Roe v Wade

My "doomposting" has tried to demonstrate the diverse reasons for not legislating the issue of abortion. I have shown the real consequences to real people. I have shown the clusterfuck which ensues when you allow state legislatures to independently determine laws in this area. We are only a few months into this fiasco, and trigger laws enacting - in many cases 100-year old legislation - from people with zero medical expertise or social understanding are going to result in actual, living human beings dying - not those which merely exist in potentia. How many people are going to suffer? 

This has been the conservative talking point for more than a generation. It was Mitch McConnell's pet project; his end game with regard to a shoehorned and janked Supreme Court which doesn't represent the wishes of 70% of Americans, made by judges who, as nominees, either equivocated or said Roe was established law, and in their final determination cited 17th-century laws to justify its overturn.

The ideological basis for overturning Roe v Wade fundamentally eventuates from the same social neurosis as the notion of sexual impropriety. It is about chastity, and the sanctity of marriage, and about heternormative and traditional notions of "raising a family." This is why the idea of convenience - that abortion is being casually used as a kind of retroactive contraception - has been pressed so hard and for so long; this idea that people "should have used birth control" as if that was the sole determinant in a phenomenon as complex as abortion. Its banning is moralistic and utterly punitive. The same states which ban any depiction of non-normative gender and sexuality; the same states where abstinence is taught as the best form of contraception. The states with the highest poverty, worst education, highest illiteracy, highest maternal death rates, and lowest life expectancy.

The other great canard which has been championed by the Republicans - the awfulness and barbarity of late-term abortions - fails to address the fundamental reality of why these occur. Less than 1% of abortions are (or were) late-term. They occur when (1)severe fetal abnormalities are only discovered after the 24th week or (2)when legal bullshit has prevented pregnant women from getting timely terminations before this. The notion - presently being implied by Lindsey Graham and his loathsome ilk - is that heavily-pregnant women are somehow going to be queuing up outside of abortion clinics to whimsically abort their fetuses in the 28th week. Women who decide on late-term abortions do so for serious health reasons. They know the sex of their baby. They have chosen a name. They have begun to decorate their nurseries. They are devastated at this choice. To assert criminality at this stage is utterly punitive; to punish a human when they are at their most vulnerable, and in their state of deepest anguish. Fuck those who legislate in this fashion.

So if you were part of the state legislature, how would you write the bill? This is what I had meant when I asked, but I botched that...

25+ affidavits filed in Ohio from cancer patients denied both treatment and abortions, child rape victims denied abortions, women with fetuses with severe abnormalities etc. etc. etc.

link

Okay. I'm not sure how to legally codify "Oops, birth control" is prohibited without additional ambiguity. That aside, would you include any restrictions after "x" number of weeks, or do you consider that type of restriction moot?

Exactly.

Though to be honest, I wouldn't actually legislate on that either, it would be on viability. Once the baby could survive outside the mother, it would require exceptions, like health of mother or child, rape victim, etc. But "oops birth control" is not an exception.

Yes this means the State would need to care for the child, and as technology advances the viability age would be lowered.

The legalistic arguments have already been made.

I’ve yet to hear a compelling ethical case.