I gather you are not familiar with the history of medicine in the US.
After the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaded, historians lined up to criticize Alito's misuse of history. This seems to be the standard consensus of real historians:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/the-history-of-abortion-rights-in-the-u-s
quote from the lin…
I gather you are not familiar with the history of medicine in the US.
After the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaded, historians lined up to criticize Alito's misuse of history. This seems to be the standard consensus of real historians:
--Before 1840, abortion was widespread and largely-stigma-free for American women.
--The first anti-abortion advocates in the United States were male physicians who sought to make abortion illegal to push out competition from midwives and female healers.
--The idea that fetuses have rights and those rights trump those of living women and girls is a relatively new concept, historians say.
The text of this article quotes Kimberly Hamlin, PhD, professor of history and global and intercultural studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
I would like to politely question your characterization of "the standard consensus of real historians".
The healthline newsletter cites only two self-proclaimed feminist historians, one of whom specialized in only a few western states. If you read the wikipedia article on Abortion in the United States, you'll find a much more complex picture which largely contradicts the simplistic storyline of the healthline article, citing dozens of historians. Wikipedia is not an authoritative source in itself but it does link to a far larger and broader set of sources than the healthline article, and includes many facts which do not fit the narrative presented in the latter.
What makes the feminist narrative of two historians "the concensus of real historians"?
It sounds to me more like a "consensus" of a small number of activist historians analyzing history through just one particular set of lenses. That narrative strikes me as almost cartoonishly oversimplified - male doctors did it in the 1840's in order to take business away from midwives. None of the other social forces mentioned in the wikipedia article are acknowledged, going back to the 1600's. Read the wikipedia article and follow some of the links, and then let's discuss whether the healthline journalistic piece represents a general consensus of "real" historians or a specific narrative of a small number of them from a specific and narrow interpretative framework.
And please understand that I have continued to personally support the right to abortion since before I could first vote, many decades ago, via voting and donations and sometimes rallies and protests. I think that Roe V Wade was close to the best possible compromise between the extremes (no abortion period versus abortion on demand at any time) and was supported by more Americans than any other position. For the sake of the nation, I am sad to see it ended on that pragmatic grounds (the legal arguments in this FAIR article are a different facet of the issue, than the pragmatic political aspect I'm addressing here). My point here is FAR from arguing against abortion, it's about arguing for honest history without a partisan narrative agenda.
Thank you for your polite discussion, it has given me food for thought and stimulated some research.
I read the Wikipedia article and I saw more details, but nothing that went against the general thread that abortion was not illegal at the founding of the country, and laws were only passed against it when the emerging male medical profession took over from female midwives - perhaps for a variety of reasons. Abortions at the time had medical complications, as did child birth, but the motive was never protecting the potential life of the embryo or fetus. The current so-called "pro-life" position is a modern construction with no basis in history or biology.
Nice chatting with you. I am still unhappy that FAIR published this uninformed article which will do nothing to resolve the issue.
"By common law, abortion was legal, and only after quickening it was not allowed; quickening indicated the start of fetal movements, usually felt 14–26 weeks after conception, or between the fourth and sixth month"
> "William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765) stated that life "begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb." This view was shared by James Wilson. As for legal penalties, Blackstone wrote they applied only "if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb." "
> "Connecticut was the first state to regulate abortion in 1821; it outlawed abortion after quickening and forbade the use of poisons to induce one post-quickening.[32] In 1829, New York made post-quickening abortions a felony and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor.[33] This was followed by 10 of the 26 states creating similar restrictions within the next few decades"
> "Physicians, who were the leading advocates of abortion criminalization laws, appear to have been motivated at least in part by advances in medical knowledge. Science had discovered that fertilization inaugurated a more or less continuous process of development, which produced a new human being. Quickening was found to be not more or less crucial in the process of gestation than any other step. Many physicians concluded that if society considered it unjustifiable to terminate pregnancy after the fetus had quickened, and if quickening was a relatively unimportant step in the gestation process, then it was just as wrong to terminate a pregnancy before quickening as after quickening. Ideologically, the Hippocratic Oath and the medical mentality of that age to defend the sanctity of life as an absolute played a significant role in molding opinions about abortion."
