Why is the USA banning abortion?

[MindPalace]

It is absolutely horrifying that 21-26 US states are actively considering outlawing abortion. There are no exemptions for rape or incest in many of the proposals.

I see lots of news articles on this eg this one

amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/08/oklahomas-move-to-ban-abortions-is-a-prelude-of-america-without-roe-v-wade

But I can’t find one setting out the reasons why. Why on earth would they want to set back hard-won women’s rights?

And Poland as well. It’s quite scary.

Sorry if there is another recent thread on this btw.

@BuffyFanForever

It is absolutely not about hating women. Half of the babies aborted are women! It is due to the continuing scientific and medical knowledge being gained. There are many babies born at 20weeks who now survive and thrive (this is the abortion limit in this country which is shocking). Yes there are strong lobbyists in the US who are Christian but there are also many other people who support the rights of babies to not be harmed.

It is absolutely not about hating women.

Its not men who are affected by forced birthers though is it? Its not men who have to carry a baby inside them if they are denied an abortion is it?

@BuffyFanForever
Can you tell me of a single 20 weeker who has survived? Or the statistics for under 23 weeks? Maybe a reference for the many 20 weekers who have survived?

Nixon’s culture war. When republicans noticed that the issue of race wasn’t quite as effective as they needed it to be, they switched to abortion.

Get people riled up enough to only focus, and vote, on one issue, and you can do whatever else you would like in the background whilst counting on them voting for you even against their own interests.

@FTEngineerM

Ob/Gyns have said a foetus has no sentience or ability to feel pain at until around 26 weeks

So we measure life on its ability to suffer? That seems absurd.

@FTEngineerM If something has no sentience, no nerve receptors, no brainstem, no actual heartbeat and no awareness, it is not alive. What is alive? The woman. The one who has to risk her health in pregnancy, and risk her life in childbirth. She is born. She is alive. She has sentience, and a brainstem. She has a life. She has rights. Rights not to be forced onto Gestational Slavery.

@Pendulumface

I've had an ectopic pregnancy and I don't think I'll ever not be heartbroken over it. But my days, how on earth does one be so stupid to think that a embryo can simply be replanted?

They know it can't, they're just trying to push the overton window so that other extreme ideas can then be brought into the conversation. It's all so cynical.

www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/

A good overview. It’s not about the ‘rights of babies’ at all.

Conservative politicians are able to push these changes by appealing to the large populations of religious zealots in the United States. I am skeptical the politicians themselves are all as Christian as they claim. The real motivation is more likely controlling women and preventing the continued fight for equality and equity.

One state has including not aborting ectopic pregnancies in their bill.

This is horrific. A quick google of stats. An ectopic pregnancy has a 1 in 60 million chance of survival. Around 1 in 50 pregnancies in the US are ectopic and account for 3-4% of pregnancy-related death.

Americans didn’t just inherit Puritanism from Britons, it also came from German Lutherans amongst others. The latter founded German town, now Philadelphia. The Amish are Swiss Mennonite. Then there are other very conservative populations such as the Hasidic Jews, who mainly arrived after WWII. Ergo America is made up of populations, which needed to be strong and unified to survive and as a result maintained strict religious practices, codes of conduct and punishing laws, the repercussions of which is still felt today.

According to this article it is about controlling, policing, punishing and exiling the bad women, who challenge male dominance, never about the children. The article explains that women are forced to carry these pregnancies to term under the pretence that every life is precious. But when the children are born, there is very little help for the women or their children. The infant mortality rate in the US is comparatively high and the writer of the piece maintains that if the state cared about these children, this would not happen. letsbreakthrough.org/anti-abortion-misogyny-its-never-about-the-children/.

The pro-life argument is given that abortion is the worst form of child abuse. Even if a child is born and then abused, they at least have a chance to escape the abuse once leaving home, whereas that right is removed if aborted. I imagine this is the justification of threatening the doctors with 99 years in prison for performing an abortion, it being on a par with murder. Whereas any initial rape is seen as a lesser crime. Anyone who asserts that the battered child would rather die than be abused is extremely arrogant. www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/abortion-and-its-connection-to-child-abuse-9578

Buffyfan, where do you get your figures of 'many' babies born at 20 weeks surviving?
This simply untrue. For the infinitesimally small number of foetuses surviving birth at this stage, most will die shortly thereafter, and the others likely have severe health issues for as long as they do survive.

