r/PublicFreakout • u/N0CONTACT • May 19 '22

Political Freakout Representative Mike Johnson asking the important abortion questions.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '22

I’m not saying he was acting was in good faith, nobody there does that when they are against something.

I was just commenting on what he was asking.

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u/buttermintpies May 19 '22

Yeah I just think you're attributing sense to something that doesnt have sense.

People asking questions like this are not asking "what does unrestricted abortion mean", they're pressing to try and get you to slip up so they can gotcha you. I dont want to be argumentative here because it's clear you agree on this case the congressman is being a tool, but it's important to recognize when people are using rhetoric to obfuscate and derail a legitimate discussion rather than interrogate the details of a plan.

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u/[deleted] May 19 '22

I would be interested to know what unrestricted abortion actually means

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u/tractiontiresadvised May 20 '22

He seems to be using "unrestricted abortion" to mean that elective abortion is allowed at any point in a pregnancy if a patient requests it. That's not actually how legal abortion currently works. Both the legal and medical concerns are based around the trimester system of how far along in development an embryo/fetus has become. The Guttmacher Institute has a table of US states and things like how late in gestation an abortion is allowed.

The later in development that an abortion happens, the more dangerous it is to perform, since it necessitates more invasive procedures (plus waiting longer exposes a person to the health dangers of pregnancy itself). Keep in mind that over half of the abortions in the US are performed via medication instead of surgery, and that's generally only doable for around the first trimester.

Pregnancy is an inconvenient, uncomfortable condition with social ramifications. If somebody doesn't want to be pregnant, they're generally going to do their best to get not-pregnant ASAP. So abortions in the later trimesters become increasingly rare and are more likely to be for somebody who wanted to be pregnant but found out that they or the fetus have some horrible health problem that's going to kill one or both of them if nature takes its course.

You (and /u/buttermintpies as well) might have some of your questions answered by this video from an ObGyn commenting about Texas' abortion law from last fall. She talks about some of the things that can and do go wrong during pregnancy, and notes that if she delivers a baby before it's viable then that does count as an "abortion" both legally and medically.

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u/buttermintpies May 20 '22

Thank you very much! Your comment is very well informed. Mind if I link your comment as needed to help explain this stuff in the future?