Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
New Abortion Laws are Splitting the Right, Too
Compared to many of you, I’m new to the abortion discussion and am self-conscious about taking positions on it. I have never been pregnant nor have I had an abortion. Until about 15 years ago, I was pro-choice. Gradually I have found myself soundly in the pro-life position. Yet the arguments that are occurring, even among those on the Right, have caused me to take a closer look at my
beliefs. I thought our having that discussion here about the abortion laws might help many of us learn from each other and clarify our views.
First, there are many states that have decided, with exceptions and no exceptions, to ban abortion. There are a whole range of criteria for whether abortions should be banned and when and how abortions might be legal:
Multiple states such as Kentucky and Georgia have passed bills that ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy, while Alabama recently passed the strictest abortion law in the country, banning the procedure with few exceptions.
Several other states are considering “trigger” laws that go into effect to ban abortion should Roe v. Wade be overturned, while other states like New York have passed bills that enshrine abortion rights.
In most of the states that have passed legislation regarding abortion, those laws will go into effect in the next month or two; in many cases, legal actions, particularly by the ACLU, have already been issued. And several other states are in the process of reviewing the status of abortion in their states to determine whether to take action.
The most intense controversy seems to be whether or not exceptions have been included in these laws for rape, incest, or the health of the mother. The Alabama Senate wrestled with this issue:
The Republican-majority chamber adjourned in dramatic fashion when leaders tried to strip a committee amendment that would have added an exception for cases of rape or incest. Sponsors insist they wanted to limit exceptions because the bill is designed to push the idea that a fetus is a person with rights, in a direct challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to abortion.
Whether this approach would have the intended impact at the Supreme Court is difficult to discern.
The controversy rising among those on the Right is how to address exceptions to these bills:
Reporters on Capitol Hill have peppered Republican lawmakers with demands to know whether they agree with Alabama’s law, which forgoes the rape and incest exceptions.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said that for him personally, the Alabama law goes too far and that his position is in line with the views held by both President Trump and former President Ronald Reagan, who favored the exceptions. But Minority Whip Steve Scalise said that when he was in the Louisiana legislature, he supported anti-abortion legislation that only had exceptions for when the life of the mother was in danger.
‘I am strongly pro-life and I do believe we ought to try to protect life at every stage and that is why protecting the life of the mother was an exception I’ve always supported,’ he said.
There are some people who feel that after the horrendous experience of a rape or incest, a woman should not have to carry a baby to term; if her life is at risk, how does one decide which life to save? In some cases, the woman’s health at risk has included her mental health.
On the other hand, no matter how the baby was conceived, the baby is a human being, too. It didn’t choose to be conceived by rape or incest. It doesn’t bear responsibility for causing the mother’s health to be at risk.
And finally, if both lives are to be considered, should the mother be expected to carry the baby to term and take the option to relinquish him or her through adoption? Wouldn’t this choice be the most moral and fair for both?
A number of questions can be gleaned from this discussion—
*What criteria should be included in an abortion ban law, in your opinion?
* Should the potential impact on the Supreme Court be a consideration?
*What are your thoughts about exceptions to be made?
Published in Culture
Showing images can be persuasive because they elicit an emotional response. Certainly a picture from a few days into pregnancy, when it really does look like just a “hunk of cells,” would not provoke the same kind of response. But our emotional response does not determine whether a 1 week old hunk of cells, or a 39 week old fully formed “fetus,” is a unique person with the same right to life as you and me.
Let’s take the emotion out of the equation. Starting with a 1 minute old full-term healthy baby that I presume you agree has a right to life (i.e. it is not a private matter between the doctor and the mother whether they must care for it), please walk back in time and explain when that baby becomes the private property of the mother and can therefore be discarded at will. When you reach that point, please explain what changed from the moment it was private property to the moment it became a person with rights.
Maybe up there in Wasilla, maybe even as far as you can see from Wasilla .
Not so much here in Los Angeles/California, Vince, and not so much in my old home town, New York.
iPad misfire.
