Utah Now Has 72 Hour Waiting Period for Abortions

[Content Note: Reproductive rights.]

As of today, Utah has the longest waiting period for abortions in the nation, as law requiring a pregnant person to wait 72 hours goes into effect:

"For some people that may be a point of celebration," said Planned Parenthood of Utah Director Karrie Galloway. "For others it may be a point of heartache."

And for everyone, it is profoundly hostile to their agency, their capacity for self-determination and self-knowledge.

Again, I will note that forcing a pregnant person to wait to get an abortion will not change the circumstances which brought hir to an abortion clinic in the first place.

A pregnant person who is coerced by the state, via guilt or inconvenience, into not terminating the pregnancy will not be magically cured by a three-day delay of a devoid of the will to parent, or the lack of better options, or under- or unemployment, or being broke, or massive debt, or being uninsured, or the lack of daycare, or the inability to care for hirself and/or hir existing children, or the need to take medication that zie can't take while pregnant, or the likelihood of passing on a fatal recessive genetic disorder, or the enmeshment in an unhealthy or abusive relationship, or whatever circumstance(s) made abortion hir preferred option.

Abortions don't happen because women and other people with uteri are stupid or thoughtless or rash or uninformed. (In fact, young women especially are more likely to be uninformed about abortion than their other options.) Underlying this absurd law is rank paternalism rooted in the misogynist fallacy that women get abortions impulsively and must be stopped by the sage gentlemen whose "objectivity" is protected by their safe remove to august statehouses that aren't sullied by the messy complexities of real life like the grotty experiences of bespoiled womenfolk and other uterined ones.

But if you have concerns about state legislators making decisions about what should happen—and when—to the bodies of pregnant people, well...

The sponsor of the measure, state GOP Rep. Steve Eliason, believes the concerns are misplaced.

"I think it's a positive change for women and children [sic]," said Eliason. "At the end of the day, it's a consumer-protection law.

"The focus of this bill is women having time to consider all of the information that is given to them when facing a life-altering decision that somebody else is making money off of," he said.

Eliason compared it to a cancer patient receiving all the relevant information before beginning treatment. And he pointed to legal waiting periods already in force for such things as adoptions, mortgage approval, marriage and divorce -- all of which, unlike abortion, can be undone.

"I've never known anybody who's undone an abortion," Eliason said.

Rage. Seethe. Boil. One of these things is not like the others. The disingenuousness of this guy is breathtaking. But, setting aside his absurd equivalence, I'd just like to note the irony that "pro-lifers" support waiting periods for abortion, but not for purchasing guns. That's a violation of Constitutional rights, but telling a pregnant person zie needs to wait to access a legal medical procedure because zie's probably too stupid to have seriously contemplated the consequences is a moral imperative.

There isn't enough whut in the world for these people.