Results of state-level abortion ballot measures in the US election

[MumtananoBay]

(skips pay wall) https://archive.ph/ptrJv#selection-1131.0-1131.66

two edged sword a lot of the changes in the USA around abortion, a lot of states had abortion measures on the ballot yesterday - archive.ph/ptrJv - I am quite alarmed around the Arizona changes for example, and equally disappointed the Florida one didn’t pass

The Florida amendment had 57% support too.....just short. What a mess.

Thanks for posting this. I did quite a bit of reading last night after reading lots of vitriol about abortion rights and the presidential election.

My view now is that the best thing for women is to try and change the mind of the electorate on a state by state basis and focus on this level of election rather than a race for an elected position that can't do much other than further stoke the polarized and acrimonious name calling on this issue (which I think overall makes things worse for women in these states as it forces people who might be persuadable on this issue to 'pick a team'). With the supreme Court as it is, it's going to be very hard to do anything across the whole country, unfortunately.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg predicted this situation. Fingers crossed for some wins at a state level.

The positive is it's a majority, hopefully next time there won't be a presidential election running alongside and they'll get over the line.

Interesting that Trump himself originally supported this then changed his mind (realized his rich donors didn't like it?). I've never believed abortion restrictions are something Trump is in favour of personally.

Why are you alarmed by Ariziona increasing rights?

"The ballot measure amends the state constitution to guarantee abortion rights up to fetal viability, generally considered to be around 23 or 24 weeks. The state currently bans abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy."

Thats an increase in the window, quite a significant one and far too long in my opinion.

FWIW I think Abortion is always wrong but is quite often the lesser of two evils and so should be available and supported for all women, for free, in all states regardless of circumstance up to a certain point in gestation but I certainly don't think that it should be 24-25 weeks.

6 weeks, clearly mad. 24 weeks? Just as mad.

It's in line with the UK.

There's quite a lot in the UK I don't agree with :)

One of my family had to abort after 22 weeks. It was an excruciating decision but it was officially an abortion. The child was deemed as having no chance of survival if born and a painful death that would take hours.

There are many points of discussion to be had about abortions after 20-24 weeks. But I don’t believe it can be seen as being straight forward enough for a blanket ban.

The UK is a bit of an outlier in Europe.

There's been an argument made, that is true IMO, that when you have extreme laws on abortion you tend to increase the tendency on the other side to push in the other direction. This seems to characterize the American situation pretty accurately. It also pisses off the majority of the population who tend to have fairly moderate views on the whole.

Tsk tsk OP a nuanced position. Don't you know this is frowned on?

Fortunately you're on FWR so just maybe it'll not result in accusations of you literally loving Donald Trump!

I personally think the number of cases where any woman would make a choice to abort at this point absent serious risk to her health / a baby that's very ill and won't survive are so vanishingly small as to be insignificant compared to the cases we've seen of women being denied healthcare when they need it (and dying of sepsis) at this point in pregnancy.

However morally I think terminating at 24 weeks for no reason other than that the woman doesn't want the child is wrong and that women should terminate sooner if they want to. I think that free, unrestricted access to abortion is more likely to ensure this is a choice women can make.

Now I know more about it I'm honestly amazed abortion rights have featured so heavily in the presidential race rather than discussing the state bills which are far more likely to immediately protect women than anything any President could do.

I'm not sure doing this (using it as a stick to try and beat people into voting Harris) has done women in the states without abortion much good. I'm guessing there will have been people who voted pro choice on state bills but Trump for president, knowing they've done a far more powerful thing to protect abortion rights in their state than voting Harris.

Absolutely agree, headline things being thrown around like "XX weeks" helps nobody when there are genuine health reasons, mother or child, to abort at all sorts of times.

The problem is, abortion rights is usually code for controlling women's rights for a lot of men rather than a genuine debate about abortion.

that's why you don't need to worry about Arizona extending the window though. Nobody is going in willy nilly at 24 weeks to have an abortion of a healthy viable foetus unless there are extremely compelling reasons to do with the health (mental or otherwise) of the mother.

I doubt that you'd find (m)any healthcare provider who would agree to perform such a procedure.

Yeah , now the smoke has cleared it seems Kamala's two big lines of attack - abortion and the threat of dictatorship - didn't land very well.
The latter was a bit nebulous and hard for people to visualise. And as you and others say , abortion is best tackled at state level now like it or not.
Rightly or wrongly , the emphasis on these two issues made it look like she had no ' forward offer' on the economy. The dems failed to make the case that trade wars , beloved of Trump, hurt farmers and consumers in the USA .
Theres another angle : Trump would have won in 2020 were it not for Covid. It's just the cycle reasserted itself ?

The problem with legal restrictions in the US on abortion is women are dying because doctors fear going to jail. If there is a heartbeat they can't do anything to intervene and women die of sepsis.

Just happened two days ago to a 18 year old woman in Texas. Her mother pleaded with the hospital to do something but they refused cause "fetal viability".

So fuck your opinion that the Arizona law is evil. It will save women's lives.

OP did not say the Arizona law was evil. She said she was 'concerned'.

Read what she wrote not what you think she wrote. She also is clearly pro choice,

Guess I spoke too soon when I said this was a place where nuance was possible. 😕

She didn't say the Arozona law was evil, but did say abortion is always wrong but sometimes the lesser of two evils - which still means evil.

that death that started circulating the other day, of the young woman with sepsis, happened in 2023.
And that's not what OP said about the Arizona law. She did say that she believes that women should be in control of their own decisions and that clearly setting the limit at 6 weeks is stupid, but she was uncomfortable with the upper limit of 24 weeks.

as the less knee-jerky replies pointed out: those later abortions are rare (thank goodness) and often life saving, so thank goodness they will be allowed.

it is perfectly ok, i think, to hold the opinion that abortion is always evil. That is something each individual person has to decide with their own conscience, and it often comes from a religious type of thinking (not always).

But when the other evil is the woman dying? then the lesser evil should be permitted. Even though it is evil.

As long as abortion is legal, safe and rare, I'm fine with people having that personal opinion.

The problem for Harris and the dictatorship comments is that she and the left have been behaving like Stalin with the compelled speach, state sponsored child abduction when parents refuse to medically trans their kids and the cover up around Biden's failing faculties. As such it's backfired on her

I'm with you here. Much as I strongly disagree with the poster who called it "evil" when I have loved ones who had to make a horrendous heartbreaking decision on a much-wanted pregnancy at 20+weeks, I have no desire to make windows into posters' souls.

The important thing to me is that abortion becomes/remains legal, accessible and safe, for the women who need it, when they need it, everywhere that they need it. And unfortunately we are still a hell of a long way away from that goal.

Most abortions are carried out between 10 and 13 weeks, so it seems these things are generally carried out in a timely manner, so any hysteria over 24 weeks is entirely missed placed.

it's the "necessary evil" I meant as a concept rather than a literal thing, I don't believe in actual evil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_evil

The 'lesser of two evils' is a well known phrase used to describe two not great things, one of which is better than the other. In my experience no-one using it actually means those things are 'evil'. I would use it to describe things that aren't actually evil - e.g. choosing between visiting the in laws or going to a school event that would be boring. Will obviously have to be more careful in future in case anyone thinks I think my in laws / the school talent show are literally evil!