The Death of Roe v Wade? The birth of a new Liberalism?
Now that Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died, Roe v Wade may soon be buried alongside. That is, assuming Trump gets another SCOTUS appointment approved.
Will Trump get this additional appointment? If so, is Roe v Wade doomed? If Dems win the White House and Senate, will they (and SHOULD they?) pack the court?
IMO, Roe v Wade will be rescinded within 2 years. SCOTUS will not be packed. It will (once again) be up to the states to set their own abortion policies. Women with money will be able to travel to the states to obtain abortions, poor women will not. On the bright side, the Morning After Pill didn't exist prior to Roe v Wade, so the situation is at least slightly less dire.
Perhaps this will be a blessing in disguise for liberals like me: it may take the abortion issue off the table, and other more-pervasive issues will persuade some "pro-life" folks to embrace social welfare.
Will Trump get this additional appointment? If so, is Roe v Wade doomed? If Dems win the White House and Senate, will they (and SHOULD they?) pack the court?
IMO, Roe v Wade will be rescinded within 2 years. SCOTUS will not be packed. It will (once again) be up to the states to set their own abortion policies. Women with money will be able to travel to the states to obtain abortions, poor women will not. On the bright side, the Morning After Pill didn't exist prior to Roe v Wade, so the situation is at least slightly less dire.
Perhaps this will be a blessing in disguise for liberals like me: it may take the abortion issue off the table, and other more-pervasive issues will persuade some "pro-life" folks to embrace social welfare.
Comments (579)
This is kind of tangential, but I had the thought recently, looking at the history of Supreme Court nominations, that perhaps instead of only appointing new justices every time one dies, it should just be habit to always appoint a new justice for every new combination of president + congress; in other words, every two years. Give the president and congress the whole two years to decide on who to nominate and confirm, and if they still can't agree on anyone, the existing court just picks its favorite of the nominees thus far rejected.
That is approximately the rate at which new justices get appointed anyway.
I originally thought "every presidential term", so every four years, and if we had been following that schedule in recent decades, we would currently have almost exactly the same Supreme Court we already have; basically only Kavanaugh wouldn't have had the opportunity to be appointed.
Sure, sometimes you would end up with slightly more or less than 9 justices, but the number of justices has varied widely over the years anyway, so that's no problem.
But looking back further in history to see what would have happened if we had always been following that rule, it looks like we would have had an empty supreme court some time in the mid-late 20th century, so I thought instead to change the rate to every 2 years instead of every 4. If we had always been doing that then we would presently most likely have a Supreme Court of size 14 (2 more each for Obama, W, and Clinton), with a balance of 7 conservative / 7 liberal.
I'm going to bed so I have more to say on this, but it's possible that a new right wing court will attempt to apply personhood on fetuses which would affect the ability of blue states to perform abortions
Interesting idea, but I'm skeptical they can do that. "Conservative" jurisprudence is not the same thing as conservative politics; it entails narrower interpretation of the Constitution. The constitution doesn't define a human life, and a strict constructionist wouldn't read this into it. However, they wouldn't stand in the way of a state legislature defining life - or the US Congress.
There doesn’t have to be a law specifically saying that fetuses are persons if the court just interprets existing laws with an assumption that they are, which thus creates common law saying that they are.
Good point - this could happen, but I think it's a worst case scenario. Do you think this likely?
I agree this is the likely outcome. It's unfortunate the left didn't anticipate this in 2016. My view at the time was that SCOTUS appointments were the biggest issue. It was for evangelicals- it is what got the idiot elected.
This seems like a strange thing to say when it was an 11th month long republican senate blockade which stopped Obama from getting Merrick appointed to the Supreme court. On the grounds that 11 months was too close to an election and that the people's vote needs to factor into the senates choice for the supreme court. That's 11 months that is too close. Obviously within 2 months is a completely different scenario (sarcasm very much intended on that last one)
Yes. Probably. They will if they get the chance. They should not.
They should not, because ideally the selection and approval process shouldn't be so politicized. It is, however, and as Disraeli noted there is no honor in politics, and there is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable, so pack it they will if they can.
Fortunately, Judges of the higher courts if they're not themselves able have staff lawyers who are capable of preparing opinions which, at least on their face, have some degree of legal basis. However, I think it's inevitable that as to issues of political significance, our Supreme Court Justices will to the extent possible and possibly even beyond what is reasonable conform to the ideology they accept.
I'm as pissed off as you are that McConnell spouted that lie in 2016. In fact, the proximity of the election had absolutely nothing to do with the unwillingness to consider the nomination; it was purely and simply an exercise of the power held by the majority party in the Senate. Similarly, the Senate has the power today to rush through a nomination. Elections matter. Even without the SCOTUS vacancy, there's been a huge influx of conservative judges to federal courts. I hope that unhappy Bernie supporters understand this - because we don't need 4 more years of loading the federal courts with conservative federal judges.
Not necessarily, Originalism is a far more openly interpretative Judicial philosophy than its followers would admit; its value for the GOP lies in providing a pseudo-intellectual cover to further conservative political ends irrespective of philosophically consistency. Here is an expanded article on the fight over Fetal Personhood in the court system.
I always have to remind myself that the abortion laws in my country are far more strict than in the US especially when here there is no debate whatsoever about the issue. The fact that the laws are more strict in all Nordic countries than in some states in the US is worth to remember too.
When I've mentioned the fact to people here that US abortion laws are far more lax than we have them, people have been totally surprised about this. Here the US abortion discussion is either portrayed as one of those hot potato issues that people go bonkers about in America or, in the leftist media, that the Republicans are impending to cancel every right of abortion that US women have and the Democrats are valiantly defending the rights of women in this case. Of course, what actually people are purposing isn't much reported.
(Btw, DJT will be stricken from some key state ballots due to provisions in US 14th Amendment, Sec. 3 because of the findings of J6 Committee and subsequent state & federal indictments, so the fat old orange fascist fuck won't be able to run again in '24 (though he'll still be a player / spoiler of some sort.))
update: :yikes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473?_amp=true
The burning begins, hopefully.
Ah, the old "ignore our legal reasoning if it implies things that I don't want it to." :roll:
Not necessarily. Much has changed since Roe v Wade. I think that abortion will still be legal in all states but with varying limitations depending on the state. You should still be able to get an abortion, just under specific circumstances (like rape, or life of the mother is threatened) or within a certain time frame (before the third trimester).
The scare tactics are predictable though. Both sides do it - engaging in spreading disinformation or faulty predictions about what the other side intends, basically demonizing the other side. It's just the elites of both sides mobilizing their flocks for a battle to impose their own views on the rest of us.
I don't know. I think a few states will immediately ban abortion.
Which will disproportionately affect the poor, pushing them further into poverty (or death).
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting frank
22 states have laws against abortion already on the books that will come into effect as soon as Roe v Wade is overturned.
The recent Texas law doesn't allow for abortion even in the case of a child being raped, and only allows it up to the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can be as soon as 6 weeks. Apparently most women don't realize they're pregnant until 4-7 weeks.
You're giving states too much credit.
Thanks for the insight. We haven't been thinking about this for years, so we need you to explain it to us.
It sounds like you are vehemently anti-choice, but not for religious reasons, based on the comment.
Actually, abortion was never legalized in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wisconsin, but those laws have been unenforceable since Roe v. Wade. Presumably if Roe v. Wade is overturned, those laws would immediately become effective again.
I think there will be a good number of other states that will outlaw abortion as soon as they can. The battle to overturn Roe v. Wade hasn't just been a symbolic gesture over state authority. Much will change in certain states.
I feel kind of apathetic about it. It couldn't have happened without the participation of a lot of women, so they got what they wanted.
Less than 20% of all women want an outright ban on abortion, and yes - they may get what they wanted- at least in some states.
Or alternatively she could've just vacated her position, being in her 80s and having survived cancer multiple times. It was arrogant of her to not consider the greater good which is ironic for a justice.
I suppose she isn't the only person in power who feels like staying well beyond their prime. The average age of US congress is around 60 and the past two presidents have been over 75. Though in that case I don't blame them entirely since the voters still decided to keep them in anyways, but for Ginsburg that was all her.
There should be mandatory retirement. "For life" doesn't mean quite the same number of years that it did when the SCOTUS was created. Deaths or forced retirements may be inconvenient, no matter what system is in place.
The key to maintaining control over "democratic" government is to maintain control from the bottom up. Local political machinery has to be in place for the national machinery to hold on to power. If Democrats once knew that, they seem to have forgotten, Republics have learned it well.
Another thing, the opponents to Roe vs, Wade have maintained a 50 year (1973-2022) campaign to overturn the decision. Victory at this point can not be a surprise, because piece-by-piece, the conservatives have been moving necessary pieces on the political chessboard toward checkmate.
GFY, man.
But 42% of the women who voted in 2016 voted for Trump.
Bingo. It was inevitable, considering their laser focus.
Left-leaning people were far too complacent, taking their successes for granted, and not recognizing that there's a struggle to retain their gains. Same sex marriage could easily be next to go.
I’m all for abortion rights but do it the right way.
In my (completely disinterested, it doesn’t affect me) opinion, the legal cut-off should be at the “point of viability.”
If it gets overturned it will be up to the states. What do you think?
Obama met with Ginsburg in 2013 to encourage her to retire before the midterm election. Instead, she resisted pressure from the President and other liberals, remained on the bench, and the rest is history; she was replaced by Amy Coney Barrett who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and roll back women's rights so that mothers had more rights than their daughters do today. That's inescapably RBG's legacy. She had the opportunity to retire and allow a Democratic President with a Democratic controlled senate pick her replacement. Instead she allowed egotistical arrogance to take precedence over political imperative. Had she died during her surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2009 Roe v. Wade would not have been overturned, given that Roberts likely sided with the liberal wing and the vote is 5-4, and therefore millions of women would have retained a fundamental bodily right (not to mention how the ruling places gay marriage, and contraceptives on the chopping block). I would much rather prefer a Supreme Court Justice die of cancer in her then mid-70s then the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the cataclysmic political and social consequences we're about to face.
(But like, just one girlboss, not all the others who might say, drop dead from ectopic pregnancies).
The American ability to fetishize and grovel at the feet of their most powerful and most elite members of society will never not surprise me.
Yep.
People now going to appeal to this republican to help them save women from being forced birthing machines.
Also "point of viability" sounds good to me too, because when not wielded as a completely made up, non-medical notion by anti-abortion misogynists - which is what it is, and what they all are - that would be the baby at term.
Are there any other innocent old people we can wish hindsight cancer on for ethical reasons? You never know what harm granny might cause if we don't kill her off. *Cackle*
Do any SCOTUS justices think they are a-political? the law is political; they are political creatures of necessity.
You have to let people decide, though. If you can't do that, then what?
Whether they want abortion in their communities.
Republicans will still take the house and senate, by the way.
This Christian Evangelical movement predates the Taliban. It's completely home grown, no need to transpose it.
Question: if the Supreme Court of the USA really does overturn Roe v Wade, as seems highly likely, won't this undermine the Republican vote in the mid-term elections? I'm guessing that it will be an extremely unpopular decision with female voters in particular, who could quite feasibly express their ire by not voting Republican. I don't know, but I haven't read any commentary to that effect, and it would seem likely to me.
SLX has no skin in this US Constitutional game so his a-holish noise is merely distasteful. I give you much more credit for knowing better, counselor; vilifying a dead woman without warrant (as pointed about in 3 points above), who was a proven champion of women's civil/human rights and tireless, life-long public servant, is fucking shameful, Maw. Wtf, man?! :shade:
Legislation and medical science to work out the details.
(Could incidentally prevent some pregnancies from rape.)
Simple, huh?
[sup]The Guardian via Facebook (May 3, 2022)[/sup]
Too long, as it has turned out.
In any case it is true that it is unfair to pin this on a single judge, least it be unclear that the supreme court in general has always been an anti-democratic guarantor of capitalist propagation and should probably be torn down brick by brick anyway.
One hopes, skeptically, that this will physically happen in the next month or so.
1) The GOP did not have a senate majority until 2014, not 2011. Democrats controlled the Senate under Obama from 2009-2013 during which Ginsburg, having recently undergone pancreatic cancer surgery, could have retired and safely been replaced by a liberal judge.
2) Yes maybe their inability to do so would have been a red flag for RBG to retire strategically. Of course the Democrats also suck, I'm happy to distribute blame beyond RBG. Like the sword of Damocles the Dems have dangled the GOP threat towards abortion rights for years as a paramount reason to vote for them. This is where the strategy has lead them.
3) This is simply not true, Breyer faced pressure to retire, and fortunately had the good sense to do so. Trump/GOP also worked to convince the ~80 year old Anthony Kennedy to retire and be replaced by a raging alcoholic Federalist Society member in his 50s, surely for overt political purposes. Nothing to do with sexism; I'm baffled by that connection. Regardless, she was a public servant within an increasingly partisan and increasingly powerful branch of Government and it was selfish to treat her lifetime appointment with such a self-serving attitude.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yes wonderful, and due to her explicit stubbornness not only will we see a rollback of women's rights, likely gay rights, continued rollback of civil rights, etc., but Ketanji Brown Jackson, the fifth woman to serve on the Supreme Court, will likely be writing dissents for the rest of her career on the bench. What's really more shameful here?
If the people judge that murder is taking place in private, then it's most definitely a governmental issue.
:fire:
And the reduction in population would be good for the environment.
Should they also get to decide if they want homosexuals or black people in their communities?
If the issue goes back to the democratic process, and abortion is made illegal, you needn't blame RGB or the Supreme Court, but you can blame John Q. Public, which is really where blame ought to lie.
Democratic party: completely fucking useless and exist only to ensure that there is no left challenge to corporate power, and otherwise happy to advance Republican politics as their own, only with a few more rainbow flags.
Voting and political activism in general: completely de-fanged and also largely useless.
Population at large: supports Roe.
I-Am-Very-Smart Person: "This is the people's fault".
If you think this way, why not go all the way? Once they express interest in sex, it's already too late. Better to make it a practise as soon after birth as possible, just like circumcision. And forget about reversibility, slip an elastic band on as soon after birth as possible, like they do with bull calves. Masculinity is the scourge of humanity (maybe this should be in the Putin thread). Go back to Plato's Republic, only the genetically superior babies (created in a lab in the modern day) will be allowed to see the light of day. (Nazism?)
This is the kinda "solutions" AI come up with!
By the way, I know you were just trying to be funny! :smile:
Fair Housing Act
Of course. It's called democracy.
The majority doesn't have the right to oppress the minority.
In a democracy, the majority (with temperance provided by various mechanisms) rules.
But why should they? Presumably, because people deciding for themselves how they want to run their communities is a 'good' thing? So if they make a decision, in doing so, that is a 'bad' thing, it's something of an own goal, no?
So you don't see a problem with a majority who decide that slavery is acceptable?
What alternative do you propose?
Not allowing the majority to decide that slavery is acceptable, and not allowing the majority to decide that abortion isn't acceptable.
The "should" comes from a particular community's commitment to democracy. It's not for everyone.
What I mean is that you think we should follow democratic decisions, yes? Or are you just telling us how democracy works?
Generally speaking, Americans have a deep seated devotion to democracy. Are you asking why that is?
No. I'm asking why you think it ought to be?
To be clear -
How and why things are the way they are: A matter for experts - if I want to know I'll read a book.
What people think about how things ought to be: Not a matter for experts, if I want to know I have to just ask people.
[quote=Justice Samuel Alito (conservative)]Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.[/quote]
Lemme get this straight. Abortion was legalized based on the right to privacy. Aren't Republicans/conservatives (the pro-life faction) staunch defenders of privacy?
:confused:
Something doesn't add up...or does it?
There's no reason they ought to be devoted. They just are at present. That may change in the future.
Re-read, please.
Mostly the latter. The point, such as it is, was that if one advocates democratic rule because they consider it a moral 'good', then there's a conflict when that democracy results in something which they consider a moral 'bad'. Unless, of course, a person has no moral goods other than promoting democracy.
That's true. To be truly devoted to democracy means you can allow the people to make mistakes (Donald Trump). You don't abandon the system just because it handed you a defeat, or because someone managed to subvert it.
There's a certain amount of faith in people involved.
So why (the devotion)? That's the question I was asking. Or, to put it another way...
Quoting frank
Why not?
The reintroduction of slavery wouldn't just be a "defeat". Politics isn't just some game where the only thing that matters is one's team "winning" for the sake of being the winner.
Exactly. We have a set of goals, only one of which is giving people a say in how their communities are run.
Numerous reasons. That's a historical, cultural, and psychological question. If your point is that it's flawed, sure I agree with that.
Again...
Quoting Isaac
I'm asking you what your reasons are (if you have any). I'm not asking for a brief history of American culture, I have a library for that job.
Oh.
1. Probably most fundamentally, democracy fosters a mindset of ownership of the challenges faced by my society. This is our world. We have the ability to shape it according to our vision of what it should be. IOW, democracy inclines us toward the truth.
I believe every society actually is of the people. This fact is just highlighted in a democratic government.
2. It's related to my ideas about how people grow and develop. Freedom to decide is a hallmark of adulthood. A monarchy stalls the development of wisdom in a society by rendering everyone childlike.
I could go on, but I'm not going to if you're just exercising your conflict habituation. We'll see. :confused:
OK, thanks.
If I were responsible (evil meddling psychologist that I am) for creating a platoon of ruthless assassins by behavioural programming, Jason Bourne style, do you think I'd have some responsibility for the actions of the resulting unit, and how ought I exercise that responsibility?
Could you make this question a little more explicit?
Sure. Do you think that we have responsibility for our effects on the personality and beliefs of others? (Or alternatively, I suppose, are you of the view that no such effect is possible?)
If the answer is yes, how do you think we should exercise that responsibility?
Say, if I, through my God awful parenting, produced an absolute monster, do I just let them loose on society at 18 and wash my hands of them (respect their "Freedom to decide" as you put it)? Or do I have some responsibility to act as some restrainer of their excess?
If you discover that you were born with a genius for manipulating people, I advise that you don't use it at all because if you think you have the wisdom to use it, you are almost certainly wrong. (Although if you find that you've been accidentally using it to calm people down in a healthcare environment, go with it.)
Quoting Isaac
If you're American, you're probably on your own with this. You can contact the police, but they'll probably ignore you. How does it work where you're from?
I was more thinking of the ordinary, everyday influence, just trying to come at it using an extreme example. Parents influence the kinds of people their children grow up to be. Popular cultural movements influence the kinds of people teenagers become... That sort of thing.
If you agree such influence exists, then there might be some responsibility on one generation to guard against the moral failure of the succeeding generations on the off chance they may have themselves failed to raise the sort of people they'd hoped to raise.
In a sense, that's the moral ground in which I think anti-democratic, but moral, legislation might stand.
Democracy doesn't unequivocally equal majority rule. E.g. Northern Ireland is a democracy, but the majority (as in majority community) is specifically forbidden to rule. Power sharing is enforced. When you have a state that's significantly split, subverting majority rule may in fact be necessary for democracy (as in representative rule) to function.
