My thoughts on the Supreme Court’s just-released decision upholding a ban on partial-birth abortion, even when deemed necessary for a woman’s health.

Ironically, this may just reduce the number of wanted pregnancies. Few to no women would just randomly decide to abort 26 weeks after they became pregnant. I suspect most late-term abortions occur when a woman who wanted to bear the child discovers medical complications during pregnancy that threaten her life or health. In this situation, I firmly believe that doctors, not politicians, should decide what procedure is safest and most effective for women. When they can’t do that, they raise the medical risks of pregnancy for every women. With this ruling, women’s bodies become forfeit to the state after a certain period–they can be scarred or maimed for life for no medically legitimate reason. In such a context, it’s entirely rational that a woman who otherwise might want to bear a child, but is afraid she might develop medical complications, will simply avoid it.

To be clear: I think that legislatures can generally ban abortion after viability for a fetus. And most, even prior to this ruling, had such bans, and they did not need this ruling to be enforcable. What this ruling did was make it so that legislatures need not add even a health exemption. They can legally mandate that women run a higher risk of being maimed. And that’s wrong.