> I don't see any Republicans targeting victims of rape and incest, and I'm sure if you talk to most of then they are OK with exceptions in these cases.
Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Louisiana all have laws with no exceptions for this. That’s a majority of the states who have bans in place. So no, republican-controlled legislatures are mostly not okay with those exceptions.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/99466 https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/9946...
I think it's interesting how medpagetoday reports these laws compared to how the laws are written. As just one example, medpagetoday says this about Missouri:
> As of June 24, Missouri's trigger ban is in effect. It prohibits all abortions, except "in cases of medical emergency" for the pregnant person, meaning death or a irreversible impairment to a major bodily function. There are no exceptions for rape and incest.
If you read the linked trigger ban it reads:
> No abortion shall be performed or induced upon a woman, except in cases of medical emergency. Any person who knowingly performs or induces an abortion of an unborn child in violation of this subsection shall be guilty of a class B felony, as well as subject to suspension or revocation of his or her professional license by his or her professional licensing board. A woman upon whom an abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subsection shall not be prosecuted for a conspiracy to violate the provisions of the subsection.[1]
(emphasis mine)
A couple things to note, the law does not explicitly forbid abortions in the case of rape and incest. It doesn't mention them at all. As laws usually get developed, there will likely be some court case that rises because of an event where rape or incest has occurred and the medical provider gave an abortion. After the case, some precedent will be set. As of right now, there is no precedent or explicit laws about this specific scenario.
Second, the law specifically notes that the medical provider is liable, not the woman. The reason I'm pointing this out is because the way medpagetoday makes it sound, it looks like the woman will be liable and they make it look as if states are actively writing laws to force women to carry a child born of rape or incest which is blatantly false. The law does not mention this at all.
The same thing is true of the Oklahoma law quoted in that article:
> Every person who administers to any woman, or who prescribes for any woman, or advises or procures any woman to take any medicine, drug or substance, or uses or employs any instrument, or other means whatever, with intent thereby to procure the miscarriage of such woman, unless the same is necessary to preserve her life, shall be guilty of a felony punishable by imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for not less than two (2) years nor more than five (5) years.[2]
And from medpagetoday:
> There are no exceptions for rape or incest.
This is true, there are no exceptions for rape and incest, and there's also no law explicitly saying that a woman is forced to carry through this. This is why I'm hesitant to believe any sources like the one you quoted. They take the laws, find a way to twist the law in a way to make it sound worse than it is, then present that as the truth. When the reality is, like all laws, there is gray area that will be explored as more court cases rise.
> So no, republican-controlled legislatures are mostly not okay with those exceptions.
Or, if you actually read the laws, it seems like rape and incest just aren't mentioned and haven't been dealt with yet. Seems like a bit of misinformation on your end or something, but at least they linked to some of the laws so we can find out what they actually say ;)
[1]: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/22-2022.pdf?sfvrsn=39ffd2d_2 https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/22-202...
[2]: https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/2021/title-21/section-21-861/ https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/2021/title-21/section-...
First, let me say that I appreciate that you've at least expressed a willingness to change your mind. That's more than I can say about myself.
Second, I must impress upon you that I'm not here to do your research for you. It seems like you're in a media bubble, and given that you've preemptively restricted me on the sources you're willing to accept, it seems like you want to stay there, so I won't try and post any sources for you lest they be rejected outright because you consider them biased. By the fact that you've posted links that presumably you found using Google, I think you are perfectly capable of finding information yourself if you're so inclined.
To address your specific points:
> If you're referring to ectopic pregnancies, it looks like the majority of abortions are not due to an ectopic pregnancy.
This sounds like a utilitarian argument where you are weighing numbers and coming out on the side with the most "lives saved". You appear to be weighing the lives of 80-100k women against 1 million abortions that you consider innocent people killed who cannot defend themselves (are the women not innocent? When were they found guilty?), and coming out on the side of the fetuses/embryos (I note that you do not distinguish between viable and unviable abortions).
But your moral calculus doesn't mean ectopic pregnancies aren't life-threatening to women. Since you're aware of what ectopic pregnancies are, your claim that you fail to see how abortions can be lifesaving doesn't follow. You do in fact see how they are lifesaving, but you value other lives more. I'm not going to fault you for that, as I in fact value my own life, the life of my mother, nieces, and sister more than that of any nascent lifeform inside of them. That's my morality, thank you for telling me yours.
> I don't know of any laws that have been passed in any state banning abortions that save the life of the mother.
The problem with this is that the laws are very gray, and that's a huge problem when on one side you're saving a life, and on the other you're viewed as someone murdering a baby. This causes doctors and hospital lawyers to err heavily on the side of not performing an abortion unless the mother's life is critically at risk. The implication here is that if an ectopic pregnancy has a heartbeat, doctors are afraid to do anything until it ruptures, which puts the mother's life at extreme risk for a pregnancy that isn't even viable in the first place.
