If you are new to abortion politics jumping into the decades-old debate can be overwhelming. Here are the key terms and fault lines you’ll need to know
Photo: Clockwise from top left: Bettmann Archive; Viviane Moos/Corbis; Mark Meyer/LIFE; Bettmann Archive; Barbara Freeman; Julie Bennett/Getty Images During the 49 years since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion, the issue has run hot and cold in the political realm, sometimes dominating the national conversation and at other times simmering in the background as conservatives chipped away at reproductive rights and laid the groundwork for the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
What is fetal viability? Fetal viability is the point in the development of the human fetus when it has the capacity to survive outside the womb. The medical rule of thumb is that viability occurs at the earliest at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. Less than one percent of abortions occur after fetal viability, which is why the anti-abortion movement has been determined to shift the line back to earlier stages of pregnancy.
What is fetal personhood? Many, and perhaps most, anti-abortion activists embrace the idea that from the moment of conception the fetus is morally and metaphysically a “person” who deserves full citizenship rights that should be constitutionally protected. In other words, while the anti-abortion movement’s immediate goal is reversal of Roe v. Wade and a state-controlled landscape of abortion laws, it generally favors a national law entrenching fetal rights.
Why do many abortion bans include exceptions for rape and incest? Within the anti-abortion movement, there is a perpetually raging debate over whether it’s immoral to accept exceptions to proposed abortion bans for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest. Such exceptions are extremely popular, and Republican politicians tend to support them.
In 2016, with Justice Kennedy supplying the key vote, the Supreme Court put up a stop sign to TRAP laws in a Texas case by challenging the states’ right to mischaracterize restrictions that were transparently intended to reduce access to abortion services .
The latest impetus for an attack on late-term abortions arose when New York sought to codify abortion rights in case Roe v. Wade is reversed, passing a law in 2019 that allows for late-term abortions under strict medical circumstances . Anti-abortion advocates, including then-President Trump, began describing such abortions as a form of “infanticide,” making lurid and wildly inaccurate claims about what the procedure entails.
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