I am pro choice and I would say, pro termination in a lot of cases (I think people should think very hard about keeping a pregnancy and to the best of their ability only keep it if they feel they can offer a child a good upbringing), however I think we do ourselves a disservice to call anti-abortionists “women haters” “white supremacists” etc.

Lots of people have the genuinely held view that abortion is murder, for them this is why it is such an emotive subject for them. The believe that to oppose abortion is to save lives, and save innocent lives.

To pretend that all pro-life are really about controlling woman’s bodies obfuscates understanding and compromise. You need to know the opposing side of you want to win the argument.

Because they like women to be under control. If you control your fertility, you are too independent for some men.

They don't make access to contraception easy either.

As a pp said, it's so sad that so many women buy into this.

In all fairness, Orem babies can be born & kept alive earlier and earlier in the pregnancy - late abortions are getting a lot closer to a killing than feminists like me want to admit.

@IncompleteSenten

I think if someone campaigns against abortion they should be allocated a child and be legally required to pay child support until that child is 18, then allocated another one. Fuckers..

As a child can be born to a woman prevented from accessing reproductive health, a more apt thing would be;

Year one: support one child including medical expenses for birth and the mother.
Year two: support two children, medical expenses for birth + medical expenses for both children and the mothers.
Year three: three children. Birth costs, medical expenses for all three plus the mothers.
Year four: four children.

and throw in a few random charges every so often with no warning for women's gynaecological damage/psychological harm, neonatal care for prematurity, a childhood cancer or two and long term specialist care for severely disabled children. You know, the actual costs of forced births.

By year 18, the actual cost of taking away women's agency over their own bodies should become clearer. Especially as there would be no end to the costs - and as the children become older, they then go on to have children of their own, so they're then supporting both the children they wanted in the world against the wishes of the women and the subsequent descendants of those children.

Religion. Believing all human life is sacred and that it begins at conception.

Because they are bible-belt God-bothering creationist nutters?

It's ok to have the right to bear arms though, and shoot people.

@Ringmaster27

Those in favour of abortion are seemingly unable to comprehend that there is a sizable amount of people who are against it.

No, I totally understand that people are against it.
But their opinion on the matter should bear absolutely no weight on my human right to healthcare. Abortion is healthcare.
Don’t like abortions? Fine. Don’t have one.

The problem is that many of the very radical anti abortion groups in the US want to go further than banning medical or surgical abortion, they also want to stop access to established emergency contraceptive measures such as MAP and inter uterine device implantation which have long been recognised by US medical authorities as contraceptive measures rather than measures causing foetal abortion. It becomes not an issue of abortion but of control over womens fertility. There have in the past been issues with some ( though not all ) US backed charities working with HIV organisations in Africa banning grassroots health practitioners offering women (and men) family planning advice if the advice mentioned abortion or post coital contraception.

It always strikes me as ironic that a country so determined to champion individual freedom has so many of its freedom loving citizens vigilant in making sure that 50% of the population has their rights to bodily autonomy denied.

@Supersimkin2

In all fairness, Orem babies can be born & kept alive earlier and earlier in the pregnancy - late abortions are getting a lot closer to a killing than feminists like me want to admit.

Not really. The gestational age at which a foetus can survive has not really improved in 30 years.

@Supersimkin2

In all fairness, Orem babies can be born & kept alive earlier and earlier in the pregnancy - late abortions are getting a lot closer to a killing than feminists like me want to admit.

women don't casually decide to have late term abortions.

Its nothing to do with the "rights" of the foetus and everything about reasserting control over women, which is most easily done by removing women's ability to control our own reproductive system.

Don't think this couldn't happen in the UK. It didn't happen in the US or other countries overnight, it was decades of chip chipping away at the hard won rights until the foundations were gone. So bits of access to birth control, bits of access to family planning care, bits of access to abortion were removed until in practice ordinary women had little or no access to abortion and limited access to contraception in many areas.

There are plenty of UK voters who fall for the "but the baybees thrive from 20 weeks" nonsense. Plenty who think a pharmacist's or doctor's religious objections to contraception should enable them to refuse the service, blindly assuming that women can easily go somewhere else.

