More than 60 new restrictions on access to abortion were passed by 19 states in 2016, according a year-end report from the Center for Reproductive Rights. The regulations run the gamut from attempts to ban abortion altogether, to excessive paperwork requirements for providers and measures that would restrict the donation of aborted fetal tissue for medical research.
In sum, 2016 was a just another normal year for advocates who have battled to protect women’s reproductive autonomy. Notably, however, state or federal courts ultimately blocked many of the onerous provisions, a circumstance that underscores how important the judiciary is in protecting women’s rights.
Still, with the looming ascension of a Trump-Pence administration, the CRR notes that advocates must remain vigilant. “Given signals from the president-elect and new administration, we know that we must renew our commitment to defend the rights of women to make decisions that affect their health, their lives, their families and their futures,” reads the report.
One of the most egregious attacks on reproductive freedom came from the vice president-elect, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who on March 24 signed into law a legislative package that included two particularly controversial provisions: one that would forbid a woman from seeking an abortion based on the presence of a fetal abnormality and a second that would require burial or cremation of aborted fetal tissue. “By enacting this legislation, we take an important step in protecting the unborn,” Pence said in a signing statement. “I sign this legislation with a prayer that God would continue to bless these precious children, mothers and families.”
While Pence and others framed the legislation as a way to provide dignity to the terminated unborn and as a nondiscrimination law that would prevent the abortion of a fetus strictly because of its gender or potential for disability, advocates for women’s health saw the measures not only as an undue burden on women seeking legally-protected health care, but also as a thinly-veiled attempt at a categorical ban on pre-viable, first trimester abortion. “The law does not value life, it values birth,” Betty Cockrum, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky (PPINK) said at a press conference after the bill’s signing. “What needs to be made abundantly clear is that what this is really about is making abortion go away entirely.”
The ACLU of Indiana filed suit on behalf of PPINK, seeking to block the provisions, and on June 30 a federal district judge imposed a preliminary injunction, prohibiting the state from enacting the measures while the lawsuit moves forward.
One of the biggest legal wins of the year came in late June, when the U.S. Supreme Court blocked two onerous restrictions enacted in Texas, in what the CRR calls a “watershed victory for the reproductive rights movement.” In that case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, the court blocked a provision that would require abortion clinics to undertake costly renovations to transform themselves into hospital-like ambulatory surgical centers, and another that would require doctors to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of each clinic where they perform the procedure.
According to the state, the measures were necessary to ensure women’s health and safety. In practice, the measures led to the closure of nearly two dozen clinics, leaving women across large swaths of Texas without any meaningful access to care. For many women, the restrictions meant having to travel hundreds of miles to access services.
Confronted with evidence of the geographical and monetary burdens that the restrictions would create, the state put the lie to its own protestations that the measures were enacted with the well-being of women in mind. In talking about the travel burdens facing women in far West Texas, for example, a lawyer for the state noted that women in the El Paso area could simply travel across the state line into New Mexico to seek care. Notably, that state does not impose the very restrictions the state was arguing were necessary in order to promote women’s health.
In its opinion, the Supreme Court placed significant weight on the evidence brought by Whole Woman’s Health that the provisions created an undue burden, evidence the state could not rebut, signaling that going forward empirical evidence would be important and that the courts could not merely defer to lawmakers’ statements of legislative intent, which previously, in various instances, had carried the legal day.
Red-Tape Restrictions
Since 2011, the CRR has monitored some 2,100 legislative proposals restricting abortion rights. More than 300 have become law — many of them known as targeted regulations of abortion providers, or TRAP, laws, which are generally red-tape regulations framed as a means to increase public health and safety. In reality such laws are medically unnecessary and designed largely to construct roadblocks for women accessing care.
In 2016, and in the wake of the Whole Woman’s Health decision, each court that considered a challenge to a TRAP law blocked it. According to the CRR, courts blocked TRAP measures in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Ohio. And state and federal courts took action to block (at least temporarily) other types of restrictions in a number of other states, including Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
While the two Indiana provisions blocked in June were not TRAP laws, or similar to the provisions at issue in Whole Woman’s Health, another provision currently being challenged by the ACLU of Indiana on behalf of PPINK does implicate that ruling. That case is pending, says Ken Falk, the Indiana ACLU’s legal director.
Still, simply because the courts have taken an increasingly strong stance against punitive abortion restrictions does not mean states will stop seeking to enact them. Just days after the Whole Woman’s Health ruling — and after the Indiana fetal burial provision had been blocked — the state of Texas took steps to pass a new health agency rule adopting its own requirement for the burial or cremation of aborted or miscarried fetal tissue. The rule was slated to take effect December 19 — and was quickly blocked by a federal district court in Austin after the CRR brought suit, pending a hearing slated for January 3.
Given the ongoing assaults on reproductive freedom by states insistent on passing new and more onerous restrictions even in the face of negative court rulings — and given the environment that is likely to infect a Trump administration that prominently features such anti-choice actors as Pence — the strength of the state and federal judiciary could not be more critical.
Over the course of his divisive campaign, President-elect Trump flip-flopped wildly on women’s health issues — though once pro-choice, Trump eventually embraced some of the most extreme views on the rights of women, from pledging to employ an anti-abortion litmus test for his Supreme Court nominees, to opining not only that abortion should be banned but also that women should be punished for having the procedure. That has happened in Indiana. While Pence was governor, the state successfully prosecuted a woman named Purvi Patel for what prosecutors said, absent hard evidence, was an illegally induced medication abortion. Pence has said that he would like to see Roe v. Wade consigned to the “ash heap of history.”