"Properly understood, democracy should not even be "rule of the majority", if that means that minorities' interests are ignored completely. A democracy, at least in theory, is government on behalf of all the people, according to their "will"."
https://www.coe.int/en/web/compass/democracy
For the people, of the people, not for the majority, of the majority, which is more like majoritarianism.
"Majoritarianism is often referred to as majority rule, which may refer to a majority class ruling over a minority class, while not referring to the decision process called majority rule. It is a belief that the majority community should be able to rule a country in whichever way it wants."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majoritarianism#:~:text=Majoritarianism%20is%20a%20traditional%20political,decisions%20that%20affect%20the%20society.
Having said that, @Michael has some work to do to demonstrate restrictions on abortion constitute repression of a minority. It probably depends on the strictness of the restrictions, and the other side will counter-claim that abortion is repression of the unborn.
Noooooooooo! :scream:
Quoting Baden
I said:
Quoting frank
I think that's about right.
Ok. Autocracy usually arises due to crisis. We instinctively know that during a crisis we're better off with a leader who can make quick decisions, whether they're right or wrong.
True. I was more thinking of the role of things like constitutions and the Declaration of Human Rights than autocrats though. In my mind, their moral standing is essentially "yes, we believe in autonomy and good people should make good choices, but...in case we fuck the next generation up so much that they don't, here's all the best bits of what we've worked out, committed to immutable law".
It's insurance in case the next generation turn out to be monsters.
That's what Roe was. Insurance against the possibility that future generations saw fit to deny those rights - not by virtue of them merely disagreeing (that would be opposed to ordinary respect for autonomy), but by virtue of the previous generation having failed to bring them up to be sufficiently moral human beings to have their preferences respected.
This is incorrect. Laws and constitutional amendments are the mechanisms for cementing the will of the people.
Roe comes from an era when it was thought that judges should take it upon themselves to make social changes that havent been arrived at democratically. Times have changed.
Ah, again, you're mistaking me for someone in search of a history lesson. I had thought I'd made the distinction quite clear, but evidently still not clear enough. I'll try again.
If I wanted to understand either the historical or legal facts about the case, I would seek out the opinion of an expert. There are countless books and journals on the subject, its a matter of supreme ease to find a wealth of such information just from my armchair, let alone a short trip to the university library.
What I'm enquiring about here is how (if we agree with the process) we might morally justify it.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Are you having trouble with the difference between how things are and how things ought to be?
Your statement seems more like a play on words than a serious objection.
Is a fertilized egg, a non-viable fetus, or a near term fetus, a person? Thereby hangs the tale.
Defining a fertilized egg or a non-viable / viable fetus as a person seems to be first a religious definition (based on the idea of 'ensoulment') that has been taken up by religious-minded secular legislators.
Religious definitions (God, sin, sanctification ensoulment -- personhood--transubstantiation, virgin birth, etc.) should not be enshrined in civil law for two reasons: the citizenry is diverse and holds diverse religious positions (or no religious positions at all); and whether to hold any or no religious view is a private matter. How to care for one's health and whether to bear children or not, are also private matters.
The anti-abortion/anti-birth control policy is often judged to be part of patriarchal control of women. Most paleo-conservatives and troglodytes are sophisticated enough that they won't profess this view openly, but the intent seems obvious enough a good share of the time.
The right to privacy is the basis of court judgements In other areas as well. For example, the court has held that two men having sex in a bedroom have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Lower courts had earlier held that two men having sex in a video stall of an adult bookstore (not on a park bench) had a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that the police were not justified in busting the door down to arrest them.
I would say no. Plenty say it is. When people have a difference of opinion about whether an action is moral, that makes it a public issue.
I've never agreed that abortion is about a woman's right to choose. It's about whether abortion is moral. If you think it is, say so, and elect people who will provide protection through laws.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes. A lot of Americans are religious. So what?
The CITIZENS UNITED decision was handed down in 2010. Apparently times haven't changed.
Laws and constitutional amendments may very well be a concretization of the people's will, or not.
The 18th Amendment concretized SOME peoples' will to ban liquor -- rural Protestant voters in particular. At that time, rural voters had an outsized level of representation -- corrected later in "one man one vote" decision (Reynolds v. Sims 1964) which stated that congressional districts had to have equal population. It was clear throughout Prohibition that the majority of the people (urban dwellers in particular, and Catholics) did not support prohibition of alcohol.
And to assert that Americans have a commitment to democracy is laughable trash. Americans have a commitment to being selfish pieces of shit regardless of what the demos might say.
Some historian I read said that Prohibition was really about the fact that bars were often the meeting places for organizing labor.
It must be the will of the people to live in an oligarchy peopled preponderantly by Morlocks and their masters.
Yes, absolutely.
Quoting frank
They aren't all religious in the same way. Religious people hold a range of opinions on what is moral and what is not moral. Secular law should not be based on canon law in a secular democracy.
Granted, and this makes it complicated, religious ideas about what is moral may overlap with secular ideas about what is moral. Stealing is considered wrong by most people, secular or religious. The list of sins in the churches (temples, mosques, etc.) shouldn't be the basis of secular law.
It probably was; bars were an essential working class meeting place prior to 1920. However, prohibition's primary drive came from women who wanted to end the domestic violence and domestic poverty caused by alcoholism. (Suffrage and temperance were often partners.).
Before I accepted the idea that anti-unionism was a prime driver of prohibition, I'd want to read a strong case for that view. But again, another major drive for prohibition came from rural protestants who were not witnessing a whole lot of union organizing.
Sure. But if some Americans firmly believe abortion is murder, that matters. Their opinion shouldn't be brushed aside in the name of someone's privacy. No one has a right to privately commit murder.
Yes. It was that the connection to the labor movement oiled the tracks for an amendment, not that that was the primary wind behind it.
It should be brushed aside. What matters in this context is the constitution and precedent, and how well our supreme jurists can stretch the plain meaning of language to suit their interpretations. Public opinion doesn’t matter, or it ought not to according to the system it operates in.
The release of the first draft of an opinion is surprising. The rather shoddy quality of the opinion in various respects is somewhat surprising as well as its likeness to a rant or polemic, but it will likely become sleeker--and slicker--in subsequent drafts.
It's pleasant to think that the Supreme Court Justices are above the fray, devoted merely to the law, but they clearly are not. They're as much political hacks as any of those who grunt and strike poses in Congress or the White House. There was a time when it could be believed they were at least somewhat more intelligent than the ordinary lackeys of the plutocracy who run our government on its behalf, but the increasingly corrupt nature of the selection process seems more and more to assure they're not that either. Thus we have, for example, the nearly catatonic Thomas, Kavanaugh (the court's Eddie Haskell) and Barrett (remarkable for being someone who spent only a few years practicing law but now sits on the Supreme Court).
Can't wait for the next decision.
This is why I am sympathetic to the conviction of pro life. These people literally believe the government allowing access to abortion is them legally protecting murder. I understand their motivation, even if I disagree with when they define a baby as being the moment the sperm enters the egg.
In my opinion, both pro-lifers and pro-choices have a point. It would be ridiculous to allow abortions the day before delivery while considering it murder the day after. So at what point does the fetus stop becoming part of the woman’s body and start becoming a “baby” (sorites paradox)? At what point does it deserve moral consideration? Scalar morality could help here.
One very interesting analogy here is slavery. In the 1800s some states found it morally reprehensible while others wanted to allow it. If the southern states hadn’t succeeded from the union, it may never have been possible to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery (because the ratification of the 13th amendment was necessary to rejoin the union IIRC). Without a situation like this, can the federal government pass laws to limits states’ abilities to pass laws? Very interesting situation.
But if their view on this is rooted in their religion, then it shouldn't be the determinant of what is law. There are reasonable approaches they could take to reduce abortions: support agencies that provide medical and other financial support for poor, pregnant women; education; ensuring access to birth control; adopting (otherwise) unwanted children...
Quoting Paulm12
That's a fair point, and I haven't had a problem with placing some reasonable restrictions - although there should be medical exceptions in any case.
I maintain that defining abortion as murder is a particular religious belief. Medically aborting a blastocyst (recently fertilized egg) is clearly not the same as killing a someone who has been born (5 minutes, 5 years, or 50 years ago), Neither is aborting a 6 week fetus, which is entirely non-viable. Neither is aborting a 5 month non-viable fetus.
Aborting an 8 month altogether viable fetus comes much closer to your claim of abortion as murder. Such abortions are extremely rare and are the result of severe compromise of maternal health, where it's the baby OR the mother.
So yes: privacy matters here. Abortion as murder can be a privately held idea, and should apply only to the person holding the view. Hence the good slogan: "Opposed to abortion? Then don't have one."
Quoting Relativist
We don't screen voters for their justifications. You're a citizen, you get a vote.
It's true they were being disingenuous, but almost everyone knew which way they leaned - that's why Dems opposed them and GOP supported them.
Anti-abortion voters had an advantage over pro-choice voters: they were single issue voters- they wouldn't vote for a dog-catcher if they suspected she was pro-choice. Pro-choice voters weighed this among a variety of issues, and I suspect many just took Roe v Wade for granted.
:yikes: It never works that way. Abortion is either murder or it's not. If it is, it's everybody's business.
You're suggesting she isn't qualified (as your eyes glaze over and you fall forward).
Of course, but the establishment clause prohibits laws that force a particular religious view on the rest of us. That's what abortion bans do.
There's more to it, of course, but this aspect is rarely brought up.
[Quote]. Abortion is either murder or it's not. If it is, it's everybody's business.[/quote]No - there's no objectively correct answer. Is a zygote a human being? What establishes that? God implanting a soul? "Human being" is a fuzzy concept.
11% of atheists are pro life. So it's not necessarily a religious view.
Quoting Relativist
Nevertheless, if a portion of the community is crying "murder," it's your business.
If the law wishes to mandate children being brought into the world, then it seems to me that the law should also provide for the upbringing of that child, and every mother should therefore receive a reasonable living wage as employee of the state, while their child is a minor. The law forbids murder, but it has then to provide a justice system that deals with annoying people in some other way, because murder works.
This is something that bothers me about the stance of (some) conservatives. It doesn’t make sense to me to campaign for anti-abortion/pro-life and also teach abstinence only and make it difficult to access contraceptives. In my view, people are going to have sex no matter what. And if you want to avoid abortions, then one easy way is to provide/teach about birth control.
Then again, most Protestants are fine with birth control (interestingly, I think Catholicism is against it).
I guess one counterargument could be that supporters of abstinence-only education do so out of the belief that comprehensive guides to sex or information about contraceptives will ultimately result in teens actively pursuing and engaging in sexual activities. Although I believe the evidence shows it is ineffective at this-research in the US showed abstinence-only education is related to increases in teen pregnancy and teen birth rates. Comprehensive sexual education on the other hand leads to a reduction in teenage birthrates. Thus, I think pro-life should not be teaching abstinence only.
I'll readily admit to having an emotional attachment to life. Yet, a couple of months in, a fetus is a lump of cells about the size of a cherry, something like that. That's not a person. My neighbor's kid is. It's more like a cyst. No more a person or conscious than pre-conception sperm and egg. And that's a difference that makes a difference. That said, it's not like abortion is a positive thing (anti-natalists not invited).
[sup]Some Christians on abortion: We don't care about bodily autonomy or individual choice! We're trying to protect innocent lives!
Some Christians on COVID-19: We don't care about protecting innocent lives! We care about bodily autonomy and individual choice![/sup]
(rant over) :) (nothing to see here, move along)
:up:
Quoting frank
I agree, and I've brought up this issue with many of them. I understand and respect that it's murder from their perspective, and that this is a valid perspective. This seems to be what you are trying to convey, but I'm just adding that it's worthwhile to try to help them understand that other perspectives are also valid.
:100: :grin:
What do you think, we might implant the males with a womb, and make each one of them take a turn at looking after the unborn? Or how else do you propose that the male might carry some of this responsibility?
The abortion debate would stop tomorrow.
--
To be fair the murdering is a choice. The mother's choice, specifically. If one is going to be linguistically blackmailed by misogynists, then one tidy solution is to grasp the nettle rather than debate this shit on their terms. Abortion is murder? Fine. But perfectly good murder.
By not being able to impregnate women, well, unless they plan to, with them.
Problem solved, no more abortions. :up:
Superb! That's the kind of analytical work that deserves a gold star!
That says it all, doesn't it? Vide infra [math]\downarrow[/math]
Quoting Agent Smith
How is the right to privacy grounds for right to abortion? Beats me! If such is true, wouldn't abolishing/banning abortions infringe on one's privacy? If yes, are conservatives ok with the tradeoff - no abortions but less privacy?
Also, before I forget to mention it, the abortion debate and how it's panning out is, to my reckoning, the first tentative step towards Americanistan - a (Christian) theocracy à la Iran :fear: . This is a recipe for a disaster of epic proportions!
You would feel at home in a Hercule Poirot mystery novel. Long live the Duchess of Death! :grin:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-05/victorian-liberal-bernie-finn-praying-for-abortion-ban/101041168
Additional reasons why American bullshit infects the rest of the world.
Every country, people, person, group, tribe, everyone has their own bullshit. The task, it seems, is to sort, categorize, file and, finally...pick one that stinks the least. Not créme de la créme, but poop de la poop! Sorry, if I interrupted you.
Looks like Finn is lying, or misrepresenting at best. There aren't any baby killings. I thought there was something about "not bearing false witness" (or however it went) in his book?
Quoting jorndoe
Sorry that was a premature ejection of the post.
Terrible logic in those tweets, and also ignores the fact that there can be unwanted pregnancies after a woman wants her partner to not wear a condom and to finish inside of her.
A shared responsibility isn't an abdication of responsibility.
Quoting Streetlight
Quoting jorndoe
Neither of these ideas, I believe, could resolve the problem. It appears like the problem which leads to a never ending abortion debate, is that many people do not understand the true reality of "failure".
If we represent the birth of a child as the successful end product of the sexual act, then a true representation would show failure as far more prominent than success. Further, if we proceed toward representing this as a designed process then we need to allow that failure is essential to the design. The prominence of failure is what renders the individual successes as something special.
Religious zealots who refuse to recognize the reality of failure as an essential part of the design, have no capacity to understand evolution and the very important information which the reality of failure gives us concerning the nature of the design.
When good is measured only by success, with complete disregard and disrespect for those who have failed, then we have a world full of uncaring, uncompassionate people who view mistake as unforgivable.
Any conversation that doesn't involve simply putting a women in charge of her own body is not to be taken seriously.
I agree with that.
:100: But good luck convincing anyone who matters of that. Meanwhile, I fight despair with gallows humour.
Quoting Paulm12
This is the real problem, that someone somewhere may be having fun, and not paying for it by producing another wage slave.
This article may help:
"The constitutional right to privacy protects the liberty of people to make certain crucial decisions regarding their well-being without government coercion, intimidation, or interference. Such crucial decisions may concern religious faith, moral values, political affiliation, marriage, procreation, or death. The federal Constitution guarantees the right of individuals to make these decisions according to their own conscience and beliefs. The government is not constitutionally permitted to regulate such deeply personal matters."
[quote=CNN]The justices solidly reaffirmed that core right in 1992, reinforcing the principle that states could not interfere with a woman's ability to obtain an abortion before a fetus could survive out the womb, at about 23 weeks. Even justices who had criticized Roe said it was important to adhere to the precedent, for institutional reasons and because, quite simply, Americans had come to rely on it.[/quote]
[quote=Professor Neil Marlow, an MRC-funded academic at University College London's Institute for Women's Health and a co-author of both papers]Our findings show that more babies now survive being born too soon than ever before, which is testament to the highly-skilled and dedicated staff in our neonatal services.[/quote]
:chin:
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
I can sense a trend here: The gestational age at which fetuses can survive outside the womb has decreased over the past century or so and is decreasing in step with advances in (bio)technology. It appears that a time will come when even a zygote will be viable ex-utero. What then? Abortion would immediately have to be made illegal, oui?
Science seems to be sleeping with the enemy, religion, at least in the eyes of a section of their fanbase, pro-choicers! Pro-choice is going to become obsolete in (say) another century (conservative estimate), but only if they don't reinvent themselves in a big way. :joke:
If at some future point, it becomes possible to artificially gestate a zygote, then abortions will be obsolete if the pro-lifers are willing to pay for the gestation service (can't be cheap), and to divide up the resulting children among themselves to be raised.
I'm alluding to a general problem I have with many pro-lifers: it's easy express moral outrage at abortion, while shrugging off the fact that the alternative has life-altering consequences for the mother who gives birth ("that's their problem, but I'll pray for them").
Four perjurious, pro-life SC Justices, appointed by 2 GOP Presidents who both lost the popular vote in their respective elections (one starting two unpaid-for, fraudelent, failed wars of opportunity and the other Impeached twice while in the pocket of Russia & Saudi Arabia), form the basis of a judicial cabal (on the verge of) stripping citizens of established Constitutional Rights (i.e. protections) for the first time in US history, aided and abetted by a fifth perjurious, pro-insurrectionist joke-of-a-Justice.
Quoting Streetlight
:up:
I'm sympathetic to your view, but it sounds almost like a conspiracy theory. I'd say it's about power: Republicans latched onto the Jerry Falwell inspired "pro-life" movement because it was low hanging fruit for a large block of voters, and it conflicts with none of their principles (few as they are). It's been a successful strategy.
I don't think so, pregnancy will then be obsolete. The only babies being produced will then be designer (GM) babies. Human abortion will be enforced by the newly derived species, resulting in the extinction of the human species.
That sounds reasonable.
True that! That's been one of the sticking points in the issue. If you're going to be pro-life then you gotta go the whole nine yards - from conception to adulthood. In its current form, the anti-abortion camp's position boils down to caring for babies but not giving a rat's ass about their future well-being (happiness). I suggest the pro-choice movement look for teens/adults who lead miserable lives and give 'em a platform to voice their outrage - they would've preferred not to have been born and yet here they are, living in poverty, homeless, no future, etc.
Quoting 180 Proof
Crumbs! It's that bad, eh? :up:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yeah, I was thinking about that. Why would a woman want to carry the fetus in her uterus when it can do just as well in some kind of artificial womb? One reason for abortion accepted by even pro-lifers is danger to the mother and with artificial wombs, this goes out the window.
Termination of pregnancy would still be permissible in the eyes of pro-choicers if the baby's quality of life is compromised (severe birth defects, poverty, and so on).
My point was that the yardstick used for abortion is the ex-utero viability of the fetus is going to come back and bite women (in the ass) for the reasons I outlined in my last post.
If this passes then women can be charged with murder for using an IUD.
IUDs can either stop fertilization or the subsequent implantation. Because they've removed the "and implantation" part of the bill, if an IUD doesn't stop the fertilization, only the implantation, it counts as having killed an unborn child.
From this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/05/05/louisiana-abortion-bill-would-make-crime-murder/9656102002/ this appears to be a bill that just came out of committee, so I assume it has a long way to go (votes before both houses) before landing on the Governor's desk.
It does have precedence in South Carolina's Nullification Act of 1832 stating it did not have to pay federal taxes on cotton exports. That didn't ultimately turn out well for South Carolina.
I did look through the bill, and it even includes provisions stating the Supreme Court precedent should not be considered.
