Why Exceptions for the Life of the Mother Have Disappeared
Updated at 5:53 p.m. ET on August 2, 2022.
When Americans used to imagine life post-Roe, many seemed to believe that at the very least the country would agree on one thing: the need for an exception to save a woman’s life. These exceptions enjoy sweeping public support; a recent Pew Research Center poll found that 73 percent of Americans favored legal abortion if a woman’s life or health was at risk. Only 8 percent of respondents favored no exception whatsoever to criminal abortion laws.
Life-of-the-patient exceptions do not even require anti-abortion-rights Americans to change their minds about fetal personhood. Even if someone believes that a fetus enjoys the same rights as an adult, abortion could be justified much in the same way that people who are anti-violence can understand the need in certain situations for self-defense. Support for the so-called life-of-the-mother exception seemed unshakable.
[From the May 2022 issue: The abortion underground]
Not anymore.. Republican candidates like Matthew DePerno, the Republican running to be Michigan’s attorney general, oppose all exceptions to , and that includes to save a mother’s life. Conservative states are rushing to eliminate or narrow existing exceptions to their laws. Powerful groups like Students for Life, , and the (AAPLOG) argue that “” and that doctors should always be punished for intentionally taking a fetal life.
