The whole, entire, complete argument of the Pro-Life movement is that a human is a human, whole and complete, however immature, from conception. Period. End of story. Now, tell me how any of your arguments even make the slightest bit of sense. 8 1/2 months, 6 months, 15 weeks, 8 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 microseconds, whatever. It is a human being, just. . . . . like. . . . .YOU.
Very gratified to read women in the replies on the difference between the choice and desire to bring a pregnancy to term, and the condition of enforced pregnancy. I had two pregnancies and two children that we truly wanted, and it was not an easy proposition. Women are no longer chattel, and there will be no enforced pregnancy in the U.S. regardless of whatever laws people (mostly men), decide to pass; however, the question is: will abortion/termination of pregnancy remain a relatively safe and elective or emergency procedure? That's what's at stake.
I think this issue, unlike almost any other in contemporary American politics, is characterized by fundamental moral differences between the two sides that, within each camp, treats abortion as a valence issue what for most of society is a position view - meaning for anti-abortion activists the question is “to what point are you willing to tolerate the slaughter of innocent human beings” and, conversely, “to what point are you willing to force a woman to carry a child to term against her will?” The obvious solutions, respectively, is “never” for both (which is why I’ve always distrusted anti-abortion advocates that pushed TRAP regulations pre-Roe and that are willing to stomach and exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother when these are clearly just stepping stones to their ideal policy position, a blanket ban). The push by pro-abortion activists for no restrictions whatsoever, even when a minor fraction occur outside beyond the first trimester, at least is an honest reflection of their ideal policy point.
There needn’t be coherent moral/philosophical arguments behind the majority of American voters decisions to support some limited restrictions (first trimester unless for the life of the mother or fetal inviability, for example). The language of the SD referendum comes to mind, crafted to pass in a blood red state yet abandoned by the ACLU for not passing a previously unspecified ideological purity test. In a state with distinctly different ideology, Illinois has expanded access using rules primarily targeting the ability to attend to people fleeing prohibitions in neighboring states. Meeting Americans at their point of current tolerance and then hoping to eventually convince them to move their policy preferences used to be a responsibility born almost exclusively by the anti-abortion crowd, but when viewed as a policy position and not a moral absolute, as the activists in SD have done, the broader public has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated an opposition to the absolutist perspective of the “personhood” crowd. Note the terror caused within the GOP after the ruling against IVF in Alabama.
Short term, the genie is out of the bottle and abortion is likely to remain legal in substantial parts of America which makes fights like those in SD, refuges like IL, and the availability of abortifacients by mail all the more crucial to effectively allow bodily autonomy for women in the current legal climate.
Re: conservative judges banning abortions this is an area where those of us who value abortion rights should be thankful for the federalist society.
Yah yah, they have all sorts of views you dislike. Not my choice for the bench either but conservatives aren't going to appoint liberals and the idea that we'd otherwise have had some Souter style moderate is silly.
Ultimately, fedsoc saved us from a judiciary full of Alitos -- or worse Eileen Canons -- who have strong moral/value judgements and aren't afraid to read them into the law. Because of fedsoc a whole generation of judges and justices entered the judiciary without ever actually giving away how they personally felt about abortion by just letting the politicians know they believed Roe didn't comport with the original public meaning.
So lots of those conservative judges likely are less opposed to abortion than you might think (many will be) and those who are likely will feel pressure not to violate their claimed principles so clearly (ofc everyone is biased but the farther it departs from prior theoretical commitments the harder to self-justify).
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Doesn't mean there aren't awful judges with that association (Thomas...tho he largely predates the influence) just that it's better than the alternative where there is less of a legal theory component and it's all just values.
Aren't there parallels here with Prohibition? A radical wing of the Republican Party gets an extreme policy enacted that most Americans hate? Of course we had ten years of Prohibition before reform could come. Hopefully the abortion debate does not go that far....