What you have is just a very political bill that has limited likelihood of being passed that some legislator wants to wave around showing how defiant he is in defense of protecting babies' lives. If that law passed, it would be declared unconstitutional. A state can't declare its sovereignty. It would never be enforced and Louisiana wouldn't secede from the union (unfortunately) in order to defend that right.
If they were the badasses they pretend to be, they'd just start prosecuting abortions now and not wait on the Supreme Court. They'd also not be permitting gay weddings, but they do, meaning that they are compliant citizens regardless of wanting to appear rogue.
Not just precedent:
And any federal law would just get repealed when the Republicans are next in power.
Could be. It'll be a talking point for Democrats until they pass something that works. They'll probably start transport assistance for poor people, free hotel rooms and so on.
No surprise here, wealthy women have the benefit of being able to afford sexual promiscuity without the downside of an undesired pregnancy. It is simply the case, as with virtually everything in life...wealthy people always have more options than the poor.
Poor women will just have to stick with what they can afford and settle with not getting randomly knocked up.
These kinds of excuses are simply covers for their complete and willing complicity.
If they do nothing they are not fucked in 2024 because they only exist to run interference for their co-rulers in the Republican party.
[quote=Heraclitus]Panta rhei.[/quote]
Anicca!
As I said - if this happens it will go against the GOP in the Mids.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Literature_Lady/status/1522202362366078979[/tweet]
@bykenarmstrong comments:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/bykenarmstrong/status/1521845736425500674[/tweet]
Is this really the move in the US? :sad: If so, then I suggest females in the US relocate.
It's been a campaign opportunity for both parties for a while now.
With a simple majority vote (50 plus 1 from Kamala), Democrats could change the filibuster that would allow for a legislative codification of Roe v. Wade to pass with another simple majority, rather than the current rule that requires 60, which, to be clear, the Democrats will likely never achieve in decades. Democrats technically have the votes to accomplish the above, but nominal Democrats Manchin and Sinema have stated explicitly that they will not vote to end the 60 vote filibuster and there doesn't seem to be much pressure from Biden, who campaigned on the promise to codify Roe v. Wade, or from the Democratic party at large to get them to do so.
I can't help but compare the Democrats apathy towards their two congressional colleagues unwillingness to conform to party lines with the reaction to GOP congressman Madison Cawthorn's accusations that members of his party engage in Eyes Wide Shut orgies and coke binges; the subsequent photo and video leaks was certainly done by GOP operatives to punish an insubordinate party member.
It's all probably moot anyway, since whatever legislature the Democrats could pass would likely be struck down by a hostile Supreme Court.
Republicans will eventually be in the majority, and can then easily strike down that law, not to mention the ACA
The Majority of American Muslims Believe Abortion Should be Legal in All or Most Cases
Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
May 5, 2022
America’s Abortion Quandary
Pew Research Center
May 6, 2022
Would the numbers be substantially different if put to a vote?
I can picture campaign circuses and people on soapboxes... :D
This seems to be the point that needs to be discussed.
I see conservatives making the argument that Roe v Wade was all about some federal judges in Washington DC deciding for everyone what they can do, but that was the opposite if what Roe v Wade did. Under Roe v Wade if you didn't want an abortion you didn't have to get one, and if you did you could get one. So the conservatives are the ones imposing their will on others by taking away the personal choice and giving that choice to state governments.
I have also found hypocrisy on the left as most vegans are left-wingers and are vegans because they want to reduce suffering of animals. If animals with small brains can suffer, then what about fetuses in the womb? The brain and nervous system form in the first trimester and fetuses are shown to react to external stimuli.
There is also this celebration of abortion that the left has, as if having an abortion is a badge of honor rather than a tragedy. Abortion is invasive and can be dangerous. It should be a last resort because the use of other less invasive forms of contraception failed, or that the mother was raped or her life is in danger.
I see both sides talking past each other and making it a black and white issue in that you are either totally against abortion in all cases or totally for abortion being made for any reason and at any time even up to the point of birth. I don't believe that most Americans see it as a black and white issue. As usual it is the extremists on both sides dominating the conversation.
Where did you see this happening? Just curious, because I haven't.
I did find this:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-had-an-abortion-t-shirt_n_1435234
The people selling the shirts tried to make the case that the t-shirts are meant to destigmatize abortion. This is a flawed argument because abortion has been legal for 40 years. It is not stigmatized by the majority of Americans, only the extremists on the right, which is a minority. This is a tactic used by both sides where they make themselves and their opponents appear to be larger or that their ideas are more pervasive than they actually are to make the case that their idea is necessary because of the size and power of the opposition. They attempt to group moderate party members with their extreme party members as if they hold the same position.
Then there is this:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-guest-make-sweet-love-to-scotus-leaker
where Laurie Kilmartin said she would "joyfully abort our fetus". She's a comedian, sure, but comedy is only funny if it has an element of truth, and it wasn't funny at all. Trust me, I know funny. I watch Impractical Jokers. :joke:
The ironic thing is that when you google this story you find it mostly on right-leaning sites, when it happened on MSNBC, as if they are trying to bury it.
I would kind of prefer this to "a woman has a right to choose."
If you think abortion is moral, go ahead and say it. Normalize it. Otherwise it's like: "abortion is moral for some of us, but not all."
That doesn't make any sense.
The question of whether abortion is murder or not hinges on whether one considers a everything from a just-fertilized egg on to a blastocyst on to a fetus with a beating heart but not much more than a neural tube for a brain on to a barely viable fetus, on to an entirely viable fetus is a "person" in the way a healthy new-born is a person.
The fetus-fetish folks think a just-fertilized egg is owed as much legal protection as a two-year od, Hence, the expected moves to outlaw 'day after' pills.
Many people do not grant personhood to a non-viable fetus; some grant personhood to a fully viable (7-9 month) fetus.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I've been among the left for the 49 years of Roe vs. Wade and I have NEVER witnessed abortion being "celebrated" or considered a "badge of honor".
Aborting a fetus may be considered a personal medical decision, but it is not a casual, pleasant procedure. Most women apparently consider it a difficult decision--far more fraught than other medical procedures.
It's not that abortion is moral. It's that it's morally neutral in certain circumstances. Helping an old lady cross the street is moral as is feeding the poor in that it's something to encourage and celebrate.
I would think that abortion would in most cases be a difficult decision and not something many (although maybe some) would think warmly about. The need for the abortion, after all, is typically the result of a mistake, in that they did not want to have a child at this time in their life, but they made choices that led to the pregnancy.
Any medical procedure that might become necessary as the result of my own negligence would be a matter of choice for me to undergo, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow heroic because I chose or don't choose a particular procedure. For example, my knee hurts because of the two years of kick boxing I did, but I'm not having it scoped because I don't want to. The decision isn't moral or not moral. It's just a matter of choice. What I would think would be immoral is if you got to decide for me
We do not all have to agree on every definition of moral and immoral behavior. I'm OK with some people thinking that I, as a homosexual, behave immorally. I'm OK with some people thinking that my beliefs about god are immoral. I'm OK with some people thinking abortion is immoral.
What we have to agree on is whether behavior is legal and acceptable in a diverse society. Most people are willing to accept abortion is acceptable; ditto for single parenthood; ditto for non-married people living together as a couple; ditto for homosexuality and homosexual behavior.
I don't know how "leftist" those people were, but I have seen several cases of women or fictional female characters being proud or otherwise thinking positively about having had an abortion.
For example, in a mainstream youth book (I forgot the title by now) about a teenage girl (15 or so), abortion is described as a rite of passage to adulthood and normalcy.
One of the characters in "Sex and the City" didn't think anything much about having had two abortions.
In a French documentary about the availability of abortion in post WW II France (it was illegal then), a woman vividly complained and bemoaned how her husband had to be more careful and couldn't enjoy himself properly during sex because abortion wasn't legal.
I personally know some women for whom having an abortion is entirely normal. I know one who said she wanted to get pregnant just so that she could have an abortion.
As usual in this dicussion, women have the least say. And most of those who do talk, represent interests that benefit the men most.
As long as, in practice, our idea of democracy amounts to
what hope can there be ...
There is enormous societal pressure to engage in sex, regardless whether one wants to have children or not. Regularly engaging in sex is even considered by many as the mark of a healthy relationship, and of psychological normalcy to begin with. Not engaging in sex is seen by many (including psychologists/psychiatrists) as pathological.
The choice isn't actually between engaging in sex or not. It's between having a relationship or not; or between being seen as normal and worthy, or not.
You wouldn't have that freedom of interpretation in every country/culture. Not even when it comes to bum knees.
If anything, people are expected to trust medicine unquestioningly, and if they don't they get regarded as irrational. Refusing a suggested medical treatment could even get one categorized as a negligent patient and one could lose one's medical insurance.
Depends who that "you" is. If it's "society", the legislative body, someone more powerful than you, how can you still say that it's immoral if they decide for you?
If some people think sexual abuse is OK, should they be allowed to do it?
Quoting Hanover
My point is that if you believe a certain act is immoral and seek to make it illegal, I need to address your concern one way or another.
Saying that it's a matter of choice does not address your assertion.
The argument that all sex is coerced due to societal pressures is pretty stupid. It categorizes all sex as rape and it defies my personal experience in that I actually did want to have the sex that I did.Quoting baker
If there is a hypothetical country where they condemn those who don't receive knee surgeries as immoral, i stand in opposition to their morality.
I don't know why you're sharing with me the underwriting policies of a hypothetical health insurer as if that has something to do with morality. Quoting baker
I'm saying that it violates my conception of morality for someone else to dictate the treatment of my bad knees. The power of that someone else is irrelevant to the moral question.
I took your point to be that if someone is pro-choice, they should be able to proudly announce all the abortions they have had. I was saying it's not a matter of pride or celebration because abortions are not a moral event, and they likely involve a very difficult and painful decision.
I agree that I've taken a pro-choice position, which is why I was offering the logic behind the seemingly paradoxical views of (1) I believe people should be permitted to have abortions, and (2) having an abortion is not cause for celebration.
#2 only follows if abortion is NOT a morally positive act (like feeding the poor). That's what I'm saying. Abortion is not a morally positive act.
It would be a little odd to have a party to celebrate having your gallbladder removed, but I'm accustomed to people doing strange things.
If abortion is different, that is, if you feel people really shouldn't be casual about it, that implies some ambivalence about the morality of it. Doesn't it?
Sex abuse (I'll assume for the present that our definition of 'abuse' is more or less the same) has been widely rejected as an acceptable behavior for some time. Not always, certainly -- standards have changed over time, and are still changing. Some behaviors that were once considered normal are now considered abusive, or even pathological.
What constitutes acceptable behavior and what constitutes abuse varies from time to time, place to place, but where something is generally defined as abusive, it's generally rejected.
Some people consider spanking children abusive while others consider it proper. Time will tell.
Time always does!
:up:
There is a difference between behavior we disapprove of and behavior which has been legislated against. Abortion, homosexuality, polygamy, corporal discipline of children (spanking with the hand--not beating), recreational drug use, and other behaviors can be legal, illegal, moral, or immoral. Abortion, obviously, is legal in many states, even though some people in those states consider it immoral. In many other states it is (or soon will be) illegal and considered immoral by some. Other people will consider abortion moral, even if it is illegal.
So: In states where abortion is legal, some people consider it murder and others consider it medical procedure.
Sure. So imagine you live in a state where sexual abuse of children is tolerated, say it's Montana. There's no law against it. Would you say that in Montana, sexual abuse is a matter of choice?
No, because it has been defined as a criminal act.
NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association (not sure if it still exists) held the view that sexual relationships between adults and youth were moral. In a few places, depending on other laws, it was legal under certain circumstances -- where homosexuality was not criminalized, and where the age of consent was low enough. Man-boy sexual relationships occurred long before NAMBLA was organized in 1978. Mostly they just flew under the radar of respectability.
The organization causes a PR panic in the gay community because pederasty threatened to blow up gay efforts to achieve respectability and legality. The issue was less one of legality than one of morality and optics. NAMBLA was denounced as if it was a doorway straight to hell.
Over the next 20 years, (less because of NAMBLA and more because of a moral panic about children) there were some very public child (<6 years old) abuse prosecutions, some of which were, in the end, found to be completely baseless.
Now relationships between adults and 15 or 16 year olds (males or females) count as a sex crime. It's illegal, Is it immoral? Not by default. It would be immoral and illegal if deceit and exploitation is involved. If it is consensual and conducted honestly, then it would not be immoral, but still illegal.
Well, Frank -- if a behavior is tolerated, and there are no laws defining what a behavior is, then it is a matter of personal interpretation as to whether one can permissibly do x, y, or z. You've raised a non-issue, seems to me.
So does it sit well with you that child abuse is considered to be a matter of choice in Montana?
It's a non-issue?
What's accepted might vary, but what's acceptable might not. If moral facts are independent of (inter)subjective opinion then these are two different things.
There seems to be two types of leftists (and right-wingers) nowadays - the moderates and the extremists. The extremists didn't exist 49 years ago.
That was my point in saying that most Americans don't see it as a black and white issue where abortions are to be banned outright, or celebrated as a joyful thing to brag about (as in wearing a "I had an abortion" or "I :heart: abortion" t-shirts). Most of the behavior of both extremes seem more to piss the other side off than to make any reasonable arguments on this topic. They just become more extreme as each side attempts to out-perform the other with preposterous actions and statements, and doing this over a period of decades has led us to where we are today.
Quoting frank
Saying it doesn't normalize it. Many people doing it without consulting others (like god or government) is what normalizes it.
But this diverges from the original point I was making between you and BitterCrank - that we need to be consistent in how we define life, personhood, and suffering. Both political extremes are not being consistent at all.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It's not just about personhood. As I stated before, vegans point to suffering as the reasons that we shouldn't abort the lives of animals. If animals can suffer, then it's not really about defining personhood, but suffering and what organisms are capable of experiencing it.
I don't think we need to be consistent, because I don't think there is a precise answer. Just as there is no single point where one species evolves into another, there's no single point where something "becomes" alive or a person or something which can suffer. We can see that at one extreme it's not a living person and at another extreme it is a living person, but in between it's just a matter of degree. With this in mind there's no reason that we can't treat the foetus differently depending on circumstance, e.g. between a woman choosing to have an abortion and some third party causing an unwanted miscarriage.
In the case of rape, the mother is not responsible for taking care of her baby but the state should interfere and place the child in the care of foster parents. If the baby is the product of incest, the same rules should apply but the parents should be fined or imprisoned.
The mother should be allowed to abort the fetus if her life is in danger , this is a special concession and it doesn't require any detailed moral reasoning behind it. For the lack of any better argument, it will minimize the net suffering/loss by saving one life instead of letting two people die.
The abortion debate is a bit ridiculous tbh. People should use better means to avoid getting pregnant. What's the point of getting pregnant accidentally and going through the hassle of abortion when a condom/pill etc will cut the problem at the root. I am in favor of the government banning unnecessary abortion as long as there is a social security net to take care of vulnerable children
Because condoms/pills etc. don't always work.
Quoting Wittgenstein
When does a foetus become conscious?
Quoting Wittgenstein
There's still the 9 months of pregnancy which a woman has to suffer through.
Nothing works perfectly all the time. That's not the point. We should encourage people to use ( better quality ) protection and discourage abortion. This can be achieved with improving sex education, subsidizing birth control means and banning unnecessary abortions. I have a religious/spiritual argument at hand but since many people here don't share the same religious commitment as me, it won't be well received. Nevertheless, l will make it. Sex should not be used primarily for hedonistic means and people should be more responsible with coitus as it has a deep psychosocial impact on society as a whole. I want to preserve the family structure in society and hedonism is playing a great role in destroying it. Self control in two individuals creates a family and self control in families creates a nation.
I could quote a medical study here but since we are not doctors, We should let the experts determine when the foetus becomes conscious and l am sure doctors have a medical definition of consciousness
Yes, but l don't see how it's proportional or even comparable to taking the life of a baby. The foetus has a right to life and the suffering of the mother during the time of pregnancy cannot take that away.
I suppose there's this:
And this:
This fits with the current law in the UK which allows abortion up to 24 weeks, and I believe this is (currently) the case in the US as well.
Whether or not a foetus has a right to life is the very thing being debated. And I would say that the woman's suffering very much is comparable, and at least in the early stages of pregnancy her rights take precedence of the foetus', just as I would say that a human's suffering takes precedence over any animal's right to life.
Well, so be it. I don't have a problem with 24 weeks
And this is probably why the debate continues. There's no clear cut way to determine when a fetus becomes a person.
Since my argument rests on consciousness as a condition to being a member of society and having the right to life in consequence, l will use it as a criterion
It's a matter of consciousness. If a person is brain dead , in a vegetative state and taking his life can reduce the suffering of an animal who is conscious, l don't see a problem with saving the life of the animal. If the foetus isn't conscious, the mother can abort it but if its conscious, then the baby has the right to life, and the suffering of the mother doesn't factor into the equation. But I'm not done with letting women abort an unconscious foetus except in special cases l have mentioned in my earlier post.
Here, it's very difficult to argue my case but l want the government to place a better social security net and weaken abortion rights to make sure no foetus is aborted for the financial inability of the parents to take care of the child. This will encourage women to not abort babies as abortion isn't a pleasant experience for the mother , placing your baby in foster care is million times better for ones mental health. This argument is in spirit of providing better social care. Abortion isn't incompatible with social care but they both drive the social practice of people in opposite directions. I will always prefer the latter option
Then what use is the term, "person" if there is no way to determine what it is? Are you a person? How do you know? Can you point to something that has an equal number of properties of personhood and not-personhood?
Sorites paradox
What about the potential of personhood? Does that matter?
A lot of the land surface of the planet has the potential to become a person, Harry.
Your hair used to be some dust stirred up by a brontosaurus.
See Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, particularly regarding what is or isn't a game.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't understand this question.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If you can't explain why you are a person then what is wrong with aborting you? I'm not interested in bringing morality into it. I just want to know what traits a thing possesses that would qualify it as a person.
Quoting Michael
Let's say that there are 5 traits that define a thing as a person. If a thing has two or less of these traits, then that thing does not qualify as a person, three or more it does.
Let's say that instead of 5 traits, there are 6 traits. We now have an even number of traits, so it stands to reason that it is possible for some things to have three of these traits. I'm asking what that thing would look like, or if there are any examples of such a thing.
I'm aware that we would first have to agree on the traits and the number that define a thing as a person, and that would be our starting point, but for now I'm simply contemplating the possibilities.
Quoting Michael
The question is whether the extreme of being a living person begins before or after birth.
I'm not trying to avoid the question. I just don't know exactly when a clump of cells actually turns into a person. I know it will, given the right conditions. It happened to me.
What we do is declare that some time before the 20th week when the AC membrane in the lungs is too thick to function, the thingy is not a person. Somewhere around 25 weeks the membrane will work and the thingy can live outside the womb.
Some people reject that claim. So the buy-in for it is iffy.
I would say the two extremes are a newly fertilised egg (not a person) and a healthy adult (a person). A 24 week old foetus and someone in a vegetative state might be somewhere in between.
