05-20-2019, 10:47 AM
(05-20-2019, 09:25 AM)Maggot Wrote: When Roe vs. Wade passed it was about abortion in the first two trimesters. Then Virginia tried to pass a law that was horrible. They wanted to let an abortion happen right up to the day of birth. It is not the right that is messing with Roe but the left that is adding more to it. Think about that.
No, Roe v Wade was not about abortion in the first two trimesters. It was about a woman's right to privacy, including making her own reproduction decisions.
The justices found that the Constitution guarantees women that right and that a fetus was not a separate person with constitutional rights, but attempted to balance that right with a concern for the pregnant woman’s health.
The justices came up with the trimester formula and ruled that states could not ban abortions or place restrictions on the pregnant woman's privacy/choice within the first trimester, period. However, the SC ruling stipulated that states could pass laws with narrow restrictions (related to concerns for the pregnant woman's health) after that point.
Later, in subsequent abortion cases, the trimester formula was put aside by the Supreme Court in favor of basing the point upon which state governments could restrict women's right to choose on 'fetal viability to survive outside the womb'. The fetal viability standard remains in place today.
Anyway, abortions in the third trimester are quite rare. But that doesn't stop religious folks and politicians who represent conservative/religious regions from making 'late term abortions' the focus of their attention in public statements and arguments designed to place more restrictions on abortion, close down clinics that provide abortion procedures (and, for the extremists, to ban abortion and some forms of birth control altogether).