Annals of derp: Elective amenities

Heritage:

Report: U.S. Is One of Seven Countries That Allows Late-Term Abortion

The United States is one of only a handful of developed countries in which late-term abortions after 20 weeks—five months—are allowed, according to a new report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute. At that stage, the child is capable of feeling pain and women are at increased risk for the negative effects of abortion.

Except it's no truer than the last time the claim went around (when it was Mrs. Governor Anita Perry of Texas and former California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina who gave the number as 4 rather than 7. As Politifact Texas explained at the time,

Image via Crazy Uproar.

Anita Perry’s statement, like the claim by Fiorina, also leaves off an important qualifier. She did not mention that dozens of countries permit abortions after 20 weeks for different reasons. Common exceptions to the gestational period requirement mean women may be able to get therapeutic abortions based on physical health, mental health or socioeconomic status.

Just 29 countries (meaning independent states and semi-autonomous regions whose populations exceed 1 million) outlaw abortion entirely, with no exceptions to save the woman’s life. Thirty-seven other countries that routinely outlaw abortion, including Paraguay, Afghanistan and Uganda, make clear exceptions to save mothers.

Another 59 will do so in general to preserve pregnant women’s physical health on a broader scale, with Israel, New Zealand and others also accepting mental health reasons as valid exceptions. India and Japan belong to a group of 13 countries that grant even wider exceptions that include access to the procedure for socioeconomic reasons based on factors like age of the woman or very low income.

The remaining 61 countries legalize elective abortions with varying gestational period requirements, with the United States, Canada, North Korea, China, Singapore and the Netherlands being the six countries with the widest acceptable time periods.

This is actually semi-clear from the Lozier report, which is only about those "elective" abortions:

Of [a sample of] 198 countries, independent states, and regions worldwide, 59 allow abortion without restriction as to reason, otherwise known as elective abortion or abortion on demand. The remaining 139 countries require some reason to obtain an abortion ranging from most restrictive (to save the life of the mother or completely prohibited) to least restrictive (socioeconomic grounds) with various reasons in between (e.g., physical health, mental health).... the United States is one of only seven countries in the world that permit elective abortion past 20 weeks.

Which is true, as long as you ignore the range of different ways of making the distinction between "elective" and "therapeutic" in the 157 countries that use it, and the obvious overlaps. What's therapeutic in India or Japan is much more generously interpreted than in Afghanistan or Uganda.

What seems really unique about the United States is the way Roe v. Wade allows individual states to put gestational limits on therapeutic abortion—to say after 20 weeks the fetus trumps the mother's health and she can't have an abortion on therapeutic grounds, however defined. Other countries either value the woman or they don't. In America we seem to value her, but only up to a point, when her right to life can be and in some states is taken by the thing she's carrying, which may be "capable of feeling pain". Adult women aren't capable of feeling pain? (Sure they are, says the subtext, but they fucked so they deserve it.)

To get from the Lozier report to the Heritage report, anyhow, you have to be either illiterate or an inveterate liar. Wonder which it is.

Jim DeMint, via Real Clear Politics.