In some legal respects, a corporation is a person. What would need defining is: individual human person., but the fundamental problem is that it's a fuzzy concept - agreement on some specific set of traits would be virtually impossible. For example, I'd argue that a zygote clearly isn't an individual human person, because a zygote is a cell that can produce more than one person (monozyogtic twins, triplets, quadrupelets...), whereas many Christians disagree (a zygote has a soul; if it divides - God tosses in another soul...). So...it seems to me, it's all a matter of opinion, and it's inappropriate to force your opinion upon others.
Quoting 180 Proof
My 30+ years old position is, I suppose, the "extremist" one (as the old post exerpted shows): abortion on demand – as an inalienable Human Right – even in the third trimester. Why? (from the same nearly year-old thread) :point:
Quoting 180 Proof
:up:
:up:
Yea, that's not going to happen. Third trimester is a baby.
Back in the day, folks said the same about Abolition ... and desegregation ... and mixed-raced marriage ... Actuarial inevitability, sir.
Prenatal homicide (e.g. mother's physical or mental health; severe / unviable birth defects; poverty, etc) ain't infanticide. Ergo no unwanted / unloved newborns. Each woman (& her doctor) knows best. Anyway, soon enough, actuarial progress over retrograde conservatism.
They also said it about pigs flying.
Quoting 180 Proof
Third trimester is too late. Get over it.
In the following US States, etc, abortion without limits (e.g. third trimester) is currently legal by statute in the following states:
[i][b]Alaska
Colorado
(Wash. DC)
New Hamphire
New Jersey
New Mexico
Oregon
Vermont[/b][/i]
Get over it yourself, frank. More states with currently legal abortion will lift the "viability" and other arbitrary restrictions after "Roe ..." is overturned. :up:
Third trimester abortion is rare and usually done for medical reasons, either a problem with the mother or the baby.
:up:
True. It's always going to be rare, though.
It is a bit too much to terminate a pregnancy in the third trimester. Reason? Both the terms fetus & infant apply at that stage. It's like the grey area between living and nonliving, an ethical nightmare scenario. I wouldn't want to be part of such decisions, not for all the tea in China!
:grin: That doesn't, however, solve the ethical problem does it? We need to use our brains & heart (xin) and only then is any judgment whole and complete. Those who sanction third trimester abortions are not even using their heads properly, forget about their hearts.
What sayest thou?
That’s a good point. Imagine if people could kill their children after they were born, and then claim it was their right to choose. Maybe there are options for 3rd trimester abortions that preserve the child’s life. In some ways, it isn’t just a “right” to choose when it involves another life. The question, of course, is when it becomes another life, and to me, it certainly isn’t during natural birth. Under this logic, one could also argue a fetus/baby is also a slave if the government rules that the mother can choose a procedure design to take their life.
To get technical, I talked to a pro-life biologist who was particularly against Dilation and Evacuation because it doesn’t even give the fetus a chance of survival.
It brings up an interesting question-if there were medical procedures that gave the fetus/baby a chance of survival, what probability would be acceptable? Would this solve the whole pro-life/pro-choice thing? Like put it in a test tube or something and let it grow the rest of the way organically.
I try to be careful, because I sometimes think certain pro-choice arguments could be used to justify things like allowing people who want their spinal cord severed or who want assisted suicide due to existential pain (not in the case of a terminal illness).
Jains should be up in arms against abortion! Why I don't hear a peep out of them puzzles me deeply.
Did you know?
Jains avoid farming because then they'd kill what? trillions of microbes and creepy crawlies. Jain priests cover their mouths with a cloth to avoid breathing in and offing, again, microbes.
By that token, for a Jain even the zygote can't/shouldn't be terminated. It is life and it has the right to live!
Abort(ion) = End (prematurely) = Kill! :chin:
Ok, ok!
They're called incubators.
Although that would probably require a caesarian if it were done as an alternative to abortion.
Quoting Michael
So the victims of school shootings were not people?
To even say that there are two extremes means that there must be a distinction between them, or else the extremes aren't extremes at all.
Quoting Relativist
Yet we do force our opinion upon others by having laws that put you in jail if you kill people.
Asserting that there is no objective means of defining a person opens the door for anyone to define it how they want, and then use their own definitions to then kill and enslave others that they do not define as a "person".
It seems that most people here aren't even willing to give it a try, yet their behavior in other threads when it comes to discussions on the treatment of others and respecting the "identities" they assert seems to indicate that they have what defines a person all figured out and then try to impose that view on others.
I'm trying to make it easy by starting off with traits that we know make a thing a person. In talking about extremes, you are admitting that there are easily discernable traits that make one a person vs. not a person. If not, then the use of the term, "extremes", is meaningless.
For vegans, yes. They are fine with killing plants for food, but not pigs, chickens and cows because they point to suffering, not necessarily personhood, as the reason to not kill some organism.
I think a 24 week infant has about a 7% chance of survival even with high tech care. At 20 weeks, there's really no chance.
How is that any different than what I said? If the preemie baby outside the womb still requires care to survive, how is that any different than the care they receive inside the womb?
No, how did you come to that conclusion?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, there's a difference between a fertilised egg and a healthy adult.
Quoting Michael
You defined a person as a "healthy adult". Does this also mean that an adult with cancer is not a person?
Quoting Michael
You're repeating yourself. What are those differences?
No I didn't. I offered a healthy adult as an example of a person.
You didn't say it was an example until now. Have any other examples? And after you give those examples, provide the traits that they share that qualifies them as a person.
There are many differences; a healthy adult has lungs and a fertilised egg doesn't, a fertilised egg is about 100 microns in diameter and a healthy adult is quite a lot larger.
Okay. Now we're moving the conversation forward!
A healthy fetus in the third trimester has lungs. Is there anything else?
Does "healthy adult" include other species other than humans?
A sperm isn't a person, but a child is.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Again, see Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations re. what is a game. If you're looking for some set of necessary and sufficient conditions for something to qualify as a person then you're approaching the issue the wrong way. That's just not how things work in many cases. There are extremes where it's easy to say what is or isn't a person (a healthy adult is, a sperm isn't) and where it's easy to say what is or isn't a game (chess is, clouds aren't), but then there are cases where there's no clear answer (and by this I don't just mean that we don't know which it is, but that there isn't a definite fact of the matter).
Quoting Harry Hindu
Possibly, if they're intelligent enough. I would think some advanced extra-terrestrial life would quality as persons. But dogs probably aren't (even if they're more intelligent and more self-aware than a newborn human).
Quoting Harry Hindu
There are thousands of differences between an ovum and an adult human. I'm not going to list them all, and I don't understand the purpose of doing so.
Yet, those cases where it seems to be difficult to say one way or another are rare compared to the all the cases where it is easy to say. Depending on how we define "person" vs. "non-person" the transition between the two can be very brief or very long. What we are trying to do is narrow that window of transition. By doing this and then by giving the benefit of the doubt to the fetus during this transition, we only end up adding a small amount of time to when it is not okay to abort a life.
Quoting Michael
But I wasn't talking about an ovum. I was talking about a fetus in the third trimester.
Then intelligence is another defining factor?
We put people in jail for animal abuse. It's okay to abuse a pig on a farm, but not a dog? Pigs are actually more intelligent than dogs. What about dolphins or apes?
Yet you're saying that there is a clear-cut case between what is discernable vs. indiscernible.
What's the connection between our definition of "person" and whether or not abortion is OK? I didn't realise that how we use words is the measure of morality,
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't understand what these questions have to do with anything.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I don't know what you mean here either. All I've said is that there is a very clear difference between a fertilised egg and a healthy adult.
Are you arguing that abortion is always wrong?
So when does abortion become murder if not by the way we define "person"?
Quoting Michael
Then I don't understand why you brought Wittgenstein into this discussion.
"Murder" is a legal term, so it "becomes" murder if the law declares it to be murder.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Because you seem to think that there is some set of necessary and sufficient conditions that qualify a thing as a person, but as Wittgenstein argued, this is a mistake. Instead, we just use the word "person" to refer to things that fit within a (vague) family resemblance, and that there are some things that clearly fit the use and some things that clearly don't, and then other things that sit within a grey area.
Would it be better if I used the term, "kill"?
Quoting Michael
And you seem to think that Witt is a prophet of some sort whose words are infallible. You don't seem to have a problem discerning what Witt said vs. what Witt did not say.
That will also be a quagmire.
You'd have to define "suffering."
Does suffering require a sense of self? If it's just the firing of nociceptors, then earth worms can suffer.
Even then it's a matter of degree. An adult with congenital insensitivity to pain, a foetus at 24 weeks old, and cockroaches aren't capable of suffering in the same way that I am. At what "strength" does it become an ethical concern?
There's no point where it "becomes" killing. As I've said before, there is no point where something that wasn't alive "becomes" alive; it's all a matter of degree. Like personhood, life isn't some binary state that something either has or doesn't have.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No I don't. I just think he happens to be right. Personhood, life, being a game -- none of these are some intrinsic property that things either have or don't have. The world is a chaotic place, and to help us navigate it we start using words like "person", "life", and "game". But such use isn't dictated by some strict formal system of logic; it's often imprecise and inconsistent. That's just the reality of language.
No set of traits can draw sharp boundaries that fit all analyses. E.g. if humans have 46 chromosomes, then men with XYY syndrome don't fit; evolutionary history: there's no sharp boundaries in species' emergence.
That said, for most cases of criminal law, it's not problematic- there's no confusion or disagreement, no sorties fallacy. But there IS disagreement in terms of fetal development, and the problem isn't solvable by creating a definition. But that is exactly what anti-abortion advocates try to do. It's not fair for me to insist they drop their religion-based belief that a zygote is a human being with a soul, but neither should they force their view on others - particularly on those who may suffer. We should all accept there's disagreement that is honest and sincere in terms of identifying some point in fetal development as a dividing line.
quote="Harry Hindu;694655"]Asserting that there is no objective means of defining a person opens the door for anyone to define it how they want, and then use their own definitions to then kill and enslave others that they do not define as a "person".[/quote]
That door is always open, unfortunately, and the risks aren't eliminated by pointing the evil-doers at a lexicon.
We could consider flushing a load of wriggling sperm cells through the toilet an act of ethnic cleansing...
Yes, and sex is genocide, even if one of the little wrigglers is lucky enough to survive.
:lol:
Darwin still had a lot to learn.
Thanks for the helpful reminder! I owe you one, 180 Proof.
Life without choice may survive (i.e. slavery). Life with choice however thrives (i.e. agency). And choice without life is 'life insurance' (i.e. policy). Not "more important", but choice makes living significant. :death: :flower:
Life sans choice is pointless!
Choice sans life is nonsense!
We're screwed, thoroughly I might add.
Sure, I think suffering is the awareness of your own pain. I think there are animals, like earth worms, that don't possess that awareness. Their behaviors of running from the source of pain is instinctual. There is no "what it is like" for an earth worm, at least not in the way there is for a human. It's not just having a brain, but having a particular type of brain.
Being pro-life isn't necessarily religious. Maybe it's more of a pro-personhood, in that one can respect the rights of another person. The question is, what makes one a person that deserves these rights? And we don't even have to bring a government into this. God and government are irrelevant here. What type of rights do you, as an individual, recognize that other persons have? At what point do you, as an individual, recognize that a thing either deserves those rights and doesn't deserve those rights? At what point in your own development would you want others to recognize those rights for you?
Physical pain isn't the only type of suffering. I would imagine that the adult with congenital insensitivity to pain would still suffer from mental anguish of realizing that they could seriously injure themselves and not even know it.
24 week old fetuses and cockroaches don't have a concept of time, much less even a realist concept of an external world (object permanence), so they couldn't experience the mental anguish of some event in the future causing them harm. They would only exist in the present. I would also argue that a 24 week fetus's brain is much different than an adult cockroach. I think that the reactions of cockroaches to injury are instinctive in that there is no conscious awareness of this pain. So the question is at what point does a particular brain create a sensory-feedback loop of self-awareness.
Quoting Michael
Then there are no extremes. You described both extremes as one being a person and one not being a person. If that isn't binary, then what is it?
Again, we can narrow down the transitionary period between not-person and person to the point where the time in between the two binary states is short enough to not make much of a difference.
Quoting Michael
Which is to say that you think that his words are infallible. Many people think Jesus was right. What is the difference?
Quoting Michael
Yet you laid out the argument for the existence of extremes. How can extremes even exist if there aren't intrinsic properties that make one a person and one not a person. You keep conflating the transitionary period with the extremes. Is the world a chaotic place or is it orderly, or somewhere in between? You keep proving Witt wrong every time you make an argument for what is the case - as in the world is chaotic, and what Witt said, which means that you have no issues with understanding what Witt is vs. what Witt is not.
Quoting 180 Proof
But that is what I'm asking, 180. At what point are we merely projecting human qualities onto objects vs. those qualities actually existing independent of our projecting them?
This is simple to resolve. Instead of just two categories (man vs. woman or person vs. non-person), there could be three or more. Transitions between extremes would be a separate category. For instance, we don't say that black and white are the only colors. We recognize that there are many colors, not just two and the other colors are the transition between black and white (no colors vs. all colors).
Quoting Relativist Then the question is who suffers more and who has the power to prevent the greater suffering in using contraception instead of relying on abortion as the only option to prevent a birth? I don't see anything wrong with using a morning-after pill to abort a pregnancy because I don't see a zygote as a something that can be self-aware or suffer. The longer you wait, the more it becomes an issue. The only reason I can see for having a late-term abortion is because the woman's life is in danger.
Quoting Relativist
Sure it is. The prosecutors read the statute that the offender has broken, and people are put in jail because of some words on some court documents. I think that the words of a statute prevent some people from doing evil things. For some the words don't matter as they will respect others or not regardless of what some law states. I'm interested in talking to those that can do the "right" thing even when not threatened with prison. Are you one of those people?
And back to the rule of the dick.
The surest way to keep the discussion of this topic superficial and never moving from the spot.
This is the wrong direction of approaching the issue. It's a direction that makes sure that the matter never gets resolved.
If, on the other hand, we focus on the intention of those involved in abortion, it all gets very clear and very simple. They act with the intention to kill. They know what that glob of cells is likely going to develop into, and this is what they want to stop from happening. So as far as intention goes, it's irrelevant whether the unborn feels pain or not, whether it should be considered a person or not. Because the intention is to kill.
Again, too narrow a scope. The issue is the intention for engaging in sex in the first place. In discussions of abortion, this is rarely or never addressed.
Quoting Harry Hindu
And since you bring up suffering and magnitudes of it:
What is the greater suffering:
Enduring a sexual urge and not acting on it until it passes (after about 10 minutes),
or risking the health and life of the woman with hormonal contraceptives (and abortions, in case the contraceptives fail)?
It's so wonderful that the abortion dicsussion is done mostly by men. And that most women who participate in it protect the interests of men.
Yay, the best a woman can be in this world is a fool, a beautiful little fool. That's what grandma fought for.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Who decides on who is suffering, and to what degree? These judgments will necessarily be based on one's subjective beliefs because there's no objective measure of suffering and no objective identifier of what constitutes an individual human being.
This sounds a reasonable basis for you to decide on when you should or shouldn't get an abortion. But it's not based on objectively true standards, so how could you justify imposing your view on others?
Who decides on the level of risk women are required to accept (e.g. "more than likely" she'll die? 50-50? 25%risk?)Is there some reason to think women are getting late term abortions for a reason that is so bad that it needs to be made illegal? I've seen no statistics on it, and my impression is that people feel it should be banned because it sounds gruesome (It IS gruesome!) without considering that there may be good reasons (such as health risks).
Quoting Harry HinduI understand, and in the abstract - it's a reasonable objective. In practice, there are problems. Louisiana was considering a law that would treat any act that causes the death of a zygote as a homicide, including a morning after pill, in-vitro fertilization, and failure to medically implant a fertilized egg in an entopic pregnancy. The legislators who favored it believe they would be preventing evil things from occurring.
We ALL want people to do the right thing, but there's an element of subjectivity in deciding when something is wrong and there are nearly always exceptional circumstances that make any firm legal boundaries problematic in special cases. Why isn't it "the right thing" to trust women to do what's right for themselves, and refrain from creating restrictions that limit their choices?
Quoting baker
:ok:
:snicker:
The meme that “life begins with conception” stands contra the most rudimentary of human reasoning. Zygotes are alive, yes, and so are all gametes. Pollen is alive, never mind eggs and sperm - not dead, nor inanimate, but living. Rebuttal: “But a human zygote is a human being because it holds the potential to so become a human being.” Leaving the logic of this aside for now, so too do human eggs and sperm “hold the potential to become human beings”. Most if not all contraception is enacted with the intention of killing gametes, hence, yes, life, which furthermore holds the very potential to “become a human being”. Hence why some hold contraception to be murder - this in the very human history we are now reenacting.
And the “potential to so become” argument is blatantly irrational. That which has the potential to so become X is not yet X. Moreover, we can clone humans from individual human cells' genome, granting the cells we defecate along all other excrements the “potential to become a human being”. Should those who go to the restroom be considered killers of human life?
“But a zygote left to its own devices …” … will often enough result in miscarriage anyway, likely much higher than the 10-20 percent reported (which most always do not account for miscarriages in the very early stages of the fetus).
The pivotal question to this issue remains: at which point does a bundle of human cells actually become a human being?
The intentional killing of a zygote or of a fetus is not the intentional killing of a human being unless one considers these to in fact be human beings. And then on what grounds other than that of “potential”, which, again, is not a rationally cogent argument.
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Aside from which, too many of the pro-lifers that talk of zygotes as being human beings pretty much shit on all unwanted human life once birthed: e.g., the intentional killing of a zygote verses the potentiality of 80-years or longer of misery and suffering of an unwanted member of society that society at large does not want to help out. You see plenty of these lives homeless on the streets most everywhere.
Finding the latter more moral than the former? I’d really like to understand why. Empathetic - hence non-sociopathic - humans that we all are.
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My two cents, at least. This, so as to express my own stance: that of pro-life-quality, which requires choice in regards to abortion so as the maximize the wanted human beings in this world.
Probabably because we, at least nominally, live in a legal system where it is the action that is relevant.
In some cultures in the past, killing one's own child wasn't murder, but killing another person's child was.
I have read that it was common in Roman families to leave unwanted infants in the streets, and that early Christians would collect these children and raise them.
It is a paradox in early Christianity (and even today) that this world is considered profane and corrupt, but it is still a moral duty to live in it. Some Christians were all to ready to leave it as soon as possible - possibly leading to the determination that suicide is a mortal sin to stop people from offing themselves in the throws of religious ecstacy. Life is a gift from God, that is full of suffering, sickness, sadness and loneliness for most people, but you can't give it back of your own accord - though He will take it back eventually.
The best thing that could happen to a person is not to be born, obviously. There is no amount of happiness that will make up for the grief and suffering even the most fortunate people will suffer - and most of us are not in that esteemed category. So, we should all have a helluva lot of sympathy for the rest of us caught in this slaughterhouse, but we seem to be more inclined to take it all out on each other.
This is somewhat reflected in the common pro-birth position where the ultimate aim is to force people that do want to bring someone into the world to do it above even their own lives, but then once a person is born, they're on their own.
There was nothing dickish or stubborn about my post. I made the obvious observation that the demand for abortion typically arose as the result of a mistake, namely in having gotten pregnant when the woman hadn't wanted to.