This is how the foundations are removed - chipping away at the edges and the soft targets, reducing the quantity of the services, telling us to "be kind" and "be mindful" of the feelings of the very people removing those rights.

But what is specifically making them change their laws now?

Have you been living under a rock for the past 5 years?

[quote Ringmaster27]**@BuffyFanForever* I’m sorry, but those foetuses* have no rights until they leave the mother’s body.
The living, breathing human being who can survive without a host body keeping it alive is who’s rights should be at the forefront of this.
I think what infuriates me the most about this whole issue is the people screaming for the rights of the foetus to life aren’t at the front of the queue at fostering and adoption agencies to give a home to the babies who were born but unwanted. [/quote]
Exactly 👏🏼

The USA is the worst country in the developed world for maternity leave and maternal mortality. I don't understand why they're not embarrassed by this?

And the audacity of calling themselves pro life when they quite clearly don't give a fuck about the life of the woman giving birth, and the life of the baby after it's born?

Deeper than the abortion issue though is the casual/hook up sex culture that needs to change.

Why shouldn't someone (of any age) have sex with multiple partners provided both parties are over the age of consent, are willing participants, and are practicing safe sex?

Young people need to start being taught that sex is for deepening meaningful relationships and creating offspring.

But it's not just for that, it's also for fun and pleasure. See my above comment.

And that when opposite gametes are intimately close, there's ALWAYS a possibility of pregnancy, no matter what contraception is used.

They should also be taught that abortion exists and is an options for if/when that contraception fails. They should also be taught that it exists for a multitude of other reasons and that they, if they have one of those reasons, its between them and their doctor with no requirement to justify it to anyone else because - just like sex - it is their body and their choice.

As an aside, around 51% of UK abortions last year were to women whose marital status was given as single but living with a partner. Over 58% had already had at least one full term pregnancy and 22% had no full term pregnancies but had at least one previous miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy. The age range with three biggest rise in abortion rates was the 30-34 age group while all age ranges 23 and under showed a decline in abortion rates. A co-habiting 32yr old with two children is more statistically more likely to have an abortion than a single 19yr old having sex with a different partner every weekend.

The patriarchy. I mean there are lot of reasons why, but fundamentally, it supports the patriarchy. Old, white, rich men having control over women, children, people in relative poverty and POC and not allowing other groups to have meaningful power, thus perpetuating the patriarchy. Women are becoming a bit too powerful for the comfort of the patriarchy, and need putting back in their place.

Women who can choose to have children later in life, or not at all, are likely to better educated, more skilled, have better employment prospects, more wealthy and more politically active. In short, they do not actually need men, and are therefore significantly less oppressed by the patriarchy.

If it were really about neonatal rights, they could be putting money into family planning, sex education, contraception availability, adoption and fostering support, and counselling women. And forcing men to pay child support and supporting fathers to step up and care for their children, and stepping in as the state to help women when they don’t or can’t. Even promoting the benefits of temporary vasectomies for young adult men until they are ready for children. But they aren’t. They are simply forcing more women to bear the astronomical burden of an unwanted child. Not men, just women.

@DogandMog

Abortion needs to remain legal on the statute books for women in situations of rape and abuse, and I mean that in a more broad sense, including coercive sex.

Men need to start being held morally, legally and financially responsible for the messes that unwanted pregnancies bring. Maybe they should start being forced to think in advance where and how they dip their appendages. There's DNA tests these days to arbitrate disputes.

Deeper than the abortion issue though is the casual/hook up sex culture that needs to change. Young people need to start being taught that sex is for deepening meaningful relationships and creating offspring. And that when opposite gametes are intimately close, there's ALWAYS a possibility of pregnancy, no matter what contraception is used. Both sexes using each other as living sex robots in throwaway encounters is as depressing and dehumanising as it gets.

@DogandMog As per my image. You are suggesting in order to have basic human rights and body autonomy, a woman must be violated first. Abortion will always be necessary, there is also such thing as domestic abuse, forcing a woman to get pregnant. Being anti-choice is being pro-Gestational Slavery. And lets call it what it is. Gestational Slavery. Or Gestational Servitude. It's treating a human being, a woman, as someone with no more rights than a broodmare.