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 conservative base won’t accept anything but a full ban
The sooner it dawns on Democrats that the anti abortion base is now down to "the life begins at conception" people the better.
Some number of weeks is a liberal construct, based on balancing what is (to us) the obvious rights of the mother.
They don't think a pregnant woman has any rights to "kill" the unborn. They are not going to be satisfied with some number of weeks - its not a negotiable issue for them.
This issue has to be brute forced on a state by state basis. And it will never go away.
Agreed. There is no negotiation possible with people who believe that a zygote is a person with equal rights to the woman carrying it.
Also 15 weeks isn't enough for many of the things that go terribly, horribly wrong with fetal development and don't appear until later.
We should do something about all those men killing unconceived babies, maybe cut their balls off. It won't bring the babies back to life, but it will stop them before they kill again.
The population of the unconceived must be tens of billions by now; non-conception is probably the biggest crime in history. My wife and I probably could have had an extra 8-10 kids if we had tried.
Not sure when non-conception will be criminalized, but if I had to guess where, I'd guess Texas or Mississippi.
A quick run to Healthline.com reveals that anything under 28 weeks development is considered extreme preterm.
Every sperm is sacred!!! Masterbation is next.
Polls indicate a third of Republicans say abortion should be illegal. But 26% say it should be legal, and 24% say “it depends.” All conservatives are not evangelical Christians. Also, the MAGA crowd will mostly just follow whatever Trump says.
The third of the Republican Party that doesn’t think abortion should be legal under any circumstances has more political clout than the ones that think it should be legal. And that third is mostly die hard Trump supporters. They will not brook any compromise and it is useless trying to dream up ones.
the 1/3rd that think that are single issue voters The rest don't vote on the issue so the 1/3 control the agenda
Indeed, if the last 50 years have taught us anything, it's that a compromise on abortion is not on the table. And a fifteen week ban would not be remotely acceptable unless it included exceptions for the life or health of the pregnant woman. Serious complications can occur at any stage of pregnancy. Women aren't "home free" at fifteen weeks.
And also had no intention of honoring their part of the deal made fifty-some years from the very get-go.
The majority of people would likely accept such a compromise. Just like a majority of people think that there should be laws and rules regarding type, possession and carrying of firearms. There are no rational solutions or compromises. We need to recognize and accept this.
"Suppose it contained reasonable safeguards for the physical health of the mother"
Have you read none of the stories about how women with life-threatening pregnancy complications are being treated in the antiabortion states, Kevin?
bingo
This isn't a difficult question. Over 94% of all abortions occur before 15 weeks, and a significant amount (if not most?) of the remaining 6% are for health/medical reasons, so those would still be allowed. In other words, a 15 week compromise accomplishes nearly all the goals of the pro-choice movement except for the distasteful feeling of "compromising" in theory.
Frankly, I'd have to question your actual commitment to being pro-choice if you'd object to 15 week compromise to protect the rights of a vanishingly small amount of California women to get an elective abortion at 25 weeks at the expense of prohibiting all Texas women from having any kind of abortion access at all. That's an unhealthy adherence to ideological perfection at the expense of real world and real people consequences.
"...a significant amount (if not most?) of the remaining 6% are for health/medical reasons, so those would still be allowed."
Hahahahahahahaha
This made me laugh. As if there aren't states right now denying abortions to the remaining 6% despite being for health/medical reasons. Every day there are stories of women facing medical problems who have to flee their home state to get that "allowed" abortion, mostly because doctors and hospitals still face legal liability if they provide the supposedly "allowed" abortion "too soon."
That's the point: states right now are denying abortion to anyone for whatever reason. A 15 week compromise would dramatically expand the options for people in those very states you're referring to.
I think you’re wrong about medical exceptions. In the abstract and assuming good faith among Republicans, you’re right that everything would probably work out okay for women with complications. But if you look at the way the current laws are written, they universally require doctors to assume an unknown and unknowable risk of being prosecuted. It’s the ambiguity that is causing most of these problems we’re seeing and it’s Republicans bad faith that’s creating the ambiguity.
