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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I think that there exist abortion rules which 80% of the country would find acceptable, but as it is a partisan topic, there is a lot of signaling value in either side making extreme demands. "abortion should always be illegal, no exceptions" to "abortion should be legal until the separation of the naval cord after birth".

A six weeks ban means that women has about two weeks after missing her period (per Wikipedia) to get an abortion. Now, a woman with regular periods and high executive function will notice that something is amiss within a week, and then can conveniently schedule her abortion.

But not every woman, and especially not every woman likely to have unwanted pregnancies will make it in that time frame. Perhaps her periods sometimes are a week late due to stress or whatever, and then it only takes a few more days of distraction to miss her window. (I don't have a very high executive function myself ('is it my week to deal with the garbage cans again?', 'I should really schedule a dentist appointment soon', etc), so I am sympathetic.)

Ethically, I am a Singerian who does not find anything fundamentally wrong with baby-killing, but politically that is not a hill I would be willing to die on. In practice, I would be fine with banning abortions without medical indication after a few months of gestation -- give the woman a bit of time to notice 'well, I did have sex and my period stopped, perhaps I should buy a pregnancy test'.

Now, there will be people who think that ensoulment happens at conception (I am not clear how this works with monocygotic twins, do they each have half a soul or is one of them soulless?) and people who have or perform abortions should always go to prison for murder. But I am somewhat hopeful that these are a fringe minority. On the other hand, the number of people who believe that killing what might already be a viable baby is wrong is likely much higher.

In a way, this is a late fallout of Roe v Wade. If the SC had not legislated that abortions are always legal, there might have been room for a sane compromise federal law before the issue became hopelessly soaked with partisan politics to the point where half the raison d'etre of the Republican party was to elect a president who would appoint justices who would overturn Roe.

Of course, opinion articles on both sides will try to dig up the most extreme cases imaginable. 'Woman living in a state with harsh abortion laws lost her life in a way related to her attempt to abort. This is why abortion should always be legal until your kids are of legal age.' or 'look at this poor baby being born alive in a botched abortion in the third trimester. This is why we must ban any abortions everywhere (and perhaps let's ban contraceptives too)!'