[HN Gopher] Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade
___________________________________________________________________
Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade
Author : uptown
Score : 1521 points
Date : 2022-06-24 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| ausbah wrote:
| saying "SCOTUS didn't ban abortion" is at best useless semantic
| formality and at worst plain incorrect
|
| a number of state have laws that the automatically make abortion
| illegal as soon as Roe was overturned, those are now enacted.
| furthermore, the case behind this ruling was dealing with a state
| law the effectively outlawed abortions, despite previous
| precedent ruling against it. this rule is simply enabling such
| behavior indirectly. this allows gives the green light for
| abortion to be targeted at the federal level, something which
| Republicans will be happy to do ASAP
|
| to ignore the context of the surrounding case, and political
| motivations / backgrounds of the ruling justices is just
| ignorant. something like half of all states have now effectively
| illegal abortion
| teakettle42 wrote:
| It's neither a semantic formality nor incorrect.
|
| The Supreme Court returned the question to the legislative
| branch. That's it.
|
| I happen to think abortion should be legal.
|
| I also think it's pretty clear that, when one side believes
| abortion to be a totally unrestricted right despite never
| appearing in the constitution, while simultaneously arguing for
| severely restricting and even eliminating a specifically
| enumerated right to bear arms, that they're operating in
| complete bad faith, and don't really care about the
| constitution except when convenient.
|
| Change needs to be secured by convincing others of its
| necessity, not by appealing to authority to force others to
| behave or believe what you think they should.
|
| The courts have been abused as an end-run around democratic
| change for too long now. I'm glad to see a serious bit of
| legislation from the bench rolled back.
|
| This will force people to _talk_ to each other. To convince
| each other. To work together. That's ultimately a healthier
| outcome, even if things are a little worse while we figure
| things out.
| lovich wrote:
| > ...when one side believes abortion to be a totally
| unrestricted right despite never appearing in the
| constitution...
|
| Bud there's a whole amendment about how if it's not mentioned
| in the constitution it's assumed you have the right.
|
| > This will force people to talk to each other. To convince
| each other. To work together. That's ultimately a healthier
| outcome, even if things are a little worse while we figure
| things out.
|
| What part of this ruling makes that outcome happen?
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > Bud there's a whole amendment about how if it's not
| mentioned in the constitution it's assumed you have the
| right.
|
| That is not what the 9th amendment says. It just says that
| the Constitution and Bill of Rights specifically laying out
| some rights _does not mean_ that you lack all rights not
| laid out explicitly.
|
| So no, it is not assumed that you have a right if it is not
| mentioned in the Constitution. It is just explicitly stated
| that you _may_ have that right.
|
| The 10th amendment then kicks all of those rights to the
| states rather than the federal government.
| lovich wrote:
| >That is not what the 9th amendment says. It just says
| that the Constitution and Bill of Rights specifically
| laying out some rights does not mean that you lack all
| rights not laid out explicitly.
|
| You are interpreting it in complete contradiction to the
| text. You are literally construing the fact that some
| rights are enumerated and abortion isn't as a reason why
| you don't have a right to an abortion
|
| >The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
| shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
| retained by the people.
| bhupy wrote:
| >The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
| shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
| retained by the people.
|
| This just means that the absence of an enumerated right
| doesn't imply that the right is totally absent. I.e. the
| fact that the Constitution doesn't outline a right to
| sell heroin doesn't mean that heroin is by default
| illegal; it's just left to the States (and the people) to
| decide what to do with it.
|
| But importantly, just because the Constitution doesn't
| outline a right to sell heroin, one does not have a
| Constitutional right to sell heroin -- that's absurd.
| It's still something that can be decided upon by the
| legislatures.
| a_shovel wrote:
| This comment could easily be adapted into a form letter to
| oppose the majority of Supreme-Court-decided expansions of
| civil rights of the past century.
| softcactus wrote:
| The HN crowd never fails to surprise me. For all of the great
| discussions about software on here, threads like this one reek
| of ignorance of civics and history. The de facto outcome of
| this ruling is abortion banned in red states. It's clearly
| partisan hackery when we have: 1. A court full of Federalist
| Society members 2. A court full of Catholics (staunchly pro-
| life) 3. Who are using the old argument of "states rights"
| Three has historically been how the conservative minority
| defends its regressive legislation. They use the filibuster to
| prevent Federal legislation, then impose their will on minority
| groups within their state which has no filibuster. Anyone who
| has read about the history of the US should know this.
| portpecos wrote:
| It's almost as if the liberals didn't even read this part the
| current court's opinion.
|
| "The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each
| State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey
| arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and
| return that authority to the people and their elected
| representatives"
| softcactus wrote:
| > It's almost as if the liberals didn't even read this part
| the current court's opinion.
|
| See the section in my comment about "states rights". I read
| the decision in its entirety and it was full of flaws from
| my perspective (I am not a lawyer). It's clear however that
| this is an ideological ruling. Also, I'm skeptical of the
| intellectual consistency of anyone's arguments when they
| mention "the libs".
| pyronik19 wrote:
| It's clear the original Roe v Wade was an ideological
| ruling. It was motivated reasoning. It's just being
| undone.
|
| I support first trimester abortions. Now go pass those
| laws in the states via the legislative process where it
| belongs.
| [deleted]
| pcj-github wrote:
| Agree 100%
| [deleted]
| fulvioterzapi wrote:
| To be honest I am pretty fine with it. For a few reasons:
|
| 1) Abortion (in my opinion) should not be a constitutional right.
| I can't name a country that has abortion as a constitutional
| right. More generally: the constitution should care about super-
| general, universally-agreed values, let's leave everything else
| to the legislative branch!
|
| 2) Roe v. Wade was a bad decision. Before you downvote me, read
| the 14th Amendment: how the judges could infer from it at the
| time a right to abortion is beyond me! I can squint my eyes a
| lot, but the right is simply not there!
|
| Edit: downvoters, go read the 14th Amendment, and tell me if you
| can honestly read a right to abortion in there.
| darknavi wrote:
| > More generally: the constitution should care about super-
| general, universally-agreed values, let's leave everything else
| to the legislative branch!
|
| See: The 2nd amendment.
| fulvioterzapi wrote:
| Indeed, even though I generally support guns rights, I think
| they should be regulated by state law.
|
| However, notice the difference: the 2nd Amendment is
| extremely clear in granting the right to bear arms, whereas
| the 14th Amendment needs to be twisted in an almost comical
| way to get out of it a right to abortion.
| Ndjdndnbd wrote:
| ceejayoz wrote:
| From 1973 until 2022, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
| Amendment was officially deemed by the Supreme Court to be a
| Constitutional protection of abortion. The idea that "most
| legal scholars agree" is pretty silly; there's been significant
| debate for decades.
| [deleted]
| Ndndjdndj wrote:
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's incorrect, on several counts.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2690604/
|
| > Quickening, the point at which a woman feels life, was
| used to determine fetal viability.
|
| That's 16-20 weeks, a far more liberal standard than the
| bans going into practice now.
|
| > By the end of 1868, 30 to the then 37 states had passed
| laws restricting abortion.
|
| That's not all states.
| lawn wrote:
| There's this belief that society always moves in a
| "forward/upward" directory, where we become more advanced, more
| enlightened and more moral.
|
| But this is not the case and sometimes we regress.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > There's this belief that society always moves in a
| "forward/upward" directory
|
| That's the central fallacy of Whig historiography [1]. It is in
| part facilitated by the fact that recent history is often
| written by the victors.
|
| MLK repeated the same fallacy: "The arc of the moral universe
| is long, but it bends toward justice." Is that the same arc
| that included two world wars?
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history
| mikkergp wrote:
| Just for some context, I once heard commentary about MLK that
| suggested that that specific statement was made in more of a
| spiritual tradition than a practical or historical tradition.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Different people have different sets of principles by which
| they measure progress and sometimes those principles run in
| opposition to one another.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I don't disagree with you in this case, but there are a lot of
| people who would say this is one such example.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| A contrarian argument would say that protecting life -
| especially young life - is a more enlightened and moral
| direction.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The Republican party's concern for young life ends at the
| moment of birth. After that it's: "Fuck you, got mine".
| ls-lah_33 wrote:
| It's worth considering that IVF fertility treatment often has
| discarded zygotes.
| enumjorge wrote:
| It's a surface level protection. Forcing someone to bring an
| unwanted child into this world is not enlightened. There's a
| reason why women and couples opt for abortion. They're often
| not ready for that responsibility, and it's the kid who
| suffers most.
|
| Life for the sake of life feels like virtue signaling,
| especially since those who espouse it have no interest in
| providing social programs to help these mothers and couples
| raise the kid they were forced to have. That's pretty
| barbaric.
|
| Congratulations. You saved a life you almost immediately stop
| giving a shit about.
| sssilver wrote:
| One could argue that every living human -- all of us -- are
| a product of generations of rape and unwanted children
| whose lives no one cared about, who survived to have their
| own. Civilized humans who enjoyed enforced women's rights
| are a laughably short segment of all human history.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| If anything, reflecting on the stress and violence of our
| collective ancestors should only further strengthen the
| desire to do better by supporting things like "enforced
| women's rights". Was that your point?
| sssilver wrote:
| The only point I have is that I'm incredibly happy to
| exist.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We're also the product of generations of people dying
| prematurely of diseases like polio; our lives would be
| quite a bit different if infant/child mortality had been
| 0% for the last 100k years.
|
| Should we not wipe out polio because our ancestors
| couldn't?
| koheripbal wrote:
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are absolutely children born to parents who do not
| want a child.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| They're just waiting for their real parents to come, it's
| all part of god's plan, innit
| koheripbal wrote:
| Unwanted by their parents does not mean they are unwanted
| by humanity.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I'll sign you up to take care of those kids, then. Just
| feel free to email me your full legal name and address
| (see my profile), and I'll hire a lawyer to figure out
| how to make that happen. I might even offer to pay for
| the costs for the child you adopt doing this for the
| first year if you act fast!
|
| _Narrator: He never emailed._
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Who should bear the responsibility (financial, effort,
| legal) of matchmaking?
| byyll wrote:
| > Forcing someone to bring an unwanted child into this
| world is not enlightened. > They're often not ready for
| that responsibility
|
| So they could have used condoms, the man could have avoided
| ejaculating where it could cause pregnancy, or they could
| also just not have sex or the woman could take pills or an
| IUD. Unless it was rape, nobody forced them to have a
| child.
|
| I do agree that there should be programs that help the
| parents more.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| How do you feel about rape victims who are unable to
| prove they were raped in court and are forced to co-
| parent the rest of their life with their rapist?
|
| Or what about rape cases which take longer than 9 months
| to reach a conviction?
| byyll wrote:
| Rape is hard to prove and it doesn't necessarily mean co-
| parenting with the rapist, I think it's even more likely
| that he avoids responsibility and escapes than become a
| parent.
|
| And the second issue seems to be an issue of bureaucracy
| and it's slowness.
|
| Those cases are both valid where I think most people
| would argue it's not as clear cut but I think they are
| mostly the exception, not the rule.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Clarence Thomas said we should reconsider contraception
| as a right, which according to your logic essentially
| means we should reconsider sex except for having a child
| as a right. You can't advocate for personal
| responsibility and then take away all mechanisms to
| conduct it.
| lawn wrote:
| The direction they're going includes removing the right for
| contraception and same-sex marriage.
|
| That's not an enlightened or moral direction.