> "In 1900, abortion was normally a felony in every state. Some states included provisions allowing for abortion in limited circumstances, generally to protect the woman's health or to terminate pregnancies arising from rape or incest"
I think the above quotes raise some question regarding your characterization: "The current so-called "pro-life" position is a modern construction with no basis in history or biology."
Let's heed the dates above. If English common law - prior to the very founding of the US - considered "quickening" to be the threshold between lawful and unlawful abortions, I think we need to admit that the situation is at the least more complex than that summary proposes.
It can be as complex as you want it to be. I would not want to rely on Wikipedia. Read the full quote from Blackstone - abortion after quickening is a crime but not murder:
I. The right of personal security consists in a person's legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation.
1. Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the antient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemesnor.
Thanks for digging deeper and sharing the search for accuracy, Fran!
The overall point I was making in using the Wikipedia article was that there were many criminal laws against abortion (post quickening) much earlier than the modern conservative anti-abortion movement. And the concept that there was a second life involved - after "quickening" - also far precedes that modern movement.
It's also true that post-quickening abortion were sometimes legal, sometimes misdemeanors, and sometimes felonies - back then. (EG: New York after 1829, see above).
Blackstone considering post-quickening abortion to be a "very heinous misdemeanor" but not murder, is entirely consistent with that.
The conservative US position equating all abortions with homicide is indeed a more recent phenonenon, but the idea that post-quickening fetuses deserve protection is not.
I personally believe that Roe v Wade was a good compromise supported by a substantial majority of the US population (and consistent with Europe, Japan and the more liberal third world). I have supported abortion rights for women my entire voting life. But after reading many analyses, I tend to agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the SCOTUS ruling of 1973. I hope we can instead get legislative pro-choice success in the various states and the US Congress, to replace the SCOTUS intervention, and I will contribute time and money to that cause.
But I stilll question whether this issue should be on FAIR's agenda at all. There are many pro-choice and pro-life organizations (we have donated to NARAL for decades); I don't need FAIR to become yet another of those. I see FAIR having a role in narrower field - having to do with opposing intolerance and racism in a pro-human framework. I don't see taking a position on abortion, or climate change, or tax reform, as part of that.
Thanks for politely sharing your own viewpoint. There is obviously a range of views on abortion, well beyond a stark binary of "never" and "whenever". I am glad that at least FAIR is not adopting either extreme position, so far just publishing some articles.
I think finding an article to publish which will resolve the issue is an incredibly high bar for FAIR to meet :-)
While any sort of consensus resolution is hard enough to forge, what many people (not saying you) consider "resolving the issue" is "resolving the issue in the way I want" - as in motivating the other side to change their minds and agree with me. That's pretty impossible for one article.
I think it's way above FAIR's pay grade to resolve this, one of the most intransigent problems in American politics.
Most people do not support the planned parenthood position (abortion on demand up to just before childbirth) nor the extreme conservative position of no abortion (the most extreme law in the US today allows only saving the life of the mother). By contrast, abortion with restrictions is the majority view (eg: on demand up to somewhere between 15 and 24 months with medical exceptions beyond that). That's also the case in Europe, Japan, and the most liberal third world countries. Roe V Wade was a functioning compromise along those lines, with majority support in the US. I have seen more advocacy groups on one extreme or the other, than in the middle. In part I think that's because the compromise is a pragmatic one rather than a moral one; those coming from ideology rather than pragmatism, on either side, tend to find their arguments land them on one of the extreme ends.
The most I can imagine FAIR doing is providing more information and helping people understand the "other side" without hatred. Not resolve it.
This article is about the legal background, and I found it helpful context because this is a multi-faceted problem, and this article was one of the clearest I've seen regarding that facet.
