[ExI] Abortion laws (Was: Re: Trump suggests letting Iran 'take out' Los Angeles and San Diego)

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 14/10/2026 15:31, spike wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Ben
> Zaiboc via extropy-chat
>
>> ... the dreadful consequences for a huge number of women....
> Women can still get an abortion.
> ...
>  >...It might not be newsworthy anymore, but those consequences are still
> ongoing.
>
> Abortion is legal in most states Ben.  There were not huge changes after
> that decision.
>
> https://www.britannica.com/science/US-abortion-rights-by-state-2236312
>

I count 8 states where abortion is fully legal, and 13 with a full ban. The rest have a variety of restrictions, some of them extremely restrictive, and I somehow doubt that a woman living in a restrictive state where an abortion is banned in her case, who can't afford to travel to another state where she could get an abortion, will receive state assistance in order to do so.

Many states had 'trigger legislation', ready to be sprung as soon as Roe vs. Wade was overturned, that immediately restricted the availability of abortion, either directly or indirectly  (e.g. affecting the practicality rather than the legality of abortions, things like making sure that clinics can't get licences, doctors can't practice if they offer abortion services, etc.).

The reason I brought up the overturning of Roe vs. Wade was not about the constitution, but about the larger picture of creeping authoritarianism, of which attacks on constitutional protections is just one part.

You agree with me that women should be able to be in control of their own bodies, and this was largely the case, as far as the law is concerned, for 50 years. Now it's very much less the case. Roe v. Wade established that the U.S. Constitution protects a woman's right to choose to have an abortion before the point of foetal viability. So all the 50 states had that as a minimum. Some would be more permissive than that, I don't know which ones or to what degree, but we can use that as a baseline for the pre-January 2022 situation. Abortion was legal in all states, up to foetal viability.

Now it's not. 13 states have a full ban, many have lesser bans that don't come up to the 'foetal viabililty' mark. Neither of the statements 'abortion is legal in most states' (unless you argue that any possibility of an abortion, under even the most  stringent conditions counts (e.g.'you can have an abortion, but only if you were raped and the rape was reported to the police at the time, and your health is critically endangered by the pregnancy')) and 'there were not huge changes' are true, in any practical sense. You can quibble (as I'm sure you will want to) about the meanings of 'most' and 'huge', but the fact is that abortion is more restricted now than it was before 2022. That was the motive behind bringing the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The rationalisation for it was, as you say, about federal vs. state legal rights, but the motive was taking away freedom of choice from women who want an abortion. It makes no  sense to say that it "wasn't about abortion". Without the anti-choice people, the case wouldn't have happened.

There does seem to be a puzzling, and hopeful, statistic about actual numbers of abortions carried out before and after January 2022: Apparently the numbers are about the same. I presume that's due to more women breaking the law. I can't see how else to interpret it (unless the states are (implausibly) completely failing to enforce the relevant laws, and everyone who wants an abortion knows they won't be prosecuted).

I say this is hopeful because it seems to indicate that faced with unjust laws, people tend to break them.

So you're right in saying "Women can still get an abortion", in two ways:
1) They can get an abortion if they happen to live in one of the states where abortion in their individual circumstance is still legal (which is considerably fewer than prior to 2022), and 2) if not, they can break the law.
-- 
Ben
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Pablo Casals, via Albert Einstein