Lindsey Graham, who once proposed a national 20-week limit on abortions, has now proposed a 15-week limit. However, this would only be a ceiling. The law would still allow states to pass more restrictive abortion laws, and this makes it obviously of no interest to liberals.
But what if it were just a straight nationwide rule of 15 weeks for every state? Post-Dobbs, this would give both liberals and conservatives a choice. Do they prefer a checkerboard of abortion bans in some states and no limits in others? Or a consistent 15-week rule in every state?
I myself would prefer to fight it out on a state-by-state basis, but that's based a bit selfishly on the fact that I live in California and the women in, say, Mississippi are fairly distant.
Hypothetically, then, suppose a nationwide 15-week rule were on the table. Suppose it contained reasonable safeguards for the physical health of the mother but very stringent rules for mental health. Suppose additionally that the Supreme Court would allow it.
How popular would such a bill be? Should liberals support it? Should conservatives support it? Or should we all accept that more-or-less forever we're going to have some states where abortion is unrestricted and others where it's completely banned?
Comments?
The framings in the comment section misses the point.
The real question is: Do Democrats try to find a middle ground to block the extreme states from blocking all access to abortion, or do they stick to their credo/dogma that people (in this case, specifically women) have the right to control their own bodies, at the expense of some women who will lose all rights to abortion?
Simplistic answers need not apply.
There is no middle ground to be found. That's the point.
Is that your personal belief or your opinion of the situation?
Whose point?
What are the ramifications of this position, eg the balance of rights?
It's my assessment based on observing the past 50 years of abortion politics in the United States. The point is the one you believe we are missing.
But, that's not the point. The point is in the last part of what I wrote.
Lindsey Graham made the offer, which breaks the notion that there is no middle ground. There are at least two other Republican senators who would accept his offer.
The point that is that this 'compromise' was tried fifty years ago. Nobody was particularly happy with it, but well, that's compromise. The difference difference between the two sides? One side delivered on their end of the deal. The other side never did, and never had any intention of doing so.
_That_ is the point, you blithering moron.
You either respect my body D_Ohrk or you don't. Yeah no middle ground, you don't get to trade away my civil rights. Besides the other side isn't going to compromise anyway.
In the Anarchist system where all rights all required to be respected between every side, I can absolutely state that you are 100% right.
But what if you could give away some of your rights so that some others could get some?
Are we pragmatic or sticking to our principles?
The even real-er question is: Why are you acting like Roe wasn't very popular nationally? These wildly unpopular anti-abortion laws are only possible in the reddest of red states.
Dems don't need to find a middle ground. They just need to find a couple Dem Senators willing to carve out the filibuster and then make Roe the law of land. Call it the "F This Radical Supreme Court Act". Problem solved.
Me personally? I would note that Roe's popularity varies significantly by state -- blue ones decisively so, red ones not so much.
I suggest to you this is incorrect. The only means of codifying Roe is to enshrine it in the Constitution. Absent that, any law is subject to re-interpretation after the fact, weighed arbitrarily against Originalism and Freedoms.
There are already multiple examples of moderately conservative states overwhelmingly rejecting tougher abortion laws. The only ones that are getting away with it are supermajority state houses in bright red states, and the jury is still out on whether voters will eventually punish even them.
Anyway, as I stated below, this is another example of our reflex to snivel in the corner for fear of what the mean conservatives might do. Dems aren't just on high ground here, this is the Mount Everest of political issues... Social Security on steroids. This isn't the third rail of politics, Republicans are about to find out it's the electric chair.
So let Republicans try to pass their crazy red state laws nationally. It would be their electoral doom. Let the Supreme Court try to strike down an actual abortion law, as opposed to the Roe decision. We'd immediately be on the express elevator to expanding a radical court. Bring it on.
Wow, are you ever completely delusional.
The problem is that without a practical set of exceptions, which Republicans are refusing to support, there is no compromise. If your rules are going to be that a woman whose water broke at 4 months, with a uterine infection, but a fetus with a heartbeat, must suffer and perhaps die to avoid an abortion, then you really aren't treating women as people.
Honestly, you need to learn more about how crappy the human reproductive system is before throwing out half-assed compromises.
Name one state where abortion is “unrestricted.”
Laws can be amended. Passing any federal abortion law and getting the Supreme Court to agree that it is constitutionally valid would open the way for unknowable future developments. Democrats need to think hard about the implications before going down that road.