However, I'm actually not so sure abortion should even be on FAIR's plate - it's not really about intolerance and racism. (Yes, one could stretch and make a case that either side of the abortion debate is "intolerant" of the other, but that still sounds like mission creep to me). Why should FAIR get involved? There are many other orgs deeply involved which we can join.
The last article FAIR published asserted that the Supreme Court had ended abortion, which is simply not true - as this says, it took itself out of the picture and shifted the decision to legislatures to ban or allow. More than half the population will continue to have abortion access (perhaps made even easier in reaction), and a large minority will (unfortunately in my view) have to struggle for it. I thought that was a remarkably uninformed article, to so misrepresent the core of Dobbs. I'd probably have preferred that FAIR omit both article, and concentrate its still limited resources on other issues, and step aside from the political tarpit of abortion, lest it go the way of the ACLU.
I would agree that the anti-abortion side has evolved over the decades and the current focus is not the original focus (whatever mix of motives on wishes to impute). Some of the early abolistionists appeared more concerned about corrupting the master than about the human rights of the slave, and it's good that the focus of abolition changed over time. We fight today's battles based on today's points of disagreements, whether or not they match the disagreements of our grandparents.
But I don't understand what you mean by "no basis in biology". The biology does not seem to be core to the disagreement, the core issue today is when a being is considered to be human and to have rights, which is more about values than science. At conception, 15 weeks, 24 weeks, at fetal heartbeat, at viability, at birth, a week after birth, upon naming? Different cultures may decide that different ways, but I don't see how biology answers it. That difficult philosophical question does not go away because it was not the way thing were framed a couple of generations ago, it still remains on the table today to be resolved.
I'm with the majority in the middle. But I'm a pragmatist, more than an ideological purist.
Anyway, I'm curious - what specifically did you find inaccurate about this article?
What did I find to be inaccurate? To start with, the title - rights were taken way from women. Rights to control women were given to state legislatures. So Dobbs did take rights away from people.
Then there is the last paragraph. Late term, post-viability abortions are not covered by Roe, since the fetus is viable at the time, and they are done rarely, and for good medical reasons. Why does the author claim without evidence that Planned Parenthood's position is that all abortions should be legal at any time, with no restrictions, as if a 8 1/2 month pregnant woman could suddenly decide to abort a fetus for some frivolous reason? I have looked at the Planned Parenthood site, and the only positions I can find are that abortion is a safe procedure, and that women should be trusted to make their own medical decisions in conjunction with their doctor. To describe this as approving of abortions up to the moment of birth sounds like a bad faith misrepresentation of the issue.
I think the general patina of reasonableness in this article is deceptive, and the idea that there is some compromise that can be worked out if we just understand each other is misleading. The anti-abortionists have deliberately staked out an extreme position that will not admit to any compromise. They have no logic or humanity on their side, and have had to resort to lies and manipulation, with fake crisis pregnancy centers and the recently invented fiction that a fertilized egg is a human being.
> " rights were taken way from women. Rights to control women were given to state legislatures."
Let's calmly parse that.
First, state legislatures already have the right to legislatively control their citizens, of any sex. Roe v Wade did not exempt women from the laws of their state.
Nor did it prevent states from passing laws which limited abortions after some fetal age. Most states already had such laws, even under Roe v Wade
Roe v Wade was interpreted by the courts is restricting states from excessively limiting women's ability to get abortions on demand - like setting too short a time span. In the Dobbs case, that limit would have been 15 weeks (3 1/2 months), and the court needed to decide if that was too short a time. Instead the court reversed Roe v Wade.
TL;DR: The ability of a state to pass laws binding upon their citizens (including women) was never at issue, and states were already allowed to restrict abortions after some fetal age under Roe v Wade. So reversing that did not suddenly allow state legislatures to control women. It did remove some limitations in regard the ability of state to limit early abortions.
We can support or oppose the reversal of Roe v Wade (I'm in the latter camp) while still accurately framing the questions involved.