| qalmakka wrote:
| Come on. Nobody that supported this ruling except the deluded
| give a damn about life or whatever they were preaching. The
| Republicans only care about getting the votes they need to
| maintain their stranglehold over red states, cut taxes and
| environmental protections for the benefit of their patrons.
| The fundamental Christians only care about seeing the rights
| of women being repelled, there are zero concerns about the
| life of children, otherwise they would be pushing for free
| childcare, support for mothers, parental leave, ....
|
| It's all a matter of punishing women for their own desire to
| be emancipated, it's a punishment for those women who have
| sinned by thinking they could act like a man and have sex
| whenever they wanted. If they truly cared about the unborn,
| they would
|
| 1. care about the already born, first, and 2. push for the
| widespread availability of contraception.
|
| Given that contraception is bad for them, too, it's clear
| this is not an ethical question, but a moral one: sex outside
| of marriage, or for pleasure really, should not be allowed,
| and it must always carry consequences, no matter if it vastly
| more impacts women than it does men. You know, a man can
| always run from their responsibilities, while a woman cannot
| run away from her womb.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > Nobody that supported this ruling except the deluded give
| a damn about life or whatever they were preaching.
|
| This is just straw manning the other side's position to the
| extreme.
|
| > If they truly cared about the unborn, they would
|
| Neither of those are logical implications of being against
| late-stage abortion, and you don't get to tell others what
| they should care about.
| warent wrote:
| If evidence on their position was completely missing or
| neutral then I would agree with you. Sadly, this is far
| from a straw man because there is evidence that they do
| not care.
|
| These are the same people who actively work against
| giving children school lunches, who protect racist
| gerrymandering, who want to defund planned parenthood,
| and so on.
|
| If, in the same breath, we were talking about
| significantly revolutionizing support for
| children/families in poverty, then this would be a
| different discussion. Sadly, look at the polls, this is
| majority boomers who no longer have functioning ovaries &
| men whose egos demand control over women.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/393104/pro-choice-
| identificatio...
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The parent isn't wrong. Republicans don't do shit to
| support "the born" who are ill or live in crushing
| poverty, they don't give a shit about people, they give a
| shit about power and this is a lever they've been yanking
| on to get it for years.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| On one hand, you are correct in that the right is more
| reluctant to use governmental power to improve society.
| That's in part because they put more emphasis on personal
| responsibility, and in part because they are skeptical of
| the government's competence.
|
| On the hand, I think the right has done more than they
| usually get credit for. Median real wages rose
| significantly under Trump. [1] Nixon created the EPA. [2]
| At an individual level, conservatives donate
| significantly more to charities, and give blood more
| often. [3]
|
| [1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
|
| [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Enviro
| nmental_...
|
| [3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/conservatives-
| are-more-...
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Christians do give a lot to charity, but a lot of those
| are christian charities that give aid on the condition
| that you eat a heaping mouthful of bullshit. It's really
| just a feel good way for them to try and proselytize.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > give aid on the condition that you eat a heaping
| mouthful of bullshit
|
| I don't have any stats on that, but it's contrary to my
| personal experience. When I was a student, there was this
| Pentecostal group which used to give free food to
| everyone every Thursday. It was quite unconditional, not
| even means tested.
| mikkergp wrote:
| It seems like if they want to emphasize personal
| responsibility, they could stop trying to influence laws
| that prevent people from getting abortions or using
| contraception.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > stop trying to influence laws that prevent people from
| getting abortions
|
| I'm not sure if I follow. That seems to me like having
| more empathy with irresponsible people, possibly at the
| cost of innocent fetuses.
| mikkergp wrote:
| While I won't try to argue with you because abortion is
| the thing we won't see eye to eye on, what bout the 'or'
| on contraception, or do you think that responsible people
| only think that sex is for making babies?
|
| On another thought, you think the best thing to do is
| give people you judge as irresponsible a child? Also,
| doesn't original sin mean the fetus not innocent? Is
| innocence really the important measure? Because lots of
| things are innocent we don't care about.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > what bout the 'or' on contraception
|
| I don't have any particular problems with contraception.
| Some right-wingers do, they should speak for themselves.
| (I'm also not against early-stage abortions)
|
| > On another thought, you think the best thing to do is
| give people you judge as irresponsible a child?
|
| It's not ideal, it's just better than normalizing taking
| innocent lives. Also, if someone really thinks they can't
| be a good parent, putting up the baby for adoption is
| always an option.
|
| > Also, doesn't original sin mean the fetus not
| innocent?(which of course doesn't really apply since it's
| not a person)
|
| I'm not religious, so I don't really think about the
| issue in terms of sins in the religious sense.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| JasonFruit wrote:
| > The Republicans only care about getting the votes they
| need to maintain their stranglehold over red states, cut
| taxes and environmental protections for the benefit of
| their patrons.
|
| As has been pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, we
| don't vote for Supreme Court justices. There's no leverage
| to impose electoral or party pressure on a justice who has
| already been appointed, unless it is by impeachment. Your
| assessment of their motivations doesn't hold up.
| zzleeper wrote:
| Are you naive or what? Republicans have lists of
| candidates for justices that they have deemed so anti
| roe-vs-wade that they deemed safe to propose for
| justices. Someone like Thomas is not going to change his
| mind once he is appointed...
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Why not, if he's now free to act as he pleases? The
| assertion is that he doesn't believe he's acting rightly,
| but does so under electoral pressure. If I'm naive,
| please explain: what's to stop him doing as he thinks is
| right, now that he's appointed?
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Your naivete lies in the fact that you don't realize that
| Supreme Court justices are elected by proxy of voting for
| the president that nominated them and the senators that
| confirm them.
|
| It stands to reason that on average, if you elect
| conservative presidents and senators, you will get
| conservative justices, and vice-versa.
|
| You seem to assert that there are wolves hiding in
| sheeps' clothing, waiting until they are confirmed to
| show their true colors to save the country. I counter
| that reality is more boring than that, and that these
| people can be taken at face value by virtue of what
| they've said and done for decades.
|
| Furthermore, I think yours is an apologist/denialist
| stance people use so they can get someone in the courts
| they truly approve of, while hiding behind the "hope"
| that they won't be as bad as everyone else knows they
| will.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| The only part of what you wrote that addresses my point
| is this:
|
| > You seem to assert that there are wolves hiding in
| sheeps' clothing, waiting until they are confirmed to
| show their true colors to save the country
|
| Against this characterization I would oppose John
| Roberts, who was appointed by a Republican president, but
| has been reluctant to create any non-trivial precedent on
| topics that figure in the Republican platform. There's a
| lot of anger among Republican voters over that, but _what
| can they do_? They can 't vote him out, he is not
| beholden to the Republican party, and he's done nothing
| impeachable.
|
| I understand how this can be difficult to perceive from
| outside, especially if you happen to be in a bubble that
| perceives Republicans as uniformly deplorable. But I
| assure you that Roberts is viewed that way. (I view them
| from another direction entirely.)
|
| As far as my stance being apologist or denialist, you
| have no idea what I think or want.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| you: "we don't vote for Supreme Court justices... There's
| no...electoral...pressure on a justice['s]
| motivations..."
|
| zzleeper: "Are you naive...? Republicans have lists of
| candidates for justices...they have deemed...anti roe-vs-
| wade"
|
| you: "If I'm naive, please explain"
|
| This is where you lost the point, and where I explained
| your naivete, an explanation you ignored in your response
| to me.
|
| Your last two paragraphs consist of speculative ad
| hominem (judging by your profile, we have similar life
| circumstances, and I have many conservatives in my
| "bubble" ie family members) followed by a hypocritical
| self defense. We don't know anything about each other
| outside of what we've said here. I'm simply calling it
| like I see it:
|
| you: "Why [wouldn't Thomas change his mind once he is
| appointed], if he's now free to act as he
| pleases?...what's to stop him doing as he thinks is
| right...?"
|
| The obvious answer is that he was appointed precisely
| because it was expected he would act the way he has,
| because what he believes is right is fully aligned with
| who appointed him, as are the three most recent
| appointees. You want to point out exceptions like
| Roberts, but those merely prove the rule from my original
| explanation.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Pointed out by you. Maybe you should stop writing it;
| surely once is enough.
| lovich wrote:
| Sorry, I learn by repetition
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I would have no problem with this line of argument if it was
| honest and genuine, but it's not - it's a pretence.
|
| If prolife movement actually cared about protecting life,
| they would not support policies that leave children to die of
| terrible diseases if their family can't afford healthcare.
| rg111 wrote:
| I am not arguing here.
|
| But there are some stages in the life of a human fetus that
| is less sentient than a monkey, a horse, a dog, a fly, an
| ant, etc.
|
| Do you think abortion should be illegal at all stages?
|
| And, do you think that abortion should be illegal even if the
| woman faces life threatning risks?
| aksss wrote:
| The legal question here is whether the federal government
| of the United States, absent legislation, is able to compel
| the states to allow abortions up to a certain time window
| of pregnancy.
|
| The ruling today says that the federal government does not
| have that power, absent legislation. But by the same token,
| it also could not BAN abortion absent federal legislation.
|
| Others have commented on the weakness of the original
| "penumbral reasoning" of Roe v. Wade decision establishing
| the government's ability to do this, and that this
| criticism is recognized by judges commonly perceived to be
| on either side of the political spectrum.
|
| A lens with which to view this decision through is the
| correction of technical debt, and it's really not that
| remarkable from a legal perspective.
|
| It's very remarkable from a social perspective, considering
| many of us have grown up in a Roe v. Wade world.
|
| But this returns the burden to states. In my state, today's
| ruling changes nothing, as abortion is protected by our
| state constitution. In other states, there's some political
| work to do assuming the citizenry in those states agrees
| that things should be different.
|
| If there's actually a consensus opinion on abortion in the
| US across enough states, federal legislation could be
| created some day. By design, federal legislation is a slow
| process - it's designed to be inefficient. One of the
| biggest liberal criticisms of Roe v. Wade is that it
| stopped the process cold, and we've lost decades of time to
| have that conversation about legislation in trade for a
| decision on very weak legal footing, which many have argued
| was long overdue for correction.
|
| From my vantage point, the questions you raise are
| immaterial to the legal issue decided in the SCOTUS. This
| decision was one about the structural relationship between
| the states and the federal government. The questions you
| raise are relevant to the state politics that need to take
| place going forward, for sure. But it comes back to this
| question - if the majority of people in a state believe
| that abortion past some point in time (1w, 14w, 24w, pick
| one) constitutes murder, should they not be allowed to have
| their state law reflect that? We believe other nations have
| that power for diverse views on the matter - France, I
| believe, doesn't allow abortions after 14w (it was merely
| 10 up until 2000). When evaluating law in the US, a key
| premise is the idea that the US is a collection of states
| that outsources certain functions to a central government,
| not a singular government with separate census areas.
| thatnerdyguy wrote:
| Except that states banning abortions after X weeks was
| already a thing under Roe.
|
| And this decision was not about any "state rights"
| bullshit. The court previously found an unenumerated
| right to an abortion, and now they completely reversed
| themselves. Women do not have complete body autonomy and
| must support another life no matter the impact on their
| own.
| meesles wrote:
| I can understand this argument, however in this specific case
| we are forcing children onto parents who are in bad positions
| to raise them (or most wouldn't consider abortion), and our
| state does a terrible job at providing support to kids
| throughout their lives (healthcare, education, welfare
| programs are all notorious in the US) in the case where
| parents aren't reliable.
