I'm not disagreeing with you in the slightest. I just think rights are not something that can be traded, certainly not without the agreement of the individual affected. Now if you're talking about limit access after the point of viability, I think that's a fair compromise. Very, very few abortions are performed after 20-24 weeks, so using that at the point where fewer options are available seems the way to go.
very few abortions are performed even after 13-15wk, something those opposed to them at 20-24wk don't really talk about enough. late 2nd trimester abortions on a whim at scale isn't a thing.
i am not talking about "trading rights" from one to another, i'm talking about tradeoff in policy wrt rights. we generally accept laws that suppress total individual liberty when those laws prevent the "liberty" of one person from infringing on the "liberty" of others. this is why the personhood question is imo central to abortion policy from a legal perspective...if we treat the fetus as a person, it has some basic rights (including to life). if we don't consider the fetus a person yet, banning abortions at that stage is *strictly* a violation of the mother's rights.
i wind up in the same spot as you in terms of policy (20-24wk). i am not thrilled by bans in the 15-20 wk range, but those are already extremely rare and i might be wrong about personhood, so i won't quibble with states that go that route. banning abortions in 1st trimester comes off as arbitrary, in the legal sense. for me to be comfortable with that, i would need clear evidence to support a claim of personhood/undue suffering we don't have that differentiates it from contraceptives or morning after pill.
note that aside from any timeframe above, if we're talking about major health risk to mother or confirmed non-viable fetus abortion bans are callous and unjustifiable. asking people to die for no reason because they have a medical complication crosses a line whereby "pro-life" advocates can't call themselves that any longer when they take such a stance.
20/80, don’t fetishize the seatbelt when we banned abortion?
"we" didn't. most states still do not ban abortions.
there are fundamental questions of individual liberty at play wrt to the seatbelt argument. indeed, it's not clear where the line can be drawn in terms of state deciding for people on pain of punishment "for your own good". frankly, few institutions seem to have someone else's best interests factored reliably in making choices, and nobody more so than that individual (on average). the state is (in practice) even less beholden than most. it can both lie and enforce selectively, without recourse for victims.
the seatbelt battle was "lost", but imo it's unquestionable that it's an example of the state exerting influence in a context which implies a *lot* of intrusion is similarly "justified" (using same standards). it's not clear to me why it can't dictate what foods you can eat based on that "logic"...it already dictates foods you can't because it feels the risk to you is too high (regardless of your own wishes), while allowing sustained consumption of a huge number of harmful products.
color me unimpressed when the same organization simultaneously bans sale of food products with full disclosure while also not banning products which *guarantee* things like cancer and copd risks are many times above normal. maybe as a matter of principle, we should regulate disclosure about product risks, but not try to arbitrarily and inconsistently compel action/inaction on people and use the government as a tool to favor some individuals (or more realistically, lobbying groups) over others.
the only reason the abortion question has merit for the state is when it (successfully) alleges it is protecting a person who can't otherwise protect themselves (once the fetus is considered a person). it's not immediately obvious perhaps, but it's true that the state having an interest/controlling "pre-personhood" abortions and having an interest in compelling seatbelt usage is on the same spectrum of authoritarianism.