They give all the reasons they do not want legal restrictions on abortion, at any time. They say it's uncommon, but their position is still that they do not want legal abortion limited to the first trimester or any other fixed time period, or any restrictions. No compromise, nada.
I've been to a number of abortion rights rallies (as a supporter), and of the hundreds of signs and banners, I have never seen a sign which accepts ANY limits to abortion rights, like "hands off my body - for the first trimester". Or "forced birth is only OK after X weeks". All of the arguments and slogans reject ANY restriction whatsoever. If abortion is unrestricted, then yes that legally goes up to birth - 1 day. (Of course that is a small portion of all abortions statistically, but the position is that it should still be allowed for those who want it because the government has no right to ever restrict abortion, period).
If this is a bad faith misrepresentations, show us the signs and slogans and public positions which allow for legislative control after some time period (eg: allowing late term abortions for only a limited number of reasons). Show where Planned Parenthood accepts some restrictions on abortion.
That is NOT the majority position. 60+ percent (depending on the poll) of the population supports first trimester abortion with restricted late term abortions.
The point here is that both sides take extreme positions - no abortions (except for the mother's health) on one side, and no restrictions on abortions on the other side, And the American people are in the middle, without majority support for either extreme.
----
Tell me the reasons you support abortion rights.
Does is follow from the internal logic of your reasoning that it's OK for the government to sometimes restrict abortion, like in late term? Or do your arguments imply that abortion at any time for any reason should be exclusively decided by a woman without any restrictions by the government?
(This is why overturning Roe V Wade is bad for the nation; it was a compromise position, which neither followed the "no abortions after conception" logic, nor the "abortion is always the right of the mother" logic; it was understood as allowing abortion on demand for some time period, and restrictions after that - a compromise between the extremes, which is what the majority of the population supports, in many more countries than just the US.)
I gather you are not familiar with the history of medicine in the US.
After the draft of the Dobbs decision was leaded, historians lined up to criticize Alito's misuse of history. This seems to be the standard consensus of real historians:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/the-history-of-abortion-rights-in-the-u-s
quote from the link:
--Before 1840, abortion was widespread and largely-stigma-free for American women.
--The first anti-abortion advocates in the United States were male physicians who sought to make abortion illegal to push out competition from midwives and female healers.
--The idea that fetuses have rights and those rights trump those of living women and girls is a relatively new concept, historians say.
The text of this article quotes Kimberly Hamlin, PhD, professor of history and global and intercultural studies at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
I haven't seen any alternative histories.
Thanks for the good response.
I would like to politely question your characterization of "the standard consensus of real historians".
The healthline newsletter cites only two self-proclaimed feminist historians, one of whom specialized in only a few western states. If you read the wikipedia article on Abortion in the United States, you'll find a much more complex picture which largely contradicts the simplistic storyline of the healthline article, citing dozens of historians. Wikipedia is not an authoritative source in itself but it does link to a far larger and broader set of sources than the healthline article, and includes many facts which do not fit the narrative presented in the latter.
What makes the feminist narrative of two historians "the concensus of real historians"?
It sounds to me more like a "consensus" of a small number of activist historians analyzing history through just one particular set of lenses. That narrative strikes me as almost cartoonishly oversimplified - male doctors did it in the 1840's in order to take business away from midwives. None of the other social forces mentioned in the wikipedia article are acknowledged, going back to the 1600's. Read the wikipedia article and follow some of the links, and then let's discuss whether the healthline journalistic piece represents a general consensus of "real" historians or a specific narrative of a small number of them from a specific and narrow interpretative framework.
And please understand that I have continued to personally support the right to abortion since before I could first vote, many decades ago, via voting and donations and sometimes rallies and protests. I think that Roe V Wade was close to the best possible compromise between the extremes (no abortion period versus abortion on demand at any time) and was supported by more Americans than any other position. For the sake of the nation, I am sad to see it ended on that pragmatic grounds (the legal arguments in this FAIR article are a different facet of the issue, than the pragmatic political aspect I'm addressing here). My point here is FAR from arguing against abortion, it's about arguing for honest history without a partisan narrative agenda.