Man, what a sniveling position.
Roe was VERY popular. Let Republicans try to pass their crazy red state laws nationally. It would be their electoral doom. Let the Supreme Court try to strike down an actual abortion law, as opposed to the Roe decision. We'd immediately be on the express elevator to expanding a radical court.
Dems aren't just on high ground, this is the Mount Everest of political issues. Bring it on.
The idea that the Senate would ever agree to stack the Supreme Court is fanciful.
The existing court would uphold a federal law banning abortion, and strike one down that enabled it. It's hard to see any any circumstances on the horizon that would alter that reality.
I would like to see no restrictions. These arbitrary time limits don't allow for the most difficult cases--mother's health, and the condition of the fetus. These are often cases where the pregnancy was desired but something has gone terribly wrong.These are personal, gut-wrenching decisions that should be made by the doctor and patient without political interference from meddling, bombastic, attention-seeking bad actors trying to feed off of someone else's tragecy.
This is exactly right. These decisions, if made by prosecutors, will lead inevitably to womens' pointless suffering and death.
I support that it is a women's right to choose in the first 15 weeks. After that it is a decision between a women and her doctor. If people think doctors are abusing that there is an administrative law infrastructure to work that out. There should be no criminal remedies available to any prosecutor for people accessing health care.
The coercive power of the state should not be used to compel a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term against her will.
Hmm, so at 8 months pregnant, if a woman gets depressed and decides she wants an abortion, the state should not prevent her?
One should be careful how much weight to give such far fetched examples when discussing broad principles, but when crafting a law it is a good idea to address as many edges cases as one can.
So how about in the vanishingly unlikely instance where a very late term change of heart occurs AND the woman is dead set against seeing out one last month and putting her baby up for adoption, a viable fetus can be removed via cesarian section and still given to others to raise. Indeed, how else could one "abort" at such a late stage?
Are you really as stupid as you present yourself or just as completely dishonorable as you seem. No medical licensing body would let a doctor who performed an abortion in such a circumstance keep their license. Nor is there any procedure for performing said abortion. No mentally healthy doctor would perform such an abortion.
I hate to sound like Ralph Nader, but maybe we should accept the fact that the court's evident agenda of forcing everyone to be conservatives Catholics whether they want to or not is eventually going to go too far and the court will have reform thrust upon it. Then every decision overturning century old precedents can be re-overturned.
A guy can hope. But I do not think I should be in the business of compromising women's rights for them. And neither should you.
Kevin, there are really two different issues here. One issue is the gestational age after which a woman can't get an abortion without any questions; pre-Dobbs that was effectively the first trimester.
The second, and most important issue, is that a lot of red states are making impossible for a doctor to treat a miscarriage or otherwise failing pregnancy, by allowing prosecutors to charge those doctors with felonies for performing those abortions. No doctor is going to perform an abortion if some lame ass prosecutor can charge them with murder for performing an abortion on a 12 year old rape victim, or a woman who has a raging infection, but isn't quite close enough to death to satisfy a law written by morons.
No compromise is possible while abortions are criminalized. Doctors must have the right to use their best medical judgement about whether an abortion is warranted.
I want to try to clarify what I wrote. There are *lots* of things that can go wrong in a pregnancy after 15-20 weeks: preeclampsia, water breaking leading to a massive infection, partial miscarriage, and a separated placenta are just some of them.
In most of these cases, the fetus has no chance of survival outside the womb, and the woman will likely die without an abortion.
None of these red state restrictions even recognize this reality; they may on paper have exceptions "for the life of the mother," but in practice this means that if a prosecutor doesn't think the pregnant woman was close enough to death's door, that doctor can be charge and convicted of a felony.
What you're going to see is OBGYNs leaving these states -- if you can't legally practice good medicine, what are you going to do?
It’s been mentioned above, but really the commenters who pose scenarios of "8-month abortions because the woman suddenly decided she didn't want the baby" should look at our neighbor to the north. Canada has no abortion law whatsoever.
Abortions standards are set as medical guidelines like any other procedure. In practice, this means that up to 24 weeks it is on demand. After that a medical evaluation is done. Medical evaluation, with no role for the legal system.
Do they have the 8-month scenarios imagined above? They do not. Those arguments are bogus. Doesn't happen in the real world.
Please look up Wikipedia "abortion in Canada" and learn the facts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Canada?wprov=sfti1
Which is why they never cite any specific examples of such a thing ever happening.