The phony rape exception to abortion bans | The Hill – Column

  Now that the Supreme Court permits states to outlaw abortion, Republican state legislators are bitterly split over whether abortion bans should include exceptions in cases of rape. This is a pointless political fight. Laws forbidding abortion often force women to bear their rapists’ babies. If you don’t want to do that, don’t support abortion prohibitions. For many…

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The abortion emergency in the federal courts | The Hill Column

  It is now notorious that the criminalization of abortion, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade, doesn’t do much to lower the abortion rate but has had devastating effects on the ability of doctors to treat pregnancies that go wrong.  Horror stories accumulate. Opponents of abortion have claimed that the press has exaggerated the…

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Religion and the wrong defense of abortion rights | The Hill Column

  It is commonly claimed that restrictions on abortion illegitimately impose some people’s religious beliefs on the rest of us. This is the wrong way to defend abortion rights. It implies that religious motives have no legitimate place in lawmaking. In fact, we all have normative commitments that we have trouble articulating – you could call them matters of…

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The neglected common ground on abortion — The Hill Column

  Abortion is one of the most polarizing issues in American politics, made even more toxic by the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe v. Wade. It doesn’t need to be. Pro-life and pro-choice people should be able to agree on policies that would actually reduce the abortion rate. To accomplish that, though, opponents of…

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If an embryo is now a person, mortality rates just soared in Alabama — The Washington Post, Outlook

Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, states have begun enforcing statutes that forbid abortion. The states with laws specifying that personhood begins at the moment of conception carry extra baggage: Paradoxically, death rates for their youngest citizens will spike. Statutes supposedly intended to protect the lives of the unborn will instead,…

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