|
| As a pro-choice person, I could be convinced against abortion
| _if_ there was a guarantee that every child would have the
| full resources of the government to help them achieve a
| successful life. We all know that isn't going to happen.
|
| So without the appropriate follow-through, this is actually
| less enlightened and hurting both parents and children more.
| londgine wrote:
| > I could be convinced against abortion _if_ there was a
| guarantee that every child would have the full resources of
| the government to help them achieve a successful life. We
| all know that isn't going to happen.
|
| Kids brought up with bad parents will be somewhat similarly
| disadvantaged. Why should potentially bad parents (eg.
| heavy drug addicts) not be banned from having kids? Both of
| them would be "forcing children onto parents who are in bad
| positions to raise them".
| nulld3v wrote:
| Isn't this essentially what CPS does today? The
| difference being that it's reactive instead of being
| proactive.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think there is huge question of right of mother as well.
| Lets take hypothetical situation where someone forcibly mates
| two humans together in such a way that removing other would
| kill that other. Per anti-abortion people they would have to
| live together forever. Which seems bit sick...
| acalmon wrote:
| Abortion restrictions do not reduce abortion rates. They only
| reduce safe abortions.
| https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/21/health/abortion-
| restricti...
| voisin wrote:
| I am fine with this contrarian argument, but why does it stop
| at birth? There's no support (universal healthcare for
| children, paid maternity/paternity leave, etc etc).
| Conservatives apply these arguments inconsistently.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Actively supporting/helping vs not killing/preventing
| others from killing are pretty significantly different
| moral arguments. This always comes across as "If you're
| against abortion then why don't you support _insert
| political position that involves drastically raising taxes
| and giving way more power to the state_? "
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm not sure how one can call a woman carrying a child
| something other than "actively supporting/helping" that
| child. So this amounts to a hypocrisy where it's OK for
| the state to have power to force a person to keep another
| person[1] alive for ~9 months, but somehow wrong for the
| state to contribute resources to this effort.
|
| I'm also not sure how giving the power to pry into
| people's reproductive decisions is somehow less state
| power than administrative power to distribute resources.
|
| [1] That's accepting the argument that a fetus is
| technically a person, which can also be debated.
| kennywinker wrote:
| You're just describing a trolly problem. If you believe a
| foetus has more right to autonomy than the person
| carrying it, but you don't believe in making sure that
| all children have what they need to survive, you're
| avoiding "killing" by direct action in favor of killing
| by neglecting to act.
|
| As for paying for it... no taxes need to be raised. Just
| divert 1/1000th of the money going to the military.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >You're just describing a trolly problem.
|
| Except the child's death isn't guaranteed if we fail to
| implement universal healthcare/free school lunches/insert
| welfare program here, so it's not really a normal trolley
| problem. And that's before you get into potential adverse
| second order effects of such programs.
|
| >Just divert 1/1000th of the money going to the military.
|
| GP mentioned universal healthcare as one of the ways in
| which to support children after birth, I don't think $800
| million is going to be enough to cover it.
| kennywinker wrote:
| There are cases where it will literally be a trolly
| problem. E.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrea-
| prudente-incomplete-misc...
| josephcsible wrote:
| enumjorge wrote:
| The next sentence in his post explains what he meant by
| support.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I know that's what the post says. But that's not the
| actual equivalent. If we had free healthcare just for
| pregnant women, then it would be fair to say we should
| give free healthcare to children too, but we don't.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The fact that there is no free healthcare for pregnant
| women demonstrates that noone actually cares about the
| child's life.
|
| It demonstates that you are willing to force a woman to
| carry the child of a rapist against her will (so it's not
| her choice) and then have her give birth without medical
| assitance if she can't afford hospital stay, potentially
| resulting in the death of the child and the mother.
|
| it shows what the game is really about - control over
| women
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| To quote Carlin - "if you're pre-born you are fine; if you
| are pre-school you are fucked!"
| zht wrote:
| in cases of rape too?
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Yes. Because it's not about the mom. It's not about the
| dad. It's about the baby's life.
| surajrmal wrote:
| Pregnancy has nontrivial effects on women. There is risk
| of death, emotional and physical changes to the body, and
| you need to adapt your life around these things. In the
| case of rape there is also trauma. It seems incredibly
| unjust to rob the mom of the choice to decide what to do
| in that situation. Having a position that ignores the mom
| in favor of the baby is terrifying.
| FiveClientAuto wrote:
| Unless it's young life that's already living and happens to
| be impregnated via rape? Then fuck her, right? Force her to
| give birth?
|
| And exactly how does banning an abortion when the pregnancy
| is not viable for any number of reasons (molar pregnancy,
| ectopic pregnancy, anencephaly) help anyone? Why are we
| forcing women to carry dead fetus's around in their bodies?
|
| Because that's what a total ban on abortion does. It also
| makes IVF illegal if "life begins at conception".
|
| The notion that the only abortions happening are happy
| couples who find out they're pregnant, tell their friends and
| family, plan parties, and then in some sinister plot months
| later wake up and casually decide "you know what, let's just
| kill it" is absurd.
|
| Not all life is equal, and not all human life is equal. If
| you were driving down the street and two buildings were on
| fire, a IVF clinic with viable implanted eggs, and a
| preschool full of living children, you would 100% of the time
| try and rescue the preschoolers if you only had time for one.
| The idea that all human life down to a recently implanted egg
| has the same value as an 11 year old girl who's been raped
| and wants an abortion is an untenable position.
| azth wrote:
| As a non-American, non-Christian, I find the entire fiasco
| quite weird. Like a lot of cases in the US, why don't they
| address the core issue? If rape is so common, how about
| punish the rapists like other advanced countries do? Yes,
| including the death penalty for serial rapists or repeat
| offenders.
| status_quo69 wrote:
| Because that's a reactive punishment that does absolutely
| nothing to help out the woman who might be carrying a
| fetus post rape, not to mention the fact that rape is
| already illegal and a rapist isn't exactly going to be
| deterred by the fact that there's illegality involved.
| The issue of abortion also touches upon things like
| ectopic pregnancies where the woman can/will die if an
| abortion is not performed.
| dsego wrote:
| > rapist isn't exactly going to be deterred by the fact
| that there's illegality involved
|
| Controversial opinion, prisons aren't a deterrent,
| corporal punishment would leave a more lasting impression
| and instill fear into would be offenders. It would also
| be more cost effective and efficient.
| baseballdork wrote:
| Rape is illegal already. Rapists go to prison. The death
| penalty has never been an effective deterrent and is
| abhorrent.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| What country do you live in where rape is uncommon?
|
| Or is it common in your country, but the justice system
| nails the rapist every time?
| andsoitis wrote:
| then why do these same people not do other things to protect
| life that's already being lived?
|
| sorry, this is not enlightened.
| Clubber wrote:
| I suspect people exist who are both pro-life and also pro-
| social safety net. You're falling into the trap created by
| the two political party system: binary thinking.
| [deleted]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| People exist who satisfy any imaginable criteria - one
| guy cut out his own appendix with a kitchen knife and
| lived. What does that prove, we should be our own
| surgeons?
|
| The key questions is, how many of such peope exist.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I think Trump proved many so called "conservative" voters
| are actually pro religion populists not republicans.
| francisofascii wrote:
| It is interesting to note that while American's attitudes on
| many social issues like gay marriage or racial injustice have
| moved in a progressive direction, American's attitudes on
| abortion haven't budged since the 1970s.
| Splendor wrote:
| There may not have been significant moves in the last 50
| years, but the majority remains pro-choice.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Yes. But pro-life/pro-choice stances are incredibly
| nuanced. A majority is pro-choice, but a majority support
| restrictions on late term abortions.
| Splendor wrote:
| Luckily 99% of abortions don't fall into that category.
| blindmute wrote:
| So true. Glad to see the regression has been reversed, a bit,
| today.
| umvi wrote:
| This assumes there is a universally agreed upon definition of
| "upward" and "forward". Religious people would argue things
| like abortion rights and pride celebrations are the opposite of
| upward and forward progress since they enable and encourage
| what they believe to be sin.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| > Religious people
|
| Maybe we should stop giving a shit about them.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| These are the same people who think the world is 6000 years
| old, the first man was made out of mud and the first woman
| was made from the rib of the first man. They're clearly
| insane so their view of forward should be thrown in the
| garbage.
| lawn wrote:
| Specific instances are subjective of course, but seen
| throughout history it's objectively the case that we've
| regressed numerous times.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Ya that's a really good point and I think about it often.
|
| Look at Iraq, the cradle of civilization, the seat of Babylon.
| And Egypt. And even Greece to an extent. Former glories of the
| world but they aren't the most glorious places in the world
| now.
| [deleted]
| ipnon wrote:
| "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward
| justice."
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Lol no it bends towards tyranny and centralized control.
| kennywinker wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| Seems to me that the arc of the moral universe is actually
| more of a spaghetti. While some things improve, others
| regress.
| gnicholas wrote:
| In case you're seriously asking for the citation, this was
| said by Martin Luther King Jr.:
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-smith-obama-
| king_n_5a...
| kennywinker wrote:
| Appreciate it, but it was a glib way of saying evidence
| needed not citation. I know that thing was said - but I
| din't believe it to be backed up by historical evidence
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| > [citation needed]
|
| Dr. Martin Luther King
| kzrdude wrote:
| Your comment is quite mild given that from the outside the last
| years it really looks like the US is sliding slowly towards
| autocracy. The tendencies are there. I've asked myself if it's
| not the case that the largest threat to peace and progress &
| good quality of life for the western world long term does not
| lie in the balance of how it goes in the US and what I can do
| about this - just to ensure the best for my life and those I
| care for.
| anm89 wrote:
| The problem with the modern left is that they aggressively want
| to win every battle and don't even know what war they are
| fighting. As long as they can yell and scream and cancel and
| grieve, they don't seem to be too focused on having cohesive
| goals or policy.
|
| And this is what that looks like.
|
| The supreme court doesn't fit into their model because they can't
| cancel it on twitter. So they just moved on to other stuff they
| could cancel. Reap what you sow.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| 13 states have "trigger laws"; pre-bans on abortion, dependent
| only on this ruling. A large swath of the country, as of this
| morning, bans abortion.
| karl11 wrote:
| The thing about abortion that most people seem not to understand
| is that the debate is fundamentally about answering "when does
| human life start?". One side believes it starts at conception,
| which equates any abortion with murder. The other side believes
| it starts at some point after that, which makes abortion up to
| that point a women's health / rights issue. Irreconcilable, but
| also toxic when the two sides never talk about what they actually
| disagree on, but instead call each other murderers or anti-
| women's rights or whatever.
| Splendor wrote:
| Nope. You completely misunderstand the pro-choice argument. You
| can believe life begins at conception and still believe it's
| wrong to force a woman to carry a fetus to term.
| koonsolo wrote:
| For me it's not about when life begins, but more about how to
| prevent most of the suffering.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| > the debate is fundamentally about answering "when does human
| life start?"
|
| I disagree.
|
| I think the more important question is, who should have the
| power of imprisoning people, on the basis of their
| interpretations of when life starts.
|
| I don't think the criminal justice system is equipped to make
| that determination, and therefore I think all abortion should
| be blanket legalized.
|
| The law needs plainly interoperable rules, and I don't see a
| rule that works other than "you are a person at birth".