The current wave of legislative attacks on reproductive rights began after the 2010 mid-term elections, which brought new conservative majorities to many state houses and governors’ mansions. While those elections might actually have been a reaction to concerns about the economy and jobs, notes Amanda Allen, CRR’s senior state legislative counsel, “we knew at the time that women’s reproductive rights would be collateral damage.” Since then, thousands of bills seeking to restrict abortion access have been filed — and hundreds have been enacted. “Since 2011, reproductive rights have been under a sustained assault, in which each legislative session piles more and more abortion restrictions on states where access is already extremely limited,” she said.
Still, CRR and others — including the ACLU and Planned Parenthood — have consistently fought those battles in the courts. “The Constitution provides strong protections against the types of policies the Trump administration has promised to advance,” Allen said, “and we will continue to turn to the courts to ensure that women’s constitutional rights are protected.”
Top photo: Supporters of legal access to abortion, as well as anti-abortion activists, rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on March 2, 2016, as the Court hears oral arguments in the case of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which deals with access to abortion.
Enough is enough with the grand lie of “religious freedom” We have tolerated it long enough but it must be stopped. America is an embarrassing disgrace to the world with it’s anti-intellecuslaism and anti-scence. We can not and will not allow laws to be made based on the willful stupidity of religious dogma.
The quoted statement that the Law does not honor Life, but only birth says it ALL, about those who kill the most defenseless in society!
wow these people just used to be weird, now they can’t even make sentences.
“birth says it ALL” whatever that means….
Yes, and beginning ones sentences with a capitalized word is a good start…
@Karl
Not just “conservative.” Mike Pence is far-right Christian theocrat. there are very few lawyers or judges so far “out there” as would suit Pence. But there are some.
A SCOTUS stacked with these fringe minds could, indeed, reverse Roe. So-called “judicial activism” has always been well and alive among the far right; it just hasn’t had the numbers to execute it. Indeed, even Scalia was not sufficiently to the right as these people have in mind.
As I wrote below:
As for this:
No. That’s just silly. The applicability of the 14th to corporations was decided in the 19th century. Since then, there has been no rush of “progressives” to advocate for “originalism” on that basis, or any other.
In stating their opposition to SCOTUS decision that the doctrine of corporate personhood was covered under the Fourteenth Amendment, many progressives have embraced a strict originalist philosophy. – Karl
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=15702#pop1
You are free to do with your bodies as you like girls, I wish the same were true for me. There are none more defenseless than the unborn. And just for the record a miscarriage is an abortion, spontaneous as it may be, and no seed of mine will ever enter your world.
LOL Joshua. Hey Joshua, who thinks all miscarriages are ‘for the record’ abortions, exactly what can “girls” do with their bodies that you can’t?
Do specify, fuckwit. So far you are too good to be true, humor-wise, so I expect great things.
@Arth
It is true that many pro-choicers play endless semantic games to detract from the fact of the fetus being both human and alive. The entity in a pregnant human woman’s uterus is a living human, and it is dishonest to deny that or obfuscate it.
That reality doe not, however, resolve the matter. For the fact remains that this living human is so, and can continue to be so, only by hijacking the woman’s body. Pregnancy and giving birth to a child can be life-destroying events.
The fetus does not have a rights claim to use the woman’s body. If she does not want it there, that must be the end of the inquiry — certainly at least until the time of viability. (At that point, it is reasonable to hold that she has had time to end the pregnancy and may not now use a method of becoming unpregnant which kills. All she may do is initiate a delivery if she wishes to be unpregnant.)
You, Arth, are never going to persuade people by continually and condescendingly dismissing the situation women find themselves in with bullshit such as:
And:
Women, Arth, are going to be tempted to tell you to go perform an anatomically improbable act on yourself when you keep spewing such offensive and dismissive crap. As well we should.
‘women’ is a concept that does not map very well into the real world. They are not a synchronized block. Perhaps ‘some women’ who lost their mother instincts or somehow separated themselves from it may view the little babies growing inside them as something foreign but then such are the times.
Talking about ‘women’, I was not a happy pregnancy for my mother. I was over 12 lbs at birth and my mother was only 5 ft. tall. The doctors told her that they were having trouble getting me out and that she might die if they tried too hard to ‘save’ me. She asked them to make sure that I lived. It turns out we both lived but that my mother expressing HER ‘right to choose’ in an extreme situation.
I understand that many women would like not just ‘the right to choose’ but, somehow, they’d want to make the choice guilt-free or even something to be celebrated but the fact is the somebody (not something) dies when that ‘right’ is exercised.
I think it’s important with these things to dig deeper and not rely on partisan spin of the events. There’s a Wikipedia article for Purvi Patel, to start with, which mentions things like that there were text messages on which the abortifacient conclusion was based (wikipedia’s current source is the Guardian playing keep-away, so here’s a somewhat better one, but even this lacks the raw data I want: https://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/pdf/07221601tac.pdf ) [This also should be of note to the anti-surveillance folks here…]
Anyway, we should bear in mind that what we’re talking about with her is someone doing a probably botched late term self-abortion, giving birth to what *may* have been a live infant, which she put in a dumpster behind a Target store. People can rant on about pro-life doctors, but what exactly is a doctor supposed to do when he’s holding one end of an umbilical cord and he doesn’t know exactly what was on the other, or what is happening to that baby? Whatever you think of it, in the hospital they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on those things trying to keep them alive. The goal of mifepristone/misopristol is to get the fetus out; they’re not really specifically designed to kill it, and there’s no reason to assume they did, even if the test to show they did not is iffy.
So while you’re entitled to some procedural legal infuriation, bear in mind that the only deficiency here, in proving class D neglect I think it was, was whether the lung test leaves enough reasonable doubt that the baby was outside the body before it died. Which to some folks seems like more of an arbitrary distinction than a real one, something for a lawyer to get mad about but not the audience.
barabbas gets to the nugget of it all with the very first comment on this thread:
instead of focusing resources to establish an operating environment for human beings to thrive in comfort that would allow a woman to want to carry a pregnancy to term,
Someone elsewhere states that both sides of the spectrum are irrational, and that may very well be, but as the above truth shows, only one side is disingenuous about their actual agenda.
