Abortion: Whose body is it?

Two oldsters squared off and squabbled over women’s bodies. A septuagenarian and an octogenarian quarreled about control but it wouldn’t have made a difference if 20 or 30-year-olds were at it. They were men, making the scene still more absurd.

It was the first Presidential debate and though Biden’s now out, Trump’s still in, with running mate JD Vance who’s opposed abortion even in cases of rape or incest (“Two wrongs don’t make a right”).

The debate needs review since the race is heating up, and with the gung ho Vance onboard, we’ll be getting still grimmer stuff.

The CNN moderator read questions ridiculous to hear. Political discourse has plunged so deep these men argued if and at what month a woman can control her body. It’s sadly an issue again, as Trump, with his Supreme Court appointees, each worse than the last, helped repeal a woman’s right to abortion.

He defended his picks and court with lies and absolutes: Everyone, Democrat and Republican, wanted Roe v. Wade to end, liberals, conservatives, religious leaders. Every legal scholar around the world wanted the issue moved back to the states. He bragged: I appointed three great Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of killing Roe v. Wade ─ killing no doubt a gift to his supporters.

But he was generous: I believe like Reagan in the exceptions ─ rape, incest, life of the mother; some people don’t. Many of his fans must have felt chastised at this bone he threw so not to appear as bad as the three greats and two benchmates who ended Roe v. Wade. He counseled us twice to follow our hearts, a cliché.

The Democrats are radical, he declared, a favorite adjective to slam his opponents. They’ll take the life of a child in the eighth, ninth month, even after birth, rip it out of the womb, fabricating with no shame, likely remembering his base, many fixated on the phrase late-term abortion, a rare procedure to save a woman’s life, which Trump just said was ok by him.

We brought the issue back to the states, he boasted, and the country is coming together on this and it’s a great thing. Biden, who’d looked out of it, suddenly came to. He turned to Trump in disgust: It was a terrible thing you did.

But Trump was not put off and even got some humor in although probably not to him. He trotted out the Founding Fathers: Even they would have backed the repeal of Roe v. Wade if they knew about this issue, which frankly they didn’t. I laughed and agreed. In an era when women had hardly a right, relegated to reproducing, often dead in the process, the matter is unlikely to have crossed our forefathers’ minds as they touted liberty and happiness.

Trump harped on: The people voting in each state must decide ─ a woman’s body now deemed public property. Biden scoffed: Civil rights needed federal intervention. State laws discriminated. Federal legislation gave equality.

It was sketch comedy: a woman calmly asking two men about abortion, a talking point on her list, no fact checks or challenges, the technicolor set 1950s sci fi.

It’s late-term abortion time again, the old wedge into ending abortion rights, and she tells us seven states have no legal limits on how far along a pregnancy can be terminated. Do you support a limit she queries. The question is offensive. Removing limits everywhere should be the issue not angling for more.

Biden breaks down a woman’s body into three parts. The first term is between a woman and doctor. The second between doc and extreme situation, the third a confusing response. He supports Roe v. Wade and is firm that politicians shouldn’t make decisions. A physician has to be in on it, abortion framed as only a health issue.

But he doesn’t want to come off as a baby killer. We are not for late-term abortion, he states, only to save the life of the mother, sentence done, period repeated three times.

Trump is repetitive. Under the Democrats, he tells the world again, you can rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month: We think that’s a radical thing. We think Democrats are the radicals, having earlier called Dems murderers.

Since 2022, with abortion decisions in the hands of voters and courts in each state, it has been totally banned in several (in Mississippi only allowed for rape but not incest!) and limited by number of weeks pregnant in still more, only fully legal in half the country. The moderator doesn’t bring any of this up, instead giving air time to the seven states without the so called late-term ban. It plays better.

But the whole point was missed. Abortion is no one’s to decide except a woman’s. Roe v. Wade rested on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of privacy, of bodily autonomy.

France gets this. On March 4, 2024 the Eiffel Tower lit up in celebration. By a vote of 780 to 72, French legislators guaranteed a woman’s right to abortion, the constitutional amendment supported by the far right as well. The message on the Eiffel Tower: MY BODY MY CHOICE.  MON CORPS MON CHOIX. For Spanish and Italian speakers: ABORTO LEGAL.

We’re sending a message to women, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told the nation: Your body belongs to you and no one can decide for you. We stand united to enshrine women’s liberty at last…We can’t forget all the women who suffered because of the laws legislators, male legislators, imposed on them.

Biden and Trump, far worse, made fools of themselves on stage. They shouldn’t have been up there obsessing at all.