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't think this is the right question. The better question
| is one of bodily autonomy: whether someone should be compelled
| to keep another human being alive at the cost of their own
| health and safety. This avoids the whole "when does life start"
| debate, which has been a moving goalpost for the history of
| abortion related law.
| randyrand wrote:
| Seems like a side issue to me. If I forcibly put someone
| under my control, it should be my responsibility not to kill
| them. Airplane pilots have the same responsibility. Imagine
| if pilots forced us to fly with them, and then decided they
| didn't want to carry our weight anymore! There's good reason
| that is illegal.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Seems like a side issue to me. If I forcibly put someone
| under my control, it should be my responsibility not to
| kill them.
|
| That's the trouble though - unwanted pregnancies are either
| accidental, forced on the mother (in cases of rape), or too
| dangerous to continue due to unforeseen complications.
| That's more like waking up and finding you're medically
| tethered to a person that now depends on your body for
| survival and less like the pilot example.
|
| What's really damning of the "pro-life" movement here is
| their general opposition to contraceptives - sometimes
| including condoms. It's pretty clear that the main goal is
| to control sex, not preserve life.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Exactly. Who cares about the fetus? It's not like any one of
| us is doing anything about the shitty stuff that people
| (conscious ones!) are going through right now in third world
| countries. So the whole "you're killing a human" angle is
| complete nonsense, life is not sacred and it is silly to act
| like it is.
|
| The only thing that matters here is what the mother wants.
| MandieD wrote:
| And please remember that even a "normal" pregnancy can exact
| a heavy toll on the mother, physical and financial.
|
| My back hurts constantly, but even worse when I pick up my
| much-desired child. He's over 25 lbs now, and I dread what
| the next years until he's able to climb up into an acceptable
| car seat on his own are going to be like.
|
| I work part-time, and thank heavens Germany made my pre-
| pregnancy employer give me that option. One of the major
| factors in MLM prevalence in the US are the absolutely
| abysmal job prospects for anyone who can't work full time -
| that is, many mothers of young children. My friends with
| preschool age kids who work full time only manage it because
| they have expensive daycare open from 7am - 6pm, pay nannies,
| and/or have spouses with less-intense (or no) jobs. This, of
| course, is only realistic for women with well-paid jobs.
|
| And if one of you wants to respond, "adoption," please
| remember the aforementioned physical wreckage, plus work-
| related difficulties. Germany encouraged my employer to let
| me stay home the six weeks before my due date and insisted I
| do so the right weeks after the birth, all at just about my
| previous net pay.
|
| I don't think that "slavery" is too strong a word for forcing
| someone to go through with an unwanted pregnancy, but others
| can call it "indentured servitude" if that makes them feel
| better.
| umvi wrote:
| So if we had artificial womb technology, should a woman have
| the choice to terminate the fetus if the fetus could be
| safely moved to an artificial womb? If so, doesn't that go
| beyond the scope of your post of abortion being purely about
| bodily autonomy? If not, whose responsibly is it to raise the
| child?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think this is an interesting hypothetical, and in such a
| universe I suspect many women would choose the artificial
| womb even for children they want to keep themselves.
|
| But let me counter with another hypothetical: if we had a
| contraceptive device that could safely and reliably turn a
| woman's reproductive system on/off at the flip of a switch
| would "pro-life" advocates support it or oppose it?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Probably state or child itself. Though reasonably the child
| should have rights to at least mother's estate.
| tantalor wrote:
| I think that's the right lens. Suppose you had a rare blood
| type that can prevent the death of somebody else; could the
| state compel you to donate blood? Or suppose we are at war
| and badly in need of blood donors of all types; same
| question.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Furthermore what about organs? There is lot of people with
| two functional kidneys and they don't necessarily need
| both... Should we start forcibly removing them and
| transplanting to people in need? Also other such operations
| like bone marrow...
| softcactus wrote:
| There is no answer of "when life begins". It's a game of
| semantics. Like Diogenes bringing a chicken to Plato, any set
| of traits you can give me to define life, I can find an
| exception that destroys your definition.
|
| Therefore the question should be "when is it ethical to
| terminate a fetus". Pro-choice voters have different answers
| for this question. The problem is pro-life hardliners who
| refuse to play ball whatsoever. They believe life begins at
| conception with no basis other than religion.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > There is no answer of "when life begins".
|
| Tell that to a right-leaning Christian pastor, or their
| congregation. Most of modern Christianity specifically
| teaches that, in some places, things are most definitely
| black and white and some basic questions do indeed have easy
| answers. "Murdering babies", as a family member of mine likes
| to phrase it, is to them one of the most straightforward and
| simple of them all.
| [deleted]
| missedthecue wrote:
| is there a destroying exception to the conception line of
| thinking?
| softcactus wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
|
| Also even if there weren't tons of holes to poke in the
| philosophical argument of "what is a human life? / what
| makes human life valuable?", life isn't sacred. We kill
| prisoners, send soldiers overseas, or let people die as a
| result of preventable diseases (COVID).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States
|
| The question for a utilitarian is when is it ethical to
| terminate a fetus? Weighing the costs of an unwanted child
| on society, the cost of life if the mother dies, the cost
| of preventing back-alley abortions, the cost of her future
| as a mother if she suffers reproductive damage and cant
| have kids in the future even if she wants to, etc.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I think weighing human lives on the basis of "cost to
| society" will lead to undesirable or rather deteriorated
| ends. I hardly need to come up with examples.
| softcactus wrote:
| I agree but this is what our government currently does
| and I'm trying to explain this in the framework of how we
| currently make decisions in the US. A spherical cow model
| of Government I guess.
| nmz wrote:
| Life is also the wrong indicator, tardigrades and ants are
| alive. But what defines a human is its cognitive abilities.
| This is why its OK to terminate a coma patient. Fetuses and
| coma patients are exactly the same, without the host/machine
| to keep them alive, they will die on their own.
| softcactus wrote:
| I also don't really agree with this definition either. This
| train of logic leads to the justification of euthanizing
| less intelligent humans. It also doesn't adequately address
| why a human with microcephaly or no frontal lobe has
| rights, but a dolphin or octopus or killer whale does not.
| It also allows for the justification of cruelty against
| animals who can feel pain but aren't intelligent enough to
| pass some arbitrary test of intelligence. To be clear, I
| don't know the answer, I am hesitant to label anything as
| "innately valuable". I think that there is however a
| sliding scale of what is "ethical".
| nmz wrote:
| > I also don't really agree with this definition either.
| This train of logic leads to the justification of
| euthanizing less intelligent humans.
|
| How so? less intelligent humans have cognitive ability so
| they have rights.
|
| > It also doesn't adequately address why a human with
| microcephaly or no frontal lobe has rights, but a dolphin
| or octopus or killer whale does not.
|
| The question is not why the law is the way it is but the
| way that it should be. As it is now, It has rights
| because it is a human, we make our laws for ourselves and
| sometimes for other species, and I would definitely say
| that animals should have protections/rights (and they
| do). A law is also a custom or an enforced custom and
| certainly animals have customs. At least in america, many
| families take the toll of taking care of their family
| members with many deformities. the state should not
| enforce termination of these, but it should be optional
| for those that do take this unfortunate toll in their
| hands. (criminalization != decriminalization)
|
| > It also allows for the justification of cruelty against
| animals who can feel pain but aren't intelligent enough
| to pass some arbitrary test of intelligence.
|
| On the contrary, as a cognitive animal capable of pain.
| it indicates that you should not do so, I would say the
| capability of pain is the most important aspect to life.
| given that it is usually an indicator of the will to
| live.
|
| > To be clear, I don't know the answer, I am hesitant to
| label anything as "innately valuable". I think that there
| is however a sliding scale of what is "ethical".
|
| Neither do I. Abortion is euthanasia, and it certainly
| has merit. both economically speaking and in the sense of
| well being for humans. Given that human childbirth is
| probably one of the worst around on the animal kingdom.
|
| It would be nice if we just relegated pregnancies to
| artificial wombs, but until the technology is there. I
| guess we'll be having this abortion "debate" forever.
| xdennis wrote:
| > The problem is pro-life hardliners [...]
|
| No. Most people agree that abortion is acceptable early on
| (e.g. < 12 weeks). It's hardliners on both sides who are
| doing the most fighting because they either think that it's
| okay to abort up to the point of birth or that terminating a
| bunch of cells is murder.
|
| > They believe life begins at conception with no basis other
| than religion.
|
| It's not religion, it's science. A new human life (complete
| how it looks, what gender it's assigned, etc) begins at
| conception. It's not a full human, but it's slowly becoming
| one. The question is when it's too human to terminate.
| softcactus wrote:
| I'm about to bring you a chicken, do you consider HeLa
| cells to be a human life?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks
|
| > It's hardliners on both sides who are doing the most
| fighting because they either think that it's okay to abort
| up to the point of birth or that terminating a bunch of
| cells is murder.
|
| The pro-life hardliners are the ones currently overturning
| super-precedents and creating trigger laws in red states.
| This isn't hypothetical, it's going to cause real harm to
| poor women and poor children.
|
| Again, all these decisions are being made by pro-life
| hardliners aren't even willing to have a discussion AT ALL,
| many even believe that contraceptives are "killing babies".
| There's no basis behind their beliefs other than the bible.
| Most couldn't even tell you the stages of fetal
| development.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > There's no basis behind their beliefs other than the
| bible
|
| That is a bit unfair. An ultrasound is pretty compelling
| evidence.
| softcactus wrote:
| Can the state compel you to get an ultrasound to prove
| you are pregnant? No, that would be an invasion of
| privacy. That was the underlying logic of the Roe V. Wade
| ruling.
|
| Also, I could show you an ultrasound of a mouse or a
| dolphin at 6 weeks and tell you it's a human fetus and
| you'd believe it. "Well the human fetus has human DNA"
| ok, does that have any meaning at that stage of
| development when their features are all the same? At that
| point the distinctive trait that allows for abortion of a
| Dolphin but not a Human is the DNA, or that it's inside
| of a human mother. It's all arbitrary distinctions. You
| can have a real discussion about it but pro-lifers start
| and end at the Bible.
| golergka wrote:
| Absence of a correct answer doesn't mean that all answers are
| equally wrong. All we have to do is to become less wrong over
| time.
| softcactus wrote:
| What you are describing is science. The scientists can
| determine when life begins, but when life begins is
| ultimately irrelevant. The state already has no issue
| killing violent criminals, so even if scientists agree and
| say "a fetus is equivalent to a fully-developed human at 12
| weeks", the question will still be "is it ethical to allow
| the mother to terminate that human beings life?". At which
| point you start comparing the value of an unborn human life
| to the cost that raising a child imposes on society. Again,
| pro-lifers wont engage with any of this discourse. The
| blame lies with them.
| analog31 wrote:
| An interesting aside is that when sperm were discovered, it was
| hypothesized that each sperm carried a complete, miniature
| person, a "homunculus." The person became a fully formed
| _human_ life when God attached a pre-existing Soul. The Soul
| contained those things which separated us from the animals,
| such as moral and reasoning capacity if male. It was God 's
| intervention that marked the start of life.
|
| "Every sperm is sacred."
| DesiLurker wrote:
| thats the thing, we dont even know what sentient life means. we
| arbitrarily define it as human and nothing else (hence we are
| okay with killing billions of animals for food yearly, not
| debating that just making a point). so if we are not sure when
| the life begins indeed we should be more considerate of other
| factors/right that we may be impacting like womens right to
| bodily autonomy or even just safety.