To be clear, I am merely engaging in the abstract hypothetical that Kevin proposed. I doubt Kevin believes the proposal is realistic; I sure don't. More of a thought exercise, really.
There's a procedure called amniocentesis. It's basically the only way to be 100% sure that your fetus has Down's Syndrome or a bunch of other awful things, and it can only be performed between 15 and 20 weeks.
So assuming someone is very concerned about serious problems with their fetus, you're saying the choice is:
1) Abort before 15 weeks based strictly on an earlier test that isn't very accurate, possibly aborting a healthy fetus
or
2) Be forced to risk having a kid with severe disabilities
It sure seems like the people that come up with these great ideas have never had kids or otherwise have no idea what they're talking about.
Chorionic villus sampling can diagnose Down Syndrome. CVS can be done at 10-13 weeks.
You're right, CVS will work for Downs, but not for some other conditions like neural tube defects.
Incidentally, given that it takes a couple weeks to get CVS test results, and likely some additional delay to schedule an abortion, you'd basically have to get the CVS at exactly 10 weeks and then hope there are no wait times at all.
Thank you. I actually had trouble finding an ObGyn to deliver my first child, back in the 1980's, during the ObGyn shortage due to rising medical malpractice rates.
I had to agree to an amnio, which is very invasive. We did not get the results until 26 weeks.
So I have a big problem with a 15-week ban.
Oh dear lord, one of those. The point, assuming you can get it, is not about abortion per se. It's that its's her body, her rights, and whatever she does with them is none of my damn business. Got it now?
Thank you for sharing your opinion on abortion with the class.
By all means keep pretending that this point doesn't exist. It's a classy look for you.
Kevin's hypothetical isn't even worth considering. The nutjob states aren't going back to allowing abortions up to 15 weeks and the Supreme Court would support their denial of women's rights. And way to throw women in pro-choice states under the bus. It's compromises like this that got us to where we are now. Of course I'm sure you're a male so it won't really affect your life.
The problem is that the Republicans have no intention of allowing those last 6%, and probably won't go for 15 weeks, either. Florida just passed a 6 week ban, and a significant number of Republicans think a fertilized egg merits protection.
"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?"
It's only "forever" until the next time Republicans control both Congress and the Presidency, whereupon they will enact an absolute national ban on abortion, which the Supreme Court will declare to be just fine despite Dobbs saying that abortion is a matter for the states.
It's only forever until the Democrats rebalance SCOTUS and reinstate Roe v Wade.
A law like that would not last long. Both sides of the debate would fight it continuously. And it would never pass. Might as well discuss the popularity of landing astronauts on the sun.
Most West-European countries with liberal abortion laws have bans at around 14 weeks, except when there are serious health issues. But seriously, in the USA the issue is so politicized that women will have to live with state-by-state laws, not forever but until two or three SC Justices meet their maker, kick the bucket, push up the daisies and I forgot the other terms from Monty Python's parrot sketch.
Those countries all have universal health care and easy of access to the procedure and any problems arising from it.
Yeah, I logged in to say that this isn’t any different than debating France’s restrictions, which are mitigated with comprehensive sex ed, full access to contraceptives, insurance coverage, easy access to abortion services (iirc even covering transportation), wide latitude for doctors to allow later procedures, and a far less foolish understanding of human relationships. With those terms, sure, early abortions are better than late ones anyway… but we have neither the health infrastructure or political sense to implement anything like it.
We need abortion to be more generally available than under Roe, not less.
Take a look at Canada. No abortion law at all, no problems.
I am so sick and tired of guys mansplaining my rights to my own bodily autonomy to me. Get real Kevin the GOP wants to use abortion to take away all of my rights as a female citizen of the US. There won't be accommodations for the health of the mother nor will be there be safe havens in blue states. It doesn't have to happen this way but it will if folks like you don't wake up and smell the coffee and join us in fight to protect our rights 100%.
Yes, yes, and yes. Kevin is not usually this clueless. I get it, there are some people who will never be happy until all abortions are illegal so does it make sense to try to find some compromise that protects most women most of the time (very debatable) ? But the answer has to be no. Either this is a personal decision for women to make, hopefully with good medical advice, or it's not. For God's sake, ROE was a compromise and it was unacceptable to these people . And the 2022 mid terms make it pretty clear that the politics are NOT on the side of Lindsay Graham and his ilk either.
