20 week abortion ban

About that “sensible” 20 week abortion ban the Senate tried to pass this week

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Congress.Gov
Congress.Gov

Anti-choicers like to tout the popularity of some of their positions and one of those that they do frequently is that of the 20 week ban on abortions. They have relentlessly and ingeniously painted procedures at that stage as being done mostly on flighty women who, midpoint in pregnancy or later, callously decide to dispatch with the inconvenient fetus. It seems to have worked. “I’m not even a sanctity-of-life guy,” a local alternative weekly columnist told me on Facebook a while back, “but it seems ghoulish to me to wait that long.” Comments like that amply illustrate how anti-choicers deftly wove their narrative about women who abort after the first trimester into existing negative views on women’s trustworthiness and mental and moral competency in the larger culture.

Because that perception about abortion has taken root in the general public and especially with many journalists, it is difficult for pro-choicers to counter it with facts and nuance. The reality is that there are many reasons that women don’t get abortions prior to the twentieth week of pregnancy and ideally in the first trimester (which is up to 13 weeks and when the most people support abortion on demand). They include things like geographical barriers, lack of funds, intimate partner violence, trauma, and, of course, health problems. Many fetal abnormalities are detected at weeks 18 to 20, and lead some patients to opt for termination. Basically, it’s a lot more complicated than the simplistic “damn, don’t wait so long, lady!” truism would have you believe.

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For my friends who continue to believe that legal abortion is safe

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On this very day in 2015 there are still liberals who cling to the belief that the anti-abortion stance is merely a ploy by wily “establishment” (whatever the hell that means) Republicans to keep the rank-and-files docile and the campaign coffers full. I, of all people, still hear this claim constantly from I know! “They’ll never overturn Roe! They need abortion as a wedge issue too much!”

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Why adding family leave to an anti-abortion bill is bogus

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Charles Camosy
Photo: Catholic Star Herald

Anti-choicers are egregious in general but they are most frustrating to deal when they pretend to be seeking common ground while in reality pushing for the same bad forced birth policies under a thin veneer of caring about women. Some, like Democrats For Life and Secular Pro-Life, pretend to be liberal, all the better to lull reporters and the general public into believing that it’s possible to want to deny women basic bodily autonomy for non-reactionary ends (hint: it’s not). I honestly prefer Trent Franks sobbing about holocausts and the candor of the people in my Twitter feed screaming how I’m a murdering whore because I’ve had an abortion because at least they make it clear where they’re coming from.

A relentlessly self-promoting author and academic, Charles Camosy, “associate professor of Christian ethics at Fordham University and board member of Democrats for Life, author of Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation” has joined this dubious cohort. The title of his book (on several occasions Camosy has, annoyingly, shilled said book to me in response to specific questions I’ve asked him about policy positions he has stated publicly rather than simply answering them) seems to describe a worthy, and benign, goal.

Camosy provides an example of what he considers a “way forward” in a recent oped in the LA Times:

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Anti-choicers jailing women because they care?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

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Anti-choicers are such prodigious and unabashed liars that when they don’t even bother pretending and just show their true natures it can startle even the jaded likes of me! Two developments this past week did just that. First was the conservative Fifth Circuit Court’s decision to uphold Texas’ draconian HB2, an anti-choice omnibus law passed in 2013 (amidst thunderous protest at the State Capitol and after then-Senator Wendy Davis’ now-famous filibuster) that imposed onerous and unnecessary “safety” requirements on abortion clinics in what was obviously an attempt to shut them down. The implementation of the law was delayed due to lawsuits, with a federal judge last summer calling the anti-choicers right out on their bullshit.

The most remarkable portion of Yeakel’s opinion, however, may be the fact that he does not simply analyze the effect of Texas’s law. He also accuses the state of outright dishonesty. Responding to the state’s argument that some Texans can seek abortions in New Mexico if they are unable to obtain one in Texas thanks to HB2, Yeakel notes that this argument completely undermines any suggestion that these laws are supposed to protect women’s health:

If the State’s true purpose in enacting the ambulatory-surgical-center requirement is to protect the health and safety of Texas women who seek abortions, it is disingenuous and incompatible with that goal to argue that Texas women can seek abortion care in a state with lesser regulations. If, however, the State’s underlying purpose in enacting the requirement was to reduce or eliminate abortion in parts or all of Texas, the State’s position is perfectly congruent with such a goal.

Yeakel, in other words, calls a sham a sham. He recognizes, in the words of the Supreme Court, that the purpose HB2 is to “place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.” And he comes just one step from outright accusing the state of lying when it claims that the law was actually enacted to protect women’s health.

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Center for AZ Policy continues to be terrible

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com Unsurprisingly, Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, who is reviving the 20 week supposed “pain-capable fetus” abortion ban, has the unflagging support of our state’s most prolific God-botherers, the Center for Arizona Policy Note how they claim that 137 post-20 week abortions take place in Arizona with no context outside of “horrors” and Kermit … Read more