|
| None of that matters to these zealots. taking a step back, if
| you look at it with your real world glasses (i.e.. not lawyer
| ones) you'll realize this is just a bunch of religious crowd
| trying to backdoor _their_ religion into law. I mean
| realistically how much of self doubt and introspection Trump
| crowd you think has had about this issue? How many of them do
| you think would even be participating in these debates except
| to 'trigger the libs'?
| bern4444 wrote:
| The difference is, there is no universal answer, everyone has
| their own beliefs and answers. Making the right to an abortion
| an individual decision allows everyone to decide for
| themselves.
|
| Banning that ability is the government deciding for you.
|
| This is a loss of individuality for everyone regardless if you
| can or ever have an abortion.
|
| This is how individual rights begin to erode.
| mkw2000 wrote:
| it is really sad how many people chime in on this issue with zero
| knowledge of the fact that some people NEED to get an abortion
| for health reasons
| cupofpython wrote:
| the supreme court did not ban abortion. It removed abortion as a
| legal right. It means people cannot use the power of the federal
| government to overrule their own state legislature on the topic
| of abortion.
|
| If you understand how the US Government works, then you
| understand that the Supreme Court cannot establish _ANYTHING_ by
| _removing_ laws. (ie overturning previous decisions).
|
| What the Supreme court did was allow for the POSSIBILITY of a
| fully Catholic US State to practice Catholic religion with
| respect to abortion. It ALSO allows a fully Jewish state to
| practice Jewish religion however they want with respect to
| abortion.
|
| They actual problem caused by overturning Roe v Wade is that some
| states who's laws are _already_ catholic will regain the power to
| stop abortions in their state. That 's it. California, New York,
| etc, are absolutely and completely unaffected by this decision,
| for example.
| bombcar wrote:
| > If you understand how the US Government works, then you
| understand that the Supreme Court cannot establish ANYTHING by
| removing laws. (ie overturning previous decisions).
|
| This was actually part of the issue:
|
| > After cataloging a wealth of other information having no
| bearing on the meaning of the Constitution, the opinion
| concluded with a numbered set of rules much like those that
| might be found in a statute enacted by a legislature.
|
| For way too long the entire political argument in the US on
| _way too many things_ has been punted to the Supremes to let
| the elected officials get out of any responsibility whatsoever.
| timbit42 wrote:
| So theocracies? Huge doubt there are any states where every
| citizen is of the same religion.
| cupofpython wrote:
| well, voting majority - not exactly every citizen.
|
| The US is an agreement. It is more comparable to the EU than
| it is Spain, or France, etc. Each state is meant to have
| autonomy relatively similar to a country, but are united
| together for purposes of national defense and human rights.
| that was the initial premise. it's expanded from there, but
| the constitution was a compromise.. states did not want to
| join the union just to transfer power from a king to a
| federal government.
|
| The heart of the Republican platform is upholding that
| compromise. The heart of the Democratic platform is that was
| then, this is now, we are a single country and need to
| centralize more power.
| pcj-github wrote:
| Dissenting opinion (which I agree) starts on page 148 of the PDF:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
| IndySun wrote:
| USA... Abortion illegal - Gov says you must have the kid. Guns
| legal - The biggest killer of kids in USA. From the country that
| self-proclaims as the greatest this is a low.
| cmurf wrote:
| On the one hand: Mifepristone + Misoprostol, you can get them
| mailed to you anywhere in the country, even if abortion is
| illegal in your state. https://twitter.com/AidAccessUSA
|
| On the other hand: I support impeaching these five justices for
| their deception claiming it was settled law before they were
| confirmed, rescinding a constitutional right purely for religious
| reasons, and thus violation of trust. This is the proper civil
| mechanism for accountability. And making Roe a federal statute.
| westcort wrote:
| This is a supreme court in search of the limits of its power. I
| hope they find what they are looking for.
| tzm wrote:
| Abortion tourism will emerge.
| Comevius wrote:
| This will debilitate and kill and a lot of women in conservative
| states, and it opens the door to potentially eradicating the
| self-autonomy of tens of millions of non-desirable people (women,
| racial and ethnic minorities, sexual minorities).
|
| Just another day of religious extremists and fascists crawling
| out of the woodwork, pretending to have a moral high ground. A
| lot of people here don't even know or care about how pregnancy
| works, what an embryo or a fetus is, or how extremely risky
| pregnancy is for humans because it evolved to be a crazy
| biological war.
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/why-pregnancy-is-a-biological-war-bet...
| areoform wrote:
| Scientists have shirked their responsibility around abortion. The
| vacuum and silence around this topic helped push towards this
| day.
|
| The "viability" debate, or the re-branded "when does this ball of
| cells become a person" debate, has been monopolized by
| philosophers and religious people. And as a result many women
| will die due to botched abortions
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerri_Santoro or the inability to
| get one in the case of complications (which are fairly common)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar .
|
| We can absolutely arrive, with a reasonable degree of certainty,
| when the ball of cells is capable of executing the processes we
| associate with consciousness. We can track the development of the
| neocortex, and monitor its activity to derive an answer to the
| consciousness question. We can do so via careful observation, and
| comparison with equivalent brain damaged patients, including
| those that we otherwise pull the plug on.
|
| For what is the moral difference (from a consequentialist,
| utilitarian standpoint) between taking previously conscious
| humans with minimal brain function off of life support and an
| abortion of a non-sentient and non-conscious fetus? There is
| none, except for the fact that, in the case of a uterus, a human
| being is forced to act as life support.
|
| Science can answer these questions. And do so with greater
| precision and accuracy over time. We can draw a map and arrive at
| a more enlightened conclusion. But the act of doing so, of so
| clearly putting a line down in the sand, makes most scientists
| uncomfortable. So they don't. And now many people will die
| because we created the vacuum that irrational belief filled.
|
| We stopped engaging. They never stopped fighting.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > For what is the moral difference (from a consequentialist,
| utilitarian standpoint) between taking previously conscious
| humans with minimal brain function off of life support and an
| abortion of a non-sentient and non-conscious fetus? There is
| non, except for the fact that in the latter, a human being is
| forced to act as life support.
|
| There is one obvious difference: in one case, the person's
| consciousness has been irreversibly destroyed. In the other
| case, the person's consciousness is imminent.
|
| From a utilitarian standpoint, the fetus has a considerable
| upside while the brain dead patient does not.
|
| Utilitarianism is largely unconvincing anyway, IMO. A much more
| convincing pro-abortion argument is how the unwanted fetus
| infringes on the rights of the mother.
| mike00632 wrote:
| Women aren't just "life support"; that is an inaccurate view as
| well.
|
| When a fetus is growing it takes from the womans body. For
| example, a woman's bones are dissolved so they can be
| repurposed to to fetal skeleton. The woman is literally giving
| up her body. The fetus is the woman's body in a literal way.
| She is not a passive incubator to something like an egg that
| has all it needs.
| onychomys wrote:
| Sure, blame the biologists instead of the religious goofballs
| who think that something becomes human at the instant of
| gametic fusion.
| mjh2539 wrote:
| I mean it's got to be _something_ ; if it's not (a) human,
| then what could it possibly be?
| onychomys wrote:
| It's definitely NOT human. For the first day or two, all
| cellular processes (basic cell metabolism, protein
| synthesis, that sort of thing) are controlled by
| extranuclear DNA that comes only from the egg. So instead
| of having a chromosome number of 2N=46 like all the somatic
| cells in your body, the embryo is functionally haploid.
|
| While that's going on in the cytoplasm, the nucleus is a
| real mess. Sometimes it's 1N, sometimes 2N, sometimes even
| 4N! If we accept that humans are a species because of our
| DNA, then there's just no way you could ever call that
| embryo human in the first 36ish hours post-fertilization. I
| don't know quite what you'd call it, but it's definitely
| not that.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| None of this matters because the majority (probably
| overwhelming majority) of pro-life people also don't believe
| settled science like evolution or that the earth is more than
| 6000 years old. If we can't reach consensus on those things,
| how is telling someone that believes a zygote has a human soul
| that its okay because it isn't conscious?
|
| Keep in mind that the protections provided by Roe and PP v.
| Casey only extended to 24 weeks. If scientists gave an answer
| to the question anywhere past 24 weeks then I don't see how it
| would move the debate even the tiniest smidge.
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210820111042.h...
|
| https://www.illuminateourworld.org/single-post/40-percent-of...
| areoform wrote:
| It's not the ardent pro-life people that I'm concerned about
| reaching, but most Americans who aren't that radical. The
| lack of scientists speaking out about abortion and bringing
| reason to the public discussion has led to a vacuum where the
| only voice they hear are either religious nuts or social
| activists trying to be heard. Social activists usually lack
| the scientific training and background to break it down and
| explain the problem.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Absolutely. No scientist was going to be able to convince
| these people that their pastor is wrong about how precious a
| fetus is.
| eointierney wrote:
| DesiLurker wrote:
| this is the conservative slight-of-hand democrats &
| intellectuals don't understand. Invoking originalism on a
| 250year old document is in very basic fundamental terms
| anchoring social progress to 2 centuries old thought.
|
| Add to that the Senate's massive favoring of 'underpopulated
| states' plus filibuster 60 and you basically get a deep
| understanding of the state US is in today.
| luckystarr wrote:
| The mid 2030s and 2040s will be the years of crime. That's when
| all the unwanted kids will "grow up" without affection.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Is this line of thinking materially different from being pro-
| death penalty?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It is if you don't consider a fetus to be a person.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Don't worry, we will have full pre-crime surveillance by then
| and you won't be able even think about farting without it being
| noted.
| caracustard wrote:
| Bad generalization and prejudice right there. While whether
| someone is brought up in an environment that encourages care
| absolutely influences the choices people make down the road,
| whether the person in question was "wanted" does not matter. I
| can't exactly back that up with some solid data but i think
| that many people know someone who is far from being an
| "unwanted" person but still made some bad choices in life.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Looks at racial break-down of abortions. Rereads parent
| comment.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| The problem is, in a word, poverty.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| voisin wrote:
| I believe there have been social studies showing the positive
| impact to crime by increasing access to abortion. I don't
| have citations or the time to look them up now, but I am
| pretty sure it is referenced in Freakonomics and possibly one
| of Gladwell's books.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Abortion rights have never been about liquidating future
| criminals. A correlation might exist, but the dissenting
| justices were not considering it.
| Clubber wrote:
| There's no way to tell for sure, because it's such a broad
| statistic. Other people have opined that the removal of
| lead gasoline was also a reason of the drop in crime rates.
| No one really knows what is causing it.
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The study you're speaking of (abortion lowering crime rates by
| preventing unwanted children from terrorizing the streets)
| remains unproven at best, despite oft being cited as settled
| research[0]
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...
| shagmin wrote:
| For anyone interested, the book Freakonomics had a chapter
| devoted to studying this as a factor that lead crime to drop
| from its peak in the early 90s US, approximately 20 years after
| Roe v Wade.
|
| Kind of a provocative study and you could make a similar case
| for leaded gasoline and other factors but nevertheless
| interesting.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Which basically boiled down to killing all the black kids
| made crime go down.
|
| (FWIW - I think most of the research now points to the
| decrease in leaded gas as being responsible for the crime
| decrease - see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis)
| lweber wrote:
| Move to Europe. If you work and/or live in the US your taxes are
| supporting this system.
| laverya wrote:
| Most of the USA will still have more permissive abortion laws
| than Europe even after the removal of Roe v. Wade. [0] Most of
| the EU restricts abortion after 12 weeks - _which is what the
| law at issue in this case does_.
|
| 0: https://hwfo.substack.com/p/us-europe-abortion-law-
| compariso...
| bambax wrote:
| If you're American your taxes are supporting this, wherever you
| go. For it to be different, you need to renounce citizenship.
| fhkatari wrote:
| I work for a company, headquartered in the Mid West, that has
| been very public in their support of LGBTQ rights, among other
| things. Do you think corporations should take a public stance in
| support of abortion rights? Will tech companies continue to flock
| to Texas, in what will become a very difficult environment for
| abortion?