Umm, I have to disagree. Not is Kevin often exactly this clueless (disingenuous might be a better word), it's pretty much on a daily basis. Although written in a very low key, faux reasonable tone, his default mode is snarky contrarianism. Which is also frequently shot though (as it is here by his comment that he lives in California and Mississippi women are distant) with the sentiment that if Kevin himself, or people that Kevin is likely to know, are unaffected, what exactly is the fuss?
"Either this is a personal decision for women to make, hopefully with good medical advice, or it's not."
Nonsense. Developing humans acquire rights too. The vast majority of Americans want abortion outlawed after viability. Most people are solidly anti-abortion after X number of weeks of pregnancy. It's just a matter of where to draw the line. This is the essence of the debates going on in this country. BTW, the same debate has already occurred in other free countries. Most of Europe limits abortion to 18 weeks if there are no health problems.
Other countries aren't chipping away at women's rights.
So you'd support free health care including abortion, free contraception, comprehensive sex education and wide exceptions to the 18 week limit like Europe? No? What a surprise.
Canada's example says that there is no value in outlawing abortion after viability. Late term abortions, as such, are vanishingly rare and only happen in cases where the fetus is so damaged that it has no chance of post-birth survival. (There are lots of post-viability surgical pregnancy terminations, but they're not called abortions, they're called Caesarian sections and the result generally is one or more live babies.)
Rare or not, it should not be legal. If a woman decides she wants an abortion while 8 months pregnant, and there are no medical problems, abortion should not be allowed.
A 2013 US study said women getting late term abortions were often raising children alone, were depressed or using illicit substances, or were in conflict with a male partner. So late term abortions are not just due to medical reasons. Some women decide late that they just don't want to have the baby. I bet in Canada it is the same.
The sister of my high school girlfriend got pregnant in high school. The sister and her parents were horrified. They looked at options for late term abortion including where the doctor injects salt water into the amniotic fluid. I think her sister would have done it, but for some reason it didn't happen. So the baby was put up for adoption. The baby grew up, and as an adult re-connected with her birth mother.
Also, if there is any hope of getting compromises state by state, sticking to the position that abortions should be legal throughout pregnancy is a non-starter. (An exception would be for medical issues.)
Still no cites, of course. And everyone knows you're presenting hypothetical because you damn well know that bad cases make for bad law.
You cannot find a single example in Canada of abortion of a healthy viable fetus. There is no indication that any pregnant woman has ever asked for such an abortion, and if one did no Canadian doctor would perform it. As I noted earlier, surgical terminations of post-viability pregnancies with healthy fetuses are done by C-section, with a live baby as the outcome.
We did have a compromise. It's commonly known as Roe vs Wade.
Thank you.
Pregnant women are carrying a developing human, and developing humans have rights too. So abortion is more than just a women's issue.
Developing humans start off with very limited rights, and that is why the majority of Americans support allowing abortion in the early months of pregnancy. But once viability is reached, the developing human has gained enough rights that the vast majority of Americans (including women) oppose allowing abortions from then on except for a medical emergency.
Can you tell us what "protect our rights 100%" means? Abortion allowed up to 24 weeks? Abortion allowed up to 9 months?
I don't think this notion of fetuses acquiring rights on some kind of sliding scale makes sense. Do they have 22.5 percent of human rights at 9 weeks and 42.5 percent at 17 weeks and 60 percent at 23.9 weeks and then blammo 100% at 24 weeks (viability) ? What does this even mean ? I agree that most Americans were ok with Roe and the notion of viability, with exceptions for health reason afterwards. But when a woman, for whatever reason comes in at 30 weeks and says I just can't do this, what would you suggest ? And if you deny her and she goes somewhere else and has the abortion what would the penalty be ? Would it be 75% of the sentence she would get for smothering the newborn ?
A surgical pregnancy termination at 30 weeks is called a Caesarian section, and the result is a live baby.
Point taken.
