Senate Republicans to Introduce National Abortion Ban at 15 Weeks


After many years of claiming abortion’s legality ought to be left as much as particular person states, Republicans are losing no time in exposing that for the handy lie it was. Just some months after the Supreme Court docket mentioned People don’t have any constitutional proper to abortion, Republican leaders are set to suggest a nationwide abortion ban.

Led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.), a gaggle of Senate Republicans is reportedly backing a federal ban on abortions at 15 weeks of being pregnant. Graham’s invoice—the “Defending Ache-Succesful Unborn Youngsters from Late-Time period Abortions Act”—is anticipated to be launched within the Senate at this time.

The invoice’s identify is deceptive in that approach so many items of laws are—designed to make anybody who votes towards it appear to the informal observer like an extremist or perhaps a monster. (See additionally: any invoice with intercourse trafficking within the identify.) The phrase late-term abortion will not be a medical time period. However normally, it refers to an abortion within the third trimester (which begins at 28 weeks) or, not less than, an abortion that takes place after the purpose of fetal viability (when a fetus might survive outdoors the womb, round 23 or 24 weeks).

Graham’s invoice, nonetheless, is anticipated to suggest an abortion ban that begins at 15 weeks.

Even previous to the current Supreme Court docket determination in Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Group, many states banned abortion after the purpose of fetal viability, in keeping with reproductive rights group the Guttmacher Institute. For the reason that Supreme Court docket ruling, bans in 44 states have gotten extra restrictive, with some now solely banning the process and a few bans beginning at six or 15 weeks.

“Simply 1% of US abortions occurred after the 21 week level, and 91% occurred earlier than 13 weeks,” notes Georgetown College professor Don Moynihan on Substack. “So why enable a late and infrequently used cut-off? Girls usually tend to choose an abortion at that time due to well being danger both to themselves or the fetus. Having that possibility is necessary for girls pressured to make some exhausting selections.”


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Backdoor censorship on social media. A brand new evaluation from Will Duffield of the Cato Institute appears to be like at “jawboning” on social media. Jawboning is when “a authorities official threatens to make use of his or her energy—be it the ability to prosecute, regulate, or legislate—to compel somebody to take actions that the state official can not.” Basically, it is authorities bullying for censorial functions. And “though courts have recognized and censured jawboning up to now, it has been given a brand new life within the web age,” warns Duffield.


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The airline bailouts failed. In 2020, the federal government gave airways round $54 billion. “However, journey by air grew to become a nightmare for a lot of in summer time 2022 as passenger demand returned,” notice Veronique de Rugy and Gary D. Leff of the Mercatus Institute:

Mass cancellations and delays occurred with regularity, and every occasion cascaded into additional delays as crew and planes had been caught out of place. The most important carriers have canceled a good portion of their flights up to now few months, creating chaos at main airports, particularly throughout high-traffic intervals. The issue will not be distinctive to home journey; it impacts additionally worldwide flights and airways all over the world.

Quite a few components have been blamed for the present wave of delays and cancelations, together with pandemic restoration, COVID-19 deaths, early retirement, and the heavy burden of occupational licensing for pilots. Every of those explanations makes some sense. But stakeholders have additionally used every to distract from the query of whether or not authorities ought to have bailed out airways within the first place.

Their new transient—the third in a collection analyzing the airline bailouts—appears to be like at “the explanations superior to bail out the airways and the way properly the bailouts have delivered on the guarantees made.”


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