Donald Trump backs abortion ban in ‘later months’ — but says states can decide
Former president rejects nationwide ban and supports exceptions for rape and incest.
For vicious ideologues like me this is far too weak tea. But it’s around and about what the general population thinks is the right apprpach. It’s also what the law is. Abortion is not a right in the Constitution, nor is it one of the reserved powers of the Federal Government. It is, therefore, a matter for the States.
The Donald is the reasonable and sensible one here. Who saw that one coming?
I don’t get excited by the abortion question but I’ve always been interested in “exceptions for rape …”
I tend to ask the question “You’d allow a baby to be killed because its father is a violent criminal”?
Mind you, centuries of social knowledge imply that a sensible answer would be “Yes” or even “Yes and it should be compulsory”.
As for “exceptions for … incest”, any thoughts on that might get me arrested by the Polis.
But in the Debate there is no middle ground. Even the names that they give themselves “Pro Life” vs “Pro Choice” divisively set out the battle lines.
There is no one to speak for the ” Pro I really don’t like this, but it is sometimes necessary ” Lobby.
Above all it should not be in a constitution pro or contra, ideologies and morals change and so should legislation.
“The Donald is the reasonable and sensible one here. Who saw that one coming?”
What. Compared to Hilary, Sleepy Joe and the rest of them – that’s not a high bar, Tim….
Trump is really very sensible on most issues. The reason why the usual suspects brand him as an extremist is because it’s the former that are the raving loons and they want to distract everyone from this fact
Trump news: the ridiculous $175m bond Trump was ordered to raise by a New York Democratic Party activist court for not committing a crime was duly raised and filed by Trump.
The New York Democratic Party activist DA is now trying to get Trump’s bond thrown out, so they can steal his properties.
A New York attorney might be along shortly to explain why his shithole banana republic Bongo Bongo wet fart joke of a country nominally run by a senile pedo is actually perfectly normal, bigots.
PF – nailed it! Trump is/was very much reasonable & sensible on the vast majority of issues. We had the greatest economy in human history during his first term, not an accident.
Whether his position here is purely political or authentic, it does match the majority of US voters – small #’s support a total ban, ditto for totally unrestricted. The thinking seems to be that there is no easy answer here, but if you’re going to abort do it early in pregnancy.
Pregnancy tests are non invasive, cheap and available at Boots the Chemist. If you are so thick you don’t know you’re pregnant until after 24 weeks perhaps it’s best if your offspring is removed from the gene pool.
– For vicious ideologues like me . . .
You can take the boy out of Roman Catholicism . . .
Being concerned about “just a bunch of cells” (as Steve, with irony, put it the other day) has to be a religious position. Moving outwards toward “could possibly survive outside the womb” is really just a squeamish position. That’s me, but I’d still find it hard to condemn a remote peasant family for dispatching a delivered but malformed baby that probably wouldn’t survive on the resources they couldn’t afford to apply. And if you look into birth monsters (pretty much Star Trek transporter malfunctions) then things get really ugly.
An early to mid Roman Republic patriach would stand agog at our sentimentality. He could kill his children (even male ones) up to around 12 if he thought they were turning out to be wronguns.
“a remote peasant family for dispatching a delivered but malformed baby”
This was still going on in not very remote parts of Britain until almost all childbirths were moved into hospitals. Still, it made the safe childbirth figures for the hospitals look good.
The default position of the crazies is “The murder of innocent babies up to and including birth”, which, to my mind is a bit too far on the “vicious ideologues” scale, so anything which is less extreme will seem moderate. Hence, the Donald’s position.
Funnily enough, Bill and Hillary used to be the apparent “voice of reason” on this, mostly because of the general rule about the party which wins in elections is the party which controls it’s crazies the best.
They came out with the line that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”, which is great politicking, but then failed to do anything to turn that into meaningful policy and/or legislation, mostly for fear of being eaten by their own parties crazies.
So yeah, allowing states to define their own abortion rules within the boundaries of the debate in each state will end up with places like Alabama being completely outlawed in most cases (in which case there are Greyhound buses and Spirit airlines to take them on their way somewhere more liberal that the abortion can be carried out), some places will even provide funding for both the trip and the procedure.
The one thing the states can’t do is block pregnant women leaving, because that would violate the Interstate Commerce Clause, which the US Supreme Court seems to see as the lowest common denominator of what states can be allowed and what they must be denied.
To me, as a ninth level octo-priest in the church of the Reasonablists that seems…reasonable.
> Abortion is not a right in the Constitution,
The US Constitution is not the source of our rights nor a comprehensive list of them.
We have tons of rights that are not listed.