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| >Do you think corporations should take a public stance in
| support of abortion rights?
|
| No. We already have enough corporate influence in the political
| sphere.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > Will tech companies continue to flock to Texas, in what will
| become a very difficult environment for abortion?
|
| Recruiting for tech in Texas has already taken a hit due fear
| around abortion (getting employees to move down there can be
| quite difficult).
|
| More broadly, I think this is likely to put a big damper on
| high-end knowledge work in conservative states. Educated people
| are overwhelmingly liberal. While you could certainly find a
| subset of knowledge workers who don't have an issue working in
| a state banning abortion, the difficulties with hiring and
| transfers probably won't pass a cost benefit analysis (again,
| we already see this in Texas).
| hotpotamus wrote:
| "Knowledge" worker in Texas here (native; didn't move here).
| I don't feel this affects me for a few reasons, but I will
| say that I'm also aware that 1. I can travel out of state,
| and 2. drugs are available online and there are drugs that
| can provide medical abortions - perhaps those can be put
| together.
|
| That said, in talking with a colleague this morning, we
| agreed that if the state does go completely crazy and manages
| to secede, we just want enough notice to sell our property so
| we can leave.
| davidgay wrote:
| > 2. drugs are available online and there are drugs that
| can provide medical abortions - perhaps those can be put
| together.
|
| And you are willing to risk going to prison for murder
| (that's what they will call it) if caught?
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Have you seen the recent news from Texas? You might have
| noticed that our police aren't all that effective.
| charwalker wrote:
| I'd assume the GOP leadership in TX will act in bad faith
| or for their protection first. If you have a single female
| friend or associate this ruling will impact you. It will
| have far reaching consequences beyond just abortion access
| including the possibility of IVR becoming illegal as well.
| We're about to see a huge slate of medical procedures and
| practices caught up in this ruling.
| matsemann wrote:
| I always find it a bit funny that HN/tech crowd is generally
| considered liberal, when I as a Norwegian feel opinions here
| are sooo conservative. Guess it depends on frame of
| reference. Democrats would probably be far to the right in
| Norway?
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| I'm definitely using the American frame of reference here.
| I'd totally agree most of my colleagues who self-describe
| as liberal would be conservatives through much of Europe.
| kansface wrote:
| No, it really depends on the issue - economics, speech,
| voting rights, gender rights, abortion rights. Of the
| later, Democrats are far to the left of Europeans.
|
| Also, I'll point out that HN (and SV) has a little "l"
| libertarian streak (entrepreneurship) which favors smaller
| government and personal accountability/agency.
| bitcurious wrote:
| After reading a bit about Austin this morning (but before this
| news) I was browsing zillow + google maps, trying to get a feel
| for the city. Basically I'm tired of winter. It's a total non-
| starter now though.
| major505 wrote:
| They will if they have some kind of tax relief.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Texas has no income tax. But the property tax functions as a
| backdoor income tax because there is rich school district to
| poor school district redistribution. Therefore property taxes
| are high in Texas, though not higher than, say, in New Jersey
| (which also has an income tax).
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > Do you think corporations should take a public stance in
| support of abortion rights?
|
| Some companies have even gone so far as paying for abortions.
| That's disgusting. It reveals that The Man doesn't want women's
| productivity to go down and would rather work them to the bone
| instead. Out of the kitchen and into the office? That might be
| a bad deal.
| _ph_ wrote:
| While I think that these kind of things shouldn't require a
| company to take any action in, this isn't "going so far as"
| in a country where medical care is basically tied to your
| job. If your company guarantees medical care, why is paying
| for an abortion anyhow different? But indeed I prefer a
| system of public health insurances which keep these matters
| independent of your employer.
| ctvo wrote:
| > Some companies have even gone so far as paying for
| abortions. That's disgusting. It reveals that The Man doesn't
| want women's productivity to go down and would rather work
| them to the bone instead. Out of the kitchen and into the
| office? Might be a bad deal.
|
| Or it could reveal that abortions, even in the best
| circumstances, cost money -- time off of work and travel
| expenses for example. Perhaps these companies support women
| having access to it regardless of their economic status.
|
| It'll blow your mind, but some companies even allow employees
| time off to vote in elections, partially for the same
| reasons.
| lesstyzing wrote:
| While I am pro-legalised abortion I think this is a separate
| kind of issue to LGBT rights, racial equality etc. LGBT
| rights/racial equality is about treating everybody equally.
| Almost no 'good' people are opposed to those things. There are
| plenty of good people who literally believe abortion is the
| murder of a baby. I disagree but I don't agree that it's an
| unreasonable opinion. Given that, I think companies taking a
| stance on it would cause a lot more division than when they
| take a stance on more clear cut social issues.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Almost no 'good' people are opposed to those things.
|
| That is an interesting perspective. You just called something
| like 100M or more Americans not good people. I am not being
| hyperbolic. Talk to them. On the surface they are friendly,
| easygoing, etc, but switch the topic to LGBT rights and
| listen. The very fact that they believe there is such a thing
| as "gay rights" tells you a lot. Good luck trying to educate
| them on how "cannot discriminate based on sexual preference"
| is not the same thing as giving gay people special rights.
| jbeam wrote:
| Those people also believe that LGBT people aren't "good
| people." Why shouldn't we return the favor?
|
| What special rights? The right to not get thrown in jail
| for being gay?
| lesstyzing wrote:
| >> You just called something like 100M or more Americans
| not good people
|
| Fair enough. So long as they believe they deserve more
| rights than another group of people, they're not good
| people. Hopefully they'll change their opinion. I've known
| plenty of people to change their opinion on this issue over
| the years and hopefully it'll continue on that trajectory.
| My point was more than on those issues it's simply one
| group that thinks another group does not deserve to be
| treated equally. With abortion it's more two sets of
| competing 'rights' - the woman and the foetus.
| throwaway11789 wrote:
| The general consensus here seems to be leaning in a particular
| direction, but I wanted to ask. How is it the state that's
| forcing a woman to be pregnant by banning abortion rather than
| the woman putting herself in that situation? My personal stance
| on this is that abortion is not a fundamental right, but it
| shouldn't be banned either. Abortion should be something a woman
| consults with her doctor, family, etc. about and they decide if
| it's the right choice or not. In cases of rape I 100% agree a
| woman should not be forced to carry the child to birth because
| the conception was against her will. But I feel it's
| unjustifiable that a woman going out and knowingly having
| unprotected sex can have an abortion as an easy way out. If you
| make a choice and know the repercussions you should have to live
| with them. I don't think forcing them to have the child is the
| best thing to do, but I think it's better than killing a child
| that was conceived due to someone else's negligence. And if you
| say that a fetus is not a child or not a human, I can see your
| viewpoint but I disagree. The way I look at is like a tree seed,
| sure the seed isn't a tree, but that seed will become a tree
| under normal circumstances given time. It's the same with a
| fetus, maybe it isn't a human currently, but it will, under
| normal circumstances, given enough time, become a human. Abortion
| is a very tricky thing to get right but I definitely don't think
| it should be up to the government one way or the other as to its
| legality.
| andsoitis wrote:
| What are the implications for IVF?
| pseingatl wrote:
| Is anyone bothered by the court's dissembling after the leak?
| "It's not final." True, but misleading. "No decision has been
| made yet." True, but misleading. The court voted to overturn Roe.
| The Chief Justice assigned Alito to write the brief. That was
| before the leak. At the time the leak was made, the court had
| already decided the case and lied about it.
| deviantbit wrote:
| Everyone is acting like this banned abortion, which it didn't. It
| is up to the state you live in. If you don't like the state's
| laws, then move.
|
| If you don't want to move, then when you get pregnant, go to a
| state where it is legal.
|
| American's cannot be inconvenienced. These 1st world problems are
| terrible.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > go to a state where it is legal.
|
| Except there are laws that allow one state to prosecute
| abortions in another. And SCOTUS will absolutely uphold these
| laws. They've already upheld the right for private citizens to
| sue people that they believe have had one.
| deviantbit wrote:
| This isn't true, and it is also unconstitutional. You cannot
| be held liable for an action you perform in one state, where
| it is legal, for a crime in another state.
|
| Just make stuff up why don't you.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| There are no laws prosecuting abortions done out of state.
| It's possible some will be passed but I also think they are
| a) impossible to enforce and b) won't be upheld by SCOTUS
| because they violate the dormant commerce clause.
| Miner49er wrote:
| That's the whole problem though, many Americans can't afford to
| move or even travel to another state for an abortion.
|
| And there's nothing stopping states from criminalizing
| traveling out of state for an abortion.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Actually two things stop states from doing that: right to
| travel and dormant commerce clause
| beeboop wrote:
| A 2020 study showed that nearly 70% of Americans have less than
| $1,000 stashed away in their bank accounts. 40% have less than
| $300. How are these people supposed to afford to take time off
| work, drive to another state, have an invasive medical
| procedure performed, and then drive back home and potentially
| miss another day of work for recovery? If they have difficulty
| doing that, imagine how much more difficult it'd be to
| literally move to another state, lose all your friends and
| family connections, displace your kids from their school and
| friends, lose your support network, and have to find new
| employment? All for the sake of something that should be a
| protected right. Your perspective is really lacking compassion.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| This is a good occasion to remember that most people in the US
| thinks that abortion should be legal [0], thus this decision
| purely appeals the white evangelical minority.
|
| [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-
| opini...
| laverya wrote:
| Do you have stats on views of abortion by trimester? Here's [0]
| one from last year, which finds that 54% of people think third
| trimester abortions should be illegal in _all_ cases - (EDIT:
| presumably) including health of the mother - and 65% think most
| or all abortions should be illegal in the second trimester.
|
| 0: https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-
| abort...
