Abortion

Missouri became a leader in the anti-abortion movement all of a sudden. Quietly, clinics have closed by arbitrary rules. The major urban area at the Western end, Kansas City, has no clinic. Curiously, very conservative Kansas next door has a clinic in nearby Overland Park.

Nationally, white men have been ruling on abortion in all these states. Missouri had a Democrat for a senator, and even a governor. But now it is fully conservative. When the economy is doing well, the conservative issues, like abortion and guns, become campaign issues. The death penalty is also a popular campaign item. The Missouri house and senate look like this:

Nationally, Joe Biden was holding on to 20 year old ideas on abortion. These things were always decided by men. But as we have several women candidates running, Biden had to change his mind on this immediately. He no longer bans federal funds for abortion.

Nobody wants to face abortion personally. The rules put in are there to scare the single women, who have no means to support a child, to carry the child to term and put up the newborn to adoption.

The facts concerning abortion are the same as any other item you can look up on the internet. The truth lies out there, but you have to search a bit deeper. Start with Wikipedia.

Fetuses have a heart beat to exchange oxygen with the mother through the placenta. This not mean a fetus of 8 or 12 weeks is a functioning being. At 8-9 weeks it has limbs, fingers and toes. You can look up pictures of it.

Survival at past 20 weeks is only 50%, and the whole thing becomes a healthcare cost issue. Do you want the senators to pay for it? If not, what business do we have deciding? The options for the mother at 20 weeks are few, depending on insurance and local rulings. At this point, all options should be purely medical angles. Past 30-32 weeks survival is quite optimistic. But the whole thing is still quite in the medical arena at this point. The decision should be between parties involved and the doctor. The state legislature or the US senate has no business inside the uterus at this point. There are medical reasons even for late term abortions. These are rarely done, something like 1-2% in most countries. Before we had abortion, women had to carry a dead fetus along for 9 months and give birth to a dead baby, if it did not abort on its own. It was quite common.

Added note: Biden was still struggling with this issue. It's not complicated. Katie Porter explained it to Bill Maher: Your mother made a choice. You are the consequence of that choice. We are all here because of that choice our mothers made. (Well, past 1960 something).