Thank you for your polite discussion, it has given me food for thought and stimulated some research.
I read the Wikipedia article and I saw more details, but nothing that went against the general thread that abortion was not illegal at the founding of the country, and laws were only passed against it when the emerging male medical profession took over from female midwives - perhaps for a variety of reasons. Abortions at the time had medical complications, as did child birth, but the motive was never protecting the potential life of the embryo or fetus. The current so-called "pro-life" position is a modern construction with no basis in history or biology.
Nice chatting with you. I am still unhappy that FAIR published this uninformed article which will do nothing to resolve the issue.
From the wikipedia article.
"By common law, abortion was legal, and only after quickening it was not allowed; quickening indicated the start of fetal movements, usually felt 14–26 weeks after conception, or between the fourth and sixth month"
> "William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765) stated that life "begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb." This view was shared by James Wilson. As for legal penalties, Blackstone wrote they applied only "if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb." "
> "Connecticut was the first state to regulate abortion in 1821; it outlawed abortion after quickening and forbade the use of poisons to induce one post-quickening.[32] In 1829, New York made post-quickening abortions a felony and pre-quickening abortions a misdemeanor.[33] This was followed by 10 of the 26 states creating similar restrictions within the next few decades"
> "Physicians, who were the leading advocates of abortion criminalization laws, appear to have been motivated at least in part by advances in medical knowledge. Science had discovered that fertilization inaugurated a more or less continuous process of development, which produced a new human being. Quickening was found to be not more or less crucial in the process of gestation than any other step. Many physicians concluded that if society considered it unjustifiable to terminate pregnancy after the fetus had quickened, and if quickening was a relatively unimportant step in the gestation process, then it was just as wrong to terminate a pregnancy before quickening as after quickening. Ideologically, the Hippocratic Oath and the medical mentality of that age to defend the sanctity of life as an absolute played a significant role in molding opinions about abortion."
> "In 1900, abortion was normally a felony in every state. Some states included provisions allowing for abortion in limited circumstances, generally to protect the woman's health or to terminate pregnancies arising from rape or incest"
I think the above quotes raise some question regarding your characterization: "The current so-called "pro-life" position is a modern construction with no basis in history or biology."
Let's heed the dates above. If English common law - prior to the very founding of the US - considered "quickening" to be the threshold between lawful and unlawful abortions, I think we need to admit that the situation is at the least more complex than that summary proposes.
It can be as complex as you want it to be. I would not want to rely on Wikipedia. Read the full quote from Blackstone - abortion after quickening is a crime but not murder:
I. The right of personal security consists in a person's legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation.
1. Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother's womb. For if a woman is quick with child, and by a potion, or otherwise, killeth it in her womb; or if any one beat her, whereby the child dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead child; this, though not murder, was by the antient law homicide or manslaughter. But at present it is not looked upon in quite so atrocious a light, though it remains a very heinous misdemesnor.
Hi,
Thanks for digging deeper and sharing the search for accuracy, Fran!
The overall point I was making in using the Wikipedia article was that there were many criminal laws against abortion (post quickening) much earlier than the modern conservative anti-abortion movement. And the concept that there was a second life involved - after "quickening" - also far precedes that modern movement.
It's also true that post-quickening abortion were sometimes legal, sometimes misdemeanors, and sometimes felonies - back then. (EG: New York after 1829, see above).
Blackstone considering post-quickening abortion to be a "very heinous misdemeanor" but not murder, is entirely consistent with that.
The conservative US position equating all abortions with homicide is indeed a more recent phenonenon, but the idea that post-quickening fetuses deserve protection is not.
I personally believe that Roe v Wade was a good compromise supported by a substantial majority of the US population (and consistent with Europe, Japan and the more liberal third world). I have supported abortion rights for women my entire voting life. But after reading many analyses, I tend to agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the SCOTUS ruling of 1973. I hope we can instead get legislative pro-choice success in the various states and the US Congress, to replace the SCOTUS intervention, and I will contribute time and money to that cause.