When the religious right in league with ALEC and the state gerrymanderers start force-feeding us laws that supply all women with children – thereby, ALL CHILDREN – with everything they need to help their children grow into healthy, productive members of society, when someone creates a 100% effective method of birth control that men voluntarily – nay eagerly – use so that their women only ever get pregnant by choice, when they make laws that mean the only wars we fight are those where our country is fending off a physical threat, then and only then will I believe that they really give a shit about life.
When these men – and that vast majority of the legislators pushing these laws are men – start acting like they care about the children in Flint and the lead they are still exposed to, instead of quietly dropping the investigation that may have led to helping them and every other child in the country affected by lead from an aging infrastructure they don’t want to spend money to repair, then and only then will they have the right to tell even one woman what she can do with her own body and life. Until then, they can just fuck off, and take the products of their own precious orgasms with them.
Are you saying that ‘murder’ should be legal until the state provides all citizens with ‘everything they need’ and universally mind-bends everyone into full non-violence?
What is with you people and logical fallacies? You create a straw-man by equating this with murder and avoiding the rational portions of the argument. Put aside for a second your gut reaction to the thought of abortion and look for a bit of middle ground.
You can start by addressing the meat of the points above, which are: 1.) where is the support for women, children, and struggling families post-birth that would leave women in a position to fruitfully provide for both herself and her growing family? 2.) where is the unconditional societal support (not even saying free or subsidized here, just get rid of all of the stigma and the thought that somehow abstinence only education works) for birth-control so men and women can carefully decide when to grow their families?
The point is that many of the same people that support restrictions on abortion also support restrictions on access to birth control and legislation that may help families (not only in terms of material support, but also in regulatory support vis a vis the Flint water crisis, limiting maternity leave, refusing to act meaningfully regarding healthcare, etc). The end result is a veritable minefield for many lower or middle class families who literally can no longer afford to have children. What are your thoughts about that?
“What is with you people and logical fallacies? You create a straw-man by equating this with murder ”
What would YOU equate the premeditated and deliberate taking of a life? An act of hygiene? The cleansing of the uterus?
Let me ask you the same question I asked another contributor here: how would you have liked to be aborted? I know that I would have been against ‘the procedure’ if I had a say at the time but I didn’t so I am grateful that my mother’s maternal instincts, the tradition, natural decency and the law gave me the opportunity to be born and live a generally happy and almost always interesting life so far.
A question which has all the salience of: How would you like to have never been conceived?
Not quite. There’s a fundamental difference. The aborted’s humanity is at least partially expressed at the time of abortion. The aborted ‘entities’ exist. They are alive.
How do I know it? Sadly, I was a witness to a home-brewed abortion many years ago – we were all college students and we were in a place where abortions were treated as crimes of murder. What I saw was ‘something’ with arms and hands and legs and a head with eyes, nose and mouth and it was alive. We were all scared and overwhelmed if understatements are permitted. Eventually, the ‘father’ threw ‘it’ into the chimney where a fire was burning. The end.
And, yes, I understand why advocating for ‘facilities’ where the destruction of the inconvenient uterine growth is done out of sight and in a much more efficient and sterile fashion. But the outcome is not different: what clearly looked like a human life to me is ended.
And, again, the abortion invariably results in the death of the fetus or proto-human or whatever you wish to call them. Carrying an unwanted pregnancy to the point where ‘birth’ takes places almost never results in mother’s death. I am not religious or ideological in this matter but, based on what I know and on what I’ve personally experienced, every single abortion results in the ending of a life. I call it ‘murder’ and I don’t care what others call it but a life is ended in a premeditated and deliberate way.
Irrelevant. I have no more concern about thought experiments in which my parents failed to conceive me when and as they did, than I do for those concerning whether a blastocyst that would grow into me would have been expelled.
Your entire comment is a string of fallacies, even where your fact claims are true.
Sure, if it makes you sleep better…
Your parents never failed to conceive ‘you’, by the way. They were 100% successful at it which makes people like you and me ‘lucky’ given the odds of ‘someone else’ being conceived instead – like 1 in 500,000,000 or so? However, once you were conceived, they could have aborted you but they didn’t. I suspect that you believe that them not aborting you was a good thing but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you never thought of that because there are certain things we’d rather avoid thinking about.
Chance of death from giving birth is not insignificant and is significantly higher than abortion.
Watch IDIOCRACY – highly recommended to everyone, possibly the most significant movie made in the past 200 years.
You are so much fun.
Seriously, how much of an idiot does one have to be to specify “most important movie made in the past 200 years” when even by the most generous yardstick movies aren’t more than 130 years old?
And then we have one minor satiric movie out of that whole history called “most signifacant” in that “200” year history.
do
go
on
you
are
funny
Christian values can be lauded for protecting the unborn, as Mike Pence said with a prayer. This is not only protecting the foetuses, but also foetus tissues.
With these exalted ideals, conservative Christians push at every opportunity for a bigger military. A military that is already the largest in human history.
Not satisfied with murdering thousands and hundreds of thousands of ‘fully developed’ humans around the globe, and destroying the infrastructure of entire nations, they keep wanting a bigger military; more murders and more destruction.
Perhaps Mike Pence or one his clones can be kind enough to explain to us, mere plebs, the discrepancy between these Christian values and sort out truth from fiction.
Can we agree that ‘all lives matter’? I happen to firmly oppose the killing of both defenseless human fetuses and defenseless grownup humans.
There seems to be some consensus among the murderous warmongers on ‘both sides’ that killing ‘born’ humans is a great thing, therefore they actually doing it, no matter who sits on the WH throne but, of course, the ‘left’ chief gets the Nobel Peace Prize for being an inciter and perpetrator of mass killings while the imbecile retard that preceded him is generally criticized for doing the same thing.
