[Buge]

According to [1], in 1973, Roe v. Wade said abortion is legal US-wide at 27/28 weeks and earlier, then in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey said abortion is legal US-wide at 22/23/24 weeks and earlier. I'm not exactly sure whether the ages are inclusive or exclusive or how rounding/truncating works with the ages, which is why I made them fuzzy with the slashes.

According to [2], there are 203 countries listed. I'll look at "on request" abortions.

* North Korea is marked "unclear".

* 6 allow abortion at 23 weeks (24 weeks is also an identical list): China, Colombia, Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, South Ossetia

* 2 additional allow abortion at 22 weeks: Iceland, Vietnam

* 191 ban abortion at 22 weeks.

* Australia ranges from completely prohibited to no limit, depending on region.

* Canada ranges from 12 weeks and 6 days to 24 weeks and 6 days depending on region.

* United states ranges from (ignoring the recent laws that prompted the ongoing cases) 20 weeks to no limit depending on region.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade#Planned_Parenthood...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law#Independent_count...

[ss108]

Interesting, thanks.

I feel like nobody brings up other countries when it comes to abortion, but the context seems pretty helpful (as it is for most issues, I suppose). Esp since, looking at Australia and Canada, people get on and tolerate internal divergences, and maybe we should too. I suppose is it's because they accept that their federalism is much less centralized than ours.

[js2]

Men arguing over women's wombs. Love it. So this doesn't paint a complete picture. It turns out that 93% of abortions in the U.S. happen at <= 13 weeks gestation:

Among the 43 areas that reported gestational age at the time of abortion for 2019, 79.3% of abortions were performed at ≤9 weeks’ gestation, and nearly all (92.7%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation (Table 10).

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm

So it's not like we're a country of monsters despite what's technically allowed by Roe. Now I want you to imagine for a moment what's happening in the life of a woman who chooses to have an abortion well into her pregnancy, likely after quickening when she can feel movement. Well it turns out you can't, because every case will be different. And I don't trust the state to insert itself into that decision. But I'll bet every one of these women has a story to tell and that it's heartbreaking, and that we don't make those women's lives better by forcing them to carry to term.

Data from the Turnaway Study has resulted in the publication of more than 50 peer-reviewed studies, and the answer to nearly all the questions asked, said Foster, is that the women who got abortions fared better in respect to economics and health, including their mental health, compared with those who did not have abortions.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/01/21/1074605...

So that's my first point, but I acknowledged some will disagree.

Now, Mississippi's law is to limit abortions to 15 weeks, so you may think it's a reasonable compromise. But with Roe overturned, it will not stop there. It's only a matter of time till some states ban abortion entirely. Some already have:

https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-polici...

Anti-choicers will push for restrictions at the Federal level. They'll try to ban pharmaceutical abortion pills through the mail. They'll try to prevent women from traveling out of state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ba...

https://khn.org/news/article/texas-medication-abortion-crimi...

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/03/24/inside-missouris-pus...

Finally, outlawing abortions won't stop abortions. Never has and never will. What it will do is to punish poor women who don't have the means to travel to where abortion is legal. This is already the case under Roe, and w/o Roe it will be worse.

So sure, Roe may have been poorly reasoned. Perhaps a decision based on equal protection instead of privacy would have been better. But it's what we have, and given the virtual impossibility of amending the constitution, it's the only way we can have a Federal standard.

And no, I don't think handing it over to the states is workable, any more than it was workable to allow the states to decide segregation, voting rights, contraception, or interracial and gay marriage.

Women are entitled to equal protection under the law, and that includes deciding whether to carry a baby to term.

Overturning Roe is a travesty.

Disclosure: I'm a guy.

[rayiner]

> Men arguing over women's wombs. Love it.

Men and women have similar views on abortion: https://www.vox.com/2019/5/20/18629644/abortion-gender-gap-p.... Indeed, abortion is one of the political issues with the smallest gender gap in views. Women diverge from men much more on questions like the size of the social safety net. In Mississippi, the State whose law this Supreme Court case is about, the majority of women, and people of all races, oppose abortion.

