I won't say I understand the particular ins and outs of the current issue in the USA. In th UK it is a non issue and it is regulated medically. Having said that, we must have all voices on the issue so fine. I don't know who this Jessica but obviously know who Steinem is.
I apologize to the moderators, but I feel I need to respond to that comment. If my post is removed, I kindly ask the moderators to please forward it as a private reply to the OP.
There is actually a lot of misinformation about the "ins and outs of the current issue in the USA". Basically what happened is that, in the 1970s, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the
Roe v. Wade case, ruled that a woman had an unlimited right to choose to have an abortion of a non-viable fetus without state interference based on her constitutional right to privacy, with legal restrictions allowed, however, depending on how far the woman was into her pregnancy.
Since that was declared a constitutional right, and because the United States has a rigid written constitution with a qualified constitutional amendment procedure, that meant elected legislative bodies in the US could no longer pass ordinary laws restricting or even regulating abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy, and all preexisting laws to that end automatically became null and void (as they were unconstitutional). During the second trimester, ordinary law could regulate the abortion procedure but only for the purpose of protecting maternal health and not for protecting fetal life. After viability, which includes the third trimester of pregnancy and the last few weeks of the second trimester, abortions could be regulated and even prohibited, but only if the laws provided exceptions for abortions necessary to save the "life" or "health" of the mother. In subsequent cases, the Supreme Court for the most part confirmed that central opinion while relaxing it somewhat in terms of which regulations could be imposed by law. In particular, in the early 1990s, in
Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court, while upholding the main decision in
Roe v. Wade, abandoned nonetheless the strict "trimester framework", thus opening up the possibility of abortion regulations at earlier stages of the pregnancy based on a more scientific viability analysis (rather than merely counting weeks).
What happened now is that the Court, in a case known as
Dobson v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, basically reversed its previous opinions in
Roe and
Planned Parenthood, declaring that they were wrong and that there is no unrestricted constitutional right to choose to have an abortion of a non-viable fetus based on the right to privacy as implicitly protected by the 14th amendment, and that abortion regulation (or l
ack thereof) is a matter to be decided by the elected legislatures.
That basically puts the US now
in line with the UK, which does not have a rigid written constitution and where abortion is regulated by an act of Parliament (the Abortion Act 1967). Moreover, it puts the US back in line with pratically all other countries in the world where abortions are legal. There are very few countries actually where abortion was declared by the courts to be a constitutional right beyond the reach of elected legislatures. In fact, other than the US pre-
Dobson v Jackson, Canada is the only other example I know of where there was such a court ruling (in Canada specifically,
R. v. Morgentaler)
An important difference, however, between the US and the UK is that the United States is also a federal state where the regulation of abortion, if the legislature decides to do so, falls under the jurisdiction of each of the states rather than the federal government (in this sense, the United States is now in line with Australia for example). The controversy is that, unlike in most of the developed world where, as you said, that is a "non-issue", some states in the US (not all of them) might elect, by contrast, to severely restrict abortions or even prohibit them altogether, and women in those states can no longer rely on the courts to overturn such state laws based on their alleged conflict with the constitution.
Please note also that,
unlike in Canada (and perhaps nowadays Australia ?), it is not true that the UK has scrapped all forms of legal /criminal abortion regulation and now regulates it only as "a medical procedure" as you have claimed. As far as I understand , in the UK,except for situations of risk of life to the pregnant woman, or risk of permanent grave injury to her mental or physical health, or risk of the child being born with severe handicap, it is generally
unlawful to have an elective abortion beyond the 24th week of gestation and, even before the 24th week, the women requesting the procedure needs the approval of two doctors on the grounds for example of risk to her mental health (or of any of her preexisting children), which, comparatively, is not required in other countries, where there is an unrestricted legal right to abortion on demand in the first trimester for example.
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I disagree about the forum being a place for me. I don't have an issue if people talk about if royals should speak on something or not because they're royals. That doesn't bother me. I don't see this political issue but a human rights/women's rights issue so I don't have any skin in the game on that front.
I think you didn't quite understand the point. In a constitutional monarchy like the United Kingdom (or, for that matter, all other modern kingdoms in Europe), the Royal Family is not responsible for government policy and must abstain from expressing opinions on political/partisan issues, which is the case here.
For example, it would be unthinkable and, indeed, perhaps even unconstitutional in the UK, for the Duchess of Sussex to campaiign publicly for a change in the law (as she is campaigning now for the ratification of the ERA in the US). The position most Britons would take is that, if she wanted to influence the legislative process, she should give up her royal status and stand as a candidate for member of Parliament. The Queen could, in private, express her opinion to the Prime Minister or other ministers on proposed legislation, but such opinions are always confidential and, in any case, once the government has made a decision on its legislative agenda, the Queen must accept it, except for most extreme circumstances. The last monarch for example to veto a legislative bill in Britain was Queen Anne in 1708 and, even then, she did so on the advice of her ministers, and not on her personal decision.
My take in this case, however, is that the Meghan is acting not as the Duchess of Sussex and a representative of the British Crown, but rather as the US citizen Rachel Meghan Markle, which is a legitimate constitutional right that she enjoys
in the United States. That would become clearer though if she stopped using her British royal title in the US and did her lobbying activities under her "civilian" name. In my opinion, that would be the right thing to do to eliminate any controversy.
In any case, what that signals to me is that Meghan is "burning bridges" and making any comeback to royal life in the UK an even more remote possibility than it already was.