On the killing of the unborn, the so-called lefties would like to have as many of those as possible, presumably because they expect a constant influx of cheap and illegal workforce from across the southern border while the so-called conservatives probably don’t care much one way or the other but like to TALK about restricting abortions because that earns them votes from Evangelicals who would otherwise stay home and not vote at all.
And yet, not one “lefty” I’m aware of has made any argument remotely like that. The arguments are such as those made here. An insistence on the fact of, and rights of, the pregnant woman.
There has to be a balance and, I am sorry, but the about-to-be-born-human-person is entitled to a lot more protection than the mother who became pregnant because if the law does not protect these human or almost-human entities then I don’t know who would.
Why? Because if a woman does not abort a child and actually gives birth, the woman does not die. Yes, the birth may inconvenience her for a few months but it’s usually possible to give the child away. On the other hand, if the woman aborts the child then the child dies which is a lot more inconvenient from child’s point of view. Dying is quite radical, actually.
How would you have liked to be aborted? Would that have been Okay? I agree, sometimes some of us wish we were never born but, if we are serious about it there’s always suicide if one’s life turns out to be impossible.
That. Right there.
That’s why you are going to make headway with no one.
(That, and inane assertions that those on the left endorse abortion rights to ensure “a constant influx of cheap and illegal workforce from across the southern border.”)
It’s pretty ugly, I agree. Once you successfully dehumanize the foetus by absoluting refusing to accept ‘reality’ then disposing of one or more for the sake of comfort or convenience becomes quite a rational and normal thing to do because you don’t end a life, you’re only saving yourself some trouble. You’ll never have to say “I had my future son or daughter killed because I didn’t really feel like keeping them in my tummy for a while longer”, you only did some hygienic procedure, possibly one that’s fully covered by insurance because… why not?
Agree that this society dehumanizes both the unborn and born children by denying the universal health care to children and pregnant women and by giving instead enormous amount of money to war-manufacturers and “humanitarian interventionists” that have been bringing death and destruction to the millions of human beings of all ages. Ask people of Falujah (Iraq) how do they like a huge spike in birth defects after the US used depleted uranium there.
The main point: Let’s demand from the legislators that any anti-abortion measure be accompanied by new taxes intended for cleaning water and air from dangerous chemicals to protect fetuses, as well as for providing free healthcare and education to the future children. It would be easy to see those among legislators that truly care about the unborn: how many of the pontificating moralists are ready to stand up to the major polluters like Monsanto and oil & gas industries and to powerful insurance companies.
For a starter, you could check the percentage of the US population that wasn’t single-payer system (and why we do not have one) and the ongoing fight against the carcinogenic Roundup (Monsanto product), with which the food for children is laced with. The big mouths in legislature are very loud against the poor women, but they are just sycophantic weasels when faced big bosses from Chem & Pharma & MIC.
“Agree that this society dehumanizes both the unborn and born children by denying the universal health care to children and pregnant women and by giving instead enormous amount of money to war-manufacturers and “humanitarian interventionists” that have been bringing death and destruction to the millions of human beings of all ages. ”
Believe it or not, I am as antiwar as one can possibly be and I agree most of the trillions spend on ‘defense’ is either for waste or acts of aggression or for defending us for the consequences of past acts of aggression. However, linking the fate of a foetus to whatever it is that Monsanto does may appear clever but the key qualifier here is ‘appear’. Yes, the State may want or ‘need’ more workers but our State does not need them to be born here because they can always be brought in from the other side of the border so your bargaining position is not very strong.
By the way, how do you feel about the language some politicians use when talking about the masses? I remember DoubleCrap Bush calling the locally born citizens ‘consumers’ and the illegals from Mexico ‘workers’. I suspect he believed himself very clever for coming up with that choice of words.
It seems like our society has made a few comedic swaps here and there. Certainly I can picture delegations of Democrats and Republicans having a meeting late one night and agreeing to rectify the situation – from now on animal rights shall be the province of pinch-faced Republicans who love to yammer on about Responsibility and think that some things just shouldn’t be allowed if not hidden behind closed doors, while the bleeding-heart Democrats henceforth shall take on the cause of liberating fetuses. While they are at it, perhaps the Trump Republicans can finally do away with the inappropriate Jewish motif in their temples and go back to worshipping hungry old gods like Huitzlopochtli and Tlaloc.
Obama & the corporatist Dems are just as bad on reproductive rights. So glad I voted third party so I can hold my head up high.
Slaves have no “reproductive rights.”
Slaves have no right to complain, either.
SO, SHUT UP! You wanted a commie-slave government…. well, congratuations. You got one and now you don’t even comprehend it.
what a profound dude is this seeker of trood
It’s a states rights issue. Period.
Nope. It’s that 14th Amendment thing.
An issue this important can’t be left to individual states. They’re not responsible enough.
Unfortunately it is almost impossible to claim the moral high ground on an issue that intrinsically puts the rights of one person at odds with the rights of another.
On the one hand you have reproductive rights of women who should have the right to chose what they do with their own body. On the other you have the rights of a fetus/child who should have the right to be born.
On some level you are forced to choose one or the other is a higher “Right”. Most sensible people fall somewhere in the middle of a spectrum:
1. Full Reproductive Rights. Women have the right to terminate any pregnancy up until the time of birth, including partial birth (second and third trimester) abortions. No regard for the rights of the unborn Fetus/Child. Zero government control.
2. Current Law. The regulations are varied and complicated but the general rule is that Women must terminate a pregnancy before the fetus is “viable” usually around 24-28 weeks gestation, unless the woman’s life is in danger. Current federal law permits feticide which is causing the death of the fetus prior to performing a legal abortion.