Abortion advocates are no different than any other kind of progressive advocate--they claim the mantle of an entire group to champion extreme positions that most members of the group don't support, while seeking to suppress the voices of other members of the group. In reality, all the people I know who oppose abortion are women. They're moms, typically religious, and are rarely represented in discussions among educated elites like on HN. (I myself, like most educated elites, support some level of abortion rights, though I find myself favor limiting it to the first trimester, like most Americans.)

The backbone of the pro-life movement is conservative women, just like the backbone of the pro-choice movement is liberal women. Many conservative women--and slightly more women identify as conservative than liberal--deeply care about abortion. Many prioritize abortion more highly than libertarian economics, which is why the impetus for the GOP to take action on abortion has grown as women gain more power in the party. Conservative women almost uniformly love Justice Barrett. Many Republican men, by contrast, (the Justice Roberts type, or the four Republican men who voted to uphold Roe in Casey) would love to drop or at least moderate on abortion to capture more votes in affluent suburbs.

> So this doesn't paint a complete picture. It turns out that 93% of abortions in the U.S. happen at <= 13 weeks gestation. So it's not like we're a country of monsters despite what's technically allowed by Roe.

What the laws "technically allow" are an expression of society's values and sense of morality. Laws create not only legal effects, but social norms. In many cases, the social norms are more important than the legal effect. If we made stealing legal, most people, in the short term, wouldn't steal, because of the strong social norm against it. But over time and generations, we would have normalized stealing.

And even before that, we will have legalized conduct that is immoral and wrong, even if it's rare. by your numbers, you're talking about over 40,000 second trimester abortions a year. Some of which I'm sure would be justified regardless due to fetal deformity or health risks, but you could still be talking about thousands of monstrous acts a year where neither of those factors is implicated.

> And no, I don't think handing it over to the states is workable, any more than it was workable to allow the states to decide segregation, voting rights, contraception, or interracial and gay marriage.

Leaving abortion to legislatures has worked just fine in the rest of the world. Roe was heard within a few years of similar cases in Austria, France, Italy, and Germany, except Germany which found legalized abortion to violate the Basic Law. All of those Courts determined to leave abortion to the legislature. The courts in the EU left same-sex marriage to legislatures as well: https://eclj.org/marriage/the-echr-unanimously-confirms-the-...

It's fundamentally mistaken to view every social issue through the lens of segregation of Black people. Black people were a minority, brought to the U.S. in slavery, and after they were freed, they were excluded from white society. The white majority had no common bond with the Black minority, and no material interest in their welfare. Segregation laws did not affect, directly or indirectly, the white people who voted for them. Democracy could not operate in this situation.

Contraception, same-sex marriage, and abortion are completely different, because they effect everyone. Women and gay people are uniformly distributed throughout the population. The women who support restrictions on abortion are supporting restrictions on themselves. And the men who support such restrictions will be directly affected if they have to raise an unplanned child. Because the population as a whole has an interest in the outcome, democracy can operate to find a socially acceptable resolution of a contentious issue.

Liberals have used this mistaken analogy to segregation to champion a view of the Supreme Court that wrests control of society's moral and cultural development away from the public and entrusts it to highly educated elites. Abortion is legal to 24 weeks not because the public wants it, but because a bunch of libertarian-leaning Republican judges in the 1970s and 1980s did. Had Roe gone the other way, I strongly suspect we would have reached an equilibrium today that reflects public opinion of supporting elective abortion in the first trimester, but only in exceptional cases after that.

[js2]

> Men and women have similar views on abortion

I never made any claim about support for abortion rights of men vs women. My point is only that men should be especially circumspect about restricting what a woman can do with her body.

> Abortion advocates

First of all, I'm not an abortion advocate. I'm an abortion-rights advocate. Let me lay out my position so that it is clear:

The way to reduce abortions is to reduce unintentional pregnancies and to better support women and mothers.

