12 Weeks?

The joke goes like this: A dashing and well-dressed man walks into a bar, and he approaches a gorgeous woman having a drink.  He makes some conversation, and then says he'd like to ask her a question.  "Yes?," she replies.  He asks her if she would have sex with him for $1M.  She looks him up and down, thinks about their conversation, and about him and his presentation, and says she would.  He then asks her if she would have sex with him for $20.  "What kind of woman do you think I am?" she rhetorically and indignantly asks, with great offense and disgust.  The man responds "We've already determined that.  We're just haggling over the price."

Today, the legislature in NC passed a law limiting abortion to not later than 12 weeks.  In Florida, it's six weeks.  Some jurisdictions permit abortion for women who were raped, or for their health.  But whichever of these exceptions applies, the fact is that the jurisdictions permit abortion.  They might be haggling over the developmental moment in the pregnancy, or the conditions under which the pregnancy occurred, or what the pregnancy might cost the pregnant woman, but they've already determined that they permit abortion.

The facts are that women who want abortions didn't want to be pregnant, and did whatever they thought they should do to prevent pregnancy.  No one is opposed to the idea that women shouldn't become pregnant every time they're fertile.  And 93% of abortions occur within the first trimester (about 14 weeks), and six percent more (up to 99% altogether) by 20 weeks.  So, what's this 12 week game?

There are two reasons that some people are opposed to abortion.  One is that their entirely personal religious beliefs lead them to conclude that "god" does not approve of abortion.  (It's never clear how they know this.  Because they think "god" wants people to "be fruitful and multiply?"  Then aren't they similarly required to have one or two dozen children, or as many as they can crank out?)  And to adopt a limitation like that, and apply it to people who might very well not share those entirely personal religious beliefs, rejects the Constitutional "separation of church and state."  Oddly enough, the people who oppose abortion, on the basis of their entirely personal religious beliefs, also generally claim to be devotees of the Constitution, and its "original" intent.  (We can get clues to what it intends by reading what it says.)  The nice way to point that out is that it's inconsistent.  The not nice way is that it's hypocritical.  And some of the "gods" are big fans of "smiting" evil-doers.  If the religious among us believe in "original sin," then aren't fetuses evil-doers?  Especially if they imposed themselves where no one wanted them, and all parties involved tried to prevent their existence.

The other reason many of these people give is that they consider themselves "pro-life."  Except they're also generally supportive of capital punishment, and of guns in civilian and all police hands.  In the UK, few police officers have guns, and they have to be specially trained in order to have them.  In France, right now(!), one gendarme has been fired because he killed a 17 year old boy who was driving slowly when police told him to stop.  Real countries aren't gun-happy, like we are.  So, again, these Americans are either inconsistent, or they're hypocrites.

The fact, of course, is that if 93% of abortions occur by about 14 weeks, then the sizable majority of those most likely occur by 12 weeks.  So, the legislature of NC has most likely accomplished as near to nothing as possible.  The good thing that can be said for them is that they're not as cruel and sadistic as states like Florida, or states that (for the moment) have banned abortion altogether.

What's additionally interesting here is that the SCOTUS disqualified Roe vs Wade last year, and the blowback, in terms of lost elections for Republicans, has been fierce.  They spat into the wind, and they got the expected result (in that the sizable majority of American citizens want abortion access preserved.)  And they're still at it -- still spitting into the wind.