viable." We know that if there was not an abortion, a baby would likely be born at the end of the pregnancy, and if there is an abortion, a baby will not be born. Your argument is not disproving anything that those opposed to abortion base their opinion on. You're responding with a scientific answer to something that isn't a scientific question.
1
Yes, this a very difficult, and wrenching issue, not easily resolved.
My feeling is that this would be better resolved if there could be a consensus on minding your own business. Time has come to stop making personal decisions for someone else.
The Roe v Wade case was decided on the right to privacy, correct? So, just mind your own business, especially if you are not a woman. How about some support for that?
134
Yes. “All men just shut up and agree with the taking of innocent human life.”
Great argument.
1
A woman is the only one who can be pregnant or not be pregnant. It should not be the business of the person living down the street whether she decides to have an abortion or not!
148
@Interested
Not the sperm donor either. She has the right to abort and if she lets my sperm get her pregnant and decides to let that tissue become a person, let her raise it herself. I am not going to let her shackle me to child support bills and give up my freedom. I didn’t make a baby, I just made sperm that in turn, only because she allowed it to happen, stimulated some tissue to grow inside her. At some point over nine months it became a baby and a person but again that is only because she allowed it and I was not there when that magic moment happened.
No sir! Her body, her choice, her child support, her day care problem, her medical bills, her college bills. The next twenty years is all on her. I am in control of my body and will put it someplace where the child support goons can’t get me.
2
Now Biden flips ( for the public ), after seeing his internal polling tank. In contrast to his career of voting for the Hyde Amendment. I sense that Biden with his hyper bipartisanship mentality ( read giving Republicans and his corporate donors mostly what they want ) will work quickly with the Republicans and switch back to his view of keeping it law, plus add a few anti-choice sweeteners, if he is president. Biden’s actions speak louder than his current words. Also do you really believe he would choose a pro-choice Supreme Court justice?
Can’t wait for actual non-corporate polling that also counts people under 50, showing Biden is not a contender. Bernie has been standing up for women’s issues and for the non-rich his whole life with consistency, not flip-flopping to get elected.
8
"Gallup found majority support for legal abortion in the first trimester only in cases of rape or incest..."
Statistically speaking, this means 99%+ of abortions in the United States do not muster majority support, according to Gallup polling.
The more closely you look at abortion - the reality of killing a human being in the womb - the harder it is to stomach the Democratic orthodoxy of "on demand, without apology." And indeed, as is the case in most mass killing in history, the killing can only be sustained by dehumanization and euphemism, casting the victim as a parasite, a clump of cells that needs to be terminated for the safety and security of others.
14
@James The difference is that those dehumanized in massacres and genocides were actual human beings, with dreams, thoughts, ambitions, desires, self-consciousness and awareness of their mortality. Members of my family perished in the Holocaust and were incarcerated in the gulags. Those who came back told stories of their experiences. How many people do you know who will tell stories of their existence in the womb? A fetus has no self-awareness. It has human DNA, as does any of the cells each of us sheds daily. But it has no human mind. And please don’t tell me “Neither does a newborn”. The birth marks a neurological milestone as a newborn’s brain begins developing very rapidly after it is flooded by sensory input. Of course, a baby is not the same as an adult but at least it has legal personhood. A fetus does not.
44
@James Fixating on abortion frames the issue in an unhelpful way. As a result we get into the tedious "when-does-life-begin" circular argument that gets us nowhere. If you're against letting women having autonomy over their own bodies because of your moral sense, then get involved in programs that lift women out of crisis so that early pregnancy termination is not needed. Be part of a solution that helps everyone. That would be a way to put your moral sense to practical use instead of getting stuck in this endless rut of judging others.
8
Life begins with the first breath. If you don’t want an abortion don’t have one.
7
Great article explaining how difficult of an issue this is. It’s always good to be reminded that most issues we see opined about by politicians or the media are far more complex for the American people than they would like us to believe.
18
It seems a strange omission to me that your graph doesn't show a breakdown between the opinions of men and women in these categories. The effects of abortion laws cause women to lose their agency. subject women to invasive, degrading and unnecessary procedures and counseling, force women into economic hardship. If a set of laws are designed solely to denigrate the status of one segment of the population, and the majority of people crafting these laws are not part of that segment, perhaps it would be worthwhile to show the divisions in opinion between the two.
168
Eliza the whole point of this article and the reason people are so conflicted about this is that there is actually a third entity involved which is a developing fetus. This puts the lie to the tiresome 'its my body' trope. That complicates things for sure. And any thinking person with enough conscience to get past a bumper sticker mentality realizes that.
To anyone who says that this is merely a 'religious' issue... was the question of slavery is a 'religious' issue?
11
@Eliza The reliable polls (Pew , Gallup) show the opinions of men and women are not statistically different on either the pro- or anti- abortion rights fronts. Putting this in would undermine the narrative of misogyny that the “extremely liberal” wing of the democrats like to use to drive preemptive laws like the ones in NYS ;and that sells NYT subscriptions). Such figures also underline the fact that abortion opinions are more more nuanced than it being a “tool of misogyny”. So they didn’t include this figures.
This wouldn’t jibe well with factually dubious statements like your own.
Disclosure: I’m a pro- abortion rights male doctor who prefers facts and information to delusional narratives of our political extremes. I feel like sanity has left the barn and now we jeopardize Roe v Wade via rhetoric built on fear and/or morality, not common sense policy.
29
@Bob Your right to decide what you do with your body isn't tiresome to me. It recognizes your humanity, your right to privacy and self-determination. Neither I nor your state legislature has the right to force you to donate any part of your body to anyone against your wishes. I am female, and this is my body, not yours. My life, not yours. If you are concerned about children, perhaps you could volunteer to try to reduce their abuse and exploitation. Millions of live children await your assistance.
52