> Abortion isn’t 0 or 1, legal or not legal.
As others have already pointed out below, and I already mentioned, over half of states are ready to enact total bans. The repeal of Roe doesn't make abortion illegal, but it does make a _ban_ on abortion legal, which is exactly what is happening.
> I would guess in 10-20 years the US would arrive at the same conclusion, with small differences between red and blue states.
This data visualisation [0] highlights the problem with this approach.
This isn't an issue where you can sit back and contemplate it as some abstract exercise of democracy. So many women will die, or be persecuted during that 10-20 year span you mention and it is completely needless. No one should be adopting a "it'll all work out in the end" mindset.
> Because it's not really relevant—the laws making it illegal are making it illegal across the board, no matter how early.
This doesn't make any sense. Since the recent SCOTUS decision, laws are surely being drafted in many states right now. People may still be discussing, writing, overturning, and re-writing abortion law twenty years from now. Having a coherent moral position on the issue is absolutely relevant.
> But now that's no longer a concern, the bans are across the board.
This is just completely false. There are fifty states, and most of them have now and will continue to have threshold or multi-threshold laws. By my count six states have blanket bans, and the percentage of the population living under those blanket ban laws is extremely small.
And this is exactly what's bugging me. I think there is a vast middle ground of people who believe all these things:
1. Aborting a fetus with a functioning brain is wrong.
2. Forcing women to carry pregnancies to term against their will is wrong.
3. (1) becomes more wrong the further developed the fetus is.
4. (2) becomes more wrong the greater the harm or risk of harm to the mother is.
And these are the people writing most of the laws in most states. They're also the people that drafted the original Roe v. Wade opinion. These people fall on a spectrum between pro-choice and pro-life, because it's a complicated moral question.
> So it's not discussed much because it's not a big part of what happens.
I think these are Internet goggles. I think it's discussed a lot, given how many different laws there are throughout the world and how detailed many of them are in their timelines and conditions. But for some reason on message boards, it's all Christians unsubtly implying that aborting a fertilized embryo is like making somebody who exists not exist anymore, and on the other side people saying "you're so dumb, a fetus isn't a person" as if that completely settles the question. And the same people act like it's equally obvious that's it's a horrific atrocity to kill an infant that only gestated for 24 weeks, just because its using its lungs and its location in space relative to the mother has changed.
Does it make sense if I say that I'm just as appalled by the simplistically-pro-choice disregard for somewhat-cognitively-developed fetuses as I am by the simplistically-pro-life disregard for a mother's burden? Why is it sufficient that late term abortions are just "rare, expensive, and unpleasant"? Aren't they just as wrong as keeping an unwilling mother from aborting a microscopic blastocyst?
> The immediate political debate in the U.S. isn't about zygotes, but rather fetuses.
No, it's already law that currently 10 states have bans on all abortions past 6 weeks, restricting women's control over their own body. But feel free to move to Texas where a 12 year old daughter could be raped and forced to carry a baby. Sounds like freedom to me. /s
> The way it currently looks is the right want to ban abortion no matter what context.
While it's true that some republican run states are going this direction. If we look at the original case that will likely lead the SC to overturn Roe v Wade (again, it hasn't even happened yet), would be a European style ban, where abortion is allowed up until 15 weeks (this is a typical European cutoff). I believe the Mississippi law also has exceptions based on maternal health or fetal disability, which in countries like Germany, would actually require government approval in the late second and third trimester [1]. After the Roe v Wade leak, only a few GOP states have attempted to ban abortion outright. Popular GOP governors like Ron Desantis, whose name keeps coming up for 2024, signed a Mississippi style 15-week ban in Florida, instead of a full on ban.
So, while it's certainly true same in the party want a 100% ban, it's also true that the mainstream ones (again, DeSantis is extremely popular, so is a good indicator of 'centrist' republican thought) are not going that direction and instead making our laws more similar to Western European countries.
> It is fun to cherry-pick the most favorable facts for your argument from a source.
I randomly picked a state I assumed would be the most conservative.
> The rest all use the much higher bar of "serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
You said: “red state abortion laws do not make exceptions for the mother's health.” By your own admission that’s false.
The “higher bar” you mention is similar to the “grave permanent injury” standard used in France. (Note also that France had a seven day waiting period until recently, and Germany still has one plus mandatory counseling.)
> All ban abortions starting within the first trimester, most at 6 weeks.
Yes, but all those bans have been blocked by federal courts, and none have gone into effect, because Roe prohibits banning abortion prior to viability (20-24 weeks). Under Roe, most EU abortion law would unconstitutional for the same reason. That’s why Roe is radical compared to Europe.
> I'm not discussing the upper thread. You are an attorney; this isn't ignorance, it's dishonesty. US abortion laws are not more radical than other developed nations.
One of the central issues Roe and Casey grapple with is at what point is the fetus sufficiently developed that the State has an interest in protecting its life. That’s the whole point of Roe’s trimester framework. It’s also a fundamental moral question about human life. Casey says this about “Roe’s essential holding.”:
> It must be stated at the outset and with clarity that Roe's essential holding, the holding we reaffirm, has three parts. First is a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State. Before viability, the State's interests are not strong enough to support a prohibition of abortion or the imposition of a substantial obstacle to the woman's effective right to elect the procedure. Second is a confirmation of the State's power to restrict abortions after fetal viability, if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies which endanger a woman's life or health. And third is the principle that the State has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus that may become a child. These principles do not contradict one another; and we adhere to each.
The parts italicized above are ones that most EU countries disagree with. They draw the line at the end of the first trimester. There may be various exceptions beyond that—e.g. impairment of mental health in Denmark—but at that point the ball is squarely in the court of the government to choose what to allow under what circumstances.
What’s “intellectually dishonest” about pointing out that Roe’s viability line is quite radical compared to the ones other developed countries draw?
All but three EU countries limit “on demand” abortions to 14 weeks or earlier. The earliest limit in the US, that has actually been allowed to go into effect, is 20 weeks.
> I for one hope the Roe decision diffuses the abortion question in the long term.
That is obvious and absolute nonsense. The only thing it does is make the issue worse.
> At least theoretically, having the decision state by state means more people can agree with their local legislation
Not only will you always have people which do not agree with their legislation (even more so when that legislation is in no way representative thanks to voter suppression and gerrymandering), the GOP is already pivoting to trying for federal bans.
And that's ignoring the regressive states also already looking to push things further. Contraceptive bans are already coming up more and more as well.
> The reality is that this won't stop abortion, just safe abortions
I think that's probably incorrect. People respond to incentives.
The evidence that I know of for that assertion comes from studies which are poorly done and biased. The methodology is to compare the rate of the abortion in places with different legal frameworks for it. The main problem is that it is hard to estimate the prevalence of an illegal activity.
Additionally, some of the places they put in the "not legal" category tend to be poor places in which rule of law is much less important than the US. (So you can't expect similar laws to have similar effects)
> Firstly, can you even prosecute a woman for abortion? Aren't they legal?
In case you've been living under a rock for the last while: several American states have banned abortions[0][1] after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade. The federal government failed to implement any laws to safeguard access to abortions so overturning Roe vs Wade was all that conservatives needed.
Some states have exceptions for rape and incest, some don't. Texas even offers a sizeable bounty for reporting abortions. This has already resulted in medical care being refused to women carrying stillborn children and other pregnancy complications fatal to either the mother or the child out of fear of prosecution.
As for secondary criminal activity: I agree, if the police finds other illegal acts during a legal investigation, they should be allowed to act on that. This is the proof that the whole "if you've got nothing to hide" narrative surrounding state surveillance is dangerous.
> I think, if Roe v Wade had never happened, most American states would have moved to a liberal abortion regime with time (maybe with a handful of conservative holdouts), but it would have been a far less heated political and social issue. I think it is very likely that, the abortion law regime post-Roe v Wade's overturn, is going to be much more restrictive (in many states) than it would have been in the same year in a timeline in which Roe v Wade never happened to begin with.
I broadly agree. IIRC, Roe liberalized abortion by fiat shortly after a handful of states did. That totally fried the normal political/social change process and pissed off a boatload of people, which got us where we are today. Liberals got what they want, but at a much steeper cost that if they'd been more patient.
> access to abortion will be very limited everywhere
This is surely not true. Forty percent of the US population lives in states with laws protecting access to abortion. The AP is reporting that 20 states have heavy restrictions/bans, and the remainder are to-be-determined. [1]
I've seen the 26 state reference floating around on social media and wonder which states are included, beyond what news outlets are reporting. I'm open to the possibility that the AP has this wrong — the reason I'd like to know the source of the 26 figure is to compare it to the mostly-trusted sources that are giving lower numbers.
To be clear, I'm not weighing in on whether today's decision is good or bad. I just wanted to clear up some of the statistics that people hear a lot, since they are sometimes based on misunderstandings of the law (which are reasonable since the case was decided a long time ago, and until recently most people thought it would not be overturned anytime soon, if ever).
> Also, is it not the case that most Americans support some abortion rights? Thus, this could force conservatives to move center on the abortion spectrum in order to appease their constituents.
13 states have trigger laws going into effect with this. It’s not going to move the needle at all. The red states will ban it. Blue won’t. And it’ll still be a hot button topic in the reversed states. Red candidates in blue states will want to outlaw it. Blue candidates in red states will want to allow it.
Our supreme court overturned a law that enshrined country-wide access to abortion. I personally disagree with this, but the phrasing as stated here isn’t representative of the truth. Individuals in progressive states and those willing to cross state lines in many cases still retain access to abortion.
>Firstly, multiple states have been preparing for the overturning of Roe v Wade, the court case which specified the right to an abortion was privacy and therefore protected. There are multiple decades-old laws on the books that says if Roe v Wade is overturned abortion is automatically outlawed in the entire state. There's no ballot-box here.
That's precisely the ballot-box. Elected officials did that.
>The Supreme Court has outright stated they will now refuse to take up any more cases about gerrymandering, which is a process where politicians get to choose who votes for them basically.
I'm sorry but gerrymandering is orders of magnitude more complex than this. There is not even a widely agreed upon position on what would constitute fair voting districts.
If you truly believe the country simply isn't democratic then its problems are simply so large in comparison I can't imagine caring about abortion at all.
The truth of the matter, I believe, is that the national divide on abortion simply isn't solved yet, SCOTUS delayed it, but even after being established as legal in the entirety of the US for a long while a good bunch of US citizens still don't agree with the legality of the practice.
> One of the legislative initiatives that has been undertaken by several states is a statute creating a trigger ban on abortion, wherein the Supreme Court striking down Roe would immediately result in an automatic complete abortion ban statewide.
Good. I think that laws that serve to protect defenseless children should be upheld. I do think that IVF should be reconsidered, but it appears that the intent of the law is to prevent children from dying, not to prevent couples who have trouble conceiving, from conceiving because of complications that may arise. I think those two are separate issues with different outcomes. I think a child that is failed to be conceived or dies during the process of being conceived is a fundamentally different issue to a procedure who's express and deliberate purpose is to end the life of the child.
> Technically it was illegal the whole time in many places and the supreme court only last year recognized that they never had the power to prevent states from enforcing their own laws on the matter.
I don't agree with this "technical" interpretation at all. Nobody would have said in 2020 that technically abortion is illegal in many places. Just because the Supreme Court changed its mind doesn't wipe everyone else's minds.
> people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones
It's incorrect to claim that people leaving abortion-restricting states to less restrictive ones have the opposite preference to me. My preference, and I'd guess their preference in most cases, is to not allow any state to outlaw abortion. The idea that a woman leaving her own state to get an abortion has the preference of allowing states to decide to outlaw abortion sounds pretty absurd to me.
Furthermore, polls show that the majority of Americans support abortion rights, nationwide. "A record-high 69% say abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy." "A 61% majority of Americans think overturning Roe v. Wade, thus ending constitutional protection for abortion rights and returning the matter to the states, was a “bad thing" https://news.gallup.com/poll/506759/broader-support-abortion...
Here's a funny thing (funny as in hypocritical, not funny as in amusing): I've seen too many instances where advocates of "local control" suddenly impose restrictions on local control when they happen to achieve broader power and are able to implement their policy goals. It was never really about local control, it was about winning by any means available.
> This Roe v Wade thing? We could have a referendum and be done with it.
I don't think "be done with it" on abortion is remotely possible. The two sides are completely intractable. In my long life I've never heard anyone be persuaded by the other side.
Besides, overturning RvW will not federally prohibit abortion. It will leave it up to the states, which will decide democratically.
This satisfies nobody.
For example, here in Washington State, there is no chance that abortion will be outlawed by the State. But that hasn't stopped major demonstrations protesting the Supreme Court.
>The UK legalized abortion by law. It’s 24-week limit on abortion for economic reasons is the longest in the EU. In the US, abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court. 24 weeks is a fairly typical limit in the US—a country that’s more religious than Poland (where abortion is illegal). The 12-week limit in Denmark or Germany or France, or the waiting periods that were place in France until 2015, would be unconstitutional. Germany’s abortion laws (where the constitutional court found it unconstitutional to legalize abortion so it’s still just decriminalized under 12 weeks, and where there is a counseling requirement) would be unimaginable. Indeed, at the same time as the Supreme Court found a constitutional right to abortion, the courts of Canada, Austria, and France found that it was a matter for the legislature to decide.
Indeed. To provide background for others, by the early 1970s various US states had legalized abortion. In Roe v. Wade, however, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was a constitutional right, abruptly legalizing it nationwide with more or less no restrictions whatsoever; even many abortion-rights supporters believe that the legal theory behind the decision was faulty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Legal). The result was so across-the-board that, among other things, the US still allows abortions to occur later than anywhere else.
Preventing the full political debate process from occurring is why abortion remains so controversial in the country almost 50 years and counting. Because such issues are polarizing and partisan, they need full discussion in a legislature, as opposed to unelected judges unilaterally short-circuiting the debate.
> You’re assuming the rest of the country shares your views. A large portion of America views abortion as murder.
Is this backed up by data or your personal view? Because every piece of data that I've seen is that only ~30% of americans support a ban of abortion, while the large majority are in favor for it being legal.
> The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the legislature from protecting the right to abortion.
Which means that New York, California, Massachusetts will retain abortion access. And Texas, Indiana, will remove abortion access.
This sounds like States rights is actually working.
But the media is distorting the overturning of Roe vs Wade with the sensational claim that “Abortion is banned in the US”.
No, it’s not banned. This just means Texas and New York have differing policies with regards to abortion access. Yes, 46 million women living in conservative states will lose access to abortion, but not all of those women are liberal quite frankly. Moreover, those states are exactly that: conservative. And the Conservative Majority of that state isn’t required to accommodate the views of the Liberal minority of that state.
Just like the Liberal Majority of California isn’t required to accommodate their Conservative Minorities.
That’s the nature of how US Democratic institutions were built.
Sounds fair to me and the Supreme Court made the correct decision by returning that authority back to the states.
> I would guess in 10-20 years the US would arrive at the same conclusion, with small differences between red and blue states.
This data visualisation [0] highlights the problem with this approach.
This isn't an issue where you can sit back and contemplate it as some abstract exercise of democracy. So many women will die, or be persecuted during that 10-20 year span you mention and it is completely needless. No one should be adopting a "it'll all work out in the end" mindset.
[0] https://twitter.com/monachalabi/status/999562371461992448?la...
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