You indicated the choice wasn't in having had unprotected sex, but it was in having engaged in a relationship in the first place, and the sex that followed that was because society so demanded it that the couple had to submit and have the sex expected of them.
My point was that your argument was extremely poorly reasoned (i.e. pretty stupid) because (1) it defies my experience (in that the sex I've had, I truly wanted to have) and (2) if you believe most sex is under societal duress, you're claiming most sex is rape.
So, back to the discussion: women choose sex, then they choose abortion when they don't choose to have the child, and the reason the abortion is morally neutral yet unfortunate is because the fetus was not a person, but the emotional pain from the mistake is real.
:fire:
Sure, but then so is using bug spray to terminate bugs and weed spray to terminate weeds. The intent is the same (to kill) but are the consequences the same - meaning is a weed's life any more important than a zygote in the grand scheme of things? To human's a zygote in a woman's womb is more important than a weed, but that doesn't mean that a zygote in a woman's womb is objectively more important. The universe doesn't care, nor does it place any value on one life over another. We do that. What if an alien race that evolved from weeds millions of years ago travels to Earth, defines humans as the pests and attempts to eradicate the infestation?
Quoting baker
It seems to me that one can have the intention of experiencing the pleasurable feeling of sex and the orgasm that follows, or even building stronger social bonds between you and your mate, not necessarily to have kids. The existence of contraceptives allow us to make that distinction. Since my wife went through the pain and effort to carry and give birth to our children, I thought that it only fair that I be the one that gets a vasectomy. While it wasn't entirely painless, it was far less invasive than my wife getting her tubes tied. Getting the vasectomy was one of the best things I did. Now I can enjoy sex with my wife without worrying about a pregnancy. Of course the tubes can always find their way back together, but that hasn't happened in 15 years and now my wife is post-menopausal so even if my tubes did reconnect, there would be no pregnancy.
If by some crazy fluke, my wife got pregnant, we would abort because for us, three is enough. We wouldn't wait until the third or second trimester, though. We would do it as soon as possible. We would terminate the pregnancy not just because we have the number of children that we want, but also because there is a higher risk of birth defects for women over 40. Would it be fair to the child and to us if we were forced to have a child with birth defects? Which would cause the most suffering?
Sure, going under a doctor's knife can have it's risks, but in today's modern world, that is a small risk, and I think that, as individuals, it is our own prerogative to make our own risk assessments.
Consider that there is no set of necessary and sufficient properties for "human personhood". We can identify traits that most humans have, ranges of DNA, and reference to parenthood,, but it's impossible to narrow any such properties into being necessary and sufficient.
Quoting Relativist
The issue with abortion is that it shines a light on when we, as a society or as individuals, acknowledge that some life have the right to life. At what point do we as either a society, or as an individual, recognize that another life has the the right to life?
Quoting Relativist
That's the thing - who speaks for those that cannot speak of their suffering? It seems to me that if a life attempts to flee or fight back against being killed then we don't necessarily need a language to make it known to others that some organism is suffering. This is why I think that most people agree that killing a zygote creates less suffering than killing a fetus with a brain and nervous system that reacts to an abortion doctor killing it. Plants also react to being killed or attacked. Do plants suffer the same way that animals with nervous systems do, or are their behaviors instinctive in that there is no self-awareness or self-reflective experiences?
Quoting Relativist
Again, this isn't me imposing my view on others. It is asking about when a life without language deserves the right to life. We already impose our views on others by putting people in jail if that life without language is terminated after it is born, but not before. It's strange to complain about others imposing their views on you when you live in a society that does just that. If you are fine with living under someone else's rules, why are you complaining about that when it comes to abortion? At what point are we imposing our views on the fetus/baby?
Quoting Relativist
I didn't think so until I saw women bragging about having an abortions. What would be the goal a woman is trying to achieve by bragging about it, or calling it joyful? If a serial killer calls their killing of others joyful and brags about it, what would you conclude?
Quoting Relativist
I would do what I am doing now - question the consistency of such a position when they believe that killing viruses and bacteria is a good thing. I wouldn't consider an abortion a good or evil thing - just a necessary thing from some people. In my opinion, terminating the life of a zygote isn't much different than terminating the life of a virus. Terminating the life of a fetus is approaching that area where morality begins because we cross into that gray area of a language-less organism having the right to life or not. Do only organisms that can use language and make others aware of their suffering via utterances deserve to live?
*sigh*
It's not even my argument.
I began making my argument, but you, as usual, jumped the gun. How dickish.
Jesus. The phrase I most often want to use in so many discussions here is "premature ejaculator".
No, there is no mathematically strict dichotomy to this transformation. Agreed. This can be likened to the questions such as that of "when does the color orange become the color yellow?": no strict dichotomy, but it yet happens all the same. This being in many ways very entwined with the paradox of the heap: roughly expressed, asking at which point does a heap take form. To me, Roe v Wade in its addressing the three trimesters of pregnancy and their significance gives a very good and informed overall answer to this question you've quoted.
As to my use of the term "point", it was not meant to be taken so literally. My bad, if required.
But how do you interpret this lack of a strict moment of dichotomy to weigh in on the issue? Are you one to rationally uphold because of it that Y’s potential to become X at some time in the future entails that Y = X in the present? This so as to justify that a human blastula = a human being? But then a seed would of itself be a tree. And so forth in innumerable directions.
Quoting Relativist
I've considered it. What conclusions are we to then draw from this: that no such thing as "human personhood" occurs?
Although I don't understand how I could have interrupted your argument before you could set it out, considering we're typing and not speaking, go ahead and say what you're wanting to say.
It's about the intention to kill. With which many people don't seem to have a problem to begin with. That being the case, it's not clear how to get through to them ...
Bummer!
No, that's still too superficial. The issue at hand is craving, and indulging in it.
If indulging in sensual pleasures would be truly satisfying, then why must we do it over and over again?
I'm not a "pro-lifer". I'm interested in a conscientious attitude toward sexuality.
It's not about risks, it's about what is at stake. It's irrelevant what the perceived risk is (which most often cannot be correctly calculated anyway), if what is at stake is important to one. It's why people apply for a job they want even though they have less than a 1% chance of getting it, and why they refrain from easy theft where there is a big chance they won't get caught.
You have an intimidating presence and history.
What exactly do you think the mistake was in all this?
It implies there is no basis for creating legal restrictions on abortion based on protection of an "individual human life".
It's interesting that the draft SCOTUS decision doesn't take a stand on the human personhood of a fetus. It merely denied a right that women should have (irrespective of whether it's constitutionally protected as a technical matter) by permitting states to create arbitrary restrictions. IOW, per SCOTUS, a woman doesn't have a right to choose, but the state does have the right to choose for her.
How libertarian / laissez faire / anti-government control of our human liberties the current conservative SCOTUS is!!!*
* sarcasm, if I need to spell it out
I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, but How do you propose we do that as a society? You seem to accept even a late term abortion if the woman's life is in danger. Even this implies you are valuing the woman's life over the fetus. Perhaps we could do this as a society through education, rather than through legal mandates.
Quoting Harry HinduSure, nearly everyone agrees that inflicting pain on other organisms should be avoided, but this includes inflicting a lifetime of hardship on a 14 year old girl who's been date-raped. I expect you'd agree in such a case, just as you do regarding cases in which a mother's life is in danger. But what other exceptions might be you consider reasonable if you had perfect knowledge of each situation? Laws are problematic because they can't make value judgments.
Quoting Harry HinduIt's reasonable for everyone to consider this, as long as it isn't codified into law because of the inherent ambiguity. I return to my point about education.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If a woman had a late term abortion simply because she changed her mind about having another child, that's absolutely abhorent. Legislating it is another matter, but that's apparently not what you're arguing for.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Fair enough, and I feel pretty similarly about it.
I'm not certain about the emotional pain. I believe most abortions are for women that already have children and maintain a healthy life, but accidents happen. If a couple is having sex regularly, then sometimes a condom can break or birth control pills don't work this one time - apparently most of the time considering.
So, there is nothing in the actions that indicate this would be an emotionally scarring situation or needs to be anyway. A mother is already taking care of two kids shouldn't be forced to have a third. It's essentially puritanical trying to force all sex to only be reproductive in nature even for married women and their husbands. Or single mothers dating.
Also, the "shame" of abortions is entirely social at most. It is an awkward situation mostly if you have pro-birth family members, but most women are in hopefully more supportive social situations or they should find new friends. Abortions are a serious procedure though, but I think a patient would be more concerned about the safety of a procedure than the child they are not going to have. I mean, obviously, she doesn't want the baby, so she's not imagining some potential child that she is going to lose somehow. I hope not, anyway - but the idea that there is some emotional blowback from abortions seems more the result of some kind of romantic point of view that you'd see in movies and televisions more than real life.
Well, all the Supreme Court can do is rule on whether or not it's "constitutionally protected as a technical matter."
Whether or not that's what they've actually done is being debated by the legal experts, with some saying that the initial ruling was correct and that this draft ruling has been unduly influenced by the justices' biases.
Margaret Atwood
May 13, 2022
:fire:
I beseech you to reconsider your position. While the nature of the issue would require us to compromise on our compassion, we can't be that heartless as to legalize 3[sup]rd[/sup] trimester abortions. It feels wrong and I'm certain that pregnant women who opt for abortion in the 3[sup]rd[/sup] trimester experience significant psychological and physical trauma which may linger on for the rest of their lives.
We can do better!
I agree but I still feel we havta give women a better alternative than abortion which has a likeness to murder! I wouldn't feel good about myself if someone told me I don't have AIDS but I do have something that resembles AIDS.
A picture of a hanging is not a hanging.
True, true! However, that's a poor analogy, oui? It doesn't quite capture the essence of abortion. I could be wrong of course.
Loving the debate. Keep it up :pray:
:snicker: We were all once lumps then.
You have a point! The placental barrier without which the mother's immune system would attack the fetus like it would any infection! The mother suffers! :groan:
Gross :vomit:
I don't understand why there's (usually) such a strong emotional bond between mother and child? The mother's immune system attacks (to kill) the fetus if you let it (hemolytic disease of the newborn).
Physical rejection vs. Emotional attraction!
Quoting 180 Proof
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/24/scotus-roe-wade-decision-what-happens-next
(2018 midterms redux on steroids!)
I'd argue the shitstorm began when Roe was decided. It began a 50 year battle from the right to change it, resulting in a more conservative court than otherwise would ever have been created. The right, with all its floundering over the many years, stayed focused on making this a foundational issue.
But, yes, I agree, now the Democrats have a rallying cry, although their fight will be on the legislative side. They've lost the judicial side at least for a good while.
I wonder how much this will matter though. For those directly affected, it's a profound issue, but for most, it's ideological and not something they'll have to directly consider. The storm on the horizon is the economy. Fuel, food, and housing prices are spiraling out of control and the stock market is falling. That is going to drive elections in the near future more than these ideological debates.
I agree.
Either way, even assuming this does provide a clarion call for democrats come this fall, it's all moot unless they have actionable policies including court packing to protect other civil rights that Clarence Thomas explicitly put in the chopping board. But since they've had two months since the leak with little messaging beyond "go vote" I'm not holding my breath.
If the Dems do not kill the US Senate's jim/jane crow Filibuster Rule asap, then ... Welcome to Gilead. :brow:
Then, they came for the stock market, and line go down, after which I sprung into action.
So how long before a State makes it illegal to wear a condom and have oral sex?
The irony of the above is that Alito's opinion says:
[quote=Alito]This is evident in the analogy that the dissent draws between the abortion right and the rights recognized in Griswold (contraception), Eisenstadt (same), Lawrence (sexual conduct with member of the same sex), and Obergefell (same-sex marriage). Perhaps this is designed to stoke unfounded fear that our decision will imperil those other rights...[/quote]
Is it really unfounded if a concurring opinion explicitly says that those prior decisions should be reconsidered?
It's weird that people are celebrating this as State rights triumphing over federal law. They want the State to be able to take away individual rights? They don't want the constitution to guarantee them certain freedoms?
Where were all the lamenters then?
I don't hear anybody talking about it. They're more focused on gas prices.
I half agree, although I suspect it would have a knock-on effect on the price of my food which I wouldn't want.
There's a pretty good chance that the Netherlands doesn't survive the implosion.
And speaking of West Virginia, the senator from that state is still holding up climate legislation in the senate until he feels like passing it.
West Virginia v. EPA is going to kill a lot of the kids that Dobbs will force to be born.
This isn’t meant to be witty— it’s just clearly true. Goes to show how important the 2014 and 2016 elections really were. We’ll be living with the consequences for the next 30 years.
Hopefully less than that if the Dems can finally get their act together and gut the filibuster. Obviously they won't be able to do it this cycle, but given the growing support for it in the party perhaps that may change the next time they come into power. Honestly it's hard for me to see American politics being salvaged any other way at this point.
I blame young people. If they had turned out in halfway decent numbers for Clinton, the Supreme Court would look much different.
If anything happens it’ll be because real people are organizing on the ground and building structures there. This may be yet another catalyst, but I wouldn’t put money on it.
Quoting RogueAI
I don’t necessarily blame anybody. But the DNC deliberately beating back Sanders is certainly more blameworthy than young people not showing up.
In any case, it’s meaningless now. Roe is officially dunzo— We have plenty more judicial dismantling to look forward to for the next 30/40 years.
We'll see, but there does seem to be an growing appetite for it among the Democrat base. Of course, all it takes is for a few bad actors to ruin the whole thing and it apparently doesn't cost alot for someone to sell out like Sinema did, but one could always hope.
Anyone who dreams that the Democrats have a chance of winning in 2024 is on drugs. You people are done.
Poor, stupid bastards.
Pew Research.
I agree. At the end of the day, most people care more about the economy than ideological issues, especially one like abortion that doesn't really affect that many people (most people who don't want children will use contraception I'd imagine than have to go through the process of getting an abortion; I can't really imagine anyone "wanting" or being excited to get abortion).
I can imagine Republicans will blame Democrats for trying to shift the focus away from their "failure" handling the economy/inflation. Maybe they have a good argument, maybe not.
Considering how state majorities differ on their views on the legality of abortion, perhaps leaving it to the states is a good course of action.
The thing that bothers me is the obvious straw man arguments on both sides, especially the left which I am exposed to more given my age and demographic. I agree with the SCOTUS that the reasoning behind Roe v. Wade was legally dubious (RBG said so herself; perhaps this is part of the reason the left is so angry with her currently). If the federal government wants to protect abortion, my guess is a constitutional amendment would be necessary (or some way to keep states from receiving federal funding if they interfere).
Am I worried for the country? No. The legal system did exactly the job it was designed to do, regardless of whether I "like" the outcome. If it is an issue that bugs the public enough, they will vote on it and change course. I'm so fortunate to have food on the table, a job, a car, A/C so I can spend my time thinking about an issue like this instead of worrying about my next meal. Helps me put things in perspective.
I agree. It will probably be like marijuana. Little by little states will legalize it except for a few hold outs, not to mention any names Mississippi.
@TiredThinker
I highly doubt that. The abortion issue has much deeper ethical implications than recreational Marijuana. Not to mention, criminalizing Marijuana puts a much greater burden on the justice system in comparison to criminalizing abortion.
@TiredThinker
There was a case: Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization
A lot of small time police departments are substantially funded by drug related property seizures. I wonder how that pans out when marijuana becomes legal.
But you may be right. We'll see. Women can get an abortion pill through the mail if they catch it before 10 weeks.
For your first question, the court was able to overturn Roe v Wade because the reasoning behind it was (in their eyes) legally dubious and arguably unconstitutional. Roe v Wade’s legal precedent used a “right to privacy” based on an extension of the 14th amendment’s “liberty” clause. However, this was not super explicit. If the federal government wants to protect abortion, my guess is a constitutional amendment would be necessary (or some way to keep states from receiving federal funding if they interfere).
In the court’s opinion
I don’t think SCOTUS’s reasoning had anything explicitly to do with pro-life/pro-choice, simply that this “implied” right to privacy was a misuse of the 14th amendment and an overreach of the federal government/court at the time. After all, once could also argue that abortion violates an unborn child’s right to life as well.
The main question is when life deserves moral consideration. For pro-life, this seems to often be at the moment of conception or some time early after that (I don’t see a lot of protests about Plan B for instance). In particular, this is for human life, not any sentient life in general. For pro-choice, it’s unclear and varies among people. But in any case, to me it seems ridiculous to allow abortions right up to the moment of birth, especially if the fetus/baby’s life can be saved.
I’m curious if anyone who knows a bit about law thinks if there is a solid legal foundation/case that could be made for the federal government’s protection of access to abortion, outside of an explicit constitutional amendment. Unfortunately, a lot of what I see online is “I’m angry at the Supreme Court for overturning Roe v Wade which will reduce access to abortion in some/many states” not “I want federal rights guaranteeing access to abortion, how can this be legally codified”
There are plenty of other illegal drugs to keep them funded. It will definitely prevent the courts and jails from being bogged down with small time marijuana cases.
[sup]Source: Guttmacher Institute[/sup]
, when people like DeSantis and Cruz become elected officials, you know something's gone sour.
Quoting Paulm12
Sober bioethics should inform towards making a decision, and that hasn't happened here.
Gross overgeneralization. Ironically similar to one of the underlying(but not spoken much about) issues with current political speech patterns.
If the reality that just came to pass is a gross overgeneralization, then so much the worse for your use of words.
Your lumping all Americans together as supporters of what's happening is akin to each and every stupid fucking gross generalization out there underwriting the political speech atmosphere. The very bipartisan outlook is part of the deeper problems with American government. You know. Oligarchy with different actors.
The worst thing about Jan 6 was the takeaway that insurrection is something negative.
Have you even visited America?
True. Marijuana is more of a benign cottage industry though. No gangs necessary.
[quote=Wikipedia]Abortion is still haram, or forbidden, according to both Islamic law and to post-revolutionary Iranian law, and the punishments for providing or receiving an illegal abortion can be strict. Under current law, physicians can be sentenced to months of imprisonment, and women who get abortions before ensoulment are at the least fined blood money[/quote]
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
Hmmmm...Americanistan just around the corner.
Yes, because abortion is just an "ideological" issue, and pregnancy is not something that actually affects the life and health and welfare of real people. :roll:
And as for not affecting "that many":
Population Group Abortion Rates and Lifetime Incidence of Abortion: United States, 2008-2014
1. Abortion ought be afforded to those women who choose it in certain circumstances.
2. The US Constitution doesn't speak to that right.
You can believe in 1 and 2 at the same time.
That you see the Constitution as a vehicle to justify a progressive morality, regardless of the the actual content of the text, is a political position. I'm not condemning the sentiment and an argument can be made that the harsh rule of law should be bent by those wise enough to see its injustice, but so too can an argument be made that the rule of law ought be followed and not be overturned upon subjective notions if fairness.
That is, the ruling was a reasonable result if one sincerely holds to the position that the Constitution doesn't say whatever we think it ought to say.
