To think that US states who want to ban abortion should be able to?

[allsorts1]

Abortion is such a fraught topic in the US. Would it really be so bad to just let the states who want to ban abortion do so, and leave it in the hands of the states themselves to decide? It seems that the Roe v Wade decision has caused a lot of tension in the context of the USA and the feeling that states should be independent and able to choose their own laws (e.g different laws on capital punishment).

Would it be a completely terrible thing for each state to decide on this, and then live with the consequences (as presumably many young people/liberals would relocate to different states where abortion is legal?). Maybe if they experience brain drain they will change their tune. People aren’t forced to live in a certain state.

Obviously I am completely aware this will have a huge negative impact on women in poverty as they have less options. So this is a key consideration and concern.

But I’m just really thinking out loud. I am very much pro-choice, but interested in views from people who understand US law and politics… could the overturning of Roe v Wade potentially be positive in that it settles the issues, states can decide, and everyone can talk about something else?

Or would it just mean that there is a gradual encroachment on women rights and then the pro-lifers start lobbying in pro-choice states and abortion rights are even further reduced. Another risk could be that abortion becomes a political issue every election in every state, and switches back and forth from being legal to illegal - causing massive headaches….

Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts!

I think this is a worrying trend - then they can judge behavior in pg and imprison women if things go awry - I assume it would start with drugs and drinking then move on to other things.

People are projecting onto OP things that OP didn't say.

Which is annoying & typical MN behaviour.

@Musomama1 I would be shocked if they did not make the funds available regardless of state. There is extensive infrastructure in place in the US in the form of organizations like Planned Parenthood that would enable that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood

Any changes would hit the poor and particularly the AA community the hardest.

But there are extensive issues here already with respect to this community. Kermit Gosnell and the crimes he committed against women and girls seeking abortions in Philadelphia. This horrifying man did what he did in my state, Pennsylvania, and got away with it for quite a while, due to the unwillingness of the city and the state to address it and enforce any regulations on an abortion provider. I have a friend with firsthand insight into how this was allowed to happen. These were underage, poor, primarily African American girls that were victims of his horrific clinic, all just to line his pockets. What he was doing was not unknown - by the city nor by the state. And frankly I believe no one cared, because of the demographic and because regulating abortion in any way is highly unpopular.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Gosnell

Exactly this.

www.cbsnews.com/news/roe-v-wade-supreme-court-republican-gop-appointed-justices/

Roe v Wade is something that nominees for the Supreme Court are routinely asked about in their confirmation hearings. There is now suggestion being made that some of them may have lied during the hearings.

@lljkk thank you. Definitely my own fault for writing the most accidentally click baitey title in history though. Will have to change username after this 🤣

@Wallaw thanks very much for taking the time to write that. I have heard about how f*cked the gerrymandering process is, which perhaps buries all chance of this topic being dealt with sensibly through policy. Given Trump’s extraordinary justice appointments I wonder what hope there is for Democrats to even get a chance to get some balance in coming years. Dark days for issues like gay marriage.

I rather hope you wrote this thread as a sort of reverse to bring this to peoples attention.

American women need to be protesting to the max.

Under his eye indeed. Fucking frightening.

No. Just no.

As many have said, all that will happen is that safe, professional abortion will be illegal. And backstreet butchers will be the only option for women who have no other choice.

How has America gotten to a point where gun ownership is legal and abortion is potentially going to be illegal?! Insane

Anne Coates (she/her) has got hold of this and Twitter are taking the piss out of the OP.

Nice going, OP.

twitter.com/setoacnna/status/1521777625416536064

"This is an entitled year 7 in an independent school writing their first non-creative essay. The parents will pin it up with a fridge magnet."

Kind of agree here.

The people who are against abortions could do anything, literally anything, to try and reduce the rate of abortions required.

They could educate and promote birth control in their communities and consider it part of sensible family planning.

They could vote for social programmes that support vulnerable families more appropriately.

They could insist food stamps cover the costs of the most nutritious food.

They could vote for bringing jobs to their areas, and also vote to make enormous corporations pay their fair share, whether that's through local tax revenues or through appropriate wages and benefits for the work performed. They could vote to raise the minimum wage and make health insurance something everyone gets on a sliding scale. With a public option, and no Medicaid/Medicare gaps.

They could decriminalise drug possession and keep more parents out of jail and more families together.

They could support their local schools and libraries. They could support WIC and Head Start. They could support PBS.

They could work to convict domestic abusers, and support survivors psychologically and financially. They could educate their young people about the value of consent.

They could organize and vote for a health system that will not bankrupt someone for needing medical care; they could rewrite the law so that charging a woman $3,000 for a low-risk and uneventful pregnancy is consigned to the past.

