The “consequences” you’re glossing over here include rape (both forcible and statutory), fetuses who would die at childbirth anyways, who endanger the lives of their mothers, and so forth. There’s no single group of people who seek out abortions, and virtually nobody wants one in the abstract: they’re a means for preserving bodily autonomy and a necessary consequence of our legal respect for said autonomy.
I literally have a friend-of-a-friend right now being denied an abortion for a fetus with severe Anencephaly. There’s a group thread trying to figure out where she can travel to in order to terminate.
These fucking monsters want her to carry this non viable fetus for 5 more months to deliver a guaranteed stillborn baby with 0 chance of survival. Can you even imagine the trauma that would inflict on the mother? The number of people who are going to ask about her pregnancy? The severe health impacts she’s going to face because pregnancies are extremely taxing on the body? The most ignorant among us are making laws based on their uniformed feelings and it’s going to cause serious harm to a lot of people.
As I said in another comment: that’s simply not your decision to make. You’re neither qualified nor entitled to their private life; the fact that the particulars revealed to you in this instance meet your standard does not mean anything.
And no, our laws are not based on that fundamental principle. The US legal system is built on the English system, which emphasizes autonomy in the forms of property, self-legislation, and all of those other things that actually appear in our foundational documents.
I’ll say it: the mother’s rights trump those of the fetus when they conflict.
If we accept the right of bodily autonomy then the fetus has no right to the mother’s blood and sustenance.
If the state denies pregnant women bodily autonomy then it must assume the responsibility to care for them. Stats that ban abortion should cover all costs of pregnancy, at minimum.
Do you deem yourself, or anyone else for that matter, qualified and entitled to the private circumstances that separate those two groups? Does that sound like a reasonable thing for the government to task itself with ascertaining?
And no, it’s not 1%. It’s closer to 10% in self-reporting figures[1], which don’t include the obvious problem of shame associated with rape and one’s own inability to healthily deliver a baby.
> You are left with the 99%: mostly a lazy and horrible way to do contraception
Did you read Justice Thomas' concurrence? This court has contraceptives in its sight as well. I'm sure it's going to be a few, harmless steps towards theocracy?