"I don't think this notion of fetuses acquiring rights on some kind of sliding scale makes sense."
I have long struggled with this point, but have concluded you have to adopt this reasoning. Without this line of thought, it makes sense to outlaw abortion at conception. This matches what the Catholic Church says and evangelical Christian say. There must be a sudden moment when the developing human has full rights, and it must be at birth. No sliding scale allowed.
Think of the sliding scale as a moral question. If you have an abortion while 8 months pregnant instead of 3 days after conception, isn't it more wrong to have the abortion at 8 months? At 8 months you basically have a healthy baby ready to be born. At 3 days you have a few cells.
"But when a woman, for whatever reason comes in at 30 weeks and says I just can't do this, what would you suggest ?"
It's hard, but I don't see how we can allow abortion. The doctor would be killing a developing human being that at that point can live outside of the mother. Sure seems like infanticide.
"Abortion allowed up to 9 months?"
Yes. The only abortions happening that late in pregnancy are when something horrible has happened. You imagining that women are carrying a healthy fetus to term and then deciding to abort it are a right wing fantasy to justify their misogyny.
And he's still not citing any examples of this ever happening. His rhetorical ploys are obvious and tiresome.
So, you would presume to tell a couple who have a severely deformed developing human that the have no right to terminate? That's cold.
It's not your or anyone else's choice to make except the parents.
Nobody is going to terminate a healthy pregnancy at 24 months or even 9 months.
I didn't say that. If there are severe medical problems, in my view abortion should be allowed at any time.
"Nobody is going to terminate a healthy pregnancy at 24 months or even 9 months."
It does happen. Teens get pregnant and hide it, and then want a late abortion. Women have major conflicts with their male partner, and have late term abortions. Women are very depressed or have a drug problem. Women have no money or lost their job. Studies show women get late abortions for more reasons than just severe medical problems.
No, I don't imagine too many people terminate a pregnancy at 24 months.
LIKED +10! That is _exactly_ the point.
Right on. Keep "the church" and politicians out of my uterus and what goes on there. It's my business and mine alone.
100% right. The fact is that state after state controlled by Republicans have passed bans that have no effective exceptions for rape or health of the mother.
These states have passed laws that say if a prosecutor disagrees with a doctor's opinion about the severity of risk to the health of the mother, the prosecutor can charge the doctor with a felony. No sane doctor is going to risk that, and I suspect, we're going to see an outflow of OBGYNS from these red states.
These laws treat women as second class citizens, if that. There can be no compromise with people who think that a woman is nothing but a vessel for carrying babies.
We already know the answer. People who believe abortion is murder will never accept anything less than completely banned at conception, full stop. They'd never accept a 15-week compromise except as a move-the-window tactic. We see it in FL, where 15-weeks was fine last year and now is unacceptable. People who believe abortion is always a medical decision prior to viability have no reason to compromise at any specific cutoff if they know it will still be contested without end, they'd just be giving up territory for no real gain.
Maybe a 15-week compromise along with 100% ban and buy-back of semi-automatic and assault weapons.
There will be no compromises. Those just aren't on the table. We will be living with patchwork abortion bans until the Supreme Court reinstates a version of Roe. That might be in ten years, that might be in 50. But that day will come.
Why 15 and not 14 or 20? Sorry I don’t agree with the premise which is predicated in medieval style witchcraft rounded up with Victorian morality. A fetus is a being being formed. It is not formed. It is my understanding that all the human markers (physical, mental, viable) occur around the beginning of the third trimester and any discussion of preventing an abortion before that time is intellectually lacking mimicking empty platitudes because that person finds the topic uncomfortable.
I reject this false choice absolutely. In fact, that you're framing this as "either the 15-week ban, OR we have a patchwork forever" says a lot.
Eventually, either the Republicans or the Democrats will be able to form a trifecta at the federal level with a sufficient lack of internal defections that either bans abortion nationwide or protects it nationwide. One of those two things will happen. Our better energies should be focused on making sure Democrats are the ones who get to do this.
Fuck no.
A compromise cannot hold.
If you really, truly want to present an interesting policy choice and tradeoff question in this arena?
