Finding voices on both sides of Texas abortion debate? The Atlantic comes out on top

In recent weeks, Texas has swung back and forth between prohibiting abortions after six weeks, then being forced bu judges to allow them, then managing to forbid them once again.

Currently, once the fetal heartbeat is detected, abortions are forbidden in the Lone Star state.

Meanwhile, journalists have gone full court press on the matter. There’s no surprise there. But did anyone strive to talk to women and men on both sides of this hot-button issue? Hold that thought.

Now, I don’t expect Hollywood ever to be balanced on the topic but a recent offering in The Hollywood Reporter on 12 abortion-positive movies was over the top, even for them.

It’s been 49 years since the two-part “Maude’s Dilemma” — written by future Golden Girls and Soap creator Susan Harris — premiered, but the choice faced by Bea Arthur’s title character, finding herself pregnant at 47, and the determination of Norman Lear’s show to discuss that choice in depth, and engage in a nuanced debate, would be provocative in an American broadcast sitcom today.
It’s still incredibly rare to find TV comedies dealing with actual abortions, though shows like Girls and Sex and the City used it as a conversation piece. Frequently, American television falls back on abortion being a thing characters talk about on-camera, do off-camera and then never speak of again..

Then comes the list:

“Dirty Dancing” a clear and unapologetic argument for reproductive choice.” “Grandma,” which is “abortion as a regrettable but necessary option in many young women’s lives.” Or “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” about “a candid and clear-eyed contemplation of abortion as a choice arrived at not with hand-wringing but with sobering pragmatism.” Or “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t” about “love, whimsy, joyful bohemia and tenderness no less than healthy anger over injustice.”

You get the picture.

In the news media storm about the Texas abortion bill: Outrage -- 1, objectivity -- 0

If I had to sum up last week’s media maelstrom on Texas’ new abortion regulations, it’s this: 95 percent of the quotes was from those who opposed it. Maybe 5 percent was from those who favored it. And of that 5 percent, how many of them were inserted near the top of the piece rather than strung together near the end?

We’re talking about the Texas Heartbeat Act, aka S.B. 8, which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected (usually around six weeks). Individuals who learn of violations can sue the clinics involved and anyone who helps women get abortions.

Which could your friendly Uber or Lyft driver, which is why both companies, according to CNBC, have offered to cover legal fees for any driver caught transporting a woman to a clinic.

Probably the most thoughtful dispatch was Emma Green’s piece in The Atlantic. It was a Q&A more than an essay, but at least it was an interview with the Other Side, which has been lambasted everywhere else for introducing a real-life Handmaid’s Tale situation into the Lone Star state. The lead sentence began:

Sometimes, the Supreme Court does the most when it does nothing. Last night, the justices denied an emergency petition by abortion providers in Texas seeking to block S.B. 8, a law banning pregnancy terminations after roughly six weeks’ gestation.
A 5–4 majority of the justices argued that they had no power to stop the law from going into effect, since none of the citizens who are now empowered under the law to sue abortion clinics for providing the procedure has yet attempted to do so.

Hold that thought. What’s new in Texas is something called “private enforcement,” by which any citizen -– and I mean anyone –- can report -– or sue -– someone trying to sneak an abortion past them. It’s a stunning legal strategy that evades the lawsuits that groups like Planned Parenthood use to quash their opponents.

Some on the pro-life side, like conservative pundit David French, aren’t happy with it at all, feeling that it’s bad law that will end up biting pro-lifers in the end. He is not the only abortion opponent who feels this way but there was zero reporting out there on the mixed feelings in his camp. Back to The Atlantic:

Legal challenges likely lie ahead. But abortion opponents see this as a victory, however temporary. For now, at least, abortion clinics in Texas are largely suspending their work and abiding by the ban.

The article continues as an interview with John Seago, the legislative director of Texas Right to Life who, more than anyone, contributed to the success of this law. Right away, Green jumped to the crux of the law; people reporting on other people. His answer:

There are two main motivations. The first one is lawless district attorneys that the pro-life movement has dealt with for years. In October, district attorneys from around the country publicly signed a letter saying they will not enforce pro-life laws. They said that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned, they are not going to use resources holding the abortion industry to account. That shows that the best way to get a pro-life policy into effect is not by imposing criminal penalties, but civil liability.
The second is that the pro-life movement is extremely frustrated with activist judges at the district level who are not doing their job to adjudicate conflicts between parties, but who in fact go out of their way to score ideological points—blocking pro-life laws because they think they violate the Constitution or pose undue burdens.

For anyone wishing to understand why Texans went to this “private enforcement” stratagem is because they’ve tried everything else for the 48 years that Roe v. Wade has been in effect. And with a legal system set against them no matter what they do, it was time to come up with something else. And they did.