What abortion policy set would you prefer?

[traininthedistance]

Lots of people fine with forcing poor women to have kids against their will in this thread.

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed by the pro-choicers here.

You are reading the results in a manner that is not just uncharitable, but completely unjustified.  I'm pretty confident that many if not most of the people voting option 2 are not "fine" with it in the least, they just consider it a lesser evil than option 1.  The whole point of posts like these is to present a deliberately bad/difficult set of choices and force people to weigh one set of principles and rights against another; to claim otherwise is a cop-out.

[traininthedistance]

Of course I've made this poll because the choice is not an obvious one, and you guys are entitled to your opinions. I am also entitled to mine, and to express my disappointment when these opinions are not shared by other posters.

Of course; and I'm just expressing my disappointment that you seemed to endorse TNF's intellectually dishonest smear of those who would, however regretfully, choose Option 2.

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I think you're wrong on the facts here.  Abortion is (in most cases) actually a relatively simple and inexpensive medical procedure; to say that restricting access to those who can pay out-of-pocket leaves it to a "privileged elite" is gross hyperbole.  What actually does the heavy lifting of restricting abortion access are regulations like waiting periods and TRAP laws meant to hound abortion providers out of business.  And I must regard a ten-week limit as of a piece with those sorts of measures- that is to say, as a practical matter it really does more to limit equality of access to abortion than monetary issues would, because the primary obstacle to access is not strictly monetary, or at least does not intersect with class in quite so simple a manner.

Of course, it also should go without saying that privileging the most expansive theoretical freedom of choice and definitions of bodily autonomy would take precedence from a liberal philosophical perspective.  I do also believe that, in pragmatic terms, the best way to expand "rights" and access for everyone is to articulate and encode a broad theoretical set of rights, and then work on trying to make sure that everyone can exercise them.  A right that everyone can theoretically access but not everyone has the means to is certainly worth less than one that everyone does have the means to exercise.  But it is a great deal better than a right that nobody has, because it really is the prerequisite for truly "universal" rights.

[traininthedistance]

TNF's post was hyperbolic in an Atlas fashion, I wouldn't take it at face value (though, for the reasons stated above, I do agree with the broad feelings behind his post).

I think I remember that an abortion may cost up to several thousands of dollars, which I'm pretty sure would be a significant burden to a lot of women. Maybe not to the point of reducing access to a privileged elite, but certainly enough to deny this right to many working-class women. Conversely, as it has been said before, a large majority of abortions occur before the 10th week, so the proportion of denied choices would be roughly the same in both situations. If the dilemma is between denying choice to the poorest women or denying choice to late-deciders, the latter definitely strikes me as the least worst option.

I was definitely under the assumption that most abortions are more like $200-$300 out of pocket*, which can obviously be burdensome to some, but is much more widely within reach.

I think if the average abortion went for several thousand dollars a pop, that is the sort of information that might cause me to rethink my position here.  What I would rethink it to, I honestly can't say for sure.

*And IIRC that's just surgical abortions, not medical ones- though obviously the abortion pill is less and less an option the further you get into pregnancy.