Quoting Agent Smith
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Lexialex/status/1540445218809315328?s=20&t=3xjAqQkbRK1KshrJ0zkEvQ[/tweet]
Quoting 180 Proof
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ekhobson/status/1540376046838509569[/tweet]
And some additional ones:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/la_louve_rouge_/status/1540372539775631360[/tweet]
---
:up: It's amazing how many people have been propagandized into forgetting that 'the economy' just is people; instead, having watching too much CNBC, they think 'the economy' means some combination of Walmart, Amazon and Google. As if these kinds of rulings will not have massively detrimental effects on the economy in the form of healthcare, welfare payments, keeping people in poverty, and so on. The people who distinguish these things from some imaginary 'economy' have a toy concept of the economy, made by Santa Claus.
What these people mean by 'the economy is more important' is: 'the things that affect me directly are more important'.
Is it reasonable to believe that there is no substantive due process in the constitution?
That said, women can be as vicious as men (romance scams, etc.) and they get away with it (sometimes).
C'est la vie, c'est la vie.
Indeed. Although I wouldn’t say it’s a small group of people.
One doesn’t have to read the text— as I have. It’s plainly obvious what would happen, given the selection of justices. It’s not that they’re not sincere — they are, and that’s why they were selected to begin with.
The rest is just a great example of motivated reasoning. We dislike big government— so abortions must go back to the states. But gun restrictions? No— apparently states can’t restrict them. Why? Dozens of pages of legal mumbo jumbo— all of which was predictable. All you have to do is figure out who appointed the justices, and do the math.
There will be plenty of 6-3 absurdities to come. All with very “principled” and complex reasoning to justify a philosophy of life that the 6 individuals have adopted— a Christian-neoliberal one. The rest follows from that.
The anti-abortion agitation began in earnest when Roe vs. Wade was passed, 50 years ago. It was primarily conservative Roman Catholic for at least 30 years, but then came to include very conservative Protestants. (Conservative catholics and conservative protestants have more politics in common than liberals and conservatives within dominations.)
I'm never quite sure where conservatism fades into fascism, but rolling back abortion is another significant retrograde movement.
The anti-abortion movement has demonstrated exemplary consistent persistence--not doubt with the help of conservative Catholic hierarchy. It has been implacable.
The Court isn't finished with its agenda. Barring an outbreak of plague on the bench during liberal presidencies, we can expect to see other rulings overturned. It is quite possible that the legality of homosexual activity and gay marriage (at the federal level) will be repealed. Rulings in favor of the environment (over commerce) are also likely to be overturned. And more.
A core of conservatives have never reconciled themselves with New Deal programs, and if social security is offensive (they would like to privatize it) not much else is safe. (And it isn't just the SCOTUS we have to worry about.)
This is what it’s all about.
Behind the culture war “issues,” guns, abortion, the environment, and even Christian beliefs — lies the absolute contempt for the “stupid and ignorant” masses. It’s a commitment to taking power “back” from the New Deal era, returning it to its proper place: to the elites.
It’s really that simple, in my view. This is all about power, and always has been. It’s not about the constitution, or consistently applied principles, or “both sides,” or the love of freedom. It’s about one group of people wanting to keep/increase their power.
Dobbs is one symptom of this, and an important one with devastating consequences. Allowing guns to proliferate so that a few manufacturers can profit off the death of children (Heller; Bruen), allowing corporations to buy elections (Citizens United), preventing any governmental action on climate change (coming soon in West Virginia v. EPA), restricting unions from collecting dues (Janus), etc etc. — all perfectly predictable if one views things from the assumption above.
I don't understand this. If the Constitution doesn't say that States cannot establish a law against smoking then it is correct for the Supreme Court to rule that the Constitution doesn't say that States cannot establish a law against smoking, and so allow any State law against smoking to go into effect.
Reflects what I mentioned above. Further evidence.
https://apple.news/A5WfqI89ZRU2GyhQmpDHSOg
Since the document was written by Anglos for Anglos with full understanding of how Anglos would be expected to interpret it, doesn't it make sense that that be how it should be interpreted?
If it were meant to be interpreted broadly with an eye toward evolving standards, wouldn't a good Anglo analytical cunt just have written that into the document? It's not that Anglos can't behave like the well mannered Dutch, they just insist upon those rules be more plainly stated.
Yes, that is reasonable. The only way we arrive at these unspoken rules (like the right to have an abortion) is through a biblical sort of sensus plenior exegesis upon a fairly limited document. If 100 otherwise uninitiated interpreters were asked if abortion were protected under the US Constitution, I can't imagine anyone would write an opinion remotely close to Roe v. Wade, especially with regard to trimester framework described in it.
But even if I grant you that substantive due process is reasonable, that doesn't negate the reasonableness of those who reject it, but you're instead left with a reasonable disagreement, although few describe the dispute in that way.
The irony...
Well, the Ninth Amendment does say "the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" and was explicitly adopted because there was the concern that without it it would be interpreted that only enumerated rights were rights. So with that in mind it seems unreasonable to deny substantive due process, a view shared by Justice Goldberg:
[quote=Griswold v. Connecticut]While the Ninth Amendment – and indeed the entire Bill of Rights – originally concerned restrictions upon federal power, the subsequently enacted Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States as well from abridging fundamental personal liberties. And, the Ninth Amendment, in indicating that not all such liberties are specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments, is surely relevant in showing the existence of other fundamental personal rights, now protected from state, as well as federal, infringement. In sum, the Ninth Amendment simply lends strong support to the view that the "liberty" protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments from infringement by the Federal Government or the States is not restricted to rights specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments.[/quote]
Since when have the elites not had the power?
Quoting Republican-run US states move to immediately ban abortion after court overturns Roe v Wade (Jun 24, 2022)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/AGEricSchmitt/status/1540338042413944832[/tweet]
It's "a monumental day for" regressive conservatism, religious sentiments being imposed upon others apparently, no mention of sober bioethics either.
Never.
Exactly.
And the real problem is that these elites don't even change so much.
Quoting jorndoe
I wonder what the reaction would have been if a Republican would be in the White House.
Hence “back” in quotation marks. They believe they lost power during the New Deal era, and were under threat in the 60s. There’s some truth in that.
:100:
Some, but only partly.
I think the problem is that there's a huge difference in the actual policies and objectives which one side has and what the other side portrays these objectives to be. Just "who" these people are is a genuine question as people just love the stereotypes they create of "the other" as the enemy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_v._Glucksberg
This was a 1997 case where the Court unanimously held that physician assisted suicide was not a protected right.
The problem with unenumerated rights is in deciding what they are, and this standard by the Court in Glucksberg is the one previously unanimously accepted.
The current Court does not believe abortion to satisfy the Glucksberg standard. While you may disagree, how is the decision patently unreasonable? Just because you don't like the result?
I’m addressing your claim that one can believe that one ought allow for abortion and that the Constitution does not grant that right. If it is unreasonable to believe that the Constitution does not grant unenumerated rights, i.e rights that are “fundamental”, and if one believes that one ought be allowed to have an abortion, then it is unreasonable to believe that the Constitution does not grant the right to an abortion.
Unless by “one ought be allowed an abortion” you mean something other than “there is a fundamental right to abortion”?
I think this achievable list constitutes a reasonable criterion by which to judge the political will and governing competence of POTUS and the Congressional Democratic Leadership. Are they antifascists or fucking collaborators?
@Maw @Hanover @Ciceronianus @Bitter Crank ... :chin:
This is saying very little.
What I mentioned has been fairly well studied. When concentrations of power feel threatened, you bet there will be some changes. See Harvey, Brown, Chang, Gerstle, etc.
Quoting ssu
I’m not stereotyping, nor do I consider the ruling class enemies.
Odd that this is your knee-jerk reaction.
Wow, that’s actually a lot more people having abortions than I would have expected. Pretty surprising to me.
This is how I see it as well. The Supreme Court isn’t explicitly “restricting” abortion rights by overturning Roe v Wade (although this is the effect of allow states to make their own laws). Politically and legally, it comes down to peoples’ belief in how rigid or flexible the constitution “should be” in making or enforcing law on a federal level. Not only do we want the laws to reflect our opinion, but we also want the justification to be sound as well, as this sets a legal precedent for further laws and decisions.
In the evangelical community, those who take a very literal interpretation of the Bible may also take a very literal and textual interpretation of the constitution.
However, an “elastic” constitution that is open to more interpretation means it is easy to bend when liberals *or* conservatives have a majority in the senate, Supreme Court, etc. A more rigid or literal one may be more difficult to amend and take more legal “inertia” to make changes, potentially keeping things from swinging far left or right too quickly, but also delaying quick reactions to changing technology or loopholes.
For instance, if the liberty clause allows the federal government to use the 14th amendment to restrict states’ rights blocking abortion, then could a conservative senate majority use the 14th amendment to impose a federal ban on abortion because it restricts the unborn baby’s right to liberty or life in the constitution?
The bad news: More mouths to feed.
The good news: More consumers translates to a stronger economy.
Whiff of fascism.
You really think this is an open question?
Between the defunding of social security, healthcare, daily mass shootings, and uncontrolled climate change (all Republican priorities), I kind of doubt that.
Poor(er) countries have larger populations, oui monsieur/mademoiselle?
Well, just who are you talking about. I think Roosevelt and the democrats of that era were part of the ruling class. With any class of people, you obviously have totally opposing views and not so much actual solidarity inside the class, let alone one agenda that everybody agrees to.
But this is going a bit off the topic...
Quoting Mr Bee
Fertility rate goes actually down when people get more prosperous and the fertility rates have gone steadily gone down around the World. Abortion bans mean quite little, actually. Only something as crazy as ban on contraceptives might have an effect.
And anyway, this decision just separates the US states even more. I really doubt that California or Washington State would dramatically change their abortion laws now.
There was a concerted effort from the owners of the country, and they banded together very well indeed. One outline is given by Powell in his early 70s memo, literally laying out the strategy. Think tanks, lobbying groups like the US chamber of commerce/Business Roundtable, judicial programs like the federalist society, etc. All part of a real, conscious push against the Keynesian / New Deal programs.
True, it wasn’t 100% solidarity. No kidding.
I dunno how fertility rates are calculated. If I'm correct it uses birth rates in the population and that in all likelihood ignores abortions and miscarriages that should appear in their very own categories. In other words, fertility rate ain't the whole story if you catch my drift.
Like in 1971 Nixon saying that he is now a Keynesian? When especially Keynesianism is one of the most successful economic schools of all time, the idea of Keynesianism/New Deal -thinkers vs. the elites just sounds a bit strange.
Quoting Agent Smith
Let's put things into context: In the US in 2017, the abortion rate stood at 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women. Which means, as obviously someone can have more than 1 abortions, that lower than 1,35% percent of women have abortions. The fertility rate is an estimate the average number of children that a woman would have over her childbearing years (i.e. age 15-49), based on current birth trends. When the fertility rate in the US is 1,75, means that wome 15-49 have on average 1,75 children.
Something little under one fifth of women (18%) are childless, which means the vast majority of women do have children.
Hence the issue of population growth are depended on a lot of other things than abortions, which affected every 100th woman or so. And when some states will have legal abortions, the impact at least to issues like population growth is minimal if non-existent.
Then you really haven’t looked into this much. There was, for decades, a powerful network of people who despised the New Deal efforts. Google the “Old Right.” Right from the beginning, in fact. Plenty of intellectuals against it as well— Mont Pelerin, etc.
Ask Powell and the Chamber of Commerce why they needed a blueprint for action if you find it “strange.” It’s not my claim.
When did I claim otherwise?
It definitely won't be an open question in 40 days or so.
If the decision mostly affects single mother’s of very limited means, there should be a significant uptick in crime in the areas most affected in about 18 years.
That's too vague to really tell us anything. Given the specific points mentioned, I think it would all net out in the end (though thinking about it more, climate change would probably increase migration from poorer nations resulting in a net increase of people in places like the US and be a new issue for the country to divide itself on in the future I'm sure).
Both the pro-life stance as well as the pro-choice stance treat women the same way: as sex toilets for men. In the same way men use toilets to urinate and defecate, so they use women's vaginas to excrete semen.
And both the pro-life stance as well as the pro-choice stance train girls from early on to accept this order things, and to even be proud of it.
The best a woman can be in this world is a fool, a beautiful little fool.
Yet the exploitative nature of the relationship between men and women never changed.
Yes, and that’s who I was and am talking about. Corporate America. Since about 1971, there was a collective, deliberate push against New Deal policies and towards a neoliberal agenda— an agenda which has dominated since, to the point of becoming the “Washington Consensus.”
And your interjection is: “Well it’s not ALL elites.” Just a fatuous comment, really.
, I suggest we all join you in a counter-strike, what say you? :smile:
Quoting The Coach
It's also clear that Griswold, Obergefell, Lawrence, & Loving should be codified
Yeah. Got to get rid of the filibuster rule first. :up:
The Bible says nothing about abortion. So being anti-choice is a cultural and political decision, not a biblical one
Quoting 180 Proof
The problem with that is that it's relatively easy to overturn a law. Even if the Democrats are able to pass a federal law to protect these rights, when the Republicans are next the majority they'll just repeal it. Such rights need to be constitutional rights.
Why Other Fundamental Rights Are Safe (At Least for Now)
I think you're over estimating Trump's interest in anything beyond his own glory. He noted that Putin gave assistance to his campaign and thought that meant Putin liked him.
They are politicians, and Disraeli was right when he said that in politics there is no honor, so I'm not certain what they'll do. They'll do what seems to benefit them politically. These suggestions might.
:up:
There's also that time he proudly browbeat and ruined Clarence Thomas' sexual assult victim - Anita Hill - in congress so he could assure him a spot on the supreme court.
Was gonna make a joke about how annoying it must be to vote for democrats only to end up with republicans but no, this kind of thing is democrat through and through and has always been - as reflected by this guy's decades long career as a democrat.
The Supreme Court rewarded religious coercion by a Christian football coach
[sup]Hemant Mehta
Jun 27, 2022[/sup]
Wouldn't be all that surprising. I guess Muslims, Hindus, Wicca, Jedi :grin:, etc, should all join the public school football prayer sessions. Or not. Based on Mehta's commentary, I'd vote no confidence in SCOTUS, but haven't checked and verified all the details.
Quoting Matthew 6:5-6
Yes. Makes the entire Christian religion be judged by its founder.
[sup]Lydia Saad · Gallup · Jun 9, 2021[/sup]
Granted, numbers vary regionally.
Confidence in U.S. Supreme Court Sinks to Historic Low
[sup]Jeffrey M Jones · Gallup · Jun 23, 2022[/sup]
Not really looking good.
As mentioned by , the decision wasn't based on human rights treaties, natural rights theories (+ bodily integrity), bioethics, and nor on general public opinion.
It wasn't supposed to be. They're charged with ruling based on the constitution.
I think with a more conservative court, both Dobbs v Jackson and Kennedy v Bremerton (which you brought up) tell a similar story of reducing the federal government's power to intervene or bend the constitution as much.
As you mentioned, most Americans support the legality of abortions (though it does vary by state). So what would be the political reason of overturning Roe v Wade? It could be that they want the left to have to propose a constitutional amendment that they assume will hurt their voting party. Or it could be that, as Tate mentioned, they thought the ruling of Roe v Wade was unconstitutional, and, regardless if people agree with the ends of overturning it, it does not justify using the constitution that way (in the court's eyes of course).
This is alot of 4D chess. They overturned it because they are a bunch of Christofascists who hate women. It's not complicated.
Quoting Banno
This was a nice bright spot. But considering that majorities did not do anything to stop a bunch of religious fanatics in the US, we should learn that what counts is not demographics but power and process at the end of the day.
Unfortunately passing a constitutional amendment is not a realistic, and even if Democrats are able to pass a federal law to codify these rights it's assured that this Supreme Court will rule them as unconstitutional.
Roe vs. Wade permitted abortion, but it didn't make it mandatory i.e. pro-life women could bear children and not avail of abortion services.
Now, post the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, abortion is prohibited by law i.e. pro-choice women are forbidden from terminating their pregnancies.
In the former case, pro-choice women weren't under any obligation to end their pregnancies, but in the latter case, pro-life women are legally required to carry their pregnancies to full term.
The state doesn't interfere with religion, but the converse is false.
Andy Borowitz, June 27, 2022
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of American women and girls have declared themselves corporations in order to force the United States Supreme Court to grant them rights as people, legal observers have reported.
Attorneys across the nation indicated that they have been swamped by requests from clients seeking to incorporate as soon as possible.
“The Supreme Court decided in 2010 that corporations are people, so all we want is to be treated like corporations, ” Carol Foyler, who now goes by the corporate name FoylerCo L.L.C., said.
The decision by millions of women to incorporate sent shock waves through the Court’s conservative majority, who reportedly scoured the Constitution in vain for a means to circumvent the ingenious tactic.
Even the normally taciturn Clarence Thomas was moved to issue a rare public statement. “It’s a sad day in America when the nation’s highest court is forced to treat women like people,” he wrote.
https://archive.ph/vAb9r#selection-711.0-719.350
Of course, they are not ineffective. They simply don't care about abortion rights, and never have. It's a feature of the democratic party, not a bug. It's a feature of American values. Not a bug.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/roe-v-wade-democratic-establishment-failures/
Of course for anyone with half a brain, none of this is 'underwhelming' nor a 'disappointment'. The democrats have one function: to stifle the left. They have no other raison d'etre. What is continually pitched as 'failure' is nothing but Democratic success. It's only 'failure' if one expects the Democrats to exist for any other reason at all than to do what Republicans can't do: which is actually contain left revolutionary energy.
The final and overt coming of American fascism will not be ushered in under Trump. It will happen under Biden. That will be his everlasting legacy, the thing he will be remembered for forever.
But Christian women go along with it.
There was a feature on the news where a Republican politician said the overturning of Roe vs. Wade was a big victory for life (or words to that effect). He and the other men there were smiling, while the one woman who was also there, did not.
A good Christian woman must make herself sexually available to her boyfriend or husband at all times, whenever he wants. She must only get pregnant when he wants to have children, otherwise, she must "take care" of the unwanted pregnancy. Such are the unspoken rules of engagement in Christian culture.
Christian women have so far relied on the secular society for contraceptives and abortions, so as to be able to live the Christian lifestyle (or at least, keep up the appearance of it). But what are they going to do now?
Christian women hate women. This all follows.
I mean have you ever met people with more self-contempt than Christians in general? They literally made a religion out of it. Self-contempt is Christianity's other name.
Does this look like self-contempt to you?
It doesn't to me.
(EDIT wrong comment)
[Quote]President Biden is poised to nominate a conservative Republican anti-abortion lawyer for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge in Kentucky, a nomination strongly opposed by fellow Democrat and U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Louisville.The nomination of Chad Meredith appears to be the result of a deal with U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, ostensibly in exchange for the Senate Minority Leader agreeing not to hold up future federal nominations by the Biden White House, according to Yarmuth and other officials who confirmed the pending nomination to The Courier Journal.[/quote]
https://archive.ph/Unhjq
This is what Democratic party victory looks like.
Can anyone imagine a bigger waste of money than American campaign spending? Billions of dollars for identical results.
I agree. :zip:
Biden has often had to choose between being compassionate and being Catholic.
And ironically people stopped going to church for football.