Just wanting to chime back in to say that I also think progressives would do well to be more sympathetic to folks who hold consistent and sincere pro-life religious positions. Most of the Catholics that I know are personally pro-life and politically pro-choice. But for folks who believe that respect for sanctity of life requires a pro-life position, I understand how hard it would be to have it legalized. I am sure that many of them look at the reasons we give as good reasons for a termination and think that people also had "good reasons" for supporting slavery or often have what is in their minds good reasons for committing murder. To the extent that they also are pro-life on other issues such as admitting refugees or opposing the death penalty, I often find that I share more values with these folks that when many folks who are otherwise "on my team" even if we disagree on this one issue. I think the safe, legal, and rare language does more to help them feel welcome (even if they don't agree) and I don't think it actual stigmatizes folks who want or who have had abortions most of whom also want that to be something safe, legal, and rare in their lives.
"I’m not sure even die-hard anti-abortion people have fully thought through the implications for miscarriages.”
I mean, a huge problem is that you don't get to be a die-hard anti-abortion person by being capable of and/or allowed to fully think through anything. Evangelical Christianity teaches that skepticism/critical thinking = going to hell. I suspect non-religious abortion zealots are often unable to handle the level of cognitive complexity required to actually think through this or any other complicated issue.
I’m not claiming a core teaching of Christianity is that skepticism/critical thinking= going to hell. I am claiming a core teaching of Evangelical Christianity, at least the churches that I and Exvangelicals like Sarah McCammon grew up in, is that skepticism/critical thinking= going to hell.
Black Feminists have been pushing for decades for the Democratic Party to define its position as be the party for reproductive freedom - the right to have children; the right to not have children and; the right to nurture the children we have in a safe and healthy environment. I think the IVF ban has helped people understand how tied together the right to have children and the right to not have children are tied together. I think we would do well to embrace this position which actually would include abortions being safe, legal, and rare because that is what best reflects the desire of most women who would like to be able to avoid an unwanted pregnancy and be supported in parenting a child without fear of not being able to provide for it. This position ties in policy proposals like access to birth control and abortion, increased insurance coverage for fertility treatment and prenatal care, incentivized adoptions out of foster care, and a child tax credit along with many other policies around public safety, environmental protection, and providing access to child care and high quality public education into a coherent whole that I think actually does reflect a lot of what holds the big tent together.
Is it *really* necessary to scream "abortion, abortion, abortion" at voters? Put another way, the issue isn't salient because of anything Democrats are saying, but because of everything Republicans are DOING -- and they have no plans to stop doing it.
I would fold abortion into a broader argument that Republicans don't trust the American people. They don't trust you to choose who you love, they don't trust you to choose how you make love; they don't trust you to choose who you're going to marry or whether you're going to stay married; they don't trust you to choose whether to become a parent or not; they don't trust you to choose what books your kid can read or what ideas they can be exposed to; they don't trust you to choose how to express your own gender; and they don't trust you to vote the way they want you to at the ballot box.
This will be lost, I’m sure, given that it’s 12:10 mountain time, but what I haven’t seen yet in these comments is:
Functionally, term- or time-based abortion restrictions are just a fiction to make some people feel better.
Those who feel abortion is murder believe that whether it’s one week or 30 weeks in.
Those who believe there are acceptable circumstances, like for the life or safety of the mother, are functionally but not explicitly saying they trust the doctor and the mother to be reasonable.
The idea that women are regularly getting 35 week abortions because they decided they don’t want to have a baby after all is just…a fantasy. By and large, any 35 week abortion is a tragic decision made by a woman who was ready to give birth in 5 weeks but something went terribly wrong all of a sudden.
So whether we agree on “up to 15 weeks and then afterward only in X cases” or “no restrictions”, I doubt there will be much difference in the number and kind of abortion performed.
Well, whether they use the word “murder” or not, I think the opinion that all abortion is wrong and tantamount to murder is actually pretty common, even if far from a majority of voters or republicans even.
there really is a spectrum of opinion, which is why Democrats would do well to find some particularly hideous abortions to ban. Of course, they might cave to disability activists and ban eugenic abortions, which I think are the best kind.
Exactly. You either trust women to make decisions with their doctors about their own bodies or you don’t and think the state legislature should be involved.
And if you believe life begins at conception then I don’t think you are placated by a ban at x weeks.
I think a lot of people struggle to imagine what could possibly necessitate a later term abortion, but faced with an actual example—like the woman Matt cited—they usually say, Well of course that’s an exception.
The thing is—basically all later term abortion are that kind of exception. They’re rare, they’re unique, they are exceptional by definition.