To wit, I want free and universal contraception and sex education. I want better birth control options for men (and I put my money where my mouth is by having a vasectomy after my wife and I had two children). I support a stronger social safety net than America provides.

I believe we can reduce second and third term abortions by making first term abortions easier. But should a woman, for whatever reason, need an abortion after the first term, that should be between her and her medical provider. I don't think any woman wants to have an abortion, especially one after the first trimester, and so I trust women to make that decision for themselves.

> are no different than any other kind of progressive advocate--they claim the mantle of an entire group to champion extreme positions that most members of the group don't support, while seeking to suppress the voices of other members of the group.

Supporting abortion rights is not an extreme position among men or women. A majority of Americans, men and women, support Roe and think abortion should be legal in "most or all cases":

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/05/06/about-six-i...

I am not trying to suppress anyone's voice. I am arguing against those who aim to restrict what I believe is fundamentally a woman's right.

> In reality, all the people I know who oppose abortion are women.

This is neither here nor there, but I happen to think that women who "oppose abortion in most or all cases" have fortunately never had to face a decision like this:

https://joshandrebeccashrader.wordpress.com/2018/11/15/my-cr...

> And even before that, we will have legalized conduct that is immoral and wrong, even if it's rare. by your numbers, you're talking about over 40,000 second trimester abortions a year. Some of which I'm sure would be justified regardless due to fetal deformity or health risks, but you could still be talking about thousands of monstrous acts a year where neither of those factors is implicated.

In Germany in 2020 there were 2,226 abortions in weeks 12 to 21. There were 648 at 22 and more weeks:

https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Health...

Which of those were immoral and wrong? Which were monstrous acts? Who decides?

The vast majority of women who have abortions after the first trimester don't realize they are pregnant, don't have resources to get an abortion sooner, or there is a fetal deformity.

https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2013/11/who-seeks-a...

What's immoral and wrong is to decline them the right to decide for themselves.

> Leaving abortion to legislatures has worked just fine in the rest of the world.

The U.S is not the rest of the world. We either let state legislatures decide or leave it to Congress. It is immoral to leave it to the states because it will disproportionally harm women who do not have the means to travel or who wish or need to obtain an abortion confidentially. It will increase abortions after the first trimester.

Leaving it to Congress is anti-democratic due to the Senate. But say we do leave it to Congress, which presumably has the authority to grant or restrict abortion access under the Commerce Clause. Then we're right back to the Supreme Court to rule on that authority.

> It's fundamentally mistaken to view every social issue through the lens of segregation of Black people. [...] Contraception, same-sex marriage, and abortion are completely different. [...] Liberals have used this mistaken analogy to segregation.

The analogy to segregation is because its supporters defended it as as states rights issue, just like supporters of restricting abortion access. Similarly for the other issues. These are all issues that should not be left to the states.

> Champion a view of the Supreme Court that wrests control of society's moral and cultural development away from the public and entrusts it to highly educated elites.

Do you think that Griswold, Loving, and Obergefell are also issues that should have (should still be?) left to the states?

Here's what I think: Only 6% of the country could vote when the country was founded. Since that time, we've been on a path to greater democracy. But the country still retains anti-democratic institutions, and they are currently held by conservatives and allow a minority viewpoint to restrict the rights of others. At the same time, I think the constitution and representative democracy are what protects us from mob rule.

If resting control away from the states by finding implied rights in the constitution in order to allow interracial marriage, gay marriage and so forth is what is required due to the particulars of America's government, so be it.

> Abortion is legal to 24 weeks not because the public wants it, but because a bunch of libertarian-leaning Republican judges in the 1970s and 1980s did. Had Roe gone the other way, I strongly suspect we would have reached an equilibrium today.

America has highly conflicting views on abortion:

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abo...

If Roe had gone the other way, I expect we'd be exactly where we're about to end up with restrictions varying by state, and with constant arguments over it in Congress.

> that reflects public opinion of supporting elective abortion in the first trimester, but only in exceptional cases after that.

Which is where we are as a practical matter in any case.