But one topic is at the top of all the news, the other is ignored, because it's so common.
Road deaths are "random". Obviously each one has a specific cause, but we're all equally at risk. We're all in agreement that they should be avoided, and we have significant legislation to improve safety (no one is advocating for drunk driving.)
The issue either abortions is not the death part, but the agency part. Those lives -could- be saved, but aren't, because the law provides reasons for not saving them.
To make things worse, only one half of the population is subject to this risk. So it can feel kinda targeted.
Fundamentally death is not an issue. We have plenty of people. We could lower the speed limit, we could ban alcohol, or guns. All that would drive up life expectancy. We don't do that because there would be consequences and effects from those changes. And life expectancy is not the primary metric.
Abortion is a complex topic, with some people holding very strong opinions. The pendulum has swung to the point where simple medical interventions to save lives are being denied. That's what makes the topic newsworthy.
It's not the death part that matters, it's the preventable part.
This is not true at all. Auto accidents are not random and we have significant policy levers that we could pull to drastically reduce them but it's politically controversial to do so.
Simple example would regulating the height of the nose of trucks so that F-150 drivers can see pedestrians easier and make impacts less deadly. Obviously policy, politically impossible.
Yes, the agency of a woman and her doctor to do what they feel is necessary for the woman.
> Those lives -could- be saved
No, they cannot be saved.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abor...
> So it can feel kinda targeted.
Because it is.
> Abortion is a complex topic, with some people holding very strong opinions.
It is not a complex topic. A woman’s body is her body, and decisions about her body are between her doctor and her. And a doctor should never be doubting their decision in split second decisions because they think they might get prosecuted.
If the government announced tomorrow they will pick 5 people a year at random to be executed for no reason, it would also be at the top of all the news, despite being many fewer deaths than vehicle related injuries.
It’s at the top of the news because it is easily preventable, yet some choose to let people die anyway.
This is basically the police execution - sorry, "officer involved shooting" policy.
I don’t think the predominantly male lawmakers in those states would have made the same choices had it been men not women who would be affected.
The issues are independent. We can try to deal with each in their own way. If we were only ever trying to reduce the primary cause of death, and paying no attention to anything else, we would have all kinds of terrible problems running rampant.
Furthermore, the problem with abortions is not just preventable deaths. It's the massive emotional and psychological toll unwanted pregnancies take, and the women left with chronic health issues for the rest of their lives, either because of the pregnancy itself and complications thereof or a failed DIY abortion, and the doctors who are put in prison or who lose their medical licenses for trying to save a woman's life even if the fetus is already guaranteed not to survive.
Ultimately, it's about treating women as whole and complete human beings who have agency over their bodies the same way men do, and not as walking incubators who have less bodily autonomy than a corpse.