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > ... which finds that 54% of people think third trimester
| abortions should be illegal in all cases - including health
| of the mother - and 65% think most or all abortions should be
| illegal in the second trimester.
|
| I believe the poll from your source fails to make that
| distinction. From the article:
|
| > But Dr. Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and
| gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco,
| who supports abortion rights, cited research showing that
| Americans viewed second-trimester abortions more
| empathetically when told about some of the reasons why women
| seek them.
|
| So if asked if abortions should be legal in the third
| trimester, most people would jump to say "no", without
| considering the context.
| laverya wrote:
| And now we're playing the game of polls, where depending on
| what additional information you provide, people respond
| differently. The general point of "people will respond
| differently if you ask about abortion in general vs third
| (or second) trimester abortions in particular" remains.
|
| I'm sure your overall polls would change if you said it
| meant that a nearly-due baby could be aborted at will, too.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > The general point of "people will respond differently
| if you ask about abortion in general vs third (or second)
| trimester abortions in particular" remains.
|
| I don't think I understand. Are you looking for a blanket
| statement on all abortions?
|
| The former poll is not nuanced because it aims at
| providing demographic data. The latter does not - it de-
| aggregates sentiment based on trimesters, thus adding the
| circumstances should be considered.
| laverya wrote:
| I'm saying that polls can be twisted however you want, if
| you're willing to put in the effort. [0] How the question
| is framed is a large part of the effort, and what the
| quoted doctor was complaining about. (Specifically, he
| was complaining that things were not sufficiently twisted
| in the direction they found favorable)
|
| Disaggregating the question based on trimesters is one
| form of twisting. Asking only a single blanket "are you
| for or against the right of a woman to choose" is _also_
| twisting.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I still fail to see your point, as it seems that your
| proposition is just that polls aren't useful at all.
|
| Fact is though, most US citizens aren't against the
| _idea_ of abortion. We could be nitpicking in there all
| day long, but there is a majority who is not against it.
| uptown wrote:
| "In a solo concurring opinion, Thomas says the court should
| reconsider rulings that protect contraception, same-sex
| relationships, and same-sex marriage."
|
| https://twitter.com/fordm/status/1540338064324698112
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Wishing ill on an entire race to spite one man is not
| supportable.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Holy sh*t. Lawrence v Texas? Literally banning gay sex on the
| mind of American Conservatives
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I occasionally wonder just how high the prevalence of
| closeted homosexuals is amongst conservatives, given how
| strongly they seem to believe that sexual preference is a
| choice. The only logical conclusion is that at some point
| they chose.
| holmium wrote:
| Have you read (or "read"; I don't want to be responsible for
| your death lol) the Texas GOP platform[1] for this year? The
| first sentence in the "Homosexuality and Gender Issues"
| section is "Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice".
| And they follow it up with "we oppose any criminal or civil
| penalties against those who oppose homosexuality".
|
| They are rearing for another battle in the gay rights culture
| war.
|
| ----------
|
| [1] https://texasgop.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/06/6-Permanent-...
| echelon wrote:
| The Supreme Court positions to be elected positions.
|
| None of this is the will of the people.
| User23 wrote:
| Virtually nothing any branch of the federal government does
| is "the will of the people"[1]. But even if our government
| were a functioning representative republic with strong
| democratic traditions as it purports to be, the purpose of
| the courts will still be to act as a check on the will of the
| people, not just a cheerleader for mob rule.
|
| [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...
| voisin wrote:
| If I understand correctly, it now devolves to the states
| where elected people make the laws that apply.
|
| So the issue is really what the hell is wrong with the states
| where the people elected feel empowered to take rights away
| from half their populace.
| sumedh wrote:
| Republicans have always been against abortion, yet people
| vote for them, isnt that how democracy works? Major chunk
| of the US population dont support abortion and keep voting
| for politicians who support those beliefs.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Catholics and Evangelicals ... have always been against
| abortion
|
| FTFY
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is extrapolating too far. Many (perhaps most?)
| voters are single issue voters. Saying that all
| Republicans support banning abortion is not accurate;
| some people are Republicans for the tax breaks, etc.
| nightski wrote:
| I wonder how many voted republican in spite of abortion
| because of Roe vs. Wade. Given what happened today this
| could hurt republican support because it makes abortion a
| more direct election issue. I wouldn't necessarily just
| assume all republicans are pro-life.
| jquery wrote:
| The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection was
| supposed to end the patchwork system of having to live in
| the right state to be recognized as a full citizen.
| brycewray wrote:
| > So the issue is really what the hell is wrong with the
| states where the people elected feel empowered to take
| rights away from half their populace.
|
| As I just said in my chosen Mastodon instance:
|
| "Ever since today's Supreme Court decision was leaked, some
| have said that this oddly might hurt the Republicans in
| future elections -- i.e., they'll no longer have Roe v.
| Wade to use against the Democrats. However, this ignores
| what made today possible: the power of the Christian Right,
| particularly those whose votes won't be erased by some
| currently running for office on promising to make it harder
| for anti-Rightists to vote (or have their votes count)."
|
| Those of you who don't have a lot of exposure to that
| culture, and the way it has completely taken over a good
| chunk of American politics -- not to mention one of the two
| major U.S. political parties -- in the last forty-plus
| years, will find today a shock. And wait 'til you see what
| else they have in mind.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's pretty clear that the country is in for near-total
| Republican control of the federal government for a long
| time now, maybe indefinitely.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| Won't pro-lifers still vote for Republicans in order, to,
| you know, legislate pro-life laws? All this decision does
| is place the issue back in the hands of the legislative
| branch, where it should always have been. Now, it's up to
| you to vote for what you want.
|
| Of the following two forces, the Christian right and the
| atheist Marxist left, I promise you the latter is far
| more shocking, dangerous, and self-destructive to
| America.
| generj wrote:
| Remind me which side recently had a coup?
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| Remind me which side calls for violent overthrow of
| existing institutions as a foundational belief? Hint:
| it's not the Christian right.
|
| Remind me which side is threatening supreme court
| justices right now? That looks an awful lot like
| insurrection: https://news.yahoo.com/protesters-descend-
| amy-coney-barrett-...
|
| Remind me which side is planning to engage in acts of
| domestic terrorism this very weekend?
| https://aleteia.org/2022/06/24/department-of-homeland-
| securi...
|
| And if you say something like, "these people don't
| represent us," You can probably guess I'll respond: the
| small number of men who rioted at the capitol without any
| actual realistic plan to perform a coup don't represent
| us either.
|
| Leftist activists, unfortunately, are much smarter about
| what it takes to really overthrow a government, and
| they've been in it for the long haul for almost a century
| now.
| cr__ wrote:
| I "promise" it's the opposite so I guess everything
| cancels out.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| some papers claim that 24% of American voters are
| Catholics-or-similar at this time
| JasonFruit wrote:
| The Court is a counterbalance against the tyranny of the
| majority. It's specifically, intentionally undemocratic.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Now we have tyranny of the political minority. So much
| better.
| yeahNo88 wrote:
| Tyranny of a religious minority it is then!
|
| I've taken to defining nihilism as being so dedicated to an
| ephemera and philosophy, harm to real people is ignored.
|
| This decision gives states to impact interstate business.
| It controls what doctors and patients can discuss. So it
| goes a good long way to squashing other rights in deference
| to pudding brains traditions. They chose not with logic but
| delusion.
|
| Figurative identity preferences are being leveraged to
| directly control human agency.
|
| I don't owe coddling anyone else's sensibilities. There is
| no greater good. And I hope this society collapses around
| us and reminds the majority how meaningless their personal
| self image is to others.
| jquery wrote:
| "Tyranny of the minority" is even worse and that's what we
| are seeing now. This Court isn't upholding minority rights
| against the State, it's doing the reverse, taking away
| rights from minorities (poor women without easy access to
| travel to another state if necessary).
|
| We have six jurists with an extremist legal view called
| "originalism" which is "let's imagine I'm a white male in
| 1800, what would I think about X". The first Supreme Court
| decision to mention originalism was in 1994, when Scalia
| dissented because he thought juveniles should be executed.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| There are people who would dispute whether there's a
| helpless minority whose rights are being protected by
| this Court's decision. You can disagree on the
| resolution, but don't handwave away the almost unique
| conflict of rights abortion presents between the bodily
| autonomy of the mother and the right to life of the
| child. You'll convince nobody by proceeding so
| dishonestly.
|
| I'm not about to dignify such an obvious bad-faith
| argument as is represented by your parody of originalism.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| So what you are saying is that there is a huge gray area
| between a clump of cells and a child being born? Maybe
| even that pregnancy starts out nearly 100% a bodily
| autonomy issue and culminates in the life of a child?
|
| Sounds like a good argument against allowing late term
| abortions, and a good argument against banning them
| outright.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| That's a possible view, though not my own. I personally
| think it is going to remain contentious until,
| technologically, we can remove the conflict of rights by
| allowing the child to come to term outside the mother's
| body. It would be hard to support a right to kill the
| child when it could mature with no additional
| inconvenience to the mother.
| jquery wrote:
| My wife had a successful, "uncomplicated" pregnancy and
| has permanent lifelong physical and mental damage from
| it. Not that this is anyone's business, but apparently I
| have to share this private information because of all the
| extreme ignorance out there.
|
| It's hard to believe there is such ignorance out there
| that pregnancy isn't even considered an inconvenience by
| some men, let alone a life threatening event. If I can
| object to my corpse being used for organ donation to save
| lives, a woman should be able to object to her organs
| being used to support the extreme demands of a growing
| fetus. But now we are in the odd situation of corpses
| having more bodily autonomy rights than women.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I think I have not made my explanation clear to you,
| because what you have written, and should not have felt
| compelled to write, supports what I'm saying. I'm saying
| that abortion will cease to be an issue when we can,
| technologically, end the pregnancy without terminating
| the unborn life, avoiding exactly the situation you
| describe. I'm very sorry that your wife had to experience
| what she did.
| mike00632 wrote:
| You see a woman as an incubator of a "child" that has a
| right to life. This is biologically wrong and the fact
| that so many people share this view is an indictment of
| America's failed education system.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Even serious pro-choice scholars concede that a fetus is
| biologically a human life e.g., Peter Singer. If your
| argument is that a child is definitional not unborn then
| that is a semantic argument of no moral relevance.
| coldpie wrote:
| > The Court is a counterbalance against the tyranny of the
| majority.
|
| This is like an 8th grade textbook understanding of US
| government. It doesn't actually work that way.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Whether right or wrong, they have definitely provided a
| counterbalance against democracy. The Court has stood for
| what it believes are the rights of people who are unable
| to participate in democracy because they have not yet
| been born. They are, in the eyes of democracy, a minority
| of zero, though they number almost a million per year.
| Whether or not you or I agree with them, they have acted
| as a check on democracy.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| A "monitory of zero" clearly has no need to be protected
| by a legal system.
|
| Just like we don't legislate that you can't kill plants
| for the sake of the plant, a fetus spends up to 18 weeks
| in a non-sentient state where it has no subjective
| experience. It doesn't need protection since a non-
| sentient being can't suffer.
|
| Edit: it's also worth mentioning that many abortions
| happen at the zygote or embryo stage, before there is
| even a fetus.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| That worked well before it became just another body of
| partisan zealots. Now we have the tyranny of whichever
| partisan zealots have a run a good dumb luck.
| lokar wrote:
| No, the will of the people should be expressed as amendments
| to the constitution.
|
| It is a serious flaw is the US system that issues that carry
| supper majority support in the public for decades have no
| chance of making it into the constitution.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| The last amendment was passed 30 years ago, and the one
| before was 50 years ago. Maybe most of the politicians in
| charge only pay lip service to an issue, and don't have the
| will to die on a hill for anything, or leave anything for
| those who come after them.
| lokar wrote:
| I think it's a combination of it being too hard, and
| politicians "saving" issues, keeping them live, to
| motivate voters. Many times in the past 30 years the dems
| could have passed a federal law protecting abortion
| rights.
| influx wrote:
| As I understand it, at any point where the Democrats held the
| majority of the legislature (including now) they could have
| passed federal abortion legislation and this would be moot.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The federal government cannot pass a law that restricts the
| state and local governments from passing anti-abortion
| legislation. The only remedy is a constitutional amendment,
| and there have never been the votes for that.
| kpennell wrote:
| I think they would have to kill the filibuster to do that.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| The Senate is split 50/50 with two Dems blocking
| significant portions of the platform. Saying they have
| control is misrepresenting the current situation.
| influx wrote:
| And yet, the Senate just passed firearm legislation with
| support of some Republicans. But you're right, why try?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The Democrats don't have a filibuster-proof majority in the
| Senate.
|
| Any such legislation could be immediately undone if
| Republicans take things back.
|
| SCOTUS could strike it down, too.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > When liberal justices are in charge, they
| unconstitutionally force their will onto the people.
|
| One person having a right to do something is not forcing it
| on anyone else.
|
| > place the power back in the hands of the people.
|
| A majority of "the people" do not agree with this decision.
| In fact, they were appointed by someone who did not have
| majority support, by a party that represents a minority of
| the actual population.
|
| > The problem was activist judges making the Roe decision
| in the first place.
|
| You just got a handful of judges making decisions based on
| their regligious beliefs. Please explain to me how you see
| that as different than an original decision?