But I stilll question whether this issue should be on FAIR's agenda at all. There are many pro-choice and pro-life organizations (we have donated to NARAL for decades); I don't need FAIR to become yet another of those. I see FAIR having a role in narrower field - having to do with opposing intolerance and racism in a pro-human framework. I don't see taking a position on abortion, or climate change, or tax reform, as part of that.
Thanks for politely sharing your own viewpoint. There is obviously a range of views on abortion, well beyond a stark binary of "never" and "whenever". I am glad that at least FAIR is not adopting either extreme position, so far just publishing some articles.
I think finding an article to publish which will resolve the issue is an incredibly high bar for FAIR to meet :-)
While any sort of consensus resolution is hard enough to forge, what many people (not saying you) consider "resolving the issue" is "resolving the issue in the way I want" - as in motivating the other side to change their minds and agree with me. That's pretty impossible for one article.
I think it's way above FAIR's pay grade to resolve this, one of the most intransigent problems in American politics.
Most people do not support the planned parenthood position (abortion on demand up to just before childbirth) nor the extreme conservative position of no abortion (the most extreme law in the US today allows only saving the life of the mother). By contrast, abortion with restrictions is the majority view (eg: on demand up to somewhere between 15 and 24 months with medical exceptions beyond that). That's also the case in Europe, Japan, and the most liberal third world countries. Roe V Wade was a functioning compromise along those lines, with majority support in the US. I have seen more advocacy groups on one extreme or the other, than in the middle. In part I think that's because the compromise is a pragmatic one rather than a moral one; those coming from ideology rather than pragmatism, on either side, tend to find their arguments land them on one of the extreme ends.
The most I can imagine FAIR doing is providing more information and helping people understand the "other side" without hatred. Not resolve it.
This article is about the legal background, and I found it helpful context because this is a multi-faceted problem, and this article was one of the clearest I've seen regarding that facet.
However, I'm actually not so sure abortion should even be on FAIR's plate - it's not really about intolerance and racism. (Yes, one could stretch and make a case that either side of the abortion debate is "intolerant" of the other, but that still sounds like mission creep to me). Why should FAIR get involved? There are many other orgs deeply involved which we can join.
The last article FAIR published asserted that the Supreme Court had ended abortion, which is simply not true - as this says, it took itself out of the picture and shifted the decision to legislatures to ban or allow. More than half the population will continue to have abortion access (perhaps made even easier in reaction), and a large minority will (unfortunately in my view) have to struggle for it. I thought that was a remarkably uninformed article, to so misrepresent the core of Dobbs. I'd probably have preferred that FAIR omit both article, and concentrate its still limited resources on other issues, and step aside from the political tarpit of abortion, lest it go the way of the ACLU.
I would agree that the anti-abortion side has evolved over the decades and the current focus is not the original focus (whatever mix of motives on wishes to impute). Some of the early abolistionists appeared more concerned about corrupting the master than about the human rights of the slave, and it's good that the focus of abolition changed over time. We fight today's battles based on today's points of disagreements, whether or not they match the disagreements of our grandparents.
But I don't understand what you mean by "no basis in biology". The biology does not seem to be core to the disagreement, the core issue today is when a being is considered to be human and to have rights, which is more about values than science. At conception, 15 weeks, 24 weeks, at fetal heartbeat, at viability, at birth, a week after birth, upon naming? Different cultures may decide that different ways, but I don't see how biology answers it. That difficult philosophical question does not go away because it was not the way thing were framed a couple of generations ago, it still remains on the table today to be resolved.
I'm with the majority in the middle. But I'm a pragmatist, more than an ideological purist.
Anyway, I'm curious - what specifically did you find inaccurate about this article?
What did I find to be inaccurate? To start with, the title - rights were taken way from women. Rights to control women were given to state legislatures. So Dobbs did take rights away from people.