3. Halfway compromise. Regarding 20 weeks gestation, before which any abortion is legal, after which, no abortions are legal.
4. Women may terminate pregnancy only in the first trimester if the pregnancy is a result of rape or if her life is in danger due to the pregnancy.
5. Full rights for the unborn Fetus/Child. Abortions are completely illegal. No regard for the reproductive rights of the Woman. Full governmental control.
I’m sure there are different shades of each of these stances but reproductive rights advocates and pro-life advocates need to recognize that both ends of the spectrum are irrational to the other side.
Well a “fetus” isn’t a “child” and unless you totally are ignorant of the scientific aspects of a fetus’ biological development, you shouldn’t be confusing when a fetus’ central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) actually connects, when a fetus’ bone marrow begins producing red blood cells, or when a fetus’ lungs are sufficiently developed to actually function outside the womb.
And then and only then could there be any possible discussion of what “rights” a “potential” human “child” should or should not have.
No one side of “the spectrum” does employ science, reason or rational beliefs about what is/is not a “child” but rather “faith” and the other side does.
And the law in America currently understands the relevant distinctions about the scientific developmental stages of a fetus.
But there is no “rational” position attributable to human beings who believe as a matter of faith that from the moment of conception and/or a zygote is a fully developed human being (rather than potential depending on state of development) entitled to “rights” as would a fully developed human being.
So how about not engage in propaganda by using words and scientific concepts you don’t appear to fully grasp or understand when discussing this issue.
Sheesh that might have been unclear:
Interestingly, you fall into one of the neat categories of people who view the other side as irrational. The whole point of my comment was that to the mind of someone with a stance one side, the other side is irrational. Thank you for proving my point.
I find it amusing that you believe you can surmise the sum of my scientific knowledge based on my selective use of words that did not infer a particular scientific stance at all.
I am perfectly aware of the biological stages of gestation including the transition from zygote to embryo to fetus. The fact that you have chosen such specific criteria to define a viable fetus merely helps me understand where it is you actually fall in the spectrum that I defined.
According to your mutually exclusive definition of fetus and child, the only difference between a late term fetus and a child is simply one of location in or out of the womb.
You must be able to look at your own perspective critically to call yourself a rational person. If you get offended by this comment you are responding emotionally instead of rationally. By insulting my intentions as propaganda and an attack on my intellect you have engaged in the Ad Hominem logical fallacy.
This discussion was merely one of mental gymnastics for me. I intentionally chose terms that were “pro” and “for” instead of “Anti” to illustrate the views of both sides.
Too clever by half slick. Of course your “selective use” of words, coupled with the idea that “rights” being afforded “person” as in your introductory premise, puts “people” at odds:
Of course one “person” has no “rights” vis a vis another’s body or another woman’s fetus. So the only reasoned inference that can be drawn from you statement as written is that an unborn fetus has “rights” vis a vis the woman who is carrying. And since you phrase it as a question of “morality”, and “morality” is a function of “persons” not “persons” and “zygotes” to anyone who understands the science of human development, only one of two conclusions can be drawn 1) you are trying to be too clever by half in your “selective use of words” and creating distinctions that do not exist in reality, reason or morality, or 2) you don’t really understand the words you are employing.
You appear not to understand either the definition of “(ir)rational” as in your premise that “rights” should be ascribed or given to “fetus/child”. A fetus and a child, at least in common and scientific usages of those words are very distinct stages of human development. The distinctions matter, as a function of “reason” and “rationality” and “science”.
Again, “irrational” and/or “rational” does not mean what you think it means regardless of “side” one is on.
No my “mutually exclusive definition” is the definition that the scientific and medical community draws in describing the stages of gestation and human development. Whether or not, as a normative or moral matter, a “post-viability fetus” should be treated more like a born “child” or “infant” as a legal matter is a separate question. If you’d like to ask me my thoughts on that question, I am happy to answer, but please don’t conflate the two questions. Words matter. Distinctions among definitions matter. And most of us at this site aren’t new to this debate and/or the history and agenda of the anti-choice movement in this country (whether you are a member or not) and their methods of argument. Particularly those of us who are lawyers.
Again, you shouldn’t use concepts and words, selectively or otherwise, whey you appear to not fully understand or comprehend their well understood meaning and usage. And if you aren’t going to employ words consistently with their commonly understood meaning and usage, you shouldn’t be surprised someone questions your level of intellectual integrity or intentions.
Moreover, I did not engage in an ad hominem fallacy. I took disagreement with the definitions you employed, inferences that could reasonably drawn from you specific use of words, and the premises and arguments that you were attempting to make from them. That is not committing an ad hominem fallacy any more than is speculating and or using other words to describe “why” I might surmise you are using words in a selective way, and or inconsistent with their well understood meanings.
An ad hominem fallacy is refusing to engage the substance of a premise or an argument on its substantive merits (either right/wrong or valid/invalid as a matter of rhetoric or formal logic) and instead engage the following type of nonsubstantive rebuttal: “your argument is wrong because you hate dogs and are a documented adulterer” [assuming the subject matter isn’t related to dogs or adultery] i.e. attempting to claim a victory in an argument without addressing the substance of the argument and instead pointing to some character flaw, or unrelated acts of your interlocutor.
I have since I was about 14. But let’s be clear, there is only one group in America that never “critically” evaluates their “own perspective” and that’s the faith based community that wants to end access to women’s legal right to engage in pregnancy cessation as a function of the individual woman and her medical provider’s judgment as to the morality, reasons and timing of that choice.
If you can’t be honest enough with yourself about that history and methods, then don’t be surprised if people don’t take you as a good faith interlocutor on the topic who engages in “intellectually honest” usages of words rather than “selective (un)common usages” that attempt to distort or conflate things like “reason” or “rationality” with practices or ways of thinking that are neither.
