Essentially, this guy is going on about late-term abortions and how that squicks people out, and Piny is saying that most of the time, abortions are early on, because who the fuck is going to put in the energy to gestate just because they ‘don’t feel’ like getting their abortion early. As someone up there quoted the late, great Molly Ivins — no one waddles past an abortion clinic seven months pregnant and says, “Damn! I knew there was something I forgot to do.”

I don’t think you are 101ing; you merely missed the metaphor.

What?

However… I don’t know, I personally find the “rare” part of “safe, legal, and rare” highly offensive. I could just about give a crap less how rare they are, and I don’t think government should concern itself with the rarity of a legal procedure. Why don’t we just say that exercising one’s First Amendment rights should be legal but rare? Either the right to abortion exists or it doesn’t. I’m going with “safe, legal, on demand and without apology… and no one else’s damned business.”*

This. Just, exactly this.

And in this case, it’s caused him to write a bizarrely woman-absent description of pregnancy.

I’m beginning to believe that Slate is afraid of letting a woman write about abortion on a regular basis because it would make the site seem too liberally biased. Because abortion is merely a political issue.

I’ll echo others who have posted that if a woman waits, there is a reason. Money is probably the number one reason.

I’m actually not sure if it’s money. I’d assume that one of the highest reasons a woman has a late-term abortion is that she was open to parenthood, and later discovers that this wasn’t viable for whatever reason. We know of several medical reasons that would make a late-term abortion necessary, or feel necessary, for example.

Huh I just happened to read that article, but I got a different tone from it. (I have seen plenty of articles from that author that did make my blood boil, but this one didn’t.) I thought his point was that access to early abortion is the problem and that if only “pro-lifers” would stop imposing waiting periods, blocking access to RU-486, and preventing govt funding of abortions most abortions would be taking place earlier which would be better for women themselves and be less evil in the minds of people who oppose abortion. Wasn’t that the point?

Sorta, yeah. And I agree with “early” per se–at least, with all the circumstances that make early abortions possible–and also think it’s great when columnists describe the effects of these laws.

The problem is that despite the acknowledgement that punitive abortion laws do nothing but fuck women, Saletan is married to this “compromise” idea. It’s as though the zero-sum is simply between “protecting women’s choice” and “hurting fetuses.” (Or whatever–that is, as though fetal quality of life were of any independent interest to anti-abortion groups, and as though female quality of life were of any interest at all.) Were that the case, a compromise would be a working frame for the discussion.

But it’s not. For two reasons: first, anti-abortion groups don’t care about women, and aren’t interested in softening anti-abortion regs to protect women. Especially at levels more nuanced than say life-threatening pregnancy complications.

More importantly: women themselves, for reasons related both to self-interest and personal beliefs about abortion and pregnancy, will generally do these things on their own. They don’t really need to be pressured to have less invasive procedures, or earlier terminations, or to take birth control in order to prevent pregnancy in the first place. All these decisions have incentives built in. They have a more direct, more informed interest in what goes on inside their own bodies than anybody else.

So that brings us around to the bit we just can’t compromise on: choice. Women need to have the unquestioned, uncomplicated right to choose how and when to end their pregnancies. Saletan dances around that idea because he needs to believe there’s a sensible, moral way to complicate choice without any women getting hurt. And in this case, it’s caused him to write a bizarrely woman-absent description of pregnancy.