Abortion

NPR

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Sarah Weddington, who successfully argued Roe v. Wade, has died at age 76 : NPR

DALLAS — Sarah Weddington, a Texas lawyer who as a 26-year-old successfully argued the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade before the U.S. Supreme Court, died Sunday. She was 76.

Susan Hays, Weddington's former student and colleague, said she died in her sleep early Sunday morning at her Austin home. Weddington had been in poor health for some time and it was not immediately clear what caused her death, Hays told The Associated Press.

Raised as a minister's daughter in the West Texas city of Abilene, Weddington attended law school at the University of Texas. A couple years after graduating, she and a former classmate, Linda Coffee, brought a class-action lawsuit on behalf of a pregnant woman challenging a state law that largely banned abortions.

Google Maps Is Still Directing Women Seeking Abortions to Pro-Life Clinics — and a Memorial for the ‘Unborn’ – VICE

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Google Maps Is Still Directing Women Seeking Abortions to Pro-Life Clinics — and a Memorial for the ‘Unborn’ – VICE

There’s just one abortion clinic left in North Dakota, and it’s in Fargo. But if you’re searching for a clinic around the state’s second-largest city, Google Maps won’t tell you about it.

Instead, searching Google Maps for “Where can I get an abortion in Bismarck, North Dakota?” will bring up results not only for a facility that doesn’t offer abortion but also for North Dakota Right to Life — an organization that lobbies to end abortion.

Abortion bans are the future

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While I don’t support laws that ban abortion, I do see laws like Alabama’s abortion restrictions becoming more common as bigotry and intolerance of minority groups are on the rise in America. Abortion bans and severe punishment for abortion are the future in many parts of the country, even while other states make abortion cheaper and easier to access.

A lot of abortion advocates don’t understand how a law like abortion bans would work. State police and the news media would inform couples, especially the unwed about the serious risks of engaging in sexual behavior and how sexual relationships for any purpose outside of child bearing have serious risks and consequences. States banning abortion would likely buy television ads, billboards and ads on buses warning people of the grave consequences of their actions.

With abortion a serious criminal offense, couples who chose to have sex for purposes besides reproduction have two choices should contraception fail or not be used would have to make to a tough decision. They are to have a child or have an illegal abortion and risk a lengthy prison sentence.

Having a child could cost a mother and father upwards of 18-21 years of their life, and raising the child could cost the family roughly $250,000 over twenty years or roughly $12,500 a year in health care, education, food and shelter. Raising a child isn’t cheap.

The alternative would be to have an illegal abortion with all the dangerous health consequences it involves, especially in an unsanitary environment without the presence of a doctor or other medical professional to ensure that safe procedures are followed. Should police discover, a woman and maybe the husband could be subject to incarceration up to 99 years along with $250,000 in fines.

Neither is a good choice for a family not wishing to have a child – especially when safe and legal abortions do exist in many nearby states. But so is the difficult choice families would have to make after ignoring the warnings given out by public officials and the news media about the costs of choosing to have a sexual intercourse for purposes besides child bearing.

Democracy is increasingly allowing largest and most powerful groups to impose their will on minorities out of power. As states become more polarized, minorities out of power will only become more oppressed – be it gun owners and rural residents in blue states or women and persons of color in red states.

Powerful majority groups in government will look with glee as minorities are oppressed and punished, as a personal victory to their group. In many ways, abortion bans are not about protecting life but brandishing power to hurt minorities out of power.

NPR

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Louisiana Governor Says He Will Sign Strict New Anti-Abortion Law : NPR

By a vote of 79-23, the lawmakers banned abortions as early as six weeks of pregnancy. Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a statement that he "ran for governor as a pro-life candidate," and intended to sign the abortion ban.

"As I prepare to sign this bill, I call on the overwhelming bipartisan majority of legislators who voted for it to join me in continuing to build a better Louisiana that cares for the least among us and provides more opportunity for everyone," he said.

While I am not a fan of more laws and regulations, I do think there is a state interest in preserving life, and discouraging promiscuous sexual activity. It's good to see politicians working across party lines for once, and while I think most of these laws are rooted in bigotry rather then common sense, if you are going to have blue states regulating guns, then you should have red states regulating abortion. I think they are a moral equivalence.