Maybe I should have used the word “careful” instead of “selective” but the definitions in that context are indistinguishable.
My intention is not to be “Clever” but to act as a mirror to help other intelligent people see themselves in the raw unforgiving light of logic. Truly and personally I enjoy the banter because it helps me sharpen my knowledge and get to the bottom of what is “True”. That’s why we’re all reading here at TI instead of Yahoo, Salon, or Fox isn’t it?
To address your comment:
You intentionally use the word “zygote” as a representation of unborn fetuses when in fact the “common scientific definition”, which you seem to value very highly, of a zygote is a single cell. It is an incredibly specific developmental stage exclusive of all other developmental stages of a multi-cellular organism. As soon as the cell divides again it is called something else.
Since you so very truly stated that words matter let’s establish that in fact, the word “Child” is actually not very clearly defined by the scientific community as you say that it is. Merriam Webster’s primary definition of the word is “an unborn or recently born person” It is from here that I began my comparison of the rights of “persons”
Now you are also inventing a “common” definition of the word “Rational” which is defined as an adjective “based on or in accordance with reason or logic”
Now let me clarify here what I meant to communicate: I intentionally did not say that both ends of the spectrum were equally weighted in terms of scientific argument which is based on evidence bolstered hypotheses.
While similar to the scientific method, rational thought is simply a set of logical conclusions or arguments based on a given premise (which itself may or may not be “true” or in accordance with reality)
True Premise > Rational or Logical Thought > True Conclusion
I intentionally avoided making judgement statements based on the “trueness” of various premises.
Indicative in the word “Right” is the concept of “Entitlement” which in and of itself cannot be evaluated without addressing concepts of “Ought” “Should” “Owed” which are almost exclusively tied to morality which different systems define differently. We would have to establish a baseline definition of the set of morals we are discussing before we can have any proper discussion on the topic of “Rights”. Otherwise we will be talking in circles because of the multiplicity of definitions of morality.
I am disappointed that a lawyer would characterize ad hominem fallacies so narrowly using such an extreme example. Using loaded language like the word propaganda and insulting my understanding of scientific definitions without presenting any evidence to the contrary is an effort to cast me, the arguer, in a negative light. No matter the gradient of grey, it is still an ad hominem fallacy, albeit subtle. Since you are familiar with subtleties of language I am sure this was not lost on you and thus I concluded it was intentional.
By attacking an entire subset of society using absolutes “Only One Group” and “Never” I can begin to see that you have a personal axe to grind but you must deal with your own prejudice against the “faith based community” yourself. Be careful in a legal setting as exposing this bias will allow your opponents insight into how to get you off balance in an argument.
I have enjoyed this, I like conversing with smart people. I hope that we can agree that language is a beautiful thing that can be used powerfully to communicate ideas and leave it at that.
This is one of the few material things that liberals have delivered on — reproductive rights. I can’t understand why conservatives want smaller government, yet feel government should control this intimate process. Cognitive dissonance is bipartisan.
According to opinion polls a majority of Americans favor some restrictions on abortion, but the restrictions that backward states with inbred crackers like Indiana, and Texas impose are probably not what most people have in mind. I knew Trump would be president when he won the Indiana primary so handily. It gave me insight into how fired up the disillusioned white trash vote was for this huckster. I hope he does a good job although he’s a total unknown who gave the middle finger perpetually to the establishment, which I loved, and who also contradicted himself usually at least several times every time he spoke to the hoards of people at his rallies. Doesn’t Pense look like an inbred caricature of Ted Baxter the pompous ass played by Ted Knight on the Mary Tyler Moore Show? Ted Baxter is probably a MENSA quality IQ compared to Pense who was probably a special needs child.
In sum, 2016 was a just another normal year for advocates who have battled to protect women’s reproductive autonomy. Notably, however, state or federal courts ultimately blocked many of the onerous provisions, a circumstance that underscores how important the judiciary is in protecting women’s rights.
A “woman’s reproductive autonomy”? This is a rather curious phrase Jordan; and when coupled with “women’s rights”, it is extremely misleading. In appealing to the mechanisms of the State to afford “women” the legal protections that they seek, one is already acknowledging that the state itself is the final arbiter in determining the degree to which a woman is allowed to exercise free will in the termination of a pregnancy. When coupled with the fact that those “reproductive rights” are determined on a state by state basis, appeals to a “woman’s reproductive autonomy” are meaningless. That which we empower the state to legally regulate in a democratic society is ultimately subject to the will of elected officials who hold power at any particular moment in time. As the evolving complexion of the SCOTUS appears to be shifting to the right, the legislative death of Roe vs Wade must be attributed to the will of the electorate.
Americans who care overwhelmingly support Roe: In 2013, 53% to 29% (with 18% having no opinion). Donald Trump was elected by only 25% of eligible voters; many or most of those are pro-choice (a fact, given some of the pro-choice voters I personally know who voted Trump).
The Founders gave us a counter-majoritarian Bill of Rights. A person’s right to, say, speak any political view, or worship any god, remains even if 51% of the electorate would not permit it. The Civil War amendments are also counter-majoritarian; the 14th Amendment protects women even if 51% do not care to do so.
And yet, the ongoing viability of Roe vs Wade is in question? You can’t have it both ways. If the SCOTUS has the power to ultimately determine whether and/or when a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy, then it could potentially reach a future determination that the state has a compelling interest in curbing all abortions.
Because Mike Pence is vice president, and is likely to dictate SCOTUS appointments. Pence could never be elected to national, federal office, except the exact way he got there. The fringe jurists he’d approve of would never see a high bench in any other plausible scenario.
If such people are allowed to stack SCOTUS, we could have a high court that would make all manner of horrific ruling, overturning important and well-accepted precedent. For the reasons I stated, that’s not what the vast majority want, not even the majority of Trump voters.