Here's one: much of the developed world only allows unrestricted abortion in the first trimester, with fairly stringent restrictions afterward. Conservatives like to harp ON and ON and ON about this; "your beloved socialist Europe restricts abortions!"
However, those countries all mostly have universal health care and once someone decides that want an abortion, they have ready access to it, at no or nominal cost to them. So a woman wanting an abortion to can obtain it fast and with no trouble and with help for any complications before, during, or after.
So an actually interesting question is "would liberals accept this tradeoff, which puts real limits on women to satisfy those who think abortion should be legal but get squeamish the latter one occurs, in exchange for universal healthcare and ease of access to the procedure?"
That's probably the only way I would accept this sort of (off the table anyway) compromise: you could put stringent restrictions after 15 (or preferably 20) weeks only if there were universal access to health care and pregnancy tests. The goal of course would be that any woman who wants to terminate a pregnancy could easily do so in that timeframe. But I'm somewhat lukewarm about that deal.
It's been a while but I believe major ultrasound tests don't happen until around 20 weeks. I personally think people should be able to terminate their pregnancies based on that information.
I always thought viability made sense as the point at which the state could impose greater restrictions. That's the compromise Roe was trying to get at and Casey settled on, although Casey weakened the right to strict scrutiny, which it shouldn't have, and then the Court became increasingly unwilling to hold the line there. People seem to forget now that Roe was the compromise. Republicans threw that out and now we have an unmitigated mess. I'm not particularly interested in cutting them a better deal in response.
Conservatives really don't want to talk about Canada.
Given that multiple justices sitting on the Supreme Court lied under oath about this very issue, how can we possibly bargain in good faith on this issue?
Also, Lindsay Graham was once a guy I figured was trustworthy, with whom one could negotiate. But not after all the Trump bootlicking.
No. Absolutely not. They have burned the bridge. To Hades with them.
What is the point of this mental masturbatory exercise, Kevin? This "compromise" isn't on the table, and even if it were, there is zero reason to believe that the compromise would last for one day after Republicans eventually seize a trifecta in Washington again.
"You promise you won't yank the football this time, Lucy?"
With all due respect, this is the most fucked-up idea I've heard in a while. It's like telling Ukraine if they want peace all they have to do is negotiate with Putin, who wants to erase them from the map of Europe and obliterate any mention of their name in the history books.
If you wanted compromise, you had it with Roe. That was not at all satisfactory to the GOP, even in its somewhat saner days. After 50 years, they got rid of Roe and in the words of Sam Alito returned the issue "to the people," which normal people might think meant pregnant women, as Roe had it, but in GOP-speak meant (mostly) men in legislatures -- not state legislatures but any legislature, inc. Congress, that the GOP controls.
Look at Idaho, where abortion is flat-out illegal and minors will soon get 2 to 5 years in prison for traveling out of state to get an abortion. This is what the GOP will do everywhere if they have the power to.
The MAGA Republican Party is so god-damned awful that people all around the country (this blog possibly excepted) are finally sick and tired of putting with GOP crap and saying enough is enough. There's no compromise coming. Like Lincoln once said about a different problem, the country's going all one way or the other. Democrats have the best issue to win back power, as Wisconsin proved on Tuesday, and they're not about to unilaterally disarm in the name of some untenable compromise that would set the party back decades. It's better to fight on.
Republicans are the dog that finally caught the car and Democrats aren't stopping until Rover dies a bloody death.
Back in the day Democrats (or whatever you want to call them) weren't very happy with said compromise. Difference is one side honored their part of the deal and the other didn't, in fact had no intention of doing so from the get-go.
Such a "compromise" with the MAGA GOP (which will never happen in my lifetime) would be an equivalent to the deal Chamberlain got in 1938. The Red states would immediately fight it until it got to SCOTUS, and then the Christian Nationalist majority would shit can the law, so we would be back to where we were with more than 1/2 the states criminalizing abortion in almost any form.
I do hope that Florida institutes a 6 week ban, so that if DeathSantis does win, it can be wrapped around his neck in the 2024 election.