However, the Constitution does tell the federal government where its duties and responsibilities lay – and no where does it give the federal government authority to regulate abortion. *THAT* is what the USSC found.
So the constitution leaves it up to the states. If abortion is a ‘right’ then that case needs to be made to the USSC – at which point the federal government can then start to do its duty to ‘protect’ access to it.
I am concerned that the USSC by doing this though has moved us closer to an ‘enumerated’ rights situation – you can only do what the list says you can do – and greatly harmed the ‘right to privacy’ (if such a thing exists).
Canadian media leads with Trump tries to duck abortion issue, which conveniently ignores the fact that when the Canadian Supreme Court was asked if abortion was a right they said no and punted it back to the legislators to sort out, pretty much what the recent ruling in the US was.
Also some of the ‘harsh’ new abortion rules are similar to Canadian and European regulations.
PJF – thanks for the shout out.
An early to mid Roman Republic patriach would stand agog at our sentimentality. He could kill his children (even male ones) up to around 12 if he thought they were turning out to be wronguns.
Ah, but for most of our history, parents (our ancestors, people therefore like us and whom we should expect to feel grief like us) had to expect? What? 4-8 children not surviving childhood?
What luxury we enjoy, to be able to afford to cherish every life. If we don’t let idiots and weirdos fuck it all up, we can still have the Star Trek TNG future of technological abundance.
Agammamon – it just seems to me that arguing abortion is part of constitutional law is sheer fucking lunacy, and always was.
No, the constitution is about enumerating the workings of the Republic, not the morality or legality of killing your regret babby after you shagged that hot beach guy on holiday. The whole point of having different states and municipalities is people can make their own laws on morality.
The United States used to have a functioning system of government, but different parts of it are increasingly in more or less open warfare against other parts of it. The morality or otherwise of ultra-conservative state laws on abortion, other states and/or the feds getting involved trying to frustrate local laws or impose punitive actions doesn’t seem a good idea in a healthy federation. Nor does federal agents deliberately hampering immigration enforcement efforts on the Texas border, or the recently weaponised issue of US LNG exports (what sort of country has a lobby that’s against making money and supplying vital allies with a critical resource? Uncle Sam, he go loco.)
That, and the shameless destruction of any kind of notion of “due process” or even “established laws” in the effort to Get Trump (and then what?) suggests a Republic far into Jar-Jar is about to address the Senate territory.
Abortion is, in many respects, a carnival sideshow. There’s no normal actual need for it in a society that’s awash with cheap as free contraception, and it’s not as if even the “worst” case scenario of real-life Handmaid’s Tale OMG U GUYS coming true is that bad.
So your child, whom you can get all sorts of government bennies and free Christian charity (the Christians are practically begging you to take their material and financial support to keep your baby), um, lives. And you’ll live, dying in childbirth is very difficult there days. Unlike in the olden days, there’s zero social stigma attached to your marital status, you won’t have to scrub floors to feed your offspring. And you can give them up for adoption if you don’t like them.
That’s the worst case outcome of what would happen if fundamentalist Christians like myself had our patriarchal way (fnarr) with abortion laws. The reality, as others have noted, is abortion remains only a cheap (and possibly free) bus ride away. Le sigh. We Christians – in such tiny pockets as we still have political clout – can legislate for Good, but we cannot make people Good. We are not Good ourselves, or else we wouldn’t need to be Christians.
But anyway – culture war sideshow. The fragrant Ms Creasy opened her Guardian op-ed blatantly lying that the “culture war” is something the “far right” is doing in Britain. Of course, it is Ms Creasy bringing US style abortion fundamentalism to mainstream British politics.
I think she will win, and Parliament will applaud itself again.
But it’s a sideshow. We’re at the kiddies table, yet again.
The real things that matter are Net Zero (about to rort us, big time), the national debt, Ponzi levels of immigration demanded by Treasury forecasts, the fact that taxes have never been higher yet the public sector is bankrupt, and the fact we’re involved in the losing side of no fewer than three major wars at this point are all adults table stuff.
You’ll never hear Rishi talk about that. He’ll ban 15 year olds from owning a mobile phone instead.
“ Then he turned the issue back on Democrats, claiming that they were the “radical” party on abortion.
“They support abortion up to and even beyond the ninth month,” Trump said. “The concept of having an abortion in the later months, and even execution after birth. And that’s exactly what it is. The baby is born, the baby is executed after birth is unacceptable, and almost everyone agrees with that.”‘
Yup, just a sensible reasonable guy being sensible and reasonable.
To clarify: are you saying that the statement that a live birth subsequently deliberately terminated is akin to execution, is not reasonable?