No, we aren’t winning in liberal cities. Can’t win everyone over because evil exists. God will sort folks out in the end. Perhaps God already is. Typhus, anyone? All I can do is fight for what is morally right.
Alaska has the same abortion restrictions as New York, none. But L.A., New York and Alaska are not America, they are outliers, and their legislative policies have been proven failures over and over. We are winning the fight on abortion nationwide, in court as abortion providers find themselves criminally liable for medical malpractice, in state legislatures as a flood of new laws get passed, in academia as the evidence is overwhelming, in the marketplace as providers flee well-run states and fall back to the parts of the country run by liberal ideologues, and most importantly in the consciousness of a generation of young people who’s first pictures of their siblings were sonograms.
So it may feel like you’re winning from the manicured lawns of quiet neighborhoods in Santa Monica, but keep watch; Gorbachev went to bed one night, and found the Berlin wall was gone when he woke up.
@Jimkearney
I am not exactly pro-life myself, but there has to be some restrictions in place.
For one, the Left is pushing abortion of viable or even full term infants. If the fetus is delivered , the baby would have the legal rights of a minor child. In partial birth abortion, a slip could result in live birth rather than abortion. Can you see the problem here?
The reason I support vigorous restrictions after the heartbeat is present is that the fetus has been shown to have brain activity , response to pain, and similar signs of awareness. This is well within the 1st Trimester.
I do not support restrictions on abortion before then but I understand their position – it is based on when they state human life begins. In all cases, the anti-abortion activism is driven by concern for the rights of the youngest people.
That’s yer problem right there!
That would only be older siblings, and just those who like their younger siblings.
But seriously, academia? Really? You must mean Hillsdale, Biola, and Liberty. It’s like saying “the media oppose abortion rights” because you read it on Ricochet.
Most Americans polled say abortion will be legal in 30 years. If it is, wake me. I’ll be closing in on 100 and probably sleeping a lot. At best.
In the last 30 years — since the Berlin Wall fell — this country has been gifted with the internet (predicted by Marshall McLuhan); smart watches (predicted by Dick Tracy comics); and President Donald Trump, surprising everyone except himself. Our country has legalized same sex marriage and in many places, smoking pot.
Trend lines are twisty critters. I’m guessing abortion rights won’t go away, but in 30 years reproduction may feature hundreds of new choices. Athletic physique? Thick, lustrous hair? There’s an app for that! A woman’s right to choose is going to be a growth industry.
The majority of Democrats, and a large majority of Americans, oppose late-term abortions, and the numbers are not even remotely close. That much is consistent among abortion polls whenever the question is directly asked, polls with vague language just tend to have people assume abortion within the first three months. An example: http://www.kofc.org/en/news/media/new-yorkers-reject-late-term-abortion.html
As for winning in the courts, Roe v.Wade is an atrocious legal decision regardless of one’s position on abortion, and frankly any Supreme Court that maintains it will not be a court that supports a Constitutionally limited government (and therefore libertarianism) in the long run.
Either you think Human Beings have value, or you don’t.
Clearly, when you define someone as a human being is different than when I do.
That is certainly an accurate description.
What kind of fetal tissue? Human fetal tissue. Surely we would not expect to find feline or canine fetal tissue inside a human mother.
Is it the word “being” you object to, then? A being is simply one individual, as distinct from another. I am one being, you are another. We are both made up of tissues, which in turn are composed of cells. We both began our lives as a single cell and grew and developed from there.
I could live with this. I guess my add-on would be “and yet, even at three weeks, an abortion is not nothing.” In other words, even a very, very early abortion, pre-heartbeat, is a morally significant act. Because the conceptus is never really “a clump of cells.” It’s a self-organizing, separate human being, one who is traveling the same developmental route each of us took in order to get to where we are now.
In some ways, I wish the discussion didn’t stop at legal/illegal, but expanded into “what is the right response to an unwed, pregnant girl or woman?” and “how can we strengthen our daughters to bear the burden of the responsibility that, in real terms, we cannot lift from them?”