Posted on 10/13/2021 4:35:26 AM PDT by Kaslin
Texas Right to Life says S.B. 8, the state law that prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, has "saved at least 100 lives PER DAY" since it took effect on Sept. 1. Another calculation suggests the number "could be as high as 132."
One reason for the uncertainty is that Texas women who have crossed S.B. 8's legal threshold, which typically happens around six weeks into a pregnancy, can still obtain abortions in other states with less restrictive policies. In that respect, recent experience in Texas offers a preview of what will happen if the Supreme Court decides, contrary to what it has been saying for nearly half a century, that the Constitution does not protect a woman's right to abortion after all.
A case the justices will hear next month, involving Mississippi's ban on elective abortions performed after 15 weeks, presents an opportunity to revisit those precedents. But if the Court repudiates them, the consequences will be much less dramatic than anti-abortion activists hope and abortion advocates fear.
Unlike Mississippi's law, which was blocked before it took effect, the Texas ban has survived multiple challenges, including a Justice Department lawsuit that produced a short-lived preliminary injunction because of its novel enforcement mechanism, which relies on private litigation rather than direct state action. Both laws are plainly inconsistent with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that said states may not ban abortion before "viability," and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 ruling that reaffirmed Roe's "central holding."
What would happen if those barriers were removed? The current situation in Texas provides some clues.
The abortion clinics that challenged S.B. 8, aka the Texas Heartbeat Act, estimated that it would affect "at least 85%" of women seeking abortions. But that does not mean the law has reduced abortions by 85%, which would amount to something like 127 fewer abortions per day, judging from statewide data for 2020.
Appointments at abortion clinics in nearby states such as Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas surged after S.B. 8 took effect. While the financial and logistical burdens of traveling to other states probably have deterred some newly prohibited abortions, many are happening anyway.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, Oklahoma and Louisiana are among the 22 states that are likely to severely restrict abortion if Roe is overturned. But the CRR classifies New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas as states where elective abortions probably will remain legal, meaning those options would still exist even if Texas legislators, newly liberated by the Supreme Court, banned all abortions.
In 21 states, the CRR says, abortion rights are protected by statute or by judicial interpretations of state constitutions. Seven states lack such explicit legal protection but are not considered likely to enact bans in the absence of Roe.
Assuming that 22 states ban elective abortions, Middlebury College economist Caitlin Knowles Myers calculated this year, the average distance to an abortion clinic for women of childbearing age would increase from 35 to 279 miles. The upshot, she and her colleagues estimate, would be about 14% fewer abortions -- around 87,000 fewer annually, based on the 2018 total reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"A post-Roe United States isn't one in which abortion isn't legal at all," Myers told The New York Times. "It's one in which there's tremendous inequality in abortion access."
Public opinion about abortion regulation varies widely across the states. In most of the country, however, neither voters nor legislators are inclined to support the sort of sweeping restrictions that were common prior to Roe.
Something like a 14% drop in abortions would be a welcome development for those who view the procedure as tantamount to murder. But it is a far cry from the goal that has driven the anti-abortion movement since Roe, and the dystopia envisioned by that decision's most passionate supporters.
If Roe v Wade is ever overturned, all 50 State Legislatures will be in emergency session in 48 hours or less to make sure abortion is legal.
Here’s the issue with abortion.
In my opinion only.
No, I do not think anybody should get an abortion. A baby in the womb is a human being and was one since conception.
But you let one young girl, anywhere in America, get impregnated by her father....or gets pregnant by rape, and the country will rise in anger that in such cases abortion should be allowed.
Then you’ll have everybody who wants an abortion because they did not use birth control declaring they were raped.
And while few pregnancies are a result of copulation between a man and a daughter, it DOES happen. Most of America will not demand that the female should have to bear the child.
I see it as a matter of having the offender face her Lord and Savior on judgment day.
Because abortion will never....except most rarely, be totally banned.
“It’s one in which there’s tremendous inequality in abortion access.”