So I’m fine with a 16 weeks plus exceptions, knowing full well that the exception are many and necessary, and knowing that it eases the average voter’s mind that there’s no willy-nilly 38 week abortions being provided for women who’ve “changed their mind” or whatever.
It depends how you're defining later term, but for the 1% of abortions that happen at 21+ weeks we know that very very few are the kind of exception you cite. It's far more often someone who wasn't able to or chose not to get one earlier. In Arizona's abortion report from 2022 for example 0 of the 25 21+ week abortions were for fetal anomalies or maternal health.
I've joked before that a reasonable person could get a room of 10 pro-life people to agree with 10 straight late-term abortions, and could also get a room of 10 pro-choice people to agree that, "well, I wouldn't make that choice."
I agree. From a philosophical perspective, I don’t think the government should be involved in the decisions, which means that I basically think it should be legal entirely. A 38 week abortion of a healthy baby seems icky to me, but I would be shocked if any doctor would do it/if any women would want it. In practice, I understand that basically all late term abortions are extreme and very specific circumstances so something like a 16 week ban with exceptions basically covers all the use cases that I find acceptable.
But then of course I come back to, what does it matter if I find it acceptable or not? It’s not my pregnancy.
What about it seems icky though? If it's not another being with rights then what's wrong with killing it? And if it is obviously the government has an interest in protecting its rights regardless of whose pregnancy it is, no?
I think I just struggle with the language and concept of personhood as it applies to a fetus. A 12 week fetus doesn’t seem like a person to me, a 38 week fetus does. I’m not really sure where that changes for me. 20 weeks? 24? 32? I don’t think there’s a clean distinction. And I’ve birthed two babies. I’m ok with not knowing, and honestly I’m a little annoyed at the assuredness that other people have on this. It’s clearly a grey area. That’s why we all fight about it.
To relate this to another comment I made, I think that you have to consider whether the rights to life trump the rights to personal liberty. I don’t think the government should be able to commandeer my body to save the life of another person. I may believe it is the right thing to do to donate my liver/kidney to save another person, but the government mandating I should do so strikes me as an infringement of my rights and bodily autonomy, even if I would choose to of my own volition.
I agree with your bodily autonomy point but it's a lot less compelling late in pregnancy, where preventing a live birth becomes an objective of the procedure; it's not just about terminating the pregnancy.
" I understand that basically all late term abortions are extreme and very specific circumstances so something like a 16 week ban with exceptions basically covers all the use cases that I find acceptable."
This is basically the actual European laws conservatives try to paint as what they're trying to do in the US against the radical pro-abortion extreme, but any Republican who actually put forth say, French or German abortion law outside of a deep blue state would lose in a primary in 9.5 seconds.
Well, I guess I don’t begrudge people for having strong opinions in either direction. And for those who believe it’s tantamount to murder, they’re allowed to think that.
My hope is always that the rest of us can form a large majority who agree that it’s: not murder, medically necessary in some cases, and a genuine net good for society to have it available in the early weeks.
Whether people’s moral opinions *should* matter or not, I think it’s clear they *do* matter, and so legislation and activism that caters somewhat to those moral qualms is likely the straightest forward path to securing good abortion rights.
I think there are a lot of people (myself probably among them) who think a medical abortion at 6 weeks is lightyears away from murder but euthanizing a viable fetus at 35 weeks is... awfully close to it.
The counter is that there are very few abortions like that. And that's right. But it doesn't strike me as a reason to oppose a ban (with appropriate exceptions)--the principle really is important.
I see no reason to make a couple dealing with probably the saddest moment of their life to jump through more hoops to appease the worries of other people. Because that's all late term bans do, unless you don't trust doctors and women.
It's one thing to say this about paternalistic legislation but if you take seriously the premise that there is another being with weighty rights involved (which I think is definitely true at 35 weeks), the law has a role to play notwithstanding trust. We trust parents a lot but it's not absolute trust.
I think this is a very common position, and about the one I take.
Early abortions don't seem bad, and the ability to basically give people a do-over or enable reproductive medical treatments seems to far outweigh any negatives.
Late abortions seem really serious, so they should be reserved for extreme cases.
As long as a voter like you includes exceptions for abortions outside of 15 weeks or whatever, I am perfectly happy with legislation that signals that abortion after that point is more fraught without banning it in medically necessary circumstances.
