On the abortion issue, the ballot box is where unwanted opinions do matter

 

I was in a religious studies class in college when the instructor gave groups of three different topics to discuss among themselves and offer the group’s “consensus” opinion. The topic the group I was assigned to was about abortion; the “conversation” was entirely one-sided, as myself and a Muslim woman were told we had nothing to say about the matter by a despotic, radical feminist-type. End of conversation. Why waste any breath "discussing" the issue with someone like that?

When “our’ turn came to announce “our” perspective, this white female student confidently asserted that abortion was every woman’s right at any stage they chose, and her opinion was the only one that “mattered.” However, people like this do not impress me. Well, I said, I might not have a “right” to tell a woman if they can have an abortion or not, but my opinion does matter, because I am voter. Alienating any voter, (male or female) by excluding morality in your equation is not perhaps the best strategy.

While I don’t think I ever voted for anyone who was “pro-life,” other people have, which explains why that although as late as 2020, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four liberals in striking down a Louisiana law that reduced the “right” of doctors to admit patients seeking abortions, times were a changin'. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg—who for decades was in ill health with recurring bouts with cancer, and who seemingly could die at any time—lost her race against time and Trump replaced her with another Federalist Society-approved candidate with a decidedly “pro-life” agenda. 

We are thus left to mull over the fact that if a percentage point or two less than 53 percent of white women had voted for Trump in 2016, we wouldn’t have an ethically corrupt Supreme Court majority inventing privacy and environmental law based on faulty definition of words.

With a far-right majority ready to overturn Roe v Wade in hand, many states decided to take matters in their own hands; Colorado, for example, passed what is certainly the most radical abortion law in this country or any country, virtually banning any restrictions on the right to an abortion right up to the moment of “natural” birth. 

Critics have called the law overly “broad” and non-specific in its language, allowing no room to question what exactly is legal; "anything" is, no matter how offensive to the common senses it may be. 

Currently seven states—Maine, Alaska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont as well as Colorado, have passed laws that leave all decisions between the doctor and the “patient.” Opinions from people looking from the "outside" are simply an "invasion of privacy."

Thus the Supreme Court’s eventual overturning of Roe v Wade was self-defeating; the original argument from the pro-abortion side before the court in 1973 was “the right to an abortion is absolute; a person is entitled to end a pregnancy at any time, for any reason, in any way they choose.” The argument on the other side was that constitutional “rights” begin at conception. 

But while the court noted that "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense," the original justices believed that a woman alone making the decision about the difference between what is “human” and what is “non-human” was morally a bridge way too far at that time, and the court’s  ruling was not the blanket “approval” of abortion as is its reputation, but allowed states to make determinations about the “viability” of fetuses and restrict abortions as such.

Meanwhile, this week pro-abortion activists are declaring a victory of sorts in Ohio, where Republicans—who have basically controlled the state since 2012—ignored their own law banning special elections in August due to “low turnout,” and in an apparent “desperation” bid to stop the passage of a state initiative to “enshrine” abortion rights in the Ohio constitution, put forward their own "amendment" in an obvious effort to prevent that. 

The Republican amendment to the state constitution would have changed the part that states that only a simple majority of voters can amend the constitution, which to be honest the 60 percent threshold proposed by the Republican amendment sounds sensible, since changing the  constitution shouldn’t be up to a fickle majority.

Unfortunately, Republican lawmakers added some onerous addendums that made it obvious what its purpose was, and if passed would have had a detrimental effect on any issue before the voters. As it stands now, the decisive defeat of the Republican amendment means that the abortion amendment on the ballot in November is likely to pass, since polls indicate it will do so by a large majority.

If there is any chance to defeat it, its opponents will have to point to language that seems to be contradictory in an effort to fool people: for example it will “allow the state to restrict abortion after fetal viability, which is defined as ‘the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient's treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures;’” Of course what “viability” means is in the opinion of the doctor; the “patient” just has to find the doctor who shares her opinion that a fetus is not “human” until the moment in can survive on its own outside the womb.

Yet even this is contradicted by the amendment’s previous proclamation, which will “prohibit the state of Ohio from interfering with this constitutional right ("to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions") except when the state demonstrates ‘that it is using the least restrictive means to advance the individual's health in accordance with widely accepted and evidence-based standards of care.’” 

I mean, what does even mean? I am reminded of the passage of anti-affirmative action I-200 in the state of Washington, which is still on the books after the recent referendum seeking to overturn it was defeated with help of loud Asian immigrant opposition. I-200 fooled many people with its “language” that claimed it opposed discrimination based on race—meaning against the white (and Asian) “race.”

Current Ohio law sets “viability” at 22 weeks, but the proposed abortion amendment essentially makes this stipulation moot, since the amendment takes even that assessment out of the legislature’s hands and into the hands of doctors bending to the will of their “patient.”

On the other hand, some states as of 2022 (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and formerly “progressive” Wisconsin) have passed laws that attempt to do the opposite, even restricting abortions in cases of rape or incest, for which abortion is not regarded as either a valid “reason,” or if so women must supply evidence valid in a court of law for such a claim before they can have an abortion for that reason. 

However, states with restrictive laws like South Dakota are more “sensitive” about the “feelings” of women, where an “amendment” to the current restrictive law removed language criminalizing women who have abortions, but maintaining the criminalization of “illegal” abortion providers.  

There are obvious reasons why even "late-term" abortion should be lawful—if the health of the pregnant woman is in danger, or the determination that the fetus is developing abnormally and will suffer serious, life-threatening defects if allowed to come to term. 

Otherwise, I have a real hard time with the theory that “the right to an abortion is absolute; a person is entitled to end a pregnancy at any time, for any reason, in any way they choose.” Maybe these images were provided by the "wrong side," but I don't need anyone to tell me what to think, say, about partial-birth abortion...

 

...which involves partially delivering the “fetus” and effectively committing homicide by opening a hole in the base of its skull and suctioning out its brain matter, which makes the “fetus” less “painful” for the woman to evacuate. Of course we are not talking about any "pain" of conscience here.

Maybe I don’t have a “right” to make the moral judgment that that some pro-abortion fanatics seem to lack, but “opinions” do mean something at the ballot box, which some voters in 2016 forgot, and I suspect will also in 2024 as well.