A 15-week ban would give women in the U.S. a more liberal ‘right’ than the one women in France are now celebrating.
Yesterday, former president Donald Trump suggested that he’d support a national ban on abortion around 15 weeks of pregnancy. This was the first time he has publicly supported a specific limit on the procedure.
Having called into a popular radio show in New York City, Sid & Friends in the Morning, Trump said:
We’re going to come up with a time — and maybe we could bring the country together on that issue. . . . The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. And I’m thinking in terms of that. And it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable. But people are really, even hard-liners are agreeing, seems to be, 15 weeks seems to be a number that people are agreeing at.
However, he simultaneously asserted that abortion regulation should be a state issue, not a federal issue.
Everybody agrees — you’ve heard this for years — all the legal scholars on both sides agree: It’s a state issue. It shouldn’t be a federal issue, it’s a state issue.
Perhaps Trump envisions a world in which there is a federal limit on abortion up to a point during pregnancy, dubbed “reasonable” by the majority, after which states are free to impose further limitations. Regardless of how he might square these two positions, the Left is not having it.
Speaking on the topic at an earlier date, Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson for Biden said,
This is straight out of the Handmaid’s Tale. Nationwide abortion bans, attacks on same-sex marriage, and restrictions on contraception — this is the horrifying reality being openly discussed by Team Trump and the likely architects of his second term agenda.
That’s right, folks. Any federal limit on abortion — say, even at the point of viability — is straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale. (Where’s my red bonnet?)
It seems the American Left has forgotten that other progressive, European nations have pretty firm bans on abortion after a certain number of weeks. In comparison, America is the Wild West of “reproductive care.” In some U.S. states, a woman can get an abortion up to the point of birth for no other reason than that she wants one.
In France, for example — which enshrined the “right” to abortion in its constitution earlier this month, in a show of epic virtue-signaling — women are still unable to get late-term abortions without an especial, intervening reason (such as risk to the mother’s health).
As National Review reported,
France approved a bill that enshrines the right to an abortion in its constitution on Monday, becoming the first country in the world to do so. . . . French lawmakers in both chambers of the Parliament voted 780 to 72 in favor of the amendment.
When the amendment officially passed, a large crowd broke out into celebratory ecstasy beneath the Eiffel Tower. Topless women, decorated with body paint, danced through the crowd. Those gathered, mostly Parisian women, sung the apparently universal Beyoncé tune “Run the World (Girls).”
Under the amendment, abortion is now considered a “guaranteed freedom” in France. . . . This means that future leadership in the European nation will be unable to “drastically modify” existing French law, which permits abortion up to 14 weeks into pregnancy.
A woman interviewed by the Washington Post underneath the Eiffel Tower said, “It’s incredible. It’s a long fight for all generations, my mother, my grandmother, my daughter; it’s for every woman. It’s incredible to be the first country to protect this fundamental right of all women.”
Really? All this hullabaloo for the “right” to abortion up to 14 weeks? Only 14 weeks?
Under the nebulous, amorphous ban Trump mentioned, women in the U.S. would de facto have the “right” to abortion up to 15 weeks. There is, of course, a difference in the meaning and enforcement of a law that says “you have a constitutional right to do x” versus one that says “you cannot do x in these stipulated circumstances,” but the effects are very similar.
While in France, women have a “right” to abortion up to 14 weeks of gestational age, which entails a limit after that time has passed. Inversely, states in the U.S. that ban abortion at a certain gestational age necessarily allow abortions up to that point.
In this way, Florida and Utah have more “liberal” abortion laws than France. Florida allows for abortions to be performed up until 15 gestational weeks; Utah until 18 weeks. (And I’m not even mentioning the eight states that allow abortions past viability and up to the point of birth.)
The 15-week abortion ban, which Trump half-heartedly supported, would allow women in the U.S. to legally receive abortions later in their pregnancy than women in France. How come there aren’t any topless women with slogans in body paint dancing beneath the Washington Monument?