I think Republicans have latched onto this issue and Christianity in America has adopted it, but there is far more at play here than just Christian nationalism.
Why 20 weeks? Are the voting populace or politicians knowledgeable enough about pregnancy to be able to legislate these things without exposing doctors and women to unnecessary legal risk? And again, back to the numbers, does the is even need legislating? Are women or doctors haphazardly running around killing perfectly viable fetuses for fun?
The concept of viability is legal fiction. Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development and likewise, until about age 3 or so, no child will live without external support. Culturally, we celebrate “birth”, but that event has nothing to do with life.
On the other end is the necessity to support the life of a mother. While unfortunate, I think that’s a rare time that terminating a pregnancy is appropriate. That doesn’t mean lifestyle or convenience, though. That’s situations where only one or fewer people will make it alive if nothing is done. This represents a fraction of one percent of abortions. Other abuses may fall into this category.
This cannot be true, and just because a fetus could live does not mean the quality of life is worth living. Not to mention the staggering costs of NICU healthcare.
The numbers I was asking about were specifically post 20 week, as a reply to parkingrift’s concerns.
Cost had to do with practicality. It does not seem reasonable to expect a society to invest $10M into raising a 1 week old fetus that will need 24/7 support to live. Point being that there are limits real life and a purely philosophical exercise is not useful.
The practicality of saving a life is certainly different than the legal justification to end a life. The point of technology being able to support development outside of a womb is evidence, imo, of the organism being independent from the mother. If that organism is individual and human, (s)he should have the full rights of all persons.
To me that means finding options that don’t involve terminating lives when the mother decides they are not prepared to parent. Right now the options outside abortion place significant strain on mothers, but as a society, 50 years have been spent not investigating alternatives and going all in on abortion. It’s already possible to transfer embryos fertilized in a lab successfully into an unrelated host.
Ultimately it is a philosophical argument. I can’t find any argument that has convinced me that a human is a human regardless of the stage of development or capabilities of the person. I’ve argued that “viability” will continue to be earlier for the past 20 years and haven’t been wrong about that yet. It’s currently limited by technology, but that shouldn’t impact the rights of individuals (in this case the unborn).
More embryos don't implant.
> The concept of viability is legal fiction. Given the technology, there’s no reason a fetus couldn’t live at any stage of development
We could live forever given the technology. Is mortality legal fiction?
You realize that there are limits to voluntary abortions basically everywhere? Not having a limit is largely an american phenomenon. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abortion_Laws.svg
What portion of the world has limits or not has no bearing on the reasoning for exposing doctors and patients to legal liabilities for no reason.
1% of the abortions occur in week 21 or later, of a total of 625.000-930.000 abortion per year. So about 6250-9300 abortion per year in week 21 or later. Assuming a number of these are health related, "livestyle" abortions is probably less than 9300 per year.
To compare, US had about 19384 gun related homicides in 2020, so that problem is larger than the abortion one. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41488081)
I live in New York. Abortion is legal for any reason up to 24 weeks, and then legal for any medical reason beyond 24 weeks.
Nationally, about 1.3% of all abortions are after 20 weeks. I don't have further data as to what percentage of that 1.3% were due to medical reasons. Big round numbers here 1.3% is roughly 8,500 20+ week abortions in the US per year.
> Why 20 weeks?
With current technology it is roughly where viability starts to climb from 0%. Possibility of feeling pain and/or terminating a living, viable, being. At 24 weeks the viability can be as high as 70%. It is okay that you do not find this disturbing, but I do find it disturbing. It's disturbing to me to think about voluntarily terminating a pregnancy after 20 weeks with no medical issues for the child or mother.
If given an option this is how I would vote. Unfortunately, there is no nuance in most American political issues. I don't have a choice to vote on allowing abortions for any reason up to 20 weeks, or for any medical reason afterward. I typically get to choose between "ban all abortions" and "allow almost all abortions."
It does seem to me that setting an arbitrary (but flexible) point of no return was going to be necessary (probably around 18-24 weeks)
Yes, and polarization-fueled straw-man memes really obscure that. I swear some people's only understanding of "the other side" is a twisted view of the distortions of some overheated partisan bomb-thrower, stupefied into slogan form. But you kind of need something like that to feel confidently self-righteous.
I am also disturbed by strawman hypothetical edgecases.
Those words don't mean what you think they mean.
I'd wager that the vast majority of abortions post 20 weeks are performed with extreme reluctance and sadness, and only out of great necessity.
wat
https://www.judicialwatch.org/documents/jw-v-hhs-humanized-m...
Also some famous undercover videos: https://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/cmp/investigative-f...
Linking to a cryptic 575 page long PDF file is too conspiratorial to take seriously.
My point was specifically aimed at this parent comment. It is easy to make baseless wagers about motivation. I find it an equally compelling narrative that, given research and financial incentives, there is great motivation for abortion clinics to persuade individuals to abort children. Especially late-term abortions since developed infant organs are likely demanding a premium due to their rarity.
Both statements are conjectures.
Not really, no. You're spouting random conspiracy theories. You provided unverified primary sources. Any rando can make a website and post a PDF on it for $10.
Only 1.3% of all abortions happen after 20 weeks.
If the SCOTUS decision was limited to that, the controvery would have been much, much smaller. Especially if it also considered medical exceptions.
But why be sensible when you can just go full Spanish inquisition on them, right?
If the SCOTUS did that, then they would be legislators, not judges; it is up to congress to decide where that cutoff should be, and then pass a law if they want - RvW didn't outlaw abortions, it just punted it back to the correct body to act if they wanted; I suspect they (congress) will be forced to pass a law, and it will likely set at a date that makes nobody happy - not the abortion at any time crowd, and not the 'zero exceptions' crowd. Most of Europe seems OK with a ~12 week cutoff. I suspect something around that, with narrow set of exceptions, would satisfy all but the most extremes on both sides.