johnklepac wrote:I think that a woman should definitely be able to have an abortion anytime in the first trimester/trimester and a half, and that then it should become an issue of the conditions under which she became pregnant (e.g. if she was somehow raped while detained illegally and denied access to an abortion but was released or escaped a few months later, or if she didn't reasonably have access to an abortion clinic in the first few months).
I don't want you to feel singled out for your opinions, but I want to ask a question. What is it that changes along the way that makes later abortion not okay? Or another way to phrase it: what makes abortion okay, what do you base that right in? And what then removes that right, and why can there still be exceptions (like rape)?
On a more general note (not directed at you, johnklepac), I mentioned earlier that I've lately changed my opinion on late term abortions (from having qualms to not having qualms about them). It was because I realised I wasn't being consistent. The things I based the right to abortion on, they don't change when the pregnancy progresses. The right not to have to risk your health or life for another person, that just doesn't go away. Pregnancy and childbirth are not simple, safe bodily functions.
I guess one thing that helped me rethink my position and reasoning was that I've come to that age when I will soon have to start having kids if I intend to have them. Suddenly, all this about women's bodily autonomy, them not becoming public property when pregnant, them having to personally carry the health consequences of pregnancy -- it wasn't abstract armchair musings anymore. These are issues that pertain to my actual life, my actual body, and my actual health. The only life, body and health I have and will ever get.
It's easy, when being pregnant is not relevant to you, to sit and muse about how this and that point in time (weeks or trimesters) should change your rights so and so, and how this or that circumstance (rape, or somehow otherwise being pitiful enough to deserve to still decide over your body) earns you this or that right. The intentions are often good, and sure we have to make laws together, but it still ends up seeming like a bunch of unpregnant people, who out of their unconcerned safe unpregnant position, muse over what they are comfortable seeing someone pregnant do with their own body. And not just muse, but usually naturally also wish to legislate.
Realising that I will soon probably be among those pregnant people, made me realise just how it must
feel to be told by other people that your judgement over what is best for you and your body and life cannot be trusted to you, we other people must legislate to limit your choices so you won't have
too much choice. From what I can discern from my not-yet-pregnant position, it sucks and feels really demeaning. Take late term abortions, for example. They are very rare, and when done, they are usually done for very good reasons (like serious genetic defects in the fetus). Very few women want to be pregnant for months for no particular reason. They also face increasing health risks related to pregnancy, not to mention the employment issues. Legislating that "late term abortions are wrong, but can be earned with special misery like rape", really feels so banal and corny when I consider the actual issues that women (autonomous adults with adult decision making capabilites) face in relation to late term pregnancy termination. Not to mention it misses the whole point, which is bodily autonomy, and that we've moved past moralising women for opening their legs.
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