Should Texas enact the restrictions on abortion included in Senate Bill 1?

This post was originally created for the Blackboard Discussion Board for this class. The question was, "Should Texas enact the restrictions on abortion included in Senate Bill?"

Here’s a summary of my positions on Texas SB 1 — feel free to read more detailed arguments below if either position interests you:

1. The ban on abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization is reasonable: that’s plenty of time for couples to make a decision, and the government probably does have a duty to protect unborn children somewhere around 20 weeks post-fertilization.
2. The safety regulations imposed on abortion clinics are unreasonable: they place a serious economic burden on the clinics while doing nothing to actually lower the risk of a medical procedure that is extremely safe to begin with.  

A Summary of Texas SB 1

I know that many folks could use a handy summary of the bill in question, so here it is (just scroll down if you want to skip ahead to the parts where I say the time limit is good and the safety regulations are bad). The actual text of Texas SB 1 is a mere 19 pages, but it does several things:

• it articulates the idea that the government has a compelling interest in regulating abortions to protect unborn children from experiencing pain in the womb, 
• it outlaws abortions after 20 weeks post-fertilization in most cases, and
• it places new regulations on physicians performing or inducing abortions.

Like most anti-abortion bills that ban otherwise legal abortions in some way, SB 1 says exceptions can be made in certain cases. The 20-week time limit does not apply for the following scenarios:

• cases in which an abortion is necessary to prevent the mother’s death or serious injury,
• cases in which the abortion is being performed on an unborn child with “severe fatal abnormalities”, and
•  cases in which the time limit will “impose an impermissible undue burden” on the mother (this probably means cases of rape or incest).

Not Bad: 20 Week Time Limit for Abortions

While I think that the no level of government should impose itself on the private health decisions that women and their doctors decide to make, I also believe that the government has the duty to criminally punish anybody found guilty of infanticide. As a matter of fact, I am sure that almost everybody agrees that killing a child that has already been born is a punishable crime. Moreover, almost everybody would also probably agree that killing a baby that has been born prematurely is still a crime. If modern medical advances have allowed a baby to survive its birth after just 21 weeks and five days into the pregnancy (which actually happened a couple years ago in Germany), it would obviously still be wrong to kill that child.

Thinking along those lines, I think that the 20 week time limit is reasonable. As a matter of fact, Texas defines its time limit for legal abortions at 20 weeks post-fertilization and not at 20 weeks since the woman’s last menstrual period (LMP). This means that the Texas bill really bans abortions at 22 weeks of pregnancy. I think that five and a half months is a reasonable length of time for women to make an abortion decision, especially considering the that the bill waives the 20 week limit for certain scenarios (mentioned above). Even those who would bring up issues of “viability” have to admit that there may be something wrong with neutralizing a fetus that has been in the womb for 23 weeks when nearly 30 percent of babies born into the world at 23 weeks go on to survive. 

Just Outrageous: “Safety” Regulations on Abortion Clinics

On the other hand, I completely disagree with the so-called safety regulations the bill would impose on physicians. These purported safety standards are so severe that most clinics will have to quit offering legal abortion services in order to stay in business. Therefore, many women who would have otherwise undergone a legal abortion would no longer be able to do so. In turn, this will have all sorts of terrible consequences, probably including all of the following and more:

• it’ll lead to a boost in the illegal abortion black market,
• it’ll force women to deal with pregnancies and children they never wanted,
• it’ll lead to an increase in state healthcare expenditures,
• it’ll increase the population of welfare-dependent children, etc.

I think most decently-educated people know about the negatives that the regulations will result in, so the question should be: What positives do the safety regulations offer?  A typical answer might be “Safety, of course, is the purpose of safety regulations! SB 15 makes women safer! Sometimes regulations are needed to make healthcare safer!” ... only that answer is totally wrong.

The truth is that abortion is already one of the safest clinical procedures out there. Over 99.97% of all abortion patients will never suffer any serious complications. This makes abortion literally safer and less risky than childbirth, but obviously an anti-abortion bill cannot ban childbirth! Physicians across Texas and America agree that the regulations do nothing to reduce medical risks associated with abortion. I’ve blogged a full-length post on why the safety regulations of SB 1 make no sense. Check out my casual cost-benefit analysis.