Oh Roe v Wade's 40th — A few basic truths about abortion

Here's a few basic truths to note on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court legalizing abortion.

1. It's been around for more than 2,500 years, as this excellent column details, including the lengths to which women have gone in the past.

2. Seventy percent of people in the US favor keeping abortion legal, at least to some degree. And, that's from the Wall Street Journal, not any liberal website.

3. Not all versions of the Hippocratic Oath have the line about how doctors shouldn't give women abortifactant potions, and we don't know which version is the original, for sure.

4. Abortion in the US only became a big legal issue when almost entirely male doctors started taking over more of the birth oversight process from female midwives in the middle of the 19th century.

5. The Bible says nothing about abortion. One passage in the Old Testament is purely about a man assaulting a pregnant woman and causing her to miscarry. The fine amount involved is less than that for killing an adult slave. The New Testament says nothing, period. Per Note 1, abortion was around already when that Old Testament passage was written.

That said ...

Were the abortion issue not so polarized on both sides, and my lay legal mind didn't say that Roe was somewhat poorly decided, I would favor a bimester instead of trimester system, with Medicaid funding and the full nine yards in the first bimester, but state-level third trimester restrictions, and maybe more than now, covering the second bimester. And, Medicaid would cover more money for prenatal care for women wanting to take their babies to term. And, we'd provide more help for those women who wanted to keep their babies, rather than being guilt-tripped as well as poverty-trapped into putting them up for abortion.

Right-to-lifers, if you're really right to life, you'd support that, and more. You'd also be realistic about human sexuality (one-third of women in Victorian Scotland were pregnant on their wedding days, so this is nothing new) and support birth control availability, counseling, etc. as well. 

And, you have to accept that, if you don't, the result is more single moms, even among your own red-state Christian offspring. (And, blaming gay marriage for the rise in illegitimacy? Someone needs a high school biology class.)