Last week, Russ Douthat of the New York Times wrote an opinion piece, “What Do Liberals Believe About Late-Term Abortion?”, in which he outlined some of the parameters of the debate regarding both late-term and abortion in general. This year the Democrats have used the abortion access issue as key part of their electoral strategy.
Some excerpts.
First, Douthat provides a definition:
“The phrase ‘late-term’ itself is contested, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m talking about abortions that take place around or beyond the threshold of potential fetal viability, which (thanks to medical advances) currently sits somewhere in the range of 22 weeks to 25 weeks of pregnancy.”
Then to put the number of late-term abortions in perspective:
“… (the) belief, that these procedures are vanishingly rare, turns on the question of what “rare” means. Relative to other abortions, yes, late-term procedures are extremely rare: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 percent of American abortions take place at or after 21 weeks, which, by my calculation, would be slightly under 10,000 out of slightly under one million.
“On the other hand, relative to other causes of childhood death that liberals take extremely seriously, thousands of late-term abortions loom quite large. The CDC reports that in total just over 10,000 American children under age 14 died of natural and unnatural causes in 2022. As the demographer Lyman Stone points out, if you included late-term abortion in those numbers, it would instantly be the leading cause of childhood death, eclipsing diseases, drugs and gun violence.”
He then covers the implications:
“…if you accept that they will be killed in meaningful numbers (numbers that would almost certainly increase under Harris’s preferred legal order), well, then you need to either retreat to the life-begins-at-breath position — radical but consistent, mystical but stable — or else come up with some other marker that establishes personhood at, say, 35 weeks of pregnancy and consigns viable fetuses before that line to a less-than-human status.
“Having followed these debates for many years, I think it’s fair to say that the pro-choice side — not every pro-choice individual, but the political collective — consistently refuses to make this choice, preferring to occupy an ambiguous zone where late-term abortion is permitted in law, minimized as a reality and left unjustified by any consistent argument about human life or human rights.”
Bill Clinton’s 1992 statement that “abortion should be safe, legal, and rare” was politically shrewd as it provided an umbrella for a wide-range of pro-choice supporters. However that umbrella was more of façade than of any structural significance. Popular opinion points to the 2022 overturning of Roe as the radicalization of the pro-choice movement which saw abortion not as a regrettable choice, but rather as an affirmation of identity and, dare I say it, a sacrament. However, in reality that radicalization began long before 2022 as the radicalism of feminism and the Left in general overcame humanism.
In short, for all the caterwauling among the Left regarding the supposed radicalism of the pro-life movement, the energy pushing the pro-abortion movement even before Dobbs was even more radical.
A quick perusal of the post-Dobbs political landscape, as the various state legislatures passed or updated abortion laws, showed a peculiar style guide in the media as far as how the term “ban” was applied to legislation. “Abortion ban” did not only refer to states such as Alabama where abortion is permitted only in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, but also to other states where it permitted only up to 18 weeks (which makes it more liberal than well known Christian-fascist states such as France, Belgium, and the Czech Republic).
The reason for the Left’s radicalism is that to ban abortion at any time before birth would require that the personhood of a fetus be established at some point during gestation. This would require the Left to define when the individuality, and not just the viability, of the fetus occurs.
This today’s Left can never do, not in a world which calls abortion “reproductive health care” as if the fetus is a tumor to be cut out and disposed of.
Douthat playfully states the possibility of 35 weeks as that cut-off point; however, it becomes more problematic when one looks at the unique genetic structure of the fetus and the point of consciousness. The late writer Christopher Hitchens, noted leftist and atheist, believed that:
“Look, once you allow that the occupant of the womb is even potentially a life, it cuts athwart any glib invocation of ‘the woman’s right to choose.’”
The Left on the abortion issue, as with so many other issues, projects its radicalism onto its opponents. Once again the national Republican party has cut and run on an issue that with a little imagination and some guts would turn the table on the Democrats and their embrace of unrestricted abortion.
In other words, the left remains evil. I still recall and not pleasantly a picture on X claimed to be of a dead aborted baby with defensive wounds on its hands.
I don’t even consider myself “pro-life” but I am certainly anti-murder. The left is not.
Once again the national Republican party has cut and run on an issue that with a little imagination and some guts would turn the table on the Democrats and their embrace of unrestricted abortion.
What does the Gee Ohh Peeeee ever do except cut and run?
I’ve talked to people who don’t believe late term abortion ever happens or is even legal. The left works hard to ensure they keep believing that. Abortion has been a live wire in American politics for generations. There is absolutely no excuse for the reality of late term abortion to be some sort of open question open, like does bigfoot exist or is a hotdog a sandwich?
Sometimes I think I’ve grown to despise the GOP establishment enough- and then someone points out yet another reason why I have not.
The Left tries to confuse “late term abortion” with “partial birth abortion” or even neonatal murder, as Ralph Northam suggested as an option.
I honestly cannot figure out why the big-name establishment feminists and by extension leftist generally made abortion the hill for (pre-born humans) to die on.
Other than the fact that many of the mid-century prominent big-name feminists had abortions and wanted to justify their decision in retrospect.
There used to be a pro-life, anti-abortion feminist group … guess that they got read out of the meeting, so to speak.
I will add one other point from Douthat regarding the Dem talking point that late-term abortions are typically only obtained in situations where there’s a significant danger to the mother or a late-discovered fetal anomaly….
Last year, The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey interviewed a Colorado doctor who performs later-term abortions: He estimated that about half his patients have healthy pregnancies. A 2013 paper looking at the universe of abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy found that “most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
I think the Right and the pro-life movement has two problems in the post-Dobbs world. First is that the political edge tot he debate is much sharper because it is more relevant. Yes before Dobbs abortion politics was a big deal, but it was largely performative or on the peripheral; the larger questions were frozen by Roe. When Roe overturned, the Left was faster to react in part because it could mobilize support because of fear and because the Right was busy patting itself on the back. Once Roe was overturned, the Right was the proverbial dog that caught the car and didn’t know what to do next.
The next part is that politics is, like any adversarial phenomena, about trade-offs. Litigation, war, sports… the selection of any given strategy not only plays to your strengths but also opens vulnerabilities. In fact victory often depends on you executing your strategy before your opponent exploits your vulnerabilities.
The example a person gave me in regard to politics is in football when the defense blitzes; it looks impressive and if the QB isn’t alert he’s going to get smacked. However by definition the defense is leaving its secondary weak and is hoping that the QB isn’t able to find the open man in time; do onto to others before they do it onto you. Classic perceptual warfare.
The Dems are extremely vulnerable with this abortion strategy. It seems illogical for them to go to the wall for what amounts to a tiny fraction of overall abortions, but my feeling is that they are stuck in ideological trap and cannot get out.
The Right (notice not the GOP) need to start acting like the QB who sees the opportunities that a blitzing defense provides and carves them up. A simple question of what point in pregnancy would you state that abortion should be outlawed? That’s the question they cannot answer, but that’s what we need to exploit.
The Susan B. Anthony List (now Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America) is still active. So is Feminists For Life.