In light of the SCOTUS leak, the Trib reports that 78 percent of Texans think Abortion should be allowed in some form. Bold is very necessary on this issue; here's the poll, which does not put options for what allowances for abortion people accept within a trimester framework.. I think most Texans — including a plurality of Democrats, although perhaps not a majority — don't want third trimester abortions without a fair range of restrictions. Outside maternal life or health issues, I don't want them. (And, yes, that means no "rape or incest" allowance. If the adult, on rape, or the minor child, on incest, hasn't reported it before being visibly into a pregnancy at the six-month mark, then when? And, otherwise, though framing it differently than the Religious Right, I do see a "liberty interest" based on fetal viability.
In short, I'm in that "great muddled middle" that some pundits talk about, with the exception that I'm not muddled at all. First trimester, since, unless Roe is officially overturned, we're stuck with the trimester system? No restrictions outside parental notification for minors. Third trimester? Nothing other than maternal life or health.
Second trimester? The feds could let states have their say fully and freely here. Personally, I'd split the trimester in half and extend the no restrictions out there to the 20-week mark, then after that, the material life and health, maternal mental health, rape and incest, and previously undetected fetal abnormalities.
That said, as a few liberals and a few leftists acknowledge, Roe was badly written as case law. Rather than penumbras and emanations, Blackmun should have gone straight to unenumerated rights, with privacy, including reproductive privacy, being one of those. Unfortunately, he was working off Griswold, where Bill Douglas went that way. (Or, better yet, Blackmun could have used Goldberg's concurring opinion in Griswold, which specifically cited the Ninth Amendment, making a very rare appearance in constitutional law.)
Meanwhile, despite the fact that Democrats of the first two years of Dear Leader's first term squandered chances to federally codify Roe, and Obama his own self was OK with back-burnering it, the old canards about how Greens in 2016 "really voted for Trump" are rising again. Not true. I voted against both Trump and Clinton by voting for Jill Stein. (And, I considered Mimi Soltysik, and wish I would have. Google him yourselves.) And, in 2020, I voted against Trump and Biden AND Howie Hawkins. I may undervote the presidential race in 2024 if I don't vote Green and/or don't have a leftist write-in option. I can tell Dems right now I'm not voting Biden.
