Revive the abortion bus idea?

by philg

Top of the front page of CNN.com on a day when New York City was flooded, with multiple fatalities, by the leftovers from Hurricane Ida:

“Biden launches ‘whole of government’ effort to protect abortion rights after Texas ban” is kind of interesting. Leaving aside of whether the “whole of government” effort to fight the unrighteous in Texas will go better than the 20-year “whole of government” effort to permanently establish the rainbow flag over Kabul, why does it take the entire Federal government to deliver abortions to potential birthing persons in Texas?

From Why can’t Michael Bloomberg run a fleet of abortion buses? (October 6, 2020):

The billionaires trying to cleanse American politics from the filth of Republicanism could, for a tiny fraction of what they’re spending to defeat the hated Trumpenfuhrer, purchase and operate a fleet of buses painted with “Bloomberg’s Abortion Caravan” on the side. Have the buses continuously tour the U.S. and anyone who wants an abortion can hop on to be driven to, for example, Maskachusetts. We have abortion on demand up to 24 weeks; abortion of a “fetus” after 24 weeks available in the sole discretion of a single physician concluding that “a continuation of her pregnancy will impose on [the pregnant woman] a substantial risk of grave impairment of her physical or mental health.”

Essentially there is no time limit for an abortion in Massachusetts since almost any child can be a risk to a parent’s mental health (“these kids are driving me crazy” is not merely a figure of speech!).

Rich Democrats could fund abortion buses privately or, now that the executive branch has been purged of sinful Republicans, the abortion buses could be operated by Medicaid with Joe Biden being propped up to sign an order to print money to pay for the buses and then sign another order to operate them. (To get it going faster, maybe the program could be handled by contractors.)

Given the extensive transportation network in the U.S. and the fact that so many states are 100-percent controlled by Democrats and offer unlimited abortion services, why is this such a fraught issue? Why can’t the people who love abortion organize the service as a transportation+procedure package and not worry about what legislatures do in states where citizens are opposed to abortion?

(Along related lines, why can’t well-intentioned folks fund luxury buses to deliver anyone who is homeless to Santa Monica or San Francisco where rich people say that they want to help the vulnerable and unfortunate? Would it be illegal to deliver 50 indigents every hour to downtown Santa Monica? It seems like a win/win for someone who is currently homeless in, say, Chicago and a Californian who says he/she/ze/they wants to help the homeless.)

Related:

  • “As Texans fill up abortion clinics in other states, low-income people get left behind” (Texas Tribune, 9/3/2021): Texas’ near-total ban on abortions is sending patients out of state for the procedure. Advocates say many immigrants and women of color can’t leave, and that’s increasing the inequities their communities suffer. … “There are going to be thousands of individuals who don’t have that wherewithal, and it’s really particularly going to impact women of color, young women, rural women.” … “The folks that went out of state [for abortions in 2020] and came back to have follow-up care tended to be higher-income, tended to be white folks,” said Bhavik Kumar, a doctor at Planned Parenthood Center for Choice in Houston, recalling patients he saw after Abbott’s executive order ended.

20 thoughts on “Revive the abortion bus idea?”

    • I should explain a little better. If you read those things in sequence, CNN believes that when the Supreme Court makes a decision they don’t like, it’s because:

      1) The Chief Justice is not exerting sufficient control over his colleagues to prevent them from doing things CNN doesn’t like.

      CNN’s article says:

      “Nominated in 2005 by former President George W. Bush, Roberts has warned over the years about the importance of public confidence in the court and has tried to keep the bench from moving too quickly against abortion.”

      If sixteen years is “too quickly” what would “too slowly” look like? 160 years? 1,600 years? 16,000,000 years?

      https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/02/politics/john-roberts-abortion-texas/index.html

      Read the rest of the article. I’m not even thinking about the merits of the decision. CNN makes it sound as though the Court is supposed to be a gladiatorial arena or mafia operation with retribution and vengeance and so forth. That should tell everybody a lot about what they want see from a packed court like the one Erwin Chemerinsky wants.

  2. Along related lines, why can’t well-intentioned folks fund luxury buses to deliver anyone who is homeless to Santa Monica or San Francisco where rich people say that they want to help the vulnerable and unfortunate?

    Despite closing the Santa Monica Airport (which is stupid) local politicians are too smart for this and simply dump the homeless across the street in the city of LA which is even stupider and more incompetent.

