OPINION:
Unless you had the great good fortune to be living in a cave the past few days, all you’ve heard about is abortion, abortion, abortion.
To hear the mainstream media tell it, America is now worse than China, with its one-child policy, and North Korea, where no one even knows what goes on behind its Red Curtain. In half the country, women will soon be in back alleys performing abortions with coat hangers, if you believe the mainstream media. And America is worse, certainly, than every sophisticated country in the world, which former President Barack Obama so badly wanted the U.S. to emulate.
So let’s dissect that argument for a bit, just for spritz and wiggles.
And let’s go straight to a Supreme Court brief in the very case that the Supreme Court ruled on Friday, in which Mississippi officials methodically laid out how the U.S. law is out of step with Western nations — and actually in step with regressive Communist countries.
“The United States finds itself in the company of China and North Korea as some of the only countries that permit elective abortions after 20 weeks gestation,” they wrote. “That is not progress. The time has come to recognize as much.”
Let that sink in a second. When Mississippi said, “Hey, let’s maybe cut off abortions at 15 weeks” — and that’s three and a half months if you do the math at home — the MSM said, “Mon dieu, how American.”
Not even close.
For the record, no less than the uber-liberal Washington Post’s vaunted “fact-checkers” ruled in 2017 that “the data back up the claim” that “the U.S. is one of only seven countries that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy,” the Catholic News Agency wrote last year.
The other six countries, you ask? China, North Korea, Vietnam, Canada, Singapore and the Netherlands.
That’s it. In the world.
European countries — which liberals so desperately want America to use as a template — are far, far more restrictive than what Mississippi asked for: a 15-week cut-off.
And you can’t slip something like that past the Supreme Court.
“The United States is one of only seven nations in the world that permits nontherapeutic or elective abortion-on-demand after the 20th week of gestation,” the justices wrote in their first legislative finding justifying the Mississippi law. “In fact, fully 75% of all nations do not permit abortion after 12 weeks gestation, except (in most instances) to save the life and to preserve the physical health of the mother.”
Most of Europe cuts off elective abortion at 10-12 weeks. Germany, Spain and Belgium go to 15 weeks. After that period, many countries require one or two doctors to agree it’s necessary. And some countries allow later abortions for severe birth defects or abnormalities.
A study released by the Charlotte Lozier Institute in July “found that 47 out of 50 European countries, independent states, and regions analyzed either do not allow elective abortion or limit elective abortion to 15 weeks or earlier,” the CNA wrote. Just three permit elective abortions past 15 weeks, the restriction sought by Mississippi.
“No European nation allows elective abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, as is effectively permitted in several U.S. states, and America is one of only a small handful of nations, along with China and North Korea, to permit any sort of late-term elective abortion,” concluded the report’s author, Angelina B. Nguyen.
Beyond Europe, just more than a quarter of the world’s countries allow abortions without restrictions.
“Of these 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 Charlotte Lozier Institute report wrote.
“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).”
There will be more fights over abortion, but one thing is clear: Europe is far more restrictive than the United States.
The Lozier Institute’s study concluded that “Upholding laws restricting abortion on demand after 20 weeks would situate the United States closer to the international mainstream, instead of leaving it as an outlying country with ultra-permissive abortion policies.”
But you won’t hear any of this from Democrats — who swoon over everything continental — or the mainstream media, which makes all its money by stirring up controversy.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
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