Ross Douthat

All right, let's touch on one more concrete form of outreach that loops back to something we were talking about earlier, which is the idea of

compromise and middle ground right i think one of the things that has been most notable about the way um the abortion debate has played out since dobbs has been the focus on difficult pregnancies pregnancies where the woman's health is threatened in some way where there's an issue with the pregnancy where there's a potential miscarriage and so on

and where there is what I would describe as a kind of zone of uncertainty about when exceptions for saving the life of the mother kick in, when doctors are allowed to perform abortions, and so on.

Earlier, you talked about

Essentially the idea that you know, you should be allowed to perform an abortion under ectopic pregnancy conditions But basically that's about it that there isn't really any other circumstance where a Pregnancy should be treated as life-threatening to the mother and aborted.

That is a very very unpopular position and it's also a position I think that

from my perspective, sort of underplays the deep uncertainty that obtains in situations where health and life are sort of in different ways in the balance.

Is there any room for effectively saying, look, if we are going to restrict abortion, we need to recognize that there has to be a certain kind of latitude for doctors in these circumstances?

Absolutely, but it's been used because it is...

politically effective right because people are aware of the inherent uncertainty that hangs over certain medical situations during pregnancy right i'm just curious can the pro-life movement basically say look in those situations we don't know exactly which abortions count as saving the life of the mother or not but for the sake of a larger ban we are willing to accept that doctors are going to make decisions that we're not going to second guess

But in the meantime, you have laws and you have hospitals that have not been trained in these practices or doctors who disagree with those arguments.

Right.

And who are in the position of basically saying we're in states that ban abortion.

There are life of the mother exceptions.

We're not sure what those cover.

So you'll see this.

Hospitals will say, well, we're not going to.

We're going to wait and see and not perform an abortion, right?

And then that yields stories of medical difficulty that I think some of them are blown out of proportion, but some of them are legitimate.

And it seems like your argument would be in those circumstances, the hospitals are basically just doing the right thing by...