Roe vs Wade vs SCOTUS legitimacy

[CJD]

(05-04-2022, 01:13 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: Quick question for all of you: how far into a pregnancy do you think it is still ok to terminate a pregnancy?

Quote:In 2016, almost two-thirds (65.5%) of abortions were performed at ≤8 weeks’ gestation, and nearly all (91.0%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation. Fewer abortions were performed between 14 and 20 weeks’ gestation (7.7%) or at ≥21 weeks’ gestation (1.2%). During 2007–2016, the percentage of abortions performed at >13 weeks’ gestation remained consistently low (8.2%–9.0%). Among abortions performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation, the percentage distributions of abortions by gestational age were highest among those performed at ≤6 weeks’ gestation (35.0%–38.4%).

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/ss/ss6811a1.htm

The easiest thing to do would be to look at data of when abortions typically occur and, in the case of this 2016 CDC data, 91% of abortions occur at or before 13 weeks (right at the end of the first trimester), with only 7.7% occurring between weeks 14 and 20 and only 1.2% occurring after 21 weeks.

Now, based on this data, a conclusion you could possibly reach would be "Oh, well then we should ban all abortions after 13 weeks! That way, the vast majority of abortions won't be outlawed, but we can still protect human life as it approaches viability (currently, the accepted standard for viability, the time at which a baby would likely survive outside the womb with or without machine assistance, is 24 weeks)."

But I think that's the wrong way to look at this data.

My wife is currently pregnant with our second child. Our first was born early at 29 weeks and spent 53 days in the NICU before he came home with us. He's perfectly healthy now (2 and a half years old) and now my wife has been admitted to the hospital with similar symptoms to those that caused the first birth to occur early. She is currently at 27 weeks and 5 days. When she was first admitted, she was 23 weeks and 4 days. When she was first admitted, the doctors told us "If she's born before 24 weeks and is under 1 pound, we really can't do much for her. We can try to intubate her, but the odds of it working are low." So we needed her to stay pregnant until at least 24 weeks if we wanted good odds of our daughter surviving.

Those were the longest 3 days of my entire life.

The reason I bring this up is because those 3 days were just a microcosm of the entire pregnancy. In those previous 23 weeks, we had 7 ultrasounds to confirm these symptoms did not come back (they obviously eventually did) and every day in those 23 weeks felt so much longer than a week when she was not pregnant. 

I think there's this perception (among the right) that people will have "late term abortions" because, at some point, they just decide that they don't want the baby anymore. Or they changed their minds about being a mother. Or they just "didn't bother getting around to it" until now. I think this is either ignorant or malicious misinformation because, as anyone who has been pregnant or whose partner has been pregnant knows, time slows down when you're waiting for the baby to arrive. If someone simply did not want to have a baby, they would have aborted it in the early stages of the pregnancy, likely as soon as they could after finding out (assuming they have availability to abortion services).

The main reasons a person would have an abortion in the upper teens to low 20 weeks are fetal anomalies (such as if the baby has a fatal flaw or is not growing/will not survive if birthed) or maternal life endangerment. 


There may be a small contingent of people who get an abortion that high due to lack of access to an abortion or limited accessibility due to lack of funding or availability of an abortion clinic in their area but, of the 1.2%, I imagine these cases make up a small percentage of that. 


So, my takeaway from that data is not that we should set a boundary at 13 weeks (or 16 weeks or 18 weeks or whatever) because that would capture the majority of abortions. My takeaway is that we should intentionally not set a boundary because, if you're talking about an abortion that late in pregnancy, it's almost certainly because the mother's life is in danger or the baby is not going to survive.


In addition, I think funding abortion clinics would ensure that, among those rare occurrences of later term abortions, the even rarer occurrence due to lack of availability, would be even lower or perhaps completely eliminated.


If we set a boundary to when an abortion is allowed, then those rare instances of later term abortions could turn into maternal fatalities. And, while you could write in some contingencies, there is always the risk of edge cases. For example, if you wrote a bill that said "Abortion is illegal after 13 weeks, unless there is a fatal defect with the fetus or the mother's life is in danger" then you would then need to define what is and is not a "fatal defect" or what it means for the mothers life to be "in danger."

These are medical decisions that people are trying to legislate and it will inevitably result in cases that slip through the cracks. What if a doctor thinks a woman's pregnancy "may cause her death," they do whatever appeal these contingencies require, and are denied because the likelihood of her death (which would be a subjective estimate from the doctor anyway) is not considered high enough. 


That's why it is best to not set a legal limit on abortions. Setting a week limit on abortions likely does not prevent all that many abortions (maybe 1 to 2% of them), but in the cases that they would prevent, the abortions are likely the most medically necessary. So by setting a limit, you're endangering the mother without even really helping the babies.


Morally speaking, to answer your original question, I think the end of the first trimester is where it would be "Ok" to have an abortion just because you don't want to have a child, but that doesn't consider any of what I've said above, so it really holds no value, in my opinion.