Conservatism will be less and less popular as it has less and less it can do without outright descending into dictatorship and it's worthlessness becomes more straightforward and obvious with every passing year.
A compromise that no one will like and everyone will try to fuck with may be less worthwhile than waiting while the harm they do accumulates.
I just don't care about how red states self harm anymore.
Very bizarre. Some people here are saying we should never "compromise". What does that even mean -- allow abortion all the way until just before birth (9 months)? Get real -- the vast majority of Americans would never support that. Most of Europe limits abortion to 18 weeks if there are no health problems.
So the only option is "compromise". It's just a matter of what point in the pregnancy that abortion becomes illegal.
The point is that people, for good reason, fear that any good faith attempt will be taken advantage of, and that any offered olive branch will be a lie.
This is not a good context to argue about the "best" policy, or the "compromise". On this, "compromise" is a stepping stone to "our way or the highway".
There is so, so much demonstrable bad faith behind the GOP's machinations on this very issue that any "compromise" will likely be shredded at the first opportunity.
Remember the "Roe v. Wade is settled law" canard? How did that play out?
"The point is that people, for good reason, fear that any good faith attempt will be taken advantage of, and that any offered olive branch will be a lie."
I understand that. But to take the position that there should be zero restrictions on abortion just means you are not really in the debate.
"There is so, so much demonstrable bad faith behind the GOP's machinations on this very issue that any "compromise" will likely be shredded at the first opportunity."
Well, I understand this too. In the MAGA/Trump era of madness, it's hard to know what to do.
There is no debate, you either respect my right to autonomy or you don't . Obviously you don't.
Give some examples of such occurences. With links and cites please and we all know you know exactly why.
Zero restrictions on abortion is the Canadian position. It works very well.
FUCK NO.
It might seem reasonable given the statistics of when the vast majority of abortions are performed but who get's to determine when a pregnant woman's life is or is not in danger? Doctors are already refusing to treat women in some of the states for things that are not explicitly illegal but could be interpreted as such by a bunch of old white men that don't know a uterus from a Uranus.
Even your proposed compromise becomes the 15-week ceiling rather than a blanket allowance, because even if it were to pass, the courts have intervened and we have to consider that they'd step in and say that without Roe, the government can't require the states to allow abortion. Now, for 20 weeks, at least you could argue that was the status quo during Roe times, so the law helps but doesn't harm. But 15 weeks, you're giving up something without much assurance you get anything.
The devil is in the details.
We have already seen that abortion laws in red states, which theoretically contain exceptions for the health of the mother, are so poorly written that doctors are afraid to invoke those exceptions. There would have to be very clear language where, if the medical provider can check boxes A, B, and C, they are protected from prosecution unless someone can prove that one of those boxes was falsely checked.
There would also need to be strict rules forbidding red states to interfere with abortion access. No more TRAP laws.
Finally, it would need an explicit non-severability clause. If the Supreme Court strikes down any part of the law, the whole thing is null and void. No striking down the anti-TRAP provision but leaving the 15-week limit intact.
Given all that... hmm. Maybe. I'm wary of drawing comparisons to other countries with universal health care and decent sex ed; but maybe.
Not that it matters. Republicans aren't going to offer such a deal. The only value in Lindsey Graham's proposals is to use them as a club to whack Republican candidates with during election season.
So for Kevin it is a matter of fuzzy tribalism rather than general principles. Which likely explains other things where he’s shrugged.
I'm an old guy who won't ever need to consider this question. On the one hand, I really want to see republicans go off the deep end in order to teach the voting public a hard lesson. On the other hand, it doesn't matter to me. I'll be happy to endlessly taunt conservatives for not achieving their goal.
As a nurse, woman, has had an abortion, and a liberal, it is my opinion that if abortions were acceptable, there would be few issues
for term limits for abortions. Likely the reason there are so many abortion requests for longer term pregnancies is that women have no access. Think about that for a while....
Liberal men should defer to the wishes of each individual woman regarding what to do about any unwanted pregnancies. Fundamentalist men invested in the authority of patriarchy should check their blood sugar and refill their prescriptions treating ED.
Tomorrow is cat blogging, correct..?