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“U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham proposed new national restrictions on abortion on Tuesday… Graham announced legislation that would ban the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy nationwide… The current bill allows exceptions in cases involving rape, incest or risks to the mother's life and health.” Reuters
The right is supportive of banning abortions after 15 weeks, but divided over Graham’s bill.
“In several states and the District of Columbia, there is no legal limit on abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. Down the street from the White House, one abortion clinic advertises elective abortions up to 27 weeks. NPR recently reported that a new ‘all-trimester’ clinic will soon open in Maryland that will perform abortions up to the middle of the eighth month of pregnancy…
“Premature infants born as early as 21 to 22 weeks of pregnancy can sometimes survive their stays in the neonatal-intensive-care unit and grow up to be healthy children and adults… What’s the difference between an elective abortion at 22 weeks and killing a premature infant born alive at 22 weeks?”
The Editors, National Review
“There are likely around 10,000 viable or nearly viable unborn aborted every year and probably around 50,000 after 15 weeks. And those abortions are not predominately about health. As the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute once found (it avoids the topic nowadays), a majority of women who seek these abortions ‘do not do so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.’ The pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute also found that medical literature shows that a majority of late-term procedures are not performed for ‘maternal health complications or lethal fetal anomalies discovered late in pregnancy.’”
David Harsanyi, The Federalist
“According to the Gallup figures, 67% of Americans want abortion to be ‘generally legal’ in the first 12 weeks. That falls to 36% in the first 24 weeks. But the nuances might be lost on voters, and Democrats are trying to ensure that they are. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement Tuesday was illustrative. ‘The nationwide abortion ban proposal put forth today,’ she said… notice how Mrs. Pelosi refers to it as a ‘nationwide abortion ban,’ without mentioning anything about 15 weeks…
“There’s no need to re-nationalize the question, and it isn’t clear Congress has the authority to do so… Fighting for policy change in all 50 states is arduous, with victories offset by defeats and unsatisfying compromises. Democrats and some Republicans don’t want to bother, since it’s easier to pass one bill in Congress, constitutional or not. But by Mr. Graham’s political logic, if voters in Colorado, Pennsylvania or Arizona think 15 weeks is too restrictive, they now have a reason to vote against those GOP Senate candidates. Every Republican candidate will be asked to take a stance, and a Senate majority is made by swing states.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“A federal law restricting abortion will bring with it tons of lobbying money, most of which will be directed at repealing the limit. What is even nuttier is anything that will federalize abortion again. A Congress that can make a national law limiting abortion can also make a federal law legalizing it. In terms of raw politics, in an election cycle where we have nearly everything going our way (inflation, social policy, education, immigration, defense), why do we want to give the left what might be a compelling unifying issue?”
Streiff, RedState
The left opposes the bill, arguing that it would prevent or delay medically necessary abortions.
The left opposes the bill, arguing that it would prevent or delay medically necessary abortions.
"The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is clear: ‘The science conclusively establishes that a human fetus does not have the capacity to experience pain until after at least 24–25 weeks. Every major medical organization that has examined this issue and peer-reviewed studies on the matter have consistently reached the conclusion that abortion before this point does not result in the perception of pain in a fetus.’…
“When lawmakers say ‘late-term,’ they usually mean 21 weeks and after. That language is a bad-faith political construct in and of itself, but the 15-week benchmark comes early in the second trimester, well before many structural fetal anomalies — some of them lethal — would become detectable. In Roe’s absence, conservative lawmakers have ripped down the guardrails that allowed physicians to protect their patients’ health when complications arise in a pregnancy.”
Claire Lampen, New York Magazine
"Ironically, policies to ban abortions earlier in pregnancy could contribute to an increase in later procedures, because women need to travel out of state, and the influx in demand could lead to longer wait times. One woman whom [professor Katrina] Kimport interviewed had hoped to continue her pregnancy but discovered significant fetal anomalies at 21 weeks. But because her providers declined to perform an abortion, she had to travel out of state to find a clinic—which entailed significant travel, finding childcare for her son, and getting time off from work—meaning that she could not obtain an abortion until she was 24 weeks into her pregnancy…
“Kimport told me that some people whom she interviewed experienced deep trauma when they realized their pregnancy was nonviable, meaning that the fetus would be unable to survive. Some sought an abortion to ‘end the suffering’ for the unborn child they already called their ‘baby,’ Kimport said. Graham’s legislation does not include exceptions for fetal anomalies or inviability. ‘To be required to continue a pregnancy that somebody knows is nonviable, that somebody knows might entail suffering.… I think many Americans would be shocked that such a person would be required to continue the pregnancy,’ Kimport said.”
Grace Segers, New Republic
"The later in a pregnancy an abortion is performed, the likelier it is that it's a medically indicated abortion — and often a pregnancy the patient otherwise wanted to carry to term…
“Even with medical exceptions built into [state] bans, patients are still running into roadblocks. As the New York Times reported Saturday, patients in Texas wait ‘an average of nine days for their conditions to be considered life threatening enough to justify abortion,’ leading to ‘hemorrhaging and sepsis’ and even the total removal of the uterus. These kinds of ill effects will likely just keep compounding, as fewer and fewer doctors are even trained to do such procedures, making them not just legally fraught but technically daunting for doctors to consider. There's also no reason to believe Republicans will be satisfied with a national 15-week ban.”
Amanda Marcotte, Salon
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