Then there is the last paragraph. Late term, post-viability abortions are not covered by Roe, since the fetus is viable at the time, and they are done rarely, and for good medical reasons. Why does the author claim without evidence that Planned Parenthood's position is that all abortions should be legal at any time, with no restrictions, as if a 8 1/2 month pregnant woman could suddenly decide to abort a fetus for some frivolous reason? I have looked at the Planned Parenthood site, and the only positions I can find are that abortion is a safe procedure, and that women should be trusted to make their own medical decisions in conjunction with their doctor. To describe this as approving of abortions up to the moment of birth sounds like a bad faith misrepresentation of the issue.
I think the general patina of reasonableness in this article is deceptive, and the idea that there is some compromise that can be worked out if we just understand each other is misleading. The anti-abortionists have deliberately staked out an extreme position that will not admit to any compromise. They have no logic or humanity on their side, and have had to resort to lies and manipulation, with fake crisis pregnancy centers and the recently invented fiction that a fertilized egg is a human being.
> " rights were taken way from women. Rights to control women were given to state legislatures."
Let's calmly parse that.
First, state legislatures already have the right to legislatively control their citizens, of any sex. Roe v Wade did not exempt women from the laws of their state.
Nor did it prevent states from passing laws which limited abortions after some fetal age. Most states already had such laws, even under Roe v Wade
Roe v Wade was interpreted by the courts is restricting states from excessively limiting women's ability to get abortions on demand - like setting too short a time span. In the Dobbs case, that limit would have been 15 weeks (3 1/2 months), and the court needed to decide if that was too short a time. Instead the court reversed Roe v Wade.
TL;DR: The ability of a state to pass laws binding upon their citizens (including women) was never at issue, and states were already allowed to restrict abortions after some fetal age under Roe v Wade. So reversing that did not suddenly allow state legislatures to control women. It did remove some limitations in regard the ability of state to limit early abortions.
We can support or oppose the reversal of Roe v Wade (I'm in the latter camp) while still accurately framing the questions involved.
You accuse the author of bad faith in misrepresenting Planned Parenthood's position.
This came up in the first hit of a google search:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/99/41/9941f2a9-7738-4a8b-95f6-5680e59a45ac/pp_abortion_after_the_first_trimester.pdf
They give all the reasons they do not want legal restrictions on abortion, at any time. They say it's uncommon, but their position is still that they do not want legal abortion limited to the first trimester or any other fixed time period, or any restrictions. No compromise, nada.
I've been to a number of abortion rights rallies (as a supporter), and of the hundreds of signs and banners, I have never seen a sign which accepts ANY limits to abortion rights, like "hands off my body - for the first trimester". Or "forced birth is only OK after X weeks". All of the arguments and slogans reject ANY restriction whatsoever. If abortion is unrestricted, then yes that legally goes up to birth - 1 day. (Of course that is a small portion of all abortions statistically, but the position is that it should still be allowed for those who want it because the government has no right to ever restrict abortion, period).
If this is a bad faith misrepresentations, show us the signs and slogans and public positions which allow for legislative control after some time period (eg: allowing late term abortions for only a limited number of reasons). Show where Planned Parenthood accepts some restrictions on abortion.
That is NOT the majority position. 60+ percent (depending on the poll) of the population supports first trimester abortion with restricted late term abortions.
The point here is that both sides take extreme positions - no abortions (except for the mother's health) on one side, and no restrictions on abortions on the other side, And the American people are in the middle, without majority support for either extreme.
----
Tell me the reasons you support abortion rights.
Does is follow from the internal logic of your reasoning that it's OK for the government to sometimes restrict abortion, like in late term? Or do your arguments imply that abortion at any time for any reason should be exclusively decided by a woman without any restrictions by the government?
(This is why overturning Roe V Wade is bad for the nation; it was a compromise position, which neither followed the "no abortions after conception" logic, nor the "abortion is always the right of the mother" logic; it was understood as allowing abortion on demand for some time period, and restrictions after that - a compromise between the extremes, which is what the majority of the population supports, in many more countries than just the US.)