Quoting TiredThinker
Nope. Biden wants this and has always wanted this. He's not conflicted. He's happy. No more excuses.
And American politics is excruciatingly simple: fuck people over, and then get masochist clowns to blame the people for their being fucked over by elites. Repeat as necessary, so long as the elites are always defended.
No, I've never met a Christian who would actually despise himself or herself. On the contrary, they are enormously self-confident, self-assured, consider themselves superior to everyone else.
Someone suggested how pivotal the 2014 and 2016 election were which betrays a myopic view of the conservative's legal movement to achieve political objectives; a 50 year old mobilization the very concept of which is so alien and anathema to how the modern democratic party functions it seems as a definitional contradiction. Regardless of how 2014 and 2016 turned out (had Hillary won in 2016 who knows how she would have fared in 2020), the conservative legal movement would be waiting by the wings.
Oh well that settles it then never mind the very basic structure of Christianity as a religion nor the political self-loathing that is everywhere evident to anyone with a heartbeat. Guess we'll just go with your feels on this one.
People like @180 Proof will pretend, like the good milquetoast liberal he is, to use the language of comradeship, while shitting down the throats of 'people' while defending power everywhere even as it enables and supports fascism right in front of their eyes.
Coming from a vacuously bookish, bile-spitting, wannabe revolutionary WITH NO FUCKING SKIN IN THE AMERICAN GAME like you, Comrade Street, the ad homs & denunciations are a badge of honor! G'day, mate. :lol: :up:
Anyway, when the planet wilts on the back of the coming American-led global ecocide, I'll think fondly back to the time when some ignorant yank on the internet told me I had no skin in the game (because he liked this phrase he read in a book once, and lacks the vocabulary to use any other), and it will be a nice bit of ironic humor.
Agreed. We the Sheeple is only the symptom and not the problem. However, Dem voters aren't pushing-back as hard as GOP voters in the last four+ decades because Dem voters are "unethusiastic" despite not having that luxury.
True, though there have been 46 US Presidents and only 5 have lost the popular vote – the last two in 2016 and 2000. Before that was 1876. With 89% of US Presidents elected with the majority of votes I think your statement in this instance is hyperbolic, Maw. However, I agree with your broader point. So what has changed? Organization and mobilization of a fifth to a quarter of the electorate in the last half century in a concerted – plutocrat-funded – backlash against The New Deal, The Great Society and Civil Rights for minorities, women, gays. E.g. "the conservative legal movement". :brow:
Nothing new in this ... Read, for instance, Charles Beard, WEB DuBois, Eric Foner, John Hope Franklin & Howard Zinn.
Agreed. Don't you think, however, the fact that the under-30 vote is consistently less than half the over-50 vote is a significant factor in the Dems being "a milquetoast gerontocracy"? No one willingly "relinquishes political power", they must be out-organized and out-mobilized to have it taken from them, and under-30 "youth vote" is consistently the least organized and most demobilized. Tell me how to reliably elect political parties with under-50 year old leaderships without significantly more and persistent under-30 participation. Also, is it just an accident that developed nations with historically higher voter participation in elections at all levels of government than the US have governing platforms & policies which tend to be much more responsive to their populations, produce more secular, better educated polities, and sustain higher standards of living than the US? :chin:
-
After untermensch, "sheeple" is probably the most reactionary word in the reactionary dictionary, used only by toffs who think they know the interests of people better than said people.
What makes you say this? Because of a potential reaction to Dobbs?
The Republicans have done a fine job making the country ungovernable —and here I mean especially moderate Republicans (viz., Democrats). Seems unlikely that anyone shows up in support.
In 1876 women couldn't vote, so I don't think it's hyperbolic to suggest majority ruling has faced enormous hurdles in this country, to which my comment was as much about legislative (there are over 3.3M 18-29 YOs in NY. There are over 186K 60+ YOs living in West Virginia. They both get two senators.) and judicial branches (the latter being non-democratic of course), as it was about the executive branch. To further my point vis-a-vis the executive branch, if we are discussing modern political discontent and the onus of responsibility and blame between a political system and voters within that system, then it seems highly relevant that two out of five presidents who have lost the popular vote (i.e. 40%) occurred within the last 22 years of the county's history (within less than <9% of the country's history).
Quoting 180 Proof
I do not believe that democratic voters, particularly young democratic voters, are any more or less "unenthusiastic" than GOP voters; the issue is that the GOP don't actively marginalize and alienate their more radical voters in a way that the democratic establishment overtly and repeatedly do. In fact the GOP tends to court them. Nevertheless, this brings me to my final point.
Quoting 180 Proof
The 18-29 turnout for Obama in 2008 was the second highest in modern American history, second only to turnout in 1972 when Boomers were first able to vote. This was driven by Obama's youth-focused campaign and organizational team, which after having helped him win and defeat Hillary in the primary, was showered with praise by Obama as "the best political organization in America, and probably the best political organization that we’ve seen in the last 30 to 40 years". Shortly before Obama's inauguration, this momentum was transformed into a grassroots organization, Organizing for America, which would have "13 million email addresses, three million donors, and two million active members of MyBO, including 70,000 people with their own fund-raising pages." What happened to this organized, mobilized, grassroots machine with a progressive agenda in mind? It was sidelined by Obama within a year after his historic win and after he stacked his administration with democratic party operatives, and subsequently folded the organization within the DNC and effectively deactivated it. The result? When fight for Affordable Healthcare Act reached it's apex, "OFA was able to drum up only 300,000 phone calls to Congress."
According to Marshell Ganz who famously provided the organizational model and training for Obama's grassroots campaign, "Seeking reform from inside a system structured to resist change, Obama turned aside some of the most well-organized reform coalitions ever assembled — on the environment, workers’ rights, immigration and healthcare...Finally, the president demobilized the widest, deepest and most effective grass-roots organization ever built to support a Democratic president. With the help of new media and a core of some 3,000 well-trained and highly motivated organizers, 13.5 million volunteers set the Obama campaign apart. They were not the “usual suspects” — party loyalists, union staff and paid canvassers — but a broad array of first-time citizen activists. Nor were they merely an e-mail list. At least 1.5 million people, according to the campaign’s calculations, played active roles in local leadership teams across the nation. But the Obama team put the whole thing to sleep, except for a late-breaking attempt to rally support for healthcare reform. Volunteers were exiled to the confines of the Democratic National Committee."
Skipping 2016 and fast forwarding to 2020 (for the sake of brevity, I think my point is made regardless), we see similar grassroots momentum with the Bernie Sanders campaign with nearly 1.4M unique donors (the second highest was Warren with 892K...Biden at 451K), a 2020 election cycle total of $95M raised from individual donors (the second highest was Buttigieg at $76M with Biden at $60M), a rally in NYC with an astounding crowd of 26,000 people ("the largest number any Democratic presidential candidate has drawn" in 2019t) and an unsurpassed on-the-ground volunteer base. Of course Biden, the final entrant into the primary was the nuclear option for the Democratic establishment, having entered the primary two months after Sanders, who had been the leading nominee in polls by a wide margin. Long story short, the Sanders campaign sputtered in large part thanks to a hostile Obama, the Democratic party itself being more or less unified in their opposition to Bernie Sanders, the Clyburn endorsement for Biden prior to Super Tuesday helped to club Sanders' campaign (Bill Clinton thanked Clyburn for "ending the inter-family fight" with the "stroke of his hand"), and a sudden drop out of several other candidates who endorsed Biden .
My point is that youth voter organization and mobilization has existed during my entire adult life. But when preferred candidates gain power or come close to power, the Democratic party, the only viable political party in this country that isn't exclusively run by Hell's demons, disbands or works against it (not to mention a hostile media apparatus).
We can go back farther than 50 years, in fact.
My point about ‘14 and ‘16 was specific to this slate of rulings. Had the Senate not been taken by the republicans in ‘14, Trump wouldn’t have gotten 3 anti-abortion appointments. I mention these years especially because many have argued that there was no point in voting since “both parties are the same.” But they’re not the same. The differences are minor, but they’re important, and Dobbs (and today’s EPA ruling) shows that very much indeed.
I've more or less been posting these factors separately across several threads and dozens of posts since Biden and the Dems started dropping the ball early last fall. I think these constraints on the GOP taking back the Congress are growing more stringent by the month. Sure, Dems are quite capable of snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory ... :roll: :vomit:
Independents are not breaking for Democrats, so far as I see. Happy to be shown differently.
B and D are based on your suspicions. We have no idea if there will be high turnout or lower gas prices, but MY suspicion goes the opposite way — based on historical midterm trends and the Ukraine war, respectively.
As for C, I don’t think these hearings will have the slightest impact on Republican voters. They will continue voting for their Red team, because Blue team has been demonized to the point of little Anti-Christs.
Appreciate the response, just not very convincing in my view. But I hope I’m proven wrong.
How did a 10 year old get pregnant? That's just creepy and weird
A 10-Year-Old Girl in Ohio Was Forced to Travel to Indiana for an Abortion (Jul 2, 2022)
[tweet]https://twitter.com/msdreabuettner/status/1543338881478578177[/tweet]
So that's what's going on, eh.
Those articles are really downplaying the fact that a ten year old was raped, eh? I wonder, did they catch the piece of shit that did it, or have they even got a suspect?
The suspect was 12.
Anyway, something doesn't make sense here: Women can prevent pregnancies by using contraceptives of which there's a wide variety, but yet they get pregnant and then wanna tread the fine line between murder and freedom by seeking abortions. If it were possible to avoid giving people the impression that one is a murderer (by having an abortion), why would you ever put yourself in the situation where you would, for certain, be conflated as one?
Contraceptives fail. Rape happens.
Also, there is no fine line between abortion and murder.
Quoting Agent Smith
True, but Thomas' opinion questions the legitimacy of the Griswold case which ruled that the use of contraceptives is a constitutional right. It's possible that the Supreme Court could later overturn Griswold, allowing States to outlaw contraception.
An example: Attending one of Trump's rallies could mean people come to the conclusion that you're a racist. So, I don't go to the rally. Why go and then later havta explain that you're not a racist to every person who now doubts you are?
Why create problems for yourself?
Did you not read what I said? Contraceptives fail. Rape happens.
Contraceptives fail. Rape happens.
Contraceptive failure rates are negligible and most pregnancies that are aborted are not due to this reason. It shows (some) women have no respect for life.
As for rape pregnancies, what are the stats on that? I'm fairly certain that only a handful of abortion requests are for rape pregnancies.
In other words, your rebuttals fall short of their mark.
Who cares about the rate? They happen, and so abortions should be allowed to account for them.
Many rape victims are scared to admit it, so the amount of abortionion requests for rape pregnancies will likely be diminished in contrast to the actual quantity of rape victims that would request abortion if shame were not a factor.
Personally, I don’t think it makes sense to only allow abortions when rape is involved, and this is because people may falsely accuse others of rape in order to get an abortion. I realize this is a more pragmatic argument. Does this mean rape needs to be asserted, proved in court, etc?
Furthermore, I don’t know if many pro-life people would agree either; it doesn’t matter if the person is raped or not, abortion is still killing.
Perhaps a more realistic option of this idea is all men should have vasectomies unless planning to have children. The reality is people don't always plan their activities.
I'm sorry to hear that. Nevertheless, it appears that some women are piggybacking on rape victims, shooting from their shoulders as it were, to make a case for universal abortion rights. Only rape pregnancies should be aborted if the victim wants to. Normally people against whom no crime has been committed can't avail the services of the criminal justice system, oui?
Good call! I prefer chemical means (noninvasive) over surgical ones (invasive). The late Alan Turing was chemically castrated for his homosexuality. He probably hadta report to a designated clinic for regular injections of some kind.
Why should it be women only who shoulder the responsibility? Men need to step up to the plate.
Come to think of it, quite odd that not much research has been done on male contraception.
I didn't mean to suggest that abortions should only be allowed for rape. Because we can't wait for a rape to be proved in court and because we can't police the use of contraceptives, abortions should be available for everyone.
Quoting 180 Proof
Period. :brow:
DeSantis Is Changing Florida Schools’ Curricula Again (Jul 2, 2022)
Seems like Goldwater's prophecy is materializing?
Quoting Barry Goldwater (Nov 1994)
I think the vasectomy option came up earlier in the thread.
Legislate female bodies, legislate male bodies, seems fair.
Watch pro-life males complain (whine) loudly. ;)
Along the lines of ...
[tweet]https://twitter.com/designmom/status/1040363432791273472[/tweet]
The golden rule is a bastardisation of interpretative techniques available to people with half a brain. It's just wilful stupidity.
[quote=Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address, 1838]Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.[/quote]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln%27s_Lyceum_address
Alright, so if in 1972, we were to sit 100 US lawyers in a room and asked them to read the Texas abortion law and then to read the text of the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment, how many do you believe would announce the state has no compelling interest in regulating an abortion within the first trimester? Pretty small number don't you think?
Would you think that those who didn't find that right to be idiots without half a brain?
When we deal with statutory interpretation, it's usually of limited consequence and it doesn't result in protests in the street. We just send the law back to the legislature to get it right if it doesn't comport with the will of the people. The courts are just doing their best to interpret the law, but they're not placing themselves in a position above the legislature and the people and telling them what must be the case. Since typically the remedy is straightforward and democratic, you don't get into all this philosophical debate. Turning a statute on its head to get a desired result is really just the game lawyers play, with really little thought spent on these ideological questions.
But here we're not really asking how we should interpret words, but we're asking a bigger question regarding the role of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court. If you see the role of the Court as the final check on the general reasonableness of the legislature and you see the Constitution as akin to the Bible, where it says only good things even when it says bad things, then it follows that the Constitution says abortion is acceptable, gay marriage is permitted, and all sorts of other things I generally agree with. The Justices on the Court are therefore well within their right to tell us that the 14th Amendment speaks about abortion just like the rabbis are well within their right to tell us that the Bible condemns stoning.
Maybe then the argument should be redirected against those with half a brain who think the role of the Court ought to be limited, but then there are plenty of countries (the Netherlands for instance) who would never afford their courts the power to strike down democratically passed law even if their constitutions specifically forbade the conduct.
I harbor no illusions that the Court is entirely apolitical without an agenda, but I do think it follows that if a Court views its role as very limited in the US democratic structure, it will arrive at interpretational schemes that will act to limit its power.
Yes. They're idiots. The only reason this isn't obvious to you is because after 200 years of "golden rule" you don't know any better. It's unfortunate and is a source for injustice. Glad I don't live there.
The trimester framework was so obviously present in the 14th Amendment, yet I was just too blind to see it. It's just surprising to learn the drafters were thinking about abortion at the close of the Civil War prior to even women having the right to vote.
I wish you'd reconsider your not wanting to move here. We can use your positivity.
Quoting Agent Smith
The problem is that abortion and vasectomy are elective procedures. There is no legal means of forcing a vasectomy, just like there is no legal means of forcing abortion. All that can be done is to preserve the legal status . I hear there was a drastic increase in vasectomies immediately following the new law.
In US, when a pregnant woman is murdered the defendant is usually charged with two counts. Seems like this is an implicit admission of the sovereignty of fetal life on the part of the state.
[quote=Ms. Marple]Most interesting.[/quote]
So American law is internally inconsistent!
All I can say is that given how a host of inexpensive contraceptives (for men & women) are available off-the-counter and in reproductive clinics, becoming pregnant with a child neither the man nor the woman involved wants is being irresponsible and callous, doubly so since abortion the inevitable aftermath is murder in the eyes of some folks. Would you, for instance, visit an Amazonian tribe and do something that could be (mis)construed as a heinous crime in that community?
https://rozenbergquarterly.com/issa-proceedings-2006-the-a-contrario-argument-a-scorekeeping-model-2/
Reading your article, I now know that if I'm trying to figure out if the statement "Citizens have the right to form associations freely" means that citizens and only citizens have the right to form associations freely and that non-citizens do not, or if it means that citizens have that right and we don't know what non-citizens have, we will need some sort of statutory interpretation system to clarify that. Got it. We need a system to clarify ambiguous statements.
Now I have to figure out why I read that article and how it applies to what I'm talking about.
The 14th Amendment, in relevant part under the Roe analysis states:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
We know must find an ambiguity that needs clarifying. Perhaps we're not sure what "liberty" means, but that's more a problem with vagueness, not ambiguity, but let's pretend that distinction doesn't exist so that we can continue this analysis under the article your provided.
Alright, I'm now going to try to use that article to better understand what "liberty" might mean and whether it extends to abortion. In doing so, I must ignore the fact that it probably has something to do with the mass emancipation that just occurred under the 13th Amendment and has nothing to do abortion, but leaving that aside as an idiotic effort at divining drafter intent, we must dig a bit deeper.
Upon digging deeper, we realize that 14th Amendment states, as it pertains to abortion:
First trimester: No restrictions can be placed on abortion
Second trimester: Abortions can be restricted only if narrowly tailored to protect the mother's health.
Third trimester: Abortions can be completely prohibited except to protect the health of the mother.
I now learn upon analysis that the Amendment was impregnated with all sorts of hidden meaning.
What to do though with the phrase "nor shall any State deprive any person of life"? Why does that avoid the same tortured interpretation?
Is abortion a privilege?
It doesn't. The Constitution doesn't explicitly state what counts as a person at all and that's precisely why a judge needs to look beyond just what is explicitly stated.
So perhaps a case can be made that a foetus is a person and so State-supported abortion is unconstitutional.
The Constitution doesn't have a definition section for any of its terms, but it would seem if I were trying to determine whether abortion were permissible, with one side arguing that the fetus is a person and the other that it is not, I'd focus on that part of the 14th Amendment that refers to people and life as opposed to the part that refers to liberty. It stands to reason that if the fetus is a person, it cannot be deprived of liberty either. That just seems where the question obviously lies.
By the State. But like with the First Amendment it might not apply to non-Government institutions. Whereas the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment might imply that a woman has the right to an abortion.
So perhaps it is unconstitutional for a State to outlaw abortion and for a State to provide/fund abortion services, meaning it must be left to individuals and private health care providers.
It's sort of funny that we're debating how the article ought be interpreted, with you thinking it should be more broadly interpreted and me more narrowly.
Quoting Benkei
Americans generally don't care about documents outside their specific tradition, but you know that. At any rate, it wasn't like the liberal wing argued from the Convention. They too stayed within the generally defined lanes of what was considered persuasive authority in the US.
The key to this whole matter, from my perspective, is when fetuses are people deserving of rights, which has less to do with women's rights than fetal rights, which, alas, has never been addressed by the courts.
Anyway, I'm not arguing this specific case, just pointing out literal interpretations don't exist and that literal and originalist interpretation are not suitable. These are aberrations resulting from tradition but have little to do with logical rigour and even less with justice and fairness.
The 14th Amendment specifically states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
That indicates that if a "person" is within the jurisdiction of a state, that state cannot deny him equal protection under the laws. If a fetus is a "person," then that person would be afforded the same rights as any other person, meaning if it's illegal to kill you, it's illegal to kill that fetus. That Amendment, especially in light of when and why it was passed, cannot be read to mean anything other than every person must be equally protected under the law.
The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Note that this specifically applies to Congress (although later extended to the individual states, through the 14th Amendment ) making laws from prohibiting speech. It's for that reason it's limited to what the government can do but not what private companies could do.
