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There's Nothing Moderate About a Ban on Abortions at 15 Weeks
https://newrepublic.com/article/164261/mississippi-15-week-abortion-ban-texasIn 2010, Nebraska became the first state to pass a 20-week ban on abortion, but it certainly wasn’t the last. The law was soon emulated by several other states, including Idaho, Indiana, and Alabama. The real goal of those who pushed to codify the arbitrary 20-week mark as some sort of bright line—based on bogus science pushed by anti-abortion activists, who claimed a fetus could feel pain at that gestational age—was clear at the time and even more obvious now: It was meant, as one anti-abortion lobbyist put it, to “push the envelope” when it came to Roe v. Wade’s stance on viability.
These bans were unconstitutional and cruel—yet they were framed by their proponents as a reasonable, moderate compromise, seemingly supported by polls indicating a majority of Americans supported 20-week bans. (These polls are determined in no small part by their wording and framing. To quote the activist and writer Jenny Brown, one might of course get a different answer to these surveys if people were asked, “Do you think someone should be forced to carry and bear a baby against her will once she is 20 weeks pregnant?”)
As the Supreme Court, dominated by conservative, anti-abortion justices, is poised to hear oral arguments on Mississippi’s unconstitutional 15-week ban, a chorus of voices has emerged to say that banning abortions after three months is acceptable. But we should nip this foolish logic in the bud. A 15-week ban is not reasonable or moderate or a compromise worth swallowing, however reluctantly. Like any other ban at any point in someone’s pregnancy, we should recognize it for what it is—an assertion of the state’s power in determining when and how we’re made to have children, not a medical or moral middle ground.
(snip)
That these arguments were proposed just as Texas’s extremist abortion ban made its torturous way to the Supreme Court is no coincidence. Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas wrote recently that if the court were to hear the cases together and only knock down Texas’s six-week ban, it would “look almost sensible to a certain segment of journalists and pundits—never mind that upholding a 15-week ban ignores 50 years of precedent and would eviscerate Roe without ever having to say it’s been overturned.” As Rinkunas put it, “It is not a compromise or a ‘win’ if the Supreme Court blocks one unconstitutional abortion law but upholds another. Allowing either of these laws to stand is a tragedy for abortion access.” The political rhetoric of compromise and moderation has become fetishized to the point of absurdity, and used to sell the entirely unpalatable. When it comes to abortion, we shouldn’t buy it.
These bans were unconstitutional and cruel—yet they were framed by their proponents as a reasonable, moderate compromise, seemingly supported by polls indicating a majority of Americans supported 20-week bans. (These polls are determined in no small part by their wording and framing. To quote the activist and writer Jenny Brown, one might of course get a different answer to these surveys if people were asked, “Do you think someone should be forced to carry and bear a baby against her will once she is 20 weeks pregnant?”)
As the Supreme Court, dominated by conservative, anti-abortion justices, is poised to hear oral arguments on Mississippi’s unconstitutional 15-week ban, a chorus of voices has emerged to say that banning abortions after three months is acceptable. But we should nip this foolish logic in the bud. A 15-week ban is not reasonable or moderate or a compromise worth swallowing, however reluctantly. Like any other ban at any point in someone’s pregnancy, we should recognize it for what it is—an assertion of the state’s power in determining when and how we’re made to have children, not a medical or moral middle ground.
(snip)
That these arguments were proposed just as Texas’s extremist abortion ban made its torturous way to the Supreme Court is no coincidence. Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas wrote recently that if the court were to hear the cases together and only knock down Texas’s six-week ban, it would “look almost sensible to a certain segment of journalists and pundits—never mind that upholding a 15-week ban ignores 50 years of precedent and would eviscerate Roe without ever having to say it’s been overturned.” As Rinkunas put it, “It is not a compromise or a ‘win’ if the Supreme Court blocks one unconstitutional abortion law but upholds another. Allowing either of these laws to stand is a tragedy for abortion access.” The political rhetoric of compromise and moderation has become fetishized to the point of absurdity, and used to sell the entirely unpalatable. When it comes to abortion, we shouldn’t buy it.
9 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
or serious/dangerous fetal abnormality, and then THAT WAS IT?
We're DONE arguing over this as a society? It's settled? And then the steps are taken to make it easy to have done, basically everywhere?
I'd take that pretty happily.
Then again, I'm a dude, so ... 
