Really, that’s the way things seem to be going. Right now, there’s a big drive to set the limit at around six weeks.
If you are a woman who happens to live in Kentucky or Mississippi, your state lawmakers seem to believe you are so in tune with your own personal biology that you will not only realize you’re pregnant within six weeks, but could also find the time to arrange an abortion, even if there’s only one abortion clinic in the entire state.
Although obviously the real plan is to keep you pregnant, whether you like it or not.
Six-week bills — they’re tied to the arrival of the first fetal heartbeat — are moving through legislatures in about a dozen states. Some are supposed to slumber in a sort of legal cocoon until the moment — looking at you, Justice Kavanaugh! — when the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Dr. Leana Wen, president of Planned Parenthood, counts over 250 bills to ban or restrict abortion that were introduced in state legislatures this year — a jump of about 63 percent compared with last year. “We know this is a direct response to Brett Kavanaugh being on the Supreme Court.”
Lots of these eager legislators are hoping that their anti-abortion bill will spark a suit that makes their state the one to deliver a case to Kavanaugh and his colleagues. Maybe Georgia was trying to attract some special attention when it passed a law imposing up to 10 years in prison on any woman who terminates a pregnancy after a heartbeat is detected.
Certainly hard to ignore. There doesn’t seem to be any punishment for the father. This gives us a chance to recall that when Donald Trump was running for president, at one point he seemed to be supporting the idea of jail time for women who got abortions. But when the interviewer asked about the man, Trump speedily responded, “I would say no.”
Just for the record, back in 1999, on “Meet the Press,” Trump referred to himself as pro-choice four times. (“I am very pro-choice in every respect.”) But he was only, what — 53? Still evolving.
Trump has, of course, remade himself into an anti-abortion ideologue who nominates Supreme Court justices of like mind. In response, in state capitols around the country, legislators are comparing abortion to the Holocaust (Alabama), calling it “slaughter” (Tennessee) and referring to the pregnant woman as a “host body” (Florida).
There doesn’t seem to be time to mention the idea of helping women avoid pregnancy by expanding family planning services. Consider Missouri, where the legislature is currently working on one of those six-week bills. Missouri has been at war with Planned Parenthood for years because Planned Parenthood clinics advise pregnant women that there is an abortion option.
No consideration of all the health services and counseling the clinics offer, at a time when sexually transmitted diseases are soaring in the state. Pamela Merritt of the abortion access group Reproaction complains that while the state is fighting Planned Parenthood, it funnels millions of dollars into what she calls “fake clinics” that don’t do anything more than dissuade women with unwanted pregnancies from having an abortion.
“The maternal mortality is 50 percent higher than the rest of the country and rising,” said Wen, who feels a special affinity to the state, where she went to medical school.
When it comes to thoughtful planning, the Trump administration seems to be on the same wavelength. It awarded $450,000 to the Obria Group, which provides family planning services that include just about everything except, um, contraception.
“They are so vehemently anti-birth control,” said Alice Huling, a lawyer for Campaign for Accountability, a group that has been in court trying to get access to information on Obria’s programs. Not only does Obria avoid the pill, it also doesn’t provide patients with IUDs or even condoms.
Here’s the thing: If you want to claim the moral high ground in a fight over terminating pregnancy, you have to support effective family planning. Otherwise you’re either an appalling hypocrite or an elected official attempting to impose your religion on Americans of different faiths.
What’s truly going on here, people, is a war against sex without procreation. If the people declaring they’re “pro-life” in legislatures around the country were only concerned about stopping abortion, they’d be handing out vouchers for free contraceptives at every street corner.
Some religions, notably including the Catholic Church, believe sex is sinful if it precludes the possibility of producing a baby. The First Amendment gives the faithful the right to try to convince women that their way is God’s way. But it doesn’t allow them to pass laws that make the rest of the country follow their religious tenets.
There ought to be a way for people of goodwill to join hands and work together to make all pregnancies wanted pregnancies. There are plenty of good strategies: Effective sex education in the schools. Affordable family planning services for all.