The real threat to abortion in Florida isn't an all-out ban

[haele]

33. The problem is that "rare" was the wrong word.

I understand why that word is used. It's "bumper sticker" politics.
Both Safe and Legal are implicit in Roe V. Wade. But Roe v. Wade does not look at abortion as birth control, or that choice to abort a pregnancy that does not have a medical basis need be protected.
Abortion is a medical procedure.
As a friend of mine who is a lawyer that works with policy issues indicates, the use of the word "rare" by someone when discussing abortion policy will indicate that choice does not need to be a legal consideration when regulating abortion as a medical procedure, either for funding, medical licensing, etc...

Rare would be used in the context that either abortion is only to be used as an emergency procedure- in cases of the mother's health or fetal viability, or "that the law can still regulate abortion due to the way the law defines for whom abortion can be "safe", no matter the non-medical needs of the woman who finds herself pregnant.

Available is the word that should have been used. However, that cuts too close to the conservative trope that "Abortion is a moral hazard used exclusively as birth control by the unmarried or adulterous sexually active" (totally ignoring the fact that surgery is much more expensive than contraception, whether prescribed or emergency). What liberals forget is that conservatives would be hypocritically happy to get rid of Griswold as well as Roe, because Sex is for Procreation within Marriage. They see the choice component of "Pro Choice" in having sex, and all birth control being unnatural, because (and I've heard this argument over and over) "it's unnatural and punishes the baby if you decide not to go through with the pregnancy, because you wouldn't have had sex if you didn't want to be pregnant". And of course, getting married implies you are ready to start popping babies out and chose the man to father your children, and it's unnatural not to get pregnant soon after the wedding.

This is what rare means. It means abortion should only be available if there is a medical or legal necessity - primarily, back to the days of "therapeutic abortions" due to the health of the mother, and if the fetus is non-viable or the possibility of death and other children to consider. Maybe some legal compassion to those who became pregnant because they were not capable of consenting to sex that resulted in a pregnancy.

Including "rare" shows that ultimately, it doesn't matter what the woman wants, it only matters that the procedure is available, so long as it's safe and legal. Rare means that if there are legal restrictions based on some form of codified "health standard" (whether valid or not) on a woman's ability choose to have an abortion, it's all okay, because she can still have the legal medical procedure if her need to have one falls within the threshold for access to one.

I used to think "Safe, Legal, and Rare" also. But that's because I never needed one, so I wasn't paying a lot of attention. That was, until my step-daughter started becoming sexually active. And I realized how much more difficult it is for women to find an abortion provider if they want to, not to mention how much more difficult it is becoming to find affordable complete gynecological services in general.

Haele