They could vote for and then fund public housing that isn't ridden with mold and left to rot in neglected neighbourhoods where crime rates are allowed to remain high.

They could organize and vote for clean public water that isn't tainted with lead.

Instead, for approximately 50 years, they've organized only to ban abortions themselves.

Why do you think that is, Isabelle/Noah (OP)?

Dig deeper.

I'll give you a hint: it ain't about the babies.

It never fucking was.

When you chose where to live what do most people base it on? Access to employment, cost of living, family. Abortion rights? Seriously? The idea that if women want the right to abortion they should think carefully about where to live is fundamentally mysogynist.

Choose not chose. Sorry!

Exactly.

Are women equally human, or not?

Either we are or we aren't. If we are, then our rights are the same everywhere.

On a more philosophical "I got mine bruh" angle:

When you ban the rights of the people between US states in one area (abortion/bodily autonomy/privacy), that quickly creates a precedent to remove rights in other areas.

Right to bear arms? Now there's a case to ban gun ownership completely at the state level. And set up interstate borders and checkpoints (unheard of since pre-ratification, IIRC) to ensure that ban is being enforced.

Right to free speech? Banned in some states but not others.

Right to assemble? Banned in some states but not others.

Right to a lawyer and a fair (in theory) trial? Why should some states that don't particularly like those rules have to maintain them. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The Equal Protection clause in the 14th amendment of the Constitution doesn't just protect US citizens. It protects the Constitution itself. When you remove rights for some people living in some states, you don't have a United States anymore.

Hope you get a A on your essay, kid. You're getting an awful lot of content for free. Remember to rewrite in your own words: teachers will copy-paste sentences into Google and these posts will show up if you use them word-for-word.

Not just women. Anyone
I think the word Ms Harris is looking for is men.

I'm not that keen on this way of expressing the people who aren't women.

This is the tweet.

@allsorts1 Not up for debate but I’ll share 1 American’s perspective.

RoeV.Wade was a flawed ruling from the start, as it allowed abortion on a nonexistent privacy right which is not a stated constitutional right, which is why SCOTUS is assumed to be on the brink of the leaked decision. Nobody had the political will to do anything about it for 50 years. Lately (past 10 years or so) states have been challenging the decision in both way; Laws that severely restrict abortion and laws that skirt existing homicide laws and laws somewhere in the middle. These state laws have been passed to test the waters with SCOTUS on RoeV.Wade*

The overturning of RoeV.Wade sends the decision back to states to manage and pass laws, unless a federal law is passed which would supersede any state laws. Then based on the constitutionality of the law would stand or fall. The other thing that could be done is to pass an amendment that would codify abortion rights int law. The bar is really really high to accomplish that.

Now here’s my personal opinion…

Abortion is complicated and should be a complicated issue. I’m not happy with the government getting involved with very personal and fundamental decisions about my life and health (FTR- this goes for abortion as much as it does for seatbelts and vaccine mandates). That being said, that ship has obviously sailed, so as it’s already a gov’t issue fundamentally I’m not opposed to states having control and passing state laws. I think the federal legislature needs to commit and pass a laws that put framework in place for more local decisions to be made.

I do have suspicions that this has been allowed to be a shitshow for so long, because each political party uses it when they need to drum up support and votes.

*See my personal opinion in the last paragraph

Weird.. ignore the bold formatting

Yeah people love uprooting their entire lives, thousands of miles away from everything they’ve ever known, on the off chance they need an abortion. Poor women especially, they love moving, it’s totally accessible to them.

I’m not happy with the government getting involved with very personal and fundamental decisions about my life and health

Well, that's kind of the status quo under Roe v Wade. The government (state? federal? local town meeting?) is not involved in your decision to terminate a pregnancy.

Overturning Roe v Wade gets governments involved.

You're really comparing the enforcement of measures that will save someone else's life (wearing a seatbelt, so you're not a human projectile in a car accident and taking out others while you fly 500 ft through your windshield) ... with restricting medical procedures that could very well save your own?

Really?

@iCouldSleepForAYear

”Not up for debate but I’ll share 1 American’s perspective.”

Blah blah. You are just trying to get heated discussions started

You waded into a debate thread. No one made you write a post. I asked a question about the logic of your statement, because I found that logic lacking.

I'm American too. ;-)

People aren’t forced to live in a certain state.

The poorest people essentially are as they can't afford to leave. They're also the most likely to be in need of an abortion statistically.

Your post is short sighted and fails to address the fact that a voting population that comprises of 50% men and 50% women is not a fair population to vote on choices that only directly affect 50% of those people - the women. It removes their bodily autonomy.

That can never be ok.

Great, then you can share a different American perspective, if you haven’t already…(I mostly skimmed the responses).