A difficult discourse about Dems and abortion

This is a difficult and necessary discourse about abortion rights. It may piss some people off.

Democrats have lost election after election and many other issues over the single wedge issue of abortion. And now the Supreme Court has a solid conservative majority, so Roe vs. Wade is likely to be overturned.

I completely agree that early in pregnancy, an embryo is just a clump of cells, lacking consciousness. But as the pregnancy progresses, the nervous system develops and the fetus becomes increasingly viable and increasingly conscious. Clearly, by the end of the third trimester, no sane person would want to abort a fetus unless there’s a very good reason — such as deformity or risk to the woman’s health.

In fact, third trimester abortions are rare and are already effectively illegal in most locales.

I know this will piss off some abortion rights advocates, but, sorry, the view that women have an absolute right of choice over their bodies is extreme. Late term abortions should be restricted, with exceptions for the health of the woman and for deformities.

But now the train has left the station, and abortion may become drastically restricted in many states — as is happening in Texas.

It should take only a moment’s thought to realize that late term abortions are problematic. So, for heaven’s sake, why on earth didn’t Democrats compromise over this?

They could have agreed to enact abortion restrictions from, say, the 20th week, or the 16th week, in return for Republican compromises over, say, gun restrictions, or climate policy, or taxation, or voting rights. And just think how many elections Dems could have won!

Instead, the Democrats refused to compromise.

In fact, one could go further and say: the Dems let radical feminists push them around. Here’s where it gets nasty, or juicy. Republicans think Democrats are softies: snowflakes. Republicans are the party of macho men, where men rule and women are subservient. I’m certainly not in favor of that. The Dems allow women to lead, and, I agree women should have an equal voice. But it seems to me that reasonable men — and reasonable women — wimped out and failed to stand up to women who insisted on sacrificing issue after issue, and election after election, for the hopeless fight for an absolute right to choose — when a moment’s thought shows you that late term abortions are problematic.

Heck, lots of progressives are in favor of animal rights. How can one be for animals rights but not be for the rights of late term fetuses?

For more details, see

Why Abortion isn’t Murder
Dems should support a grand compromise involving reasonable restrictions on late-term abortions

The clincher for all this is that third-trimester abortions are already rare, about 1% of abortions:
‘A vanishingly small number’ of women have abortions in the third trimester. Here’s why most of them do it.

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, just over 1% of all abortions in the U.S. are performed after 21 weeks gestation, which is six weeks before the end of the second trimester. “Abortion later in the second trimester is very rare, and abortion in the third trimester is rarer still, accounting for less than one percent of abortions,” the organization said on its website.

And late term abortions are already restricted. So, the Dems wouldn’t have much to lose if they compromised on this! Perhaps abortion rights advocates fear that any compromise on the issue would open the floodgates for abortion restrictions.