More About Abortion

This is clearly a topic that will never go away as a point of often passionate contention.  It's a curiosity of the American people and their twisted and non-representative government, likely worth mentioning, that most Americans favor abortion access, while local, state, and sometimes federal governments manage to compose themselves of people who don't favor abortion access.  So these governments rule against what their constituents want.  I suppose they find some way to sleep at night, taking money from people in order to frustrate or disappoint them, or ruin their lives.

In any event, the anti-abortion crowd like to sensationalize and provoke the issue by alleging that people who favor abortion access approve of abortion up to the moment of birth.  These anti-abortionists never make clear whence they get this conclusion.  But let's take a look at their assertion.  And let's keep in mind that by definition, people who get abortions are pregnant, and don't want to be.  No one should have any trouble presupposing that people who don't want to be pregnant have a good reason not to want to be pregnant, and they have done something to try to prevent themselves from getting pregnant.  Whether anyone looking back on it would say that whatever these people did to try to prevent pregnancy was or wasn't most likely to succeed is another matter.  If you want to know which method of contraception is 100% guaranteed to prevent pregnancy (apart from abstinence, and assuming the woman who intended to be abstinent didn't get raped), the answer is none.

So, two people are sexually active together.  They did whatever they thought they should do to prevent pregnancy (pregnancy is not only rare compared to the number of episodes of sexual intimacy, but it's very much not desired the vast majority of the times), but pregnancy occurs.  How does a woman know she's pregnant?  The first clue is that she misses a menstrual period.  Technically, the first time that happens is about two weeks after insemination, but if she's not regular anyway, then she really doesn't know this --that she missed a menstrual period -- for sure for maybe three weeks after insemination.  Or more, depending on how irregular she commonly is.

The woman did not want to get pregnant, and her male partner probably didn't want this, either, but now, she is (or, in more politically correct parlance, they are).  Maybe she, and both of them, now have something to think about.  So we tack on some more weeks, for them to think about it, talk to each other, talk to family members or others, or whatever.

With this new, and previously unwanted, development, let's suppose they get attached to the idea of a new and unexpected, and unwanted, family, and they take a very deep breath, and decide to change their lives.  They might very well, however, have concerns about the health of the fetus.  It's a common and perfectly reasonable precaution to get an amniocentesis.  But you don't get that the day it occurs to you, so we tack on at least a couple or few more weeks.  During this time, our couple are of course still making sure they feel willing to do this thing they thought they protected themselves from having to do.

So the question is, when do the people who get abortions get them?  Is it, as the anti-abortionists say, any time, right up to the moment of birth?

Abortion in the U.S.: What the data says | Pew Research Center.  (That, of course, is wrong usage, because the word data is plural.  The singular is datum.  So it should have been "What the data say.)

Ninety-three percent of abortions occur during the first trimester (about 13-14 weeks).  I don't think anyone would argue with me if I said that was the vast, vast, vast majority of them.  And that's how long it takes to find out you're pregnant, get a pregnancy test or wait one more month, to be sure (if you're not regular anyway), think about it, talk to the important people in your life, and get an amniocentesis.  Six percent more occurred from weeks 14 to 20.  Would it be fair to say that 99% is essentially all of them?  (I've never heard of anyone getting an abortion at the moment of birth.  I don't believe it happens.  I think the anti-abortionists made this up.  I doubt anyone gets a third trimester abortion, and few or none other than early in the second trimester.  I do, however, have a friend who was pregnant years ago, and the fetus died in utero in about the seventh or eighth month.  I'm not an obstetrician, and I had no part of the advising or decision-making.  But the decision was to wait longer, for who knows what reason, and induce birth in about the ninth month.  But that was an already dead fetus, and I can't imagine anyone would be mischievous enough to call that maneuver a very late abortion.)

And if you want to know who gets an abortion, that Pew article talks about girls as young as 13.  Most abortions (57%) occur in women in their 20s.  And this was in 2020.  We're talking about women who were in college, graduate school, very likely not married or in stable relationships, and for whom the responsibility of a new baby would have been life-ruining.  At least not then.  Or maybe not ever.  Do they like physical intimacy?  Of course!  They're human.  But that doesn't mean they have to want children.

And I still say two things: 1) if your reason for opposing abortion is religious, and personal, you should, on the one hand, understand that your personal beliefs don't apply to everyone else, and on the other hand, if you think there's such a thing as "god," etc, then it's very possible you also think there's such a thing as the "devil."  If you do, then who do you think put that fetus in that 13 year old girl, or some 20-something whose life and ambitions will be ruined by having to trade it all in for motherhood, and welfare?  And 2) "If You Don't Believe in Abortion, Don't Have One."  If you want to complicate this, let me tell you it's not that complicated.  I think we talked about this.  You're not "pro-life."  If you're anti-abortion, it's overwhelmingly likely you're not opposed to capital punishment, nor to the shocking profusion of deadly weapons in private hands, way, way, way too many of which get used to assassinate other and commonly innocent people.

There should be a nice opportunity here, and both Democrats and Republicans are squandering it.  The Republicans who want to outlaw abortion completely, or limit it to six weeks, despite what their constituents want, simply have their heads "where the sun don't shine."  But considering the reality of it, the Republicans who propose a limit of 15 weeks are offering an extremely fair and reasonable proposal, and Democrats are fools for not making this as bipartisan as it should be, and as populist as it is.  This is what people want.  It's what they actually do.