I think it is empirically hard to evaluate how many third-trimester abortions are for fetal conditions incompatible with life versus other reasons. The one study I've found on this (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1363/psrh.12190) had cases where women experienced barriers to getting care earlier and where pregnancy was discovered late. But it's not a statistically representative sample (and "third trimester" also includes earlier times than 35 weeks).
Whatever the percentage is, though, the absolute number is very low.
I have a comment elsewhere in this thread (if you search for Arizona you should find it) that has more data though not much. Broadly the answer seems to be post 20th week abortions are very very rarely for fetal anomalies or maternal health but we lack good data later in pregnancy
There is much more data about 20-24 week abortions which are more common and more broadly legal. But you can't extrapolate to later abortions which are legal in fewer places, more expensive, more medically complicated, and performed by fewer practitioners.
Annoying reminder to everyone: the main division over abortion isn't about gender, but rather partisanship and religiosity. A lot of bad takes on the issue stem from the author not grappling with this fact (indeed while the leadership of the pro-life movement is largely male most of the "organizing muscle" of the movement, is and has been historically, made up of women.)
Really respect you, Matt, but I gotta say that I was surprised to see a sentence like this in one of your posts: "But nothing that has actually happened — not Democrats doing well in the midterms, not Democrats doing well in special elections, not the decently strong Nikki Haley protest vote in primaries — debunks the idea that there is a pro-Trump constituency of largely disengaged, disproportionately Black and Hispanic (but still mostly white), mostly young people." I am not nearly as online as I used to be (2 young kids will not abide) but since when did an "idea" become un-debunkable by what has "actually happened"? This seems lazy or, at the least, hazy to me. I trust you to do the slow boring work of reading polls and doing the deeper dives that I don't have time to do but....this seemed very off to me.
Okay.......but is this "idea" based on anything tangible? It would seem to me that the substance of the sentence he writes before the one I cite above* means that it very clearly could be debunked. If these voters "do not exist".....then what are we even talking about? (Should that be the mantra of pollsters everywhere? ;) )
So how is he "right" about something that doesn't seem to be definable? I'm genuinely asking, not trying to start sh*t.
*"It is certainly possible that these voters either do not exist or else are not being surveyed properly. If there were to be a big survey error, after all, then you would expect it to show up with a disengaged population."
Matt remains very committed (whether sincerely or as part of a bit to discourage other people from becoming complacent) to the premise that Trump is favored to genuinely win the election this year at minimum by the Electoral College and maybe even the popular vote.
I’ve always tried to frame anti-abortion folks as the pearl-clutching, militant vegans of the Right. To me, this effectively conveys the issues with the PL movement without giving it too much power or agency. It’s better if your enemies are not only bad but also uncool.
If there's activism around this, it needs to be from normie women, like the big swell of BLM protests in 2020 (ideally without the tail end of creating law-free zones and attacking police stations).
I've seen some abortion activists doing their best to turn this from a winning issue to a loser for us.
I think that the strategy that Matt is discussing here would probably be an effective one, but I’m a bit skeptical of the rationale that he offers for it—appealing to low-propensity voters.
In general, I don’t think that we actually understand that group of voters very well. I’d guess that the set of factors which makes them less inclined to participate in politics overall probably makes them hard to poll accurately about their issue preferences— they’ll have low response rates, and they’re less likely to have strong, consistent, and coherent issue opinions.
Instead, I think the strong case for raising the salience of abortion is just that we have strong evidence that this is an issue where the Dems enjoy ~a 10-20% opinion advantage, so there are a lot of cross-pressured voters who could be persuaded to flip to the Dems if they focus on this issue when making their choice.
Low-propensity voters are kind of hard to figure out but a good starting guess is probably that they have roughly the same preferences as the electorate at large, but that the salience of an issue has to get really high for it to get through. So I'd imagine D's abortion positions are probably a net winner, but a modest one in most years.
(Whispers- they're just voting based on vibes and who they'd rather have a beer with/candidate personal charisma, not 'issues'. Tough for highly educated, politics-obsessed PMCs to understand)
The whole, entire, complete argument of the Pro-Life movement is that a human is a human, whole and complete, however immature, from conception. Period. End of story. Now, tell me how any of your arguments even make the slightest bit of sense. 8 1/2 months, 6 months, 15 weeks, 8 weeks, 6 weeks, 3 microseconds, whatever. It is a human being, just. . . . . like. . . . .YOU.
