There's not a lot I can add to fellow TAPPED contributor Pema Levy's excellent response to William Saletan, who asks whether abortions past the point of viability should be granted when the health of the mother is not at stake. But I did want to emphasize a couple of points. First, Saletan deserves credit for acknowledging the effect of arbitrary abortion regulations that states like Pennsylvania have implemented -- it's good that he's not using the Gosnell case to argue for additional regulations that are irrelevant or counterproductive.
Having said that, there's a very important policy problem that Saletan's question ultimately sidesteps. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that laws banning post-viability abortions that are not necessary for a woman's life or health are legitimate, and part of a legal regime that otherwise protects a woman's reproductive freedom. The issue, then, is who decides whether or not an abortion is medically necessary. It's possible that existing exceptions for the life of the mother could be used as a license by doctors not operating in good faith. But more stringent regulations (such as requirements for panels of doctors or permitting late-term abortions only to save a woman's life) run the opposite risk: denying women who have a genuine medical need the right to a safe abortion. Even if we can answer "yes" to Saletan's question in principle, this doesn't get us very far in terms of the underlying policy dispute. And like Pema, I strongly favor erring on the side of trusting women as opposed to giving further authority to doctors.
There's another reason I agree with Pema: the Canadian case. In Canada, late-term abortions are not legally restricted, and Canada also doesn't have the other kinds of restrictions found in many American states and doesn't exclude abortion from guarantees of health care. As far as I can tell, there's no evidence that Canadian women get late-term abortions at significantly higher rates (and historically overall abortion rates in Canada have actually been lower). Essentially, absent evidence to the contrary, I think the presumption in favor of a woman's decision-making capacity is justified, and further restrictions are likely to do more harm than good.
-- Scott Lemieux