Again, all this goes to original intent when contextualized to time and place. The First Amendment wanted to protect against a tyrannical centralized government (which is why it was not originally extended to the individual states) as had been rebelled against in the recent war.
The 14th Amendment was providing additional protections to the slaves freed under the 13th Amendment.
And apparently it was ensuring the right to abort a fetus in the 1st and 2nd trimesters from 1973 to 2022.
Your criticism isn't aimed at the right, but at the left as well because no one used this as an argument.
Quoting Benkei
This has nothing to do with logical rigor. Intellectual honesty requires you reach the opposite conclusion you have.
I could easily lay out what progressive morality demands in terms of abortion rights, gay marriage rights, transsexual rights, and those rights highly valued by all secular humanists. I think we could find general agreement in what they are.
Step two is the part that's a bit disingenuous. It's the part where we start finding every one of those rules in the Constitution, as if the framers had the foresight to have written such an expansive and malleable document capable of foretelling good from evil. What makes step two particularly problematic is that those who subscribe to a whole different set of morality, who don't see any wisdom in the progressive morality we laid out, are able to find the Constitution entirely silent to what we think is obviously there.
So then this comes down not to constitutional interpretational schemes as much as public policy. The power of the Court is used like any political institution, which is to lend its power to those capable of securing it. That's what seems like is going on to me. Let's just admit that the reason we see abortion in the 14th Amendment is because that's the only way we can protect it because we're not going to get that protection from many of the legislatures.
Yes, so as I have been saying, it is up to the Supreme Court to decide what counts as a person as the Constitution doesn't spell it out.
Quoting Hanover
It protects against laws that would limit liberty and privacy and unenumerated rights. It is up to the Supreme Court to decide what counts as a "liberty", what matters are "private". and what those unenumerated rights are, as the Constitution doesn't spell it out. In Roe and Casey they decided that medical procedures like abortion are covered by this, but that the ambiguity regarding personhood warranted some restriction, and that the point of viability is a reasonable time to consider the rights of prenatal life to take precedence over the mother's.
Your phrasing of it seems like a strawman appeal to ridicule.
Consider, though, the other argument, from Justice Scalia in Toxel v. Granville (2002):
“In my view, a right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is among the ‘unalienable Rights’ with which the Declaration of Independence proclaims “all Men…are endowed by their Creator.’ And in my view that right is also among the ‘othe[r] [rights] retained by the people’ which the Ninth Amendment says the Constitution’s enumeration of rights ‘shall not be construed to deny or disparage.’ The Declaration of Independence, however, is not a legal prescription conferring powers upon the courts; and the Constitution’s refusal to ‘deny or disparage’ other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even further removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges’ list against laws duly enacted by the people. Consequently, while I would think it entirely compatible with the commitment to representative democracy set forth in the founding documents to argue, in legislative chambers or in electoral campaigns, that the State has no power to interfere with parents’ authority over the rearing of their children, I do not believe that the power which the Constitution confers upon me as a judge entitles me to deny legal effect to laws that (in my view) infringe upon what is (in my view) that unenumerated right.”
I don't agree with your analysis of Roe or Casey in terms of the Court ever having considered the rights of the fetus.
Roe specifically held:
"The Constitution does not define 'person' in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to 'person.' The first, in defining 'citizens,' speaks of 'persons born or naturalized in the United States.' The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. 'Person' is used in other places in the Constitution: in the listing of qualifications for Representatives and Senators, Art, I, § 2, cl. 2, and § 3, cl. 3; in the Apportionment Clause, Art. I, § 2, cl. 3;53 in the Migration and Importation provision, Art. I, § 9, cl. 1; in the Emoulument Clause, Art, I, § 9, cl. 8; in the Electros provisions, Art. II, § 1, cl. 2, and the superseded cl. 3; in the provision outlining qualifications for the office of President, Art. II, § 1, cl. 5; in the Extradition provisions, Art. IV, § 2, cl. 2, and the superseded Fugitive Slave Clause 3; and in the Fifth, Twelfth, and Twenty-second Amendments, as well as in §§ 2 and 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible prenatal application. All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word 'person,' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn."
Note as well that the Court's analysis refers to intent of the authors with its reference to 19th century practices (tagging @Benkei on this, as this is an example of original intent being used by the liberal wing to establish the right to abortion).
My reason for pointing this out is that the Court found no ambiguity with the term "person," and they have never afforded rights to the fetus or even attempted to weigh the rights of the fetus against those of the mother. The Roe Court admitted "If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment." That is, the Roe Court indicated that if the fetus were a "person," abortion would be prohibited under the 14th Amendment, which is why it was critical for the Court to find the fetus was not a person.
The analysis of Roe is a bit convoluted, only arguing that the State may regulate abortion to the extent it protects the health of the mother, with no reference to the fetus:
"With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in the health of the mother, the 'compelling' point, in the light of present medical knowledge, is at approximately the end of the first trimester. This is so because of the now-established medical fact, referred to above at 149, that until the end of the first trimester mortality in abortion may be less than mortality in normal childbirth. It follows that, from and after this point, a State may regulate the abortion procedure to the extent that the regulation reasonably relates to the preservation and protection of maternal health. Examples of permissible state regulation in this area are requirements as to the qualifications of the person who is to perform the abortion; as to the licensure of that person; as to the facility in which the procedure is to be performed, that is, whether it must be a hospital or may be a clinic or some other place of less-than-hospital status; as to the licensing of the facility; and the like.
This means, on the other hand, that, for the period of pregnancy prior to this 'compelling' point, the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State."
The closest it comes to referencing the rights of the fetus is in the statement:
"With respect to the State's important and legitimate interest in potential life, the 'compelling' point is at viability. This is so because the fetus then presumably has the capability of meaningful life outside the mother's womb. State regulation protective of fetal life after viability thus has both logical and biological justifications. If the State is interested in protecting fetal life after viability, it may go so far as to proscribe abortion during that period, except when it is necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother."
But even here the Court is very careful to refer to it as "potential life", and not "the fetus," which would be a very different statement. The former referencing a general view that the State has the right to encourage life to come about, while the latter would indicate that an actual, particular fetus is endowed with rights.
The Casey opinion didn't change this basic framework of Roe, but instead abandoned the strict trimester framework of Roe with an evolving viability standard based on recent science.
Quoting Michael
I'd call it just snarky, not really attempting to make any important point.
I was paraphrasing this:
"Though the State cannot override that right, it has legitimate interests in protecting both the pregnant woman's health and the potentiality of human life, each of which interests grows and reaches a 'compelling' point at various stages of the woman's approach to term."
So perhaps I should have said the interests of prenatal life can take precedence over the woman's right to privacy.
Quoting Hanover
The Constitution doesn't tell anyone how to interpret the Ninth Amendment. The Supreme Court has to interpret it by other means. Some, like Scalia, will interpret it as "the Constitution’s refusal to ‘deny or disparage’ other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them" whereas others, like Goldberg, will interpret it as "the Ninth Amendment, in indicating that not all such liberties are specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments, is surely relevant in showing the existence of other fundamental personal rights, now protected from state, as well as federal, infringement."
So my point still stands. You can't just look to the text of the Constitution to interpret it.
But no one has done that. The determination of what a "person" is was obviously outside the text because, as acknowledged, there was no definitions section and reference was made to other uses when the document was written. I also made repeated references to the context in which the documents were written, with the 1st Amendment being after the Revolutionary War and the 14th after the Civil War in order to decipher meaning and intent.
I'm curious as to what the Constitution cannot be read to mean. If I interpret "person" to mean a fetus, then abortion is murder. The problem is that a fetus that is traveling down the birth canal is to me very much a person, and I don't at all find the Roe Court's claim that no fetus is to be considered a person at all persuasive or complete. It's as much nonsense to me to claim that personhood begins at conception as it does to claim it begins when the umbilical cord is snipped. These bright lines just don't exist as much as we may want them to.
So, I'm all aboard an analysis that takes seriously the personhood question. That should be done from a Constitutional perspective, and I would be fully opposed to any law that restricted a woman's elective medical procedure to remove a non-person mass of cells from her uterus.
The Constitution doesn't explicitly list which things are covered by the right to privacy and liberty and so it is for the Supreme Court to use their best judgement. They did so for abortion (until recently), and have done so for contraceptives, sexual activities, and many other things.
Some of these people are fucking insane. They wanted to strip exceptions for rape and incest?
:up:
The GOP have to face reality at some point about the unpopularity of their policies.
Is this compatible with the claim that a fetus has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or, for that matter, that children have these rights? According to this a child does not have right to determine the course of life, liberty, or happiness. More so, an early stage fetus, which does not and cannot exist except as part of the mother, does not have these rights.
How does Scalia's claim square with the next statement of the Declaration? To wit:
The consent of the governed does not include the consent of fetuses, or children, or, at the time it was written, women.
This is followed by:
Again, fetuses, children, and women were not includes among the People who had this Right. Further, "the People" is not the same thing as an individual person. An individual person does not have the right to alter or abolish or institute new Government.
If one is to interpret the Constitution as an originalist then one needs to take a look at abortion practice and prohibitions at that time. It was legal and practiced without prohibitions. This changed in the mid-1800s.
Your questions aren't pertinent to the issue being discussed. Specifically, Scalia was simply acknowledging that people have rights and that the Declaration says as much. He then explains that the Declaration is not a legal document that can be relied upon as authority for the protection of rights. He then states that the 9th Amendment similarly supports the notion that there are rights, and that it is a legal authority, but he clarifies that he does not believe the Constitution empowers the Court to declare what those rights are. Keep in mind that no where in the Constitution does it say the Supreme Court has the power to strike down laws or to declare what rights exist, especially not those that are unenumerated. Scalia suggests that the legislature can decipher what those rights are and can then decide how best to protect them, but he denies that power is within the purview of the Court.
Quoting Fooloso4
Again, this is not a legally binding document, but to the extent you're arguing laws have been passed that don't comport with the ideology of the Declaration, that's true, but it really has nothing to do with what we we're talking about.Quoting Fooloso4
The Declaration is stating very clearly that there are rights that exist independent of the government and that the government is required to protect those rights, and if it doesn't, the government is unjust and should justly be abolished. Under this reasoning, any single person who abolished an unjust government would be just.Quoting Fooloso4
No, that's not what an originalist position would hold. No one suggests that you should interpret the Constitution by looking at what the various laws of the states held at the time.
My questions are very pertinent to the larger issue being discussed according to the thread title. If what follows doesn't interest you please skip it. Maybe someone else might find it interesting.
Theories of personhood are essential to the question of abortion.If we are to look to the Constitution, then we have to look at how it is interpreted. Scalia's originalist interpretation continues to be influential in Supreme Court decisions. It is, however, problematic. It does not support the overturning of Roe. That decision was a religious one masquerading as a Constitutional issue.
The question is whether a fetus counts as a person. If we look back to the time the document was written (which is what originalists do), we find that at that time abortion was not a legal matter. It has since become a legal matter. An originalist interpretation simply does not properly apply to something that was not originally a legal matter.
The question is, who counts as a person. If we are to look at original documents, like the Declaration, in order to see how terms were used then fetuses, children, and women were not persons. If a fetus is to count as a person it is based on a theory of personhood that is not found in the Constitution.
Quoting Hanover
And yet strike down laws is what the court did, even with all its empty talk of stare decisis.
Quoting Hanover
Originalism is a theory of interpreting legal texts based on what how the Constitution was understood at the time it was written. To this end, it does look to such things as the various laws of the states held at the time, as well as such things as the Declaration, as evidence of how terms were understood at the time of the ratification of the Constitution.
Today's court has been shaped by the Federalist Society. Although they are careful not to take an official position, this paper, published by them, represents the prevailing opinion of its members regarding the interpretation of the Constitution.
Of course it supports the overturning of Roe. He indicated that the Court lacks the authority to declare the unenumerated rights implicit in the 9th Amendment, and since abortion is most certainly not an enumerated right in the Constitution, it cannot be used to strike down state laws related to abortion.Quoting Fooloso4
The validity of the legal justifications has to be addressed even if you think you've uncovered some pretextual basis for the position. I do think there is an absurdity in the position that it is absurd to think the Constitution does not speak to abortion. That is, I can accept those arguments that extrapolate the right to abortion from the general theme of the document and I can even buy into the idea of substantive due process as being within the realm of reasonable analysis. What I cannot accept is the opposite, which is that any argument to the contrary is patently irrational. It's simply not the case that the Constitution clearly and unequivocally protects the right to abortion, meaning there is plenty of room of reasonable argument for either side. Assuming we don't care about outcome, we can at least admit that the question of whether abortion is a matter of Constitutional right or not really isn't all that clear.
Quoting Fooloso4
That might be your question, but that has nothing to do with the over-turning of Roe v. Wade. Dobbs was based upon there being no Constitutional right to abortion, not upon a finding that fetuses were people fully endowed with Constitutional rights and therefore worthy of protection.
Quoting Fooloso4
You're conflating case law with statutory law. In a common law system, a court will always have the power to rule on the meaning of a law and they will always have the power to reconsider their own precedent. How the courts rule when interpreting law is called "case law" No one has ever challenged the courts' power to create and later reverse its own case law. The question of whether a court is authorized to strike down a statute is a different matter. "Statutory law" references a law that has been democratically passed law through the legislative process. If a court can declare a law is unconstitutional, then that court will be considered a Constitutional Court. Not all Supreme Courts in all countries have that power.
So, my point was that the US Constitution does not state the Supreme Court is a Constitutional Court. That is a power the Court conferred upon itself. I am not challenging that decision, but I am pointing out that it is well within reason for the Court to limit the authority it conferred upon itself, which was the point of Scalia's comment when he said he would not expand the Court's authority to declaring what the unenumerated rights of the 9th Amendment are.
What the Court did in Dobbs was to refuse to strike down the Mississippi statute on the basis of unconstitutionality. Reversing Roe is not the striking down of a law. It's a reversal of precedent.
No they don't. They've gotten away with it for decades by making people focus on the culture war.
Just call abortions "woke" and the self described libertarians will line up to vote away their freedoms.
Roe was not based on an unenumerated right to an abortion. It was based on a right to privacy. The Texas law at issue in Roe was based on the theory that a fetus is a "person" protected by the 14th Amendment. Where in the Constitution do we find that a fetus is a person?
Quoting Hanover
What is clear is that a woman is a person (even though on a strict originalist interpretation this may not be the case). The right to liberty means the right to make choices. The fact that there is no law protecting the right to undergo a medical procedure, does not mean that the state is free to decide that a medical procedures is illegal under the questionable assumption that an early stage fetus is a person.
The majority decision in Dobbs was based in part on the claim that abortion is not "deeply rooted" in the country's history. But it is, as I pointed out in a previous post. It was common practice at the time the Constitution was ratified. It was not until the mid 1800's that the American Medical Association pushed for laws prohibiting abortion. In addition, Roe was federal law from 1973 - 2022.
Quoting Hanover
Legal precedent is an important part of the law. Overturning established legal precedent is overturning how a law is to be understood and applied. In this case it struck down the protection under law to have an abortion.
One need only read the transcript of the Kavanaugh confirmation to see the hypocrisy of how stare decisis was used to hide his anti-abortion intentions. What the legislature would not do was done by other means through the court.
It's hard to make progress here because you're too focused on trying to contradict me than in listening to what I'm saying and you're not even paying attention to what you're saying.
The right to privacy was found to encompass the right to an abortion, and the right to privacy is NOT an enumerated right. That means that abortion, under Roe, was found to be based upon an unenumerated right.
From Roe:
"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."
The discussion of the 9th Amendment related more specifically to our discussion about Scalia's views on Constitutional interpretation, limiting the Court's power from enumerating the unenumerated rights.
Quoting Fooloso4
Now you're just making stuff up. You've not actually looked up the Texas criminal code articles 4512.1 through 4512.6 as it pertained to abortion in the early 1970s and found within that code section a statement of intent of the legislature where they announced that they were passing a law based upon their understanding of a term within a post-civil war amendment to the US Constitution.
You've not found that because it does not exist. That's not how statutes are written. The legislature doesn't have to explain its basis when it passes laws.
The Constitution doesn't say anything about fetuses. That fact is entirely irrelevant. You have apparently begun to think that the amendments to the federal constitution have some bearing upon what laws a state can pass. Not only is that false due to the distinction between the state and federal authorities, but it's also not the case that the amendments empower Congress to pass laws.
Quoting Fooloso4
This makes absolutely no sense. It is the legislature and the legislature alone that has illegalized abortion. No Court has ever declared a fetus a person. If it had, then the Court would be striking down laws permitting abortion. It has never done that. Never. What the Court has clearly said is that the right to abort does not exist, which means the states are free to decide whether to legalize it or not.
Touché.
I guess for a second I forgot how cynical they really are.
And what follows from this?
Quoting Hanover
Nope:
Quoting Hanover
It is not quite so simple. Abortion was legal and protected. It did not become illegal simply because of state legislatures, but because the Supreme Court overturned its long-standing precedent. It removed that protection. And it is this than enabled states to implement "trigger laws" banning abortions.
What follows from this is that abortion, if a right, is an unenumerated right, and that unless you believe the Court has the power to enumerate the unenumerated rights, you cannot hold abortion to be Constitutionally protected right under the 9th Amendment.
Quoting Fooloso4
You argued that the basis for the Texas anti-abortion law was to provide the fetus with 14th Amendment protections. I said you were making that up. You responded by telling me that that the lawyers argued there was a legitimate state interest in protecting fetuses, as if the two have something to do with each other.
If there were an argument that fetuses have 14th Amendment rights, the remedy wouldn't be to pass duplicative anti-abortion statutory law reaffirming that right, but it would be to bring a claim on behalf of a murdered fetus pursuant to his rights being violated when he was aborted.
Quoting Fooloso4
A quick history:
Abortion was statutorily prohibited in some states. The Court struck down those statutes and the statutes became void. The Court reversed its ruling and those statutes became valid. The Court illegalize abortion. The legislatures did. If the Court illegalized abortion, no legislature could legalize it.
This really does not make sense. It is not a matter of enumerating unenumerated rights but of recognizing that not all right are enumerated.
Quoting Hanover
It is odd that you cite the 9th amendment because it undermines your position.
Rights are not limited to those that are enumerated. To not protect a right retained by the people, is to deny that right.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/02/va-plans-to-offer-abortion-services-to-certain-veterans-and-beneficiaries-00054694
[tweet]https://twitter.com/libbybakalar/status/1570122797707595777[/tweet]
Intrauterine device (contraceptive, used to contain copper which is allegedly spermicidal).
:up: & :rofl:
[sup]— Mary Kekatos, Katie Kindelan · ABC News · Jun 22, 2023[/sup]
Swiftly swap time back a few decades, then slowly moving again...?
Then again, this is where Trump was president.
Republicans sure know how to grind onwards despite all logic and evidence to the contrary.
I guess you can get away with deluding yourself — about what majorities of Americans want (fake news polling), about climate change, about guns, about voter fraud and “stolen” elections — only to a point. Eventually the facts of reality are going to prove you wrong.
In short, the Republicans are this guy: