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/272/ As Late As Necessary ft. Alex Gourevitch
🕑 Added 2022-07-05 14:20:14 +0000 UTCOn abortion.
After the US Supreme Court ruling, where does this leave women in the US? Political theorist Alex Gourevitch joins us to discuss Roe v Wade, and how the fact it rooted abortion in a right to privacy was problematic.
How can we ground the right to abortion in an argument for freedom in general? And is the US really faced with a rising tide of reaction, as liberals claim? Are same-sex marriage and contraception imperilled by the decision?
Reading:
- Wrong Life and Abortion, Ethan Linehan, Sublation
- The Left killed the pro-choice coalition, Kat Rosenfield, Unherd
- A Defence of Abortion, Judith Jarvis Johnson
- How to Win the Abortion Argument, Helen Lewis, The Atlantic
Comments
Roberta
Alex G., who I know is very smart, and whose previous appearances on ABB have been great, makes a major factual error at the beginning of his talk. He says the Roe court recognized the end of the first trimester of pregnancy as the point of fetal viability. Wrong! The Court recognized the end of the _second_ trimester as the point of viability. The difference between first and second trimester in that decision was that first trimester women gained the right to get abortions with the approval of their doctors and without state regulation, whereas in the second trimester, the state could regulate abortions in ways to protect the mother's health. (Examples could be various safety protocols for clinics and licensing requirements for practitioners.)
Viroquan
When I was living in London (a US citizen married to a UK citizen), when people would get on my case about the US having the death penalty, I would inform them that no, I grew up in the state of Wisconsin, and that Wisconsin doesn’t have a death penalty, people were flabbergasted that such laws weren’t federal. Parallel here with abortion.