Very gratified to read women in the replies on the difference between the choice and desire to bring a pregnancy to term, and the condition of enforced pregnancy. I had two pregnancies and two children that we truly wanted, and it was not an easy proposition. Women are no longer chattel, and there will be no enforced pregnancy in the U.S. regardless of whatever laws people (mostly men), decide to pass; however, the question is: will abortion/termination of pregnancy remain a relatively safe and elective or emergency procedure? That's what's at stake.
I think this issue, unlike almost any other in contemporary American politics, is characterized by fundamental moral differences between the two sides that, within each camp, treats abortion as a valence issue what for most of society is a position view - meaning for anti-abortion activists the question is “to what point are you willing to tolerate the slaughter of innocent human beings” and, conversely, “to what point are you willing to force a woman to carry a child to term against her will?” The obvious solutions, respectively, is “never” for both (which is why I’ve always distrusted anti-abortion advocates that pushed TRAP regulations pre-Roe and that are willing to stomach and exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother when these are clearly just stepping stones to their ideal policy position, a blanket ban). The push by pro-abortion activists for no restrictions whatsoever, even when a minor fraction occur outside beyond the first trimester, at least is an honest reflection of their ideal policy point.
There needn’t be coherent moral/philosophical arguments behind the majority of American voters decisions to support some limited restrictions (first trimester unless for the life of the mother or fetal inviability, for example). The language of the SD referendum comes to mind, crafted to pass in a blood red state yet abandoned by the ACLU for not passing a previously unspecified ideological purity test. In a state with distinctly different ideology, Illinois has expanded access using rules primarily targeting the ability to attend to people fleeing prohibitions in neighboring states. Meeting Americans at their point of current tolerance and then hoping to eventually convince them to move their policy preferences used to be a responsibility born almost exclusively by the anti-abortion crowd, but when viewed as a policy position and not a moral absolute, as the activists in SD have done, the broader public has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated an opposition to the absolutist perspective of the “personhood” crowd. Note the terror caused within the GOP after the ruling against IVF in Alabama.
Short term, the genie is out of the bottle and abortion is likely to remain legal in substantial parts of America which makes fights like those in SD, refuges like IL, and the availability of abortifacients by mail all the more crucial to effectively allow bodily autonomy for women in the current legal climate.
Re: conservative judges banning abortions this is an area where those of us who value abortion rights should be thankful for the federalist society.
Yah yah, they have all sorts of views you dislike. Not my choice for the bench either but conservatives aren't going to appoint liberals and the idea that we'd otherwise have had some Souter style moderate is silly.
Ultimately, fedsoc saved us from a judiciary full of Alitos -- or worse Eileen Canons -- who have strong moral/value judgements and aren't afraid to read them into the law. Because of fedsoc a whole generation of judges and justices entered the judiciary without ever actually giving away how they personally felt about abortion by just letting the politicians know they believed Roe didn't comport with the original public meaning.
So lots of those conservative judges likely are less opposed to abortion than you might think (many will be) and those who are likely will feel pressure not to violate their claimed principles so clearly (ofc everyone is biased but the farther it departs from prior theoretical commitments the harder to self-justify).
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Doesn't mean there aren't awful judges with that association (Thomas...tho he largely predates the influence) just that it's better than the alternative where there is less of a legal theory component and it's all just values.
Aren't there parallels here with Prohibition? A radical wing of the Republican Party gets an extreme policy enacted that most Americans hate? Of course we had ten years of Prohibition before reform could come. Hopefully the abortion debate does not go that far....
Just wanting to chime back in to say that I also think progressives would do well to be more sympathetic to folks who hold consistent and sincere pro-life religious positions. Most of the Catholics that I know are personally pro-life and politically pro-choice. But for folks who believe that respect for sanctity of life requires a pro-life position, I understand how hard it would be to have it legalized. I am sure that many of them look at the reasons we give as good reasons for a termination and think that people also had "good reasons" for supporting slavery or often have what is in their minds good reasons for committing murder. To the extent that they also are pro-life on other issues such as admitting refugees or opposing the death penalty, I often find that I share more values with these folks that when many folks who are otherwise "on my team" even if we disagree on this one issue. I think the safe, legal, and rare language does more to help them feel welcome (even if they don't agree) and I don't think it actual stigmatizes folks who want or who have had abortions most of whom also want that to be something safe, legal, and rare in their lives.