I, for one, am terribly tired of hearing that phrase attached to everything in sight when it has nothing to do with the topic other than an excuse to try to change local perception. If Texas wishes to have abortion limited some, it is their decision. If New York or California wishes o extend it, that’s up to them. If the topic is so overwhelming and means that much and you don’t like the decision, then move. There ae 50 other states, and a number of territories you can choose from. That is your freedom of choice. Be happy you live in a country that has it.
We have so many things that are unfair:
voting, education capacity, lying politicians at all levels, the price of a loaf of bread, reckless drivers that get people killed then are released into the population...and a whole lot more. But every time someone who doesn’t play the game tries to tell me the rules, I cringe.
Heard a phrase once:
People can be divided into three groups: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who sit around wondering what happened.
Everything we are tormented with is by ourselves. We have no one to blame but ourselves. So, make changes or go where you want to live with a like kind of person. But listening to these self-centered eggheads tell me it isn’t unfair while they are paid a huge salary, and don’t have to be concerned, and are only doing it to make you concerned so they can make their pittance off you, is a ponzi scheme.
wy69
IF politicians would put as much effort behind the “morning after pill” as they do pushing or opposing abortion, the issue would become moot.
They will not though because some Republicans think that even one day after conception is still murder, and dim-0s dont want to solve the issue, they would rather have it un solved so they can stir up idiots with it for votes.
“It’s one in which there’s tremendous inequality in abortion access.”
Maybe I’m a state’s rights person on this one. Why does the federal government need to be involved in the abortion issue?
If each state can make its own laws, yes, that will lead to inequality, but the reason we have states with their own governments is so one state doesn’t have the same laws as another, which is in turn because the people in the individual states think differently. Nothing wrong with that.
I’d not advise anyone to have an abortion.
Nope...I foresee all 50 States making abortion illegal. It’ll take time but I’d say 99% of society still believes it’s killing a human being. The question is...rights?? The right to kill an innocent can never be a right. Kill your 3 year old and see what happens.
That issue is not before the Court and is beyond it’s authority.
279 miles. Five hours of contemplating the action you’re about to take with many opportunities to make a U-turn
Is slavery a state’s rights issue? Because the unwanted child could be sold into slavery. Wouldn’t that be better than killing him? Do you believe that it was OK for Lincoln to intervene in slavery, but not OK for Clarence Thomas to intervene in abortion?
FReegards.
Is slavery beyond the court’s authority?
Just wondering if you are consistent.
FReegards.
I guess it depends on what word you use ... abortion or murder ...
It is called Murder as a form of birth control!
“I guess it depends on what word you use ... abortion or murder”
It is the taking of a life.
There’s such controversy over this issue that the Federal government can’t make the entire nation happy no matter what it does.
You can say the same for State governments but my overriding consideration is to keep the Federal government out of as much as possible.
Abortion is a personal issue supposedly covered by the Freedoms allotted in the Bill of Rights. Such a lot of cr**.
Right to Life supercedes Liberty.
I’m not holding my breath for abortion to be banned in my state. If California turns any bluer she’s going to pass out.
That's because the pro-abortion forces have successfully suppressed the scientific fact that that human life begins at conception and the moral fact that abortion is not just murder, but the savage, excruciatingly painful dismemberment or chemical incineration of an innocent baby. Even people that are generally against abortion stupidly concede the so-called "rape or incest" exceptions as if those children were not human because of the happenstance of their conception. It is punishing the child for the crime of it's parents.
As an aside, it seems to me that if people from non-abortion states start flooding abortion states to kill their babies, those states will become known as abortion destinations. At some point, the decent people of the state will get uncomfortable being known as a slaughterhouse and may start fighting to change the law there too. One state at a time.
Slavery is prohibited by the Constitution.
Abortion is neither prohibited or allowed, the Constitution is silent, it is and has always been a state matter.
Should, and what the constitution allows, are two different things.
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