Anti-Abortion Movement Faces Internal Divisions After Roe’s Fall
“For nearly five decades, abortion opponents held two truths to be self-evident. Abortion ends the life of a human being. Women who have an abortion are ‘second victims.’ Now, with Roe v. Wade overturned, a small but influential group of abortion foes believes women who have abortions should be prosecuted as criminals” - RNS
The quoted bit in the article is an oversimplification. The truth is that there have always been disagreements within the pro-life movement on a number of sub-topics but these differences didn’t matter much as long as Roe was in place. One controversy that did matter was the debate over whether state efforts should go for broke or pursue incremental restrictions on abortion that might survive Roe challenges.
One thing is for sure, as a panel at The Dispatch pointed out a few days ago, during the decades since Roe, lots of politicians and legislatures passed measures that had no real-world tests because of Roe. The laws themselves could be sloppy because they were moot, and politicians could support them without much political risk because they wouldn’t have any impact.
But now they do, and in some states the legislative situation is really messy.
And as for the movement, now the differences over how to protect life and why one approach vs another are no longer moot.
So, it’s going to be pretty chaotic for a while.
There are some things to hope for though. All the single-issue minded conservatives are going to have more to think about. It will still matter what Presidents believe or claim to believe about abortion, but White House policy on that is going to be a small factor compared to what states are doing. So the oversimplified calculation of “if he’s against abortion and his opponent isn’t, he gets my vote” is going to be much harder to cling to. So maybe more voters on the right will feel inclined to include other factors.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
One of the biggest ways to reduce abortion (regardless of restrictions) is to make high quality contraceptives available to all individuals at a very low to no cost solution. It is estimated that it would reduce current abortions by almost 75%. The most effective birth control is the IUD and comes at a cost of $750 to $1,000. This to me would be one quick step to getting bipartisan approval on a way to lower abortions. There are other health steps that could be taken that could lower this even further.
Regarding low cost/free contraception, that’s been the law since 2010, and we still have ~700k abortions per year, no? Plus, IUDs can prevent implantation—yes, less of a factor now with hormonal ones, but still—and hence that’s ethically problematic as well.
My take on ending abortion (for the most part at least) is that we’ve got to persuade the public that taxpayer funding of clinics is fundamentally unfair to the poor and pro-life taxpayers, and that there is really no such thing as casual sex. The flurry of actresses talking about their abortions are really evidence of this, as their lives are often quite the mess.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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