"I’m not sure even die-hard anti-abortion people have fully thought through the implications for miscarriages.”
I mean, a huge problem is that you don't get to be a die-hard anti-abortion person by being capable of and/or allowed to fully think through anything. Evangelical Christianity teaches that skepticism/critical thinking = going to hell. I suspect non-religious abortion zealots are often unable to handle the level of cognitive complexity required to actually think through this or any other complicated issue.
I’m not claiming a core teaching of Christianity is that skepticism/critical thinking= going to hell. I am claiming a core teaching of Evangelical Christianity, at least the churches that I and Exvangelicals like Sarah McCammon grew up in, is that skepticism/critical thinking= going to hell.
Black Feminists have been pushing for decades for the Democratic Party to define its position as be the party for reproductive freedom - the right to have children; the right to not have children and; the right to nurture the children we have in a safe and healthy environment. I think the IVF ban has helped people understand how tied together the right to have children and the right to not have children are tied together. I think we would do well to embrace this position which actually would include abortions being safe, legal, and rare because that is what best reflects the desire of most women who would like to be able to avoid an unwanted pregnancy and be supported in parenting a child without fear of not being able to provide for it. This position ties in policy proposals like access to birth control and abortion, increased insurance coverage for fertility treatment and prenatal care, incentivized adoptions out of foster care, and a child tax credit along with many other policies around public safety, environmental protection, and providing access to child care and high quality public education into a coherent whole that I think actually does reflect a lot of what holds the big tent together.
And yes, David, the YIMBY need to provide all those families with affordable housing would be in there too.
Is it *really* necessary to scream "abortion, abortion, abortion" at voters? Put another way, the issue isn't salient because of anything Democrats are saying, but because of everything Republicans are DOING -- and they have no plans to stop doing it.
I would fold abortion into a broader argument that Republicans don't trust the American people. They don't trust you to choose who you love, they don't trust you to choose how you make love; they don't trust you to choose who you're going to marry or whether you're going to stay married; they don't trust you to choose whether to become a parent or not; they don't trust you to choose what books your kid can read or what ideas they can be exposed to; they don't trust you to choose how to express your own gender; and they don't trust you to vote the way they want you to at the ballot box.
This will be lost, I’m sure, given that it’s 12:10 mountain time, but what I haven’t seen yet in these comments is:
Functionally, term- or time-based abortion restrictions are just a fiction to make some people feel better.
Those who feel abortion is murder believe that whether it’s one week or 30 weeks in.
Those who believe there are acceptable circumstances, like for the life or safety of the mother, are functionally but not explicitly saying they trust the doctor and the mother to be reasonable.
The idea that women are regularly getting 35 week abortions because they decided they don’t want to have a baby after all is just…a fantasy. By and large, any 35 week abortion is a tragic decision made by a woman who was ready to give birth in 5 weeks but something went terribly wrong all of a sudden.
So whether we agree on “up to 15 weeks and then afterward only in X cases” or “no restrictions”, I doubt there will be much difference in the number and kind of abortion performed.
“All Abortion is murder” is not that common s view, it probably doesn’t even describe a majority of Republican voters.
Well, whether they use the word “murder” or not, I think the opinion that all abortion is wrong and tantamount to murder is actually pretty common, even if far from a majority of voters or republicans even.
there really is a spectrum of opinion, which is why Democrats would do well to find some particularly hideous abortions to ban. Of course, they might cave to disability activists and ban eugenic abortions, which I think are the best kind.
Exactly. You either trust women to make decisions with their doctors about their own bodies or you don’t and think the state legislature should be involved.
And if you believe life begins at conception then I don’t think you are placated by a ban at x weeks.
I think a lot of people struggle to imagine what could possibly necessitate a later term abortion, but faced with an actual example—like the woman Matt cited—they usually say, Well of course that’s an exception.
The thing is—basically all later term abortion are that kind of exception. They’re rare, they’re unique, they are exceptional by definition.
So I’m fine with a 16 weeks plus exceptions, knowing full well that the exception are many and necessary, and knowing that it eases the average voter’s mind that there’s no willy-nilly 38 week abortions being provided for women who’ve “changed their mind” or whatever.
It depends how you're defining later term, but for the 1% of abortions that happen at 21+ weeks we know that very very few are the kind of exception you cite. It's far more often someone who wasn't able to or chose not to get one earlier. In Arizona's abortion report from 2022 for example 0 of the 25 21+ week abortions were for fetal anomalies or maternal health.
I've joked before that a reasonable person could get a room of 10 pro-life people to agree with 10 straight late-term abortions, and could also get a room of 10 pro-choice people to agree that, "well, I wouldn't make that choice."
I agree. From a philosophical perspective, I don’t think the government should be involved in the decisions, which means that I basically think it should be legal entirely. A 38 week abortion of a healthy baby seems icky to me, but I would be shocked if any doctor would do it/if any women would want it. In practice, I understand that basically all late term abortions are extreme and very specific circumstances so something like a 16 week ban with exceptions basically covers all the use cases that I find acceptable.
But then of course I come back to, what does it matter if I find it acceptable or not? It’s not my pregnancy.
What about it seems icky though? If it's not another being with rights then what's wrong with killing it? And if it is obviously the government has an interest in protecting its rights regardless of whose pregnancy it is, no?
I think I just struggle with the language and concept of personhood as it applies to a fetus. A 12 week fetus doesn’t seem like a person to me, a 38 week fetus does. I’m not really sure where that changes for me. 20 weeks? 24? 32? I don’t think there’s a clean distinction. And I’ve birthed two babies. I’m ok with not knowing, and honestly I’m a little annoyed at the assuredness that other people have on this. It’s clearly a grey area. That’s why we all fight about it.
To relate this to another comment I made, I think that you have to consider whether the rights to life trump the rights to personal liberty. I don’t think the government should be able to commandeer my body to save the life of another person. I may believe it is the right thing to do to donate my liver/kidney to save another person, but the government mandating I should do so strikes me as an infringement of my rights and bodily autonomy, even if I would choose to of my own volition.
I agree with your bodily autonomy point but it's a lot less compelling late in pregnancy, where preventing a live birth becomes an objective of the procedure; it's not just about terminating the pregnancy.
" I understand that basically all late term abortions are extreme and very specific circumstances so something like a 16 week ban with exceptions basically covers all the use cases that I find acceptable."
This is basically the actual European laws conservatives try to paint as what they're trying to do in the US against the radical pro-abortion extreme, but any Republican who actually put forth say, French or German abortion law outside of a deep blue state would lose in a primary in 9.5 seconds.
Well, I guess I don’t begrudge people for having strong opinions in either direction. And for those who believe it’s tantamount to murder, they’re allowed to think that.
My hope is always that the rest of us can form a large majority who agree that it’s: not murder, medically necessary in some cases, and a genuine net good for society to have it available in the early weeks.
Whether people’s moral opinions *should* matter or not, I think it’s clear they *do* matter, and so legislation and activism that caters somewhat to those moral qualms is likely the straightest forward path to securing good abortion rights.
I think there are a lot of people (myself probably among them) who think a medical abortion at 6 weeks is lightyears away from murder but euthanizing a viable fetus at 35 weeks is... awfully close to it.
The counter is that there are very few abortions like that. And that's right. But it doesn't strike me as a reason to oppose a ban (with appropriate exceptions)--the principle really is important.
I see no reason to make a couple dealing with probably the saddest moment of their life to jump through more hoops to appease the worries of other people. Because that's all late term bans do, unless you don't trust doctors and women.
It's one thing to say this about paternalistic legislation but if you take seriously the premise that there is another being with weighty rights involved (which I think is definitely true at 35 weeks), the law has a role to play notwithstanding trust. We trust parents a lot but it's not absolute trust.
I think this is a very common position, and about the one I take.
Early abortions don't seem bad, and the ability to basically give people a do-over or enable reproductive medical treatments seems to far outweigh any negatives.
Late abortions seem really serious, so they should be reserved for extreme cases.
As long as a voter like you includes exceptions for abortions outside of 15 weeks or whatever, I am perfectly happy with legislation that signals that abortion after that point is more fraught without banning it in medically necessary circumstances.
