During a campaign stop in Las Vegas on Sunday, President Biden made a confusing statement regarding his thoughts and plans for abortion in the U.S. if he wins reelection.
“I love how Trump now says Biden is for abortion on demand. That’s not true,” claimed Biden. “That’s not what Roe v. Wade said. It said the three trimesters and how it worked.”
It appears that President Biden may have been attempting to imply that he is not in favor of abortion on demand because Roe didn’t allow abortion on demand. However, this idea is misleading. Roe actually did allow abortion in all of “the three trimesters” of pregnancy (continue reading to learn more). Biden has vowed to “restore the protections of Roe in federal law once and for all.” Therefore, he is supporting the allowance of abortion throughout the entirety of pregnancy.
If a person claims he does not support “abortion on demand” while simultaneously refusing to state if or when he would limit or restrict the killing of preborn human beings, it should be obvious that this person does not support limiting the action in any way — and is therefore, by default, supporting “abortion on demand.”
What Roe allowed
Roe v. Wade, along with its sister case, Doe v. Bolton, legalized abortion throughout all 40 weeks of pregnancy using a trimester framework. Though Roe used so-called ‘viability‘ (essentially a meaningless and completely subjective term) to force states to allow abortion for any reason in the first trimester and for “health” reasons in the second trimester, it also said states could protect preborn children from abortion in the third trimester as long as abortion was still legal in the third trimester for certain situations including health. However, Doe defined “health” to include a woman’s “physical, emotional, psychological,” and even “familial” health — a definition broad enough to include any reason.
Under this broad ‘health’ umbrella, Roe allowed abortion on demand, and Biden wants to codify the rules of Roe into federal law. As he said, that would mean allowing abortion in “the three trimesters.” If he succeeds and codifies Roe, there won’t be a single preborn child in the U.S. who is protected from death by abortion.
But if Biden doesn’t think abortion being available in “the three trimesters” is essentially “abortion on demand,” then what do his comments mean? It’s something social media commenters pondered.
“Three trimesters” pushback
Social media users noted that while pregnancy itself includes three trimesters, there is what’s often referred to as the “fourth trimester” — the 12 weeks after giving birth. For many, Biden’s comments signified that perhaps he and his administration would allow “after-birth abortion” — a pro-infanticide idea supported by two Oxford bioethicists.
In 2012, Alberto Giubilini from the University of Milan and Francesca Minerva from Melbourne University claimed in the Journal of Medical Ethics that fetuses and newborns “do not have the same moral status as actual persons.” Because there is virtually no difference between a 40-week fetus and a newborn baby (other than location), an argument for abortion up to 40 weeks could easily expand into an argument for “after-birth abortion.”
David Deavel, Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas, quipped of Biden’s statements, “See. After three trimesters are over, he is willing to consider some limits.”
Another said, “Biden has backed some post-viability bans during his Senate career but has also said as president he’d sign legislation that effectively would not allow them.”
Another commenter wrote, “Legalized infanticide. How noble of them.”
Legalized infanticide. How noble of them. pic.twitter.com/H1o1hmxOFv
— Memelord Focker (@Johnson84Tj) February 5, 2024
It appears to some that abortion advocates’ claim that preborn children are merely “potential” persons is expanding to include born children. In their paper, Giubilini and Minerva argued that killing a baby should be “permissible in all cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled” and “the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant.”
Under a Roe-inspired federal law, abortion would be allowed for any reason through all 40 weeks. If killing a baby were to be “permissible in all cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled,” then no newborn is safe. While newborn euthanasia was called “nonsense” back in 2013, is it still “nonsense” to abortion advocates more than two decades later?
Not at all.
In 2005, the Netherlands began allowing euthanasia for babies under the age of one if they were considered “terminally ill” — a term Live Action News has already exposed as deceptive since there is no time limit indicated as to when the so-called terminal illness is expected to cause the person’s death. That law was recently expanded to include children between the ages of one and 12.
The future of abortion in America
The future of abortion laws in the U.S. remains murky at best, even nearly two years since Roe was overturned in June 2022. A year later, a June 2023 poll sponsored by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America revealed that 77% of respondents said preborn children should be protected from abortion beginning at conception (fertilization), after six weeks, or after 15 weeks. And a 2023 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National Poll found that the proportion of Americans who support pro-life laws “up to the time of cardiac activity at about 6 weeks” has increased from 27% to 40%.
Biden’s plan to codify Roe does not line up with what most Americans think of abortion. His recent statements appear to some to be even more sinister, but the idea of after-birth abortion isn’t without support in the U.S.
Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at Princeton University, believes euthanasia is acceptable for certain newborns, and said in 2005 that U.S. neonatologists told him babies were being euthanized in the U.S. occasionally. “This is never reported or publicly discussed, for fear of prosecution,” he said.
Likewise, doctors in pro-abortion Canada have also signaled support for the euthanasia of newborns. A doctor representing the Quebec College of Physicians recommended to a special committee in 2022 that the parents of newborns with “severe deformations” and “very grave . . . medical syndromes” should have the option of Medical Assistance in Dying (euthanasia) for their babies. Euthanasia for newborns could therefore logically be seen as after-birth abortion by another name.