You can see how this played out in Ireland, causing them to reverse their total ban, but we're going in the opposite direction here with the same predictable consequences. If you want to find examples of such cases already in America, look to Texas, and Michigan where women are fleeing to and having abortions of their ectopic pregnancies, due to their own state refusing to treat them because of a detectable heartbeat.
> And I can think of nothing more dangerous than a political group oppressing and killing people unable to defend themselves in the name of "reproductive rights".
There are 0 political groups in the United States forcing women to have abortions. The whole point of being "pro-choice" is that it's up to the individual and their doctor.
> I would seriously like to see actual laws that are passed or trying to be passed to ban abortions that save the life of the mother. If you can show me evidence of that I would be willing to reconsider the consequences of overturning roe v wade. But right now, it looks like the only thing happening is states have the power again instead of the federal government.
This is the "there is no slippery slope" take. The idea that power has just been returned to the states is belied by the former Vice President calling for a national abortion ban the day of the court's decision. They couldn't even pretend it was about states' rights for a single day. Since then the sentiment has been echoed by the Republican Majority Leader of the Senate. House Republicans have done the same.
Moreover, if you want to see how extreme things are about to get, take a look at Idaho, a state under total Republican control. The GOP party there just voted this weekend on their platform, and they decided overwhelmingly (412-164) to not support an exception for the life of the mother. That's the direction they are headed. Again, that party controls the entire state, so there's nothing stopping them from implementing that platform into law.
> I don't see any Republicans targeting victims of rape and incest, and I'm sure if you talk to most of then they are OK with exceptions in these cases.
Are you really sure? Because this seems to not be the case to me. I mean, have you not been paying attention to the national debate about the 10-year old who had to travel out of Ohio to get an abortion? She had to do so because Ohio does not have an exception for rape or incest. Her life was at risk, but there are Republicans out there now saying she should have carried the baby and if her life was threatened at some point during the pregnancy she could have aborted then. Again, this girl is 10. The situation is so monstrous that right wing media wanted to pretend that it didn't happen, or that terminating the pregnancy isn't technically an abortion somehow.
Pro-life groups wanted to paint people who get late-term abortions as murderers who commit infanticide, but now you have to deal with the consequence of raped, pregnant children carrying children of their own, and a political party that supports that.
Honestly, it really surprises me that you call fetuses "people unable to defend themselves" but don't see how many pro-life advocates won't allow exceptions for rape and incest. Their logic is that the circumstances of the conception don't change the fact that the fetus is a person unable to defend itself. Your point of view is logically inconsistent, and that's why pro-life advocates are now taking the logically consistent (but extreme) position of banning such exceptions outright. According to the Texas governor, their plan is to "end rape" which is not something that he has the power to do.
> There were around 140k abortions due to rape in 2019.[1]
[1] shows the total number of rapes reported to law enforcement. We know in fact that around 80% of rapes are not reported to law enforcement because they are worse than useless at defending the victims of rape and prosecuting the perpetrators. Often reporting a rape to law enforcement results in re-victimization and ostracism.
At any rate, it doesn't matter to me if the majority of cases are due to rape or not, just like it doesn't matter to pro-lifers that 99% of abortions are not late term. Nevertheless, late term abortions are constantly held up as a moral mirror to try and force the issue into a black and white area. Pro-choice advocates have made the moral calculation and have concluded that: yes, late term abortions are not what anyone wants, but if we weigh the life of the mother and the almost born fetus, we will leave it up to the mother to decide, because she has the most at stake.
Now the shoe is on the other foot; pro-life advocates must explain why a 10 year old rape victim is be forced to carry that baby under the laws they passed. It doesn't matter how many there are in proportion to the whole. The debate is one of morality, and so it's taken to logical conclusions.
> even if Republicans pass laws allowing victims of rape and incest, and ectopic pregnancies to abort, I have a feeling you still won't be happy.
No, I won't be happy, because I don't want anyone telling me what I can do with my body - especially when it's based heavily on their theology, one to which I don't ascribe (and which contradicts my own).
Finally, I will conclude with a utilitarian argument you may appreciate. There are over 1 million miscarriages every year. If a fetus is a person, then a miscarriage is not merely common and natural bodily function, but instead the tragic death of a child. This makes miscarriage the number one cause of death for Americans, accounting for 30% of all deaths every year. Miscarriages are more deadly to Americans than heart disease, cancer, or COVID.
Are we as a nation responding in a way that is proportional to those statistics? Are pro-life advocates and their political apparatus working as tirelessly to end miscarriages as they are to end abortion? I don't see that happening at all, and I think that gives away the whole charade.