Again: The 14th Amendment protects women even if 51% do not wish it. Unless, of course, fringe, minority wingnuts are concentrated on the highest bench. Then, we get wingnut judicial activism.
In other words: Karl, you are right. A conservative SCOTUS is empowered to review any case of its choosing and, in the doing, reverse its own earlier decisions. In stating their opposition to SCOTUS decision that the doctrine of corporate personhood was covered under the Fourteenth Amendment, many progressives have embraced a strict originalist philosophy. How is that any different from those who embrace originalism as a mean in determining that which the constitution intended in regard to abortion?
@Jake
You, Jake, seem quite confused about all of: Greenwald, this site, and the nature of journalism. Greenwald is a premier example of the activist journalist — or, as Reuter’s Jack Shafer puts it, the “partisan journalist” — a label he proudly claims. He writes with a distinct point of view that he generally discloses and which he openly and actively promotes in his work.
Virtually all of Greenwald’s writing, then, contains his “opinion.” Ditto for many of the other very fine journalists here, and that would most definitely include Jordan Smith, whose work is generally superb.
Smith’s phrasing you find so objectionable in the above piece? I seriously doubt he would — Glenn doesn’t cover reproductive rights, but if he did it would not at all shock me if he wrote of an “assault” on rights.
You need to consider these are men that have no respect for women, women’s bodies, or women’s rights. All these men want out of women is to spread our legs, cook and clean for them, be trophy wives, and trot out trophy children to say see what we (I mean a house full of staff) have raised?
Rich men need poor women to have as many babies as humanly possible so when they get into high school, our corrupt dictatorship can come in and recruit them for the military. Remember, all soldiers are nothing but collateral damage. We have, and raise them for our government to put into illegal wars, turn them into terrorists, and send them home in a body bag, most usually with a lie as to the cause of death. Next!
It’s too bad there are no medicines or devices that can prevent pregnancy. That would be a huge advancement for women’s right. We could call it “birth control”.
Contraceptives all have failure rates. Humans have failure rates. Further, abortion is a form of “birth control.” Resorted to, usually, when conception control has failed or humans have failed.
“Rich men need poor women to have as many babies as humanly possible so when they get into high school, our corrupt dictatorship can come in and recruit them for the military. Remember, all soldiers are nothing but collateral damage. We have, and raise them for our government to put into illegal wars, turn them into terrorists”
Miss V: You are nominated to write the New National Anthem!
And 19 times the Obomber Administration took no action?
Again, voting in neocons named Obama or Clinton will never help progress!
Only the dunderhead Ameritard refuses to accept this!
When is someone from the liberal side going to go after the churches tax free status? They obviously are political and no need to play nice anymore.
When the Congress funds the IRS adequately. The Repubs continues to defund agencies and departments they don’t like. There are watchdogs, though. Someone filed against ALEC (well done, so far). The biggest problem is the lack of bodies to do the enforcement, I am very sorry to report.
What offends me less, ONLY because it rarely comes across my line of sight – are the low-life scum on television – the televangelists who separate the hopeless & ignorant religious people from their money. Might be worth your 20 minutes with John Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg.
Where does an abortion right come from? For that matter what is a right? It may be wisdom to allow for some abortions and to prohibit others. Presently it has become a form of birth control which not only destroys a life but harms a woman permanently. Another liberal extravaganza. I think as a society we have over used the term right without actually knowing what a right is. Having a right certainly does not prevent it from being taken away.
Our rights must end where they impact the wellbeing or life of another human. Abortion crosses that line and we’d be better off without it.
Your scenario leaves out some critical information: the human life at issue can exist, and continue to do so, only by hijacking the body of a (biologically) adult human woman. That adult woman’s rights are not anywhere factored into your construction.
Abortion in this country is nothing less than genicide. Of course I’m for women’s rights but this mess has gotten out of control. A few more restrictions on such a hanoius act is a good thing in my book.
No see, you use a word like “genocide” and you only further lose your credibility. ” “Few more restrictions” has a real and adverse impact on real women.
While I am critical of the more zealous pro-choicers that posture as if the entity in the pregnant uterus is a nullity, women from time immemorial have had to deal with the horrific burden biology places on them vis-a-vis reproduction. It’s either been abortion, or exposing newborns to the elements. Or, until very recent times, death in the hellish holes that once were “orphanages.”
A civilized society must allow women a safe option to end a pregnancy they deem too problematic for their bodies and lives. Its’ one of the few zero-sum issues. Either the woman decides, or the rest of us decide and force her. The only moral option can be leaving it up to the individual woman.
Did you read the link to the horrifying Indiana case of Purvi Patel? Here’s another.
A woman who does not want her body to remain pregnant is the sole authority over that matter, certainly at last until the time of sure viability. Not because that decision is always moral, but because there is no other reasonable legal scheme — individual autonomy has to take primary consideration.
“Of course, I’m for women’s rights,” you claim before admitting that you think women’s personal health care choices have gotten out of control and need to be curtailed by the government. Spoken like a true conservative.
And, actually, yes, it is a whole lot less than genocide. It’s called exercizing a constitutional right, and it fits only the religious zealot’s demented definition of genocide.
What needs to be curtailed by the government are the chronic assaults on our constitutional rights by tyrranical Christian evangelical extremists hell bent on making America a Christian nation by law.
Glenn Greenwald’s articles are usually why I come to this site. Most of the other writers here are less talented, much more one-sided, and overwhelmingly liberal in their beliefs. Do I support women’s rights to have an abortion, yes. Do I like reading articles that use biased, one sided language, no matter their argument:
“current WAVE OF LEGISLATIVE ATTACKS on reproductive rights ”
“Given the ongoing ASSAULTS ON REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM by states …”
“In sum, 2016 was a just another normal year for advocates who have battled to protect women’s reproductive autonomy. ”
“and given the environment that is likely to INFECT a Trump administration that prominently features such ANTI-CHOICE actors as Pence ”
Next time the Intercept argues that we shouldn’t go to war I’ll remind myself to call you “pro-Russian” “pro-terrorist” “anti-American” etc. as clearly you are not above that kind of guilt-by-association and mud-slinging.
