Fantastic pick. I'm not super optimistic but if there is even a chance that this mass genocide of abortion can be chipped away at with an overturning of Roe, that would be great.
Oh for heaven's sake. People aren't going to stop getting medical abortions just because Mississippi and Kansas make it illegal.
Nobody wants to have an abortion, it's always a desperate, painful choice, and if you're in the position where you're forced to make that choice, having to cross state (or national) borders, or break the law, won't stop you.
All anti-abortion laws end up doing is making life hell for the women who are already in that horrible situation of needing an abortion. It's just cruelty and nothing more.
Increasing the distance required to travel to an abortion clinic increases the costs of getting an abortion. This in turn reduces the abortion rate. If you increase the cost of something, the quantity demanded will decrease. This is just common sense.
#ShoutYourAbortion shows that there are indeed people who do want to get an abortion. Regardless, people should feel guilty and pained about murdering their children. And it is a good thing that those who choose to do so in spite of the law face encumbrances to do so.
There is nothing cruel about prohibiting murder and prosecuting those who commit it anyways.
#ShoutYourAbortion was about not being afraid or ashamed of having had an abortion. It was basically "I was in a tough situation, I made a tough choice, I did what I felt I had to do, and I'm not going to let that decision scar me and shame me and define me for the rest of my life."
Abortion is already a tremendous cost to those getting it. It's emotionally scarring. It's heartbreaking and terrifying. Nobody wants to have an abortion.
Social conservatives have propagated myths about abortion for years. Listening to Trump and his friends, you'd think tons of young women were getting abortions and that they were all waiting until the second or third trimester to get late-term abortions. The real numbers? Around 1% of pregnancies end in abortion, and of those, 91% are in the first trimester, only 1% in the third trimester. The abortion rate is decreasing overall, and the rate of abortions after the first trimester is decreasing as well, a trend we've seen since Roe v. Wade.
The sick truth of it all is that Roe v. Wade and increased attention and education about abortion has caused abortion rates to come earlier and earlier in the pregnancy. The first heartbeat is at 6 weeks. I'm going to assume here that you find it less objectionable to abort a fetus in the first 4-6 weeks before it's even developed proper organs or anything resembling humanity. After all, plenty of miscarriages and otherwise failed pregnancies happen in this time period, ending far more pregnancies than the abortion procedure.
If that is true, you should be in favor of EASIER access to abortion and INCREASED awareness and education about the procedure. If a woman is fully aware of her options and fully prepared to abort a pregnancy as soon as she discovers it, she will get an abortion in the first few weeks of the pregnancy. The more roadblocks you throw in her way, the later in the pregnancy she ends up having to get an abortion.
Reasons why late-term abortions still happen are:
- The procedure is too expensive at $500-ish, and the woman has to save up money
- The woman doesn't believe she's pregnant due to continued period symptoms
- Severe medical issues, for either the parent or the child, discovered
- Fear of parents' reaction to pregnancy (teens are more likely to have later abortions)
- Lack of access to an abortion clinic, so the woman has to wait
- Various red-state laws that throw up roadblocks including forced waiting periods
- Mental illness, trauma, denial (common in rape pregnancies)