I think it is empirically hard to evaluate how many third-trimester abortions are for fetal conditions incompatible with life versus other reasons. The one study I've found on this (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1363/psrh.12190) had cases where women experienced barriers to getting care earlier and where pregnancy was discovered late. But it's not a statistically representative sample (and "third trimester" also includes earlier times than 35 weeks).
Whatever the percentage is, though, the absolute number is very low.
I have a comment elsewhere in this thread (if you search for Arizona you should find it) that has more data though not much. Broadly the answer seems to be post 20th week abortions are very very rarely for fetal anomalies or maternal health but we lack good data later in pregnancy
There is much more data about 20-24 week abortions which are more common and more broadly legal. But you can't extrapolate to later abortions which are legal in fewer places, more expensive, more medically complicated, and performed by fewer practitioners.
Annoying reminder to everyone: the main division over abortion isn't about gender, but rather partisanship and religiosity. A lot of bad takes on the issue stem from the author not grappling with this fact (indeed while the leadership of the pro-life movement is largely male most of the "organizing muscle" of the movement, is and has been historically, made up of women.)
Really respect you, Matt, but I gotta say that I was surprised to see a sentence like this in one of your posts: "But nothing that has actually happened — not Democrats doing well in the midterms, not Democrats doing well in special elections, not the decently strong Nikki Haley protest vote in primaries — debunks the idea that there is a pro-Trump constituency of largely disengaged, disproportionately Black and Hispanic (but still mostly white), mostly young people." I am not nearly as online as I used to be (2 young kids will not abide) but since when did an "idea" become un-debunkable by what has "actually happened"? This seems lazy or, at the least, hazy to me. I trust you to do the slow boring work of reading polls and doing the deeper dives that I don't have time to do but....this seemed very off to me.
Yeah Matt’s right here
Okay.......but is this "idea" based on anything tangible? It would seem to me that the substance of the sentence he writes before the one I cite above* means that it very clearly could be debunked. If these voters "do not exist".....then what are we even talking about? (Should that be the mantra of pollsters everywhere? ;) )
So how is he "right" about something that doesn't seem to be definable? I'm genuinely asking, not trying to start sh*t.
*"It is certainly possible that these voters either do not exist or else are not being surveyed properly. If there were to be a big survey error, after all, then you would expect it to show up with a disengaged population."
blueprint2024.com
Matt remains very committed (whether sincerely or as part of a bit to discourage other people from becoming complacent) to the premise that Trump is favored to genuinely win the election this year at minimum by the Electoral College and maybe even the popular vote.
I’ve always tried to frame anti-abortion folks as the pearl-clutching, militant vegans of the Right. To me, this effectively conveys the issues with the PL movement without giving it too much power or agency. It’s better if your enemies are not only bad but also uncool.
If there's activism around this, it needs to be from normie women, like the big swell of BLM protests in 2020 (ideally without the tail end of creating law-free zones and attacking police stations).
I've seen some abortion activists doing their best to turn this from a winning issue to a loser for us.
It’s asking a lot for some doctor to risk their license and possibly a long prison term to openly perform an abortion in a red state.
I think that the strategy that Matt is discussing here would probably be an effective one, but I’m a bit skeptical of the rationale that he offers for it—appealing to low-propensity voters.
In general, I don’t think that we actually understand that group of voters very well. I’d guess that the set of factors which makes them less inclined to participate in politics overall probably makes them hard to poll accurately about their issue preferences— they’ll have low response rates, and they’re less likely to have strong, consistent, and coherent issue opinions.
Instead, I think the strong case for raising the salience of abortion is just that we have strong evidence that this is an issue where the Dems enjoy ~a 10-20% opinion advantage, so there are a lot of cross-pressured voters who could be persuaded to flip to the Dems if they focus on this issue when making their choice.
Low-propensity voters are kind of hard to figure out but a good starting guess is probably that they have roughly the same preferences as the electorate at large, but that the salience of an issue has to get really high for it to get through. So I'd imagine D's abortion positions are probably a net winner, but a modest one in most years.
(Whispers- they're just voting based on vibes and who they'd rather have a beer with/candidate personal charisma, not 'issues'. Tough for highly educated, politics-obsessed PMCs to understand)