There are many situations where societies around the world have agreed to take away certain freedoms by means of law – access to certain drugs, access to guns, access to government facilities, access to private property, your right to privacy, taxation, etc. To argue that this is inherently wrong when it affects you, and then maybe turn around and write the next article on how we should all get together and agree to take away people’s rights to own guns or own all the money they make without taxation, shows a lack of journalistic fairness and balance.
This is an opinion piece, not a journalistic news article and the Intercept should make it clear that that’s what it is.
You’re drawing quite a few false equivalencies up there, Jake. Don’t little things like logical fallacies get in your way though, keep ’em coming!
I agree. I’m all for abortion so long as it’s not a week before a woman goes into labor but this whole thing with the left mischaracterizing their opponents with ad hominem attacks is just nasty and it turns people away. Why not just make an actual argument for abortion rather than painting others as “anti-women” and all this other non-sensible garbage? Even I can make a logical argument for abortion so these kinds of tactics are just pointless and divisive. The people on the other side of the issue aren’t immoral monsters, they just view the unborn in a different way.
You obviously are not at all acquainted with the religious reactionaries who want to outlaw abortion. The “unborn?” That would be a fetus, likely residing in a live woman’s body. You’re against abortion rights? Fine. Don’t come around then with idiotic arguments where you say you’re for those rights, and then reveal, immediately, that you’re against those rights.
No, they are not moral monsters simply for viewing the unborn in a different way. They are moral monsters for relentlessly using government to force their view of the unborn–and by extension, their religion–on the entire nation.
Many of them are moral monsters for pushing legislation forbidding termination of a pregnancy even in cases of rape and incest, a massively cruel and destructive measure that should repulse anyone with even a grain of a conscience.
Let’s not forget the moral monstrosities of cutting social services for single mothers, while at the same time using the government to outlaw birth control. While we’re at it, let’s not forget that other evangelical chestnut of abuse, gay conversion therapy, which will surely make a historic comeback with the Christian Taliban in charge.
How about the moral monstrosity in a court ruling in which a judge places a woman’s other children in foster care because their mommy was bad and had to go to jail for terminating her pregnancy for reasons that are no one’s business but her own?
These scenarios are all too real, and there are too many more to mention, but those should give you a good start as to why I and millions of other Americans believe they are moral monsters: It’s how they treat people, and the way they treat people is morally bankrupt.
The call for a rape and incest provision is itself monstrous. I say this both as a supporter of very early abortions and as an opponent of very late ones, and despite considerable uncertainty at some points in the middle.
The reason is simply that either a fetus is a person or it isn’t. If it is a person, it should not be executed in a eugenic program to wipe out inbred individuals or people with ‘rape genes’ to purify the national gene pool. And if it isn’t, then the right to abort it should be given regardless of its origin, without being gifted in one special instance as a way of implying a desire to kill out the genetically defective wherever permissible.
I think the women’s rights movement and the left generally, have made a huge error in not adequately painting a more visual scenario as to the horrors of a post-abortion America; what it would look like; how it would actually play out at ground level. I think they’ve made a mistake in keeping the fight strictly in the rights arena.
Not wanting to sound alarmist probably has something to do with that, but it’s been evident for years what the radical Christians are doing and the left really hasn’t painted a big enough picture to illustrate the many forms of abuse that would occur in a post-Roe v Wade world.
How about an official government Maternity Bureau to which pregnant women have to report to monotor the progress of their condition? Too far fetched?
How about women, many of whom will already have dependant children, being arrested and incarcerated wholesale, possibly being put on trial for murder for having an abortion. How about a local doctor being charged with murder or attempted murder. Planned Parenthood has mentioned these scenarios, but hasn’t hammered these points home as relentlessly as the right has presented their case.
The reproductive rights movement, and, again, the left generally, have failed to adequately address that this assault on women’s rights is rooted in radical Christianity; in the forcing of a particular religion onto all of America.
Religious extremism is a scourge no matter the religion. The unconscionable cruelty of forcing rape victims to bear their rapists children–even in cases of incest–is Taliban and ISIS level barbarity, but millions of radical Christians are more than willing to impose that law on women right here in our own backyard, no problem, and are currently working extra hard to make America Christian again.
It’s time to play hardball with the radically religious, or it’s all going to be lost.
Can you point to certain instances where women have been incarcerated and charged for murder for having abortions? I’m genuinely curious if this is all just rhetoric or if this is an actual problem.
You should have clicked the link in the above article, the one about an Indiana woman named Purvi Patel.
Excellent, Mona. Thanks…
Punitive measures against women and doctors exercizing their constitutional rights have been a goal of the radical Christian right for decades, and there are measures ready to go in statehouses across the country to prosecute and put in prison women who dare make their own medical decisions. Simply start with any true-believing, anti-abortion-zealot stronghold state–any southern state will do–and read their congressional proposals pertaining to abortion.
How about people dying because their doctors fear the legal consequences of proper healthcare?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar
Because sugary processed foods are the biggest public health problem in America today. Did I say processed foods? I meant guns. No wait, it’s women’s bodies. Yep. That’s our nation’s biggest public health problem.
instead of focusing resources to establish an operating environment for human beings to thrive in comfort that would allow a woman to want to carry a pregnancy to term, the geniuses of the flat earth society have figured that creating more negative re-inforcement is somehow the definition of “good”, like beating kids in school for being less than perfect.
just goes to show you, even morons can get a law degree.