    • Population replacement ? Hoping that the newcomers will be better ? If they turn out not to be so good, apply the same herd persuasion thinning technique until the desired metrics improve.

  4. What a foul headline. The ruling was procedural as in habit of this court, something US Democrats and their press hailed most of the times up until now and does not preclude pother challenges to do-gooder humanist Texan law ( Not related I do not want to even think of “aborting” someone with a heart-bit. When would is stop? At acquiring JD degree or at voting Democrat?) I hope that CNN has actual Court ruling somewhere but do not bet on it and do not want to waste my time on it when the ruling is available online. I think that Biden admin pleaded with Roberts to enable this ruling to take Afghanistan disaster out of the spotlight. As usual making a mountain out of a molehill

    • > I think that Biden admin pleaded with Roberts to enable this ruling to take Afghanistan disaster out of the spotlight.

      Sounds reasonable. These issues are political Kabuki theater [1] that are utilized when convenient.

      [1] Apologies for cultural appropriation.

  5. Ask Nancy Pelosi.

    Here is her statement: https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/9221

    “The Supreme Court’s cowardly, dark-of-night decision to uphold a flagrantly unconstitutional assault on women’s rights and health is staggering. That this radically partisan Court chose to do so without a full briefing, oral arguments or providing a full, signed opinion is shameful.”

    Here is San Francisco’s plan to pay people $300 per month not to shoot each other:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9951135/San-Francisco-rolls-program-pay-people-300-month-not-shoot-other.html

    Here is a photo of a woman (I’m assuming) in San Francisco exercising her right to preemptive and retroactive abortion:

    https://i.ibb.co/51h7PWS/SANFRAN.jpg

  6. In Europe the limit is usually 12 weeks, often with mandatory counseling. 24 weeks, if _actually_ used for non-medical reasons, sounds silly.

    Will you have fewer abortions if the limit is lowered to 6 weeks? I don’t think an abortion is an easy decision for a woman (“birthing person” these days). For all we know, the extremely short time frame will lead to more abortions just in case and because there’s no time to make up one’s mind.

    Hint to the Republicans: You could probably have won the last election if anti-abortion talk was less militant and Trump hadn’t put off womxn on a regular basis. Realpolitik.

    • @Anonymous: I agree with that and said it many times here and elsewhere all throughout 2020, along with a few others. Damned if I know whether anyone important heard it.

    • Not clear why this is a framed as a woman’s issue since half the kid is the father’s — and then there is the kid.

    • Jack: I’m European, so the following does not take potential U.S. sensibilities into account.

      “Proponents” of abortion (i.e. people who tolerate it) do not think of a fetus less than 8-12 weeks as a kid. Ben Shapiro is fond of asking “Does the vagina confer personhood?” during debates, and often he manages to elicit a “yes” from his inexperienced opponents.

      In Europe, that is the position of the Catholic Church, but even evangelical ministers cite the “person after 40 days” passage from the bible. So “proponents” think time and development confer personhood.

      It’s a tough question, I don’t think the state should interfere apart from banning obvious cases greater 12 weeks.

      The woman should decide because she does the work, that is the libertarian principle that was present in e.g. software development until the woke took over a decade ago.

    • Anon-
      Does the woman really do the work? In my neighborhood there are more men pushing strollers than women.

  7. There was a bit of a scandal in the past when it was discovered that the SLC approach to handling the “unhoused” was to buy them a bus ticket to SFO. It was highly cost effective for them though.

  8. The flooding wasn’t that bad. Thought it was a rare example of TX having less freedom than Calif*, which famously rules most of the world population’s behavior with an iron fist. Amerikans may idolize god, the life before birth issue, the sin of prostitution, but if any of them actually knew what god was, they’d crucify her.

  11. Can a woman please explain to me why any woman would wait beyond 9 weeks to have an abortion? before the 9 weeks you can just take the RU486 pill, right? I mean, don’t most women know they are pregnant by then? Who waits until 24 weeks and why ? Yes I know some cases a tricky (genetic defect only shows up later ,etc) but I would assume most cases are not like that. Btw there are no brain waves until the end of the 5 week. So before then you essentially just have a bunch of cells forming a fish like shape without an active brain. I guess what I am saying is, why not just take care of it as soon as possible?

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