The Left and, with disturbingly increasing frequency, the Right like to argue we need government-mandated paid family leave to catch up with the rest of the developed world. By that logic, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s push to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act is morally necessary.
The bill would ban the overwhelming majority of abortions after 20 weeks of gestation, bringing us significantly closer to the average European restriction. In France and Spain, abortion is banned at the 14-week mark, and in Croatia and Portugal, it’s 10 weeks. Germany (gestational limit: 12 weeks) requires mandatory three-day waiting periods and counseling sessions, and Belgium (gestational limit: 14 weeks) requires that women obtaining first trimester abortions demonstrate visible distress about their pregnancies.
So McConnell’s proposed restriction is still significantly less onerous than the majority of those in Europe. It’s popular in the developed world, but infinitely more importantly, it’s popular in America.
Though our political parties voice the most partisan and extreme opinions on abortion, the majority tend to express some iteration of support for safe, legal, and rare abortion as a last resort. Three in five people support abortion being legal in the first trimester, but fewer than half of all people support purely elective abortion, even in the first trimester of pregnancy. While that means that the majority of people compromise as supporting Roe v. Wade and legal first trimester abortion, they reject legal second and third trimester abortion in droves.
Fewer than 3 in 10 people support legal second trimester abortion, and barely 1 in 10 support legal third trimester abortion. And that’s not because of hyperpartisanship, seeing as just 1 in 4 people are pro-life without exception. Instead, it’s because 2 in 3 pro-choice people oppose third trimester abortion.
Contrary to the claims of the most extreme pro-choice activists, the number of abortions performed after 20 weeks is not insignificant, and they are not performed out of medical necessity or guidance. Of the 623,471 abortions reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 7,000 were performed after the 20-week mark of gestation. According to a 2013 study by the Guttmacher Institute, the majority of women obtaining late-term abortions did so for purely elective reasons, citing no practical barrier to obtaining an abortion.
A major factor? Indecision. At six weeks, nearly half of the public thinks that’s acceptable. At 20 weeks, a thin minority do.
A 20-week abortion ban isn’t extreme by any measure, and it’s widely popular. The question is whether Democrats have the stones to face the statistics.
