The 20 weeks about foetuses seems to be that they can survive… or maybe just that one has survived… outside the womb after only 20 weeks’ gestation. Somehow that has led to proposals to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks.
I don’t get it – if the baby can survive outside the womb after 20 weeks, then shouldn’t it be perfectly okay for a woman to end her pregnancy? Let her end her pregnancy, and let the medical establishment do their best to save the feotus for eventual adoption.
This rule – that the woman can end her pregnancy whenever she wants (up to a month post-partum, if you ask me; after that, they assume full parental responsibilities for the usual 18 years plus) and, if the newborn survives, it can be adopted, and if it doesn’t, there can be mourning; but in either case the foetus’s survival is not the mother’s responsibility – this rule solves everything. The mother has all of her privacy rights intact, the doctor can be portrayed as in the business of saving innocent babbies’ lives (instead of just saving the mothers’ lives, which doesn’t seem to garner many cheers on the ‘pro-life’ side – after all, she’s an icky grown-up person).
In fact, let’s retire the term “abortionist” and call them “baby-savers”. When they fail, they can shrug disconsolately at god’s mysterious plan, and when they succeed, pro-lifers can cheer. No more will their lives be threatened by heavily-armed zealots. Now those same heavily-armed zealots would protect the Baby-Life Clinics™.
We’re not dealing with the question of Who Pays the Bills, of course. If it were up to me (and, again, it doesn’t seem to be), every pro-life organization would have to put their money where their mouth is and pay for all that wildly expensive premature neonatal care. They’re pro-life, aren’t they? The should cheer at the chance. Right? And then they should insure adoption of the few actually living babies who emerge from the new chain of Baby-Life Clinics™.