Most people who have gone through a pregnancy, or watched someone close to them go through one, know that there are certain white-knuckle benchmarks. At 10 weeks, you can get a blood test that checks for some prenatal genetic disorders, but it can tell you only your risk level. “Most of the time we make diagnoses around things like fetal abnormalities, genetic abnormalities, at around 15 to 20 weeks, when we can do an amniocentesis,” said Dr. Kristyn Brandi, an abortion provider in New Jersey and board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health.
Then, at 20 weeks, pregnant patients are typically offered an anatomy scan, which checks, among other things, for problems like anencephaly, in which a fetus’s brain and skull fail to develop.
Graham would condemn every single woman who gets disastrous news from her amnio or her anatomy scan to carry a doomed pregnancy to term, unless she could prove that it was going to kill her. Whether thoughtless or deliberate, the cruelty of this is almost unfathomable.
Politically, Graham’s bill is a boon to Democrats. He seems to have been trying to shift the focus of the abortion debate to later abortions, where Republicans think they can paint their opponents as extremists. Instead, he has underlined Republican callousness toward the abortion patients likely to elicit the most public sympathy.
But Democrats shouldn’t be gleeful. Republicans have shown themselves willing to impose such draconian prohibitions in places where they have complete power. Recently, Kailee Lingo DeSpain, who said that in the past she was “your quintessential pro-life Texan,” told CNN about having to leave the state for an abortion after finding out that her fetus had heart, lung, brain, kidney and genetic defects and “would either be stillborn or die within minutes of birth.” How, asked DeSpain, “could you be so cruel as to pass a law that you know will hurt women and that you know will cause babies to be born in pain?”
At the moment, Republicans don’t have the ability to impose such a regime on the entire country. Nor are many of them interested in talking about national bans; some Republicans were furious at Graham for thrusting the issue into the spotlight. But Graham was probably right when he said, “If we take back the House and the Senate, I can assure you we’ll have a vote on our bill.” So far, Republicans have tried their best to give the anti-abortion movement what it wants. When Graham tells us what they intend to do to us, we should listen.