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| The judges forced their morality on everyone by saying
| the constitution gave a right to an abortion. The
| constitution does no such thing, meaning the judges were
| acting as activists, legislating from the bench, rather
| than doing their jobs correctly. If you are honest, you
| should be able to say both that you are pro-abortion and
| that Roe v. wade was possibly the worst supreme court
| decision of the 20th century.
|
| The secular argument against abortion is so incredibly
| simple: the unborn child has the right to life just as
| the mother does. Government is about managing the rights
| of everyone and balancing them when they come in
| conflict.
|
| And, finally, abortion is forced on our society in the
| sense that our tax dollars fund it, our tax dollars fund
| public schools that promote it, and, if the left have
| their way, insurance companies will be forced to cover
| it, possibly free of charge:
| https://noqreport.com/2021/02/09/california-bill-would-
| force...
| beeboop wrote:
| this reads like satire
| echelon wrote:
| > When liberal justices are in charge, they
| unconstitutionally force their will onto the people.
|
| Gay marriage, which I enjoy, is not being "forced" on
| anyone.
|
| A ban will affect green cards, force deportations and
| family breakups, and ruin the happiness of millions of
| Americans.
|
| My country, which I love, is kicking me in the gut because
| some people are "uncomfortable".
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >Gay marriage, which I enjoy, is not being "forced" on
| anyone.
|
| Tell that to bakers.
| echelon wrote:
| > >Gay marriage, which I enjoy, is not being "forced" on
| anyone. Tell that to bakers.
|
| > Tell that to bakers.
|
| One of the most fundamental aspects of my life is being
| threatened, and you're worried about other people being
| offended.
|
| Does my life offend you and are you using this proxy
| issue to more safely voice your opinion?
|
| First, this isn't you. None of the people in this story
| are you.
|
| Second, the gravity of my entire life being disrupted is
| far more serious.
|
| Third, if we really want to be particular, marriage is a
| separate issue from commerce.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I think you are reading into my comment more than you
| should and as a result are taking it as a personal
| slight.
|
| I am strictly saying it is being forced onto people in
| certain professions. This may or may not be justified,
| but it is happening.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| echelon wrote:
| > Like, are you serious?
|
| > Acceptance of gay marriage is being forced on everyone
|
| Wow. I'm sorry that my marriage to my loving wife is such
| a problem for you.
|
| Imagine saying that again but replacing gay with Black or
| interracial.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Acceptance of gay marriage is being forced on
| everyone...
|
| You could say this about almost every single civil right
| that hasn't been voted on in the past 60 years. Abolition
| of slavery, for instance.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > Acceptance of gay marriage is being forced on everyone
|
| Don't act like the victim because you're no longer
| allowed to victimize others.
|
| Let me try this sentence with some slight adjustments and
| see where we end up:
|
| - Acceptence of Black people is being forced on everyone
|
| - Acceptence of women working outside of the home is
| being forced on everyone
|
| - Acceptence of women being allowed to vote is being
| forced on everyone
|
| IF you think you are a victim for having to accept other
| people there is no helping you.
| [deleted]
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| Blacks gaining rights was done primarily via
| constitutional amendment and later civil rights acts, all
| passed by the legislative branch. Some believe the courts
| did in fact go too far during 60s.
|
| Women I believe were always allowed to work, so I'm not
| sure what this example has to do with anything?
|
| Women being allowed to vote was done via constitutional
| amendment, again, by the legislative branch.
|
| If you think marriage should be redefined and repurposed
| so it is not primarily about rearing one's own children,
| then, by all means, get it redefined, but, do it via
| legislation, not judicial activism.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Like, are you serious? Judicial fiat literally overruled
| the will of the people and forced concealed carry to be
| legal.
|
| New York decided over 100 years ago that people shouldn't
| be allowed to conceal carry without a good reason and now
| a bunch of activist judges have forced concealed carry on
| everyone.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Acceptance of gay marriage is being forced on everyone
|
| Let's follow this line of reasoning to it's logical
| conclusion.
|
| What if someone decides that acceptance of your religion,
| race and ethnicity is also being forcen on everyone? What
| if they get some funny ideas about Lebensraum?
| troyvit wrote:
| Then does the fact that the constitution allows different
| religions in the U.S. "force" the Catholic church to not
| provide communion to non-believers?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > When liberal justices are in charge, they
| unconstitutionally force their will onto the people. When
| conservative justices are in charge, they just undo the
| damage of the liberal justices and place the power back in
| the hands of the people.
|
| I'm sorry, who forced you to have an abortion?
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > public schools... sell abortions to children
|
| And I thought hallucinogens was a left-wing shtick!
|
| > The left have grown militant
|
| So let me get this straight, the year is 2022, when the
| Soviet union is gone, the Chinese Communist Party is
| practicing free market, the percentage of unionised
| workforce is the lowest it's been since 1917 and the
| effective corporate tax rate is the lowest it's been in
| 70 years - this, here, is the time of left-wing world
| order and militarism?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > The government also forces me...
|
| You have the alternative of dropping from the world and
| stop using all things paid with your taxes.
|
| > The left have grown militant, and increasingly want to
| force their world view on everyone else.
|
| I'm curious to know exactly _what_ harms you about gay
| marriage or abortions, other than your feelings.
|
| On one side, we have people gaining rights, whereas on
| the other, there are people who don't agree with it. And
| I'm having a hard time understanding why your feelings
| are supposed to have more weight in a society, than their
| rights.
|
| You frame this in a way so it is about tax money, but
| frankly, there is no possible tax system where people
| only pay for what they want.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Do you believe that miscarriage is manslaughter? If a
| woman smokes while pregnant, should that be a crime?
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| SCOTUS in 73 were not full of "activist judges".
| rrradical wrote:
| They literally just overturned gun regulations that some
| states lawfully enacted. You're cherry picking your views
| as much as the court is cherry picking their reading of the
| constitution.
| tomschlick wrote:
| They overturned "may issue" laws where you could meet all
| the training and qualifications to legally carry but a
| state official could make an arbitrary judgement call
| based on if you had a "good reason" to carry.
|
| All states with "shall issue" are still in effect because
| its a straight here are the requirements, if you meet
| them and are not a prohibited person, you get your
| permit.
|
| Also, the right to bear arms is explicitly enumerated in
| the constitution, so taking that right away isn't up to
| the states. The right to an abortion is not. So it goes
| to each state to decide.
| rrradical wrote:
| It's not explicitly enumerated more than anything else
| we're talking about. It's always up to interpretation.
| Does the constitution say where to draw line between me
| bearing a knife and a nuke? Nope, 'arms' is defined
| conveniently in the eyes of whoever's in power when this
| is decided. That's how all of this works!
| Aunche wrote:
| Roe v. Wade wasn't the will of the people. If the will of the
| people is to make abortion legal, they would vote for
| politicians that make abortion legal. In Mississippi, they
| clearly voted for the opposite.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| More than 60% of the country wants roe levels of abortion
| rights.
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/08/29/u-s-
| public-c...
|
| It can't happen because 30% of republican primary voters
| are evangelicals, so every republican will vote against
| abortion protection, even if most of their constituents
| want it.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| So wouldn't a granular authority be better than a nation
| wide ruling?
|
| It would serve people better.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| It's certainly a tricky question. How granular should we
| get? People's actions in other states still affect
| everyone in the country. I don't want unwanted children
| to exist in this country, they require government
| handouts and become a drag at a much higher rate. Plus
| kids are smart, they realize they're unwanted and that
| sucks. Since those people use tax dollars that I pay
| should I not have a say?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| You're specifying your opinion (which is reasonable), but
| that's orthogonal to the _rights_ of the people that live
| in that state and vote according to the _rights_ they
| wish to exercise.
|
| If state A wants to ban abortion based on what their
| constituency wants, isn't that _exactly_ how democracy
| works?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| If country A wants to ban banning abortion based on what
| their constituency wants, isn't that exactly how
| democracy works? Why should local vs federal constituency
| matter more?
| aftbit wrote:
| Note though that the majority opinion itself specifically calls
| out these cases several times as different from abortion
| because they do not result in the termination of a potential
| life. Here is one specific quote:
|
| Unable to show concrete reliance on Roe and Casey them- selves,
| the Solicitor General suggests that overruling those decisions
| would "threaten the Court's precedents holding that the Due
| Process Clause protects other rights." Brief for United States
| 26 (citing Obergefell, 576 U. S. 644; Law- rence, 539 U. S.
| 558; Griswold, 381 U. S. 479). That is not correct for reasons
| we have already discussed. As even the Casey plurality
| recognized, "[a]bortion is a unique act" be- cause it
| terminates "life or potential life." 505 U. S., at 852; see
| also Roe, 410 U. S., at 159 (abortion is "inherently dif-
| ferent from marital intimacy," "marriage," or "procrea- tion").
| And to ensure that our decision is not misunderstood or
| mischaracterized, we emphasize that our decision con- cerns the
| constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in
| this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents
| that do not concern abortion
|
| https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/supreme-court-abortio...
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| No one was surprised.
| jquery wrote:
| These are next up on the chopping block and the same logic used
| to overturn Roe v Wade can be used to overturn those. Thomas is
| merely voicing that reality instead of playing coy like other
| reactionary justices.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| This being a solo opinion is encouraging that they won't
| overturn every due process case.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| There are, IIRC, forced sterilization laws that depended on
| RvW, so perhaps those are back in fashion too.
| pjscott wrote:
| Take heart! The majority ruling explicitly says that its
| reasoning does _not_ apply to those, and goes into detail
| about why those rulings are different.
| dwater wrote:
| The majority also said in congressional testimony that Roe
| was settled, and then changed their minds when they had the
| power to overturn it.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, better hurry up while the conservatives still have the
| overwhelming majority on the court. You never know what the
| future brings...
| giarc wrote:
| Rich given he is a black man married to a white women. Cherry
| picks cases for same-sex marriage but not cases allowing inter-
| racial marriage.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| It's an interesting sub-case of Dunning-Kruger that people
| with consciences and integrity try to shame people like
| Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito about hypocrisy. They
| project onto them attributes they _do not care_ about; their
| logic is that Loving impacts Thomas and Griswold,
| Olbergefell, and Lawrence do not. They dislike gay people and
| feminists, and things that hurt them are good. Things that
| hurt them are bad. Just look at the _stunning_ hypocrisy on
| Bruen. It says in plain English: "well regulated militia",
| and they can't infer a right to regulate firearms by states
| there... but they can't find a right for a basic medical
| procedure in the Due Process Clause. I'm not being
| uncharitable, just read the majority decision. They can't
| hide behind inconsequential dissents now, their shitty
| jurisprudence is front and center. They can't argue on
| merits, so they appeal to a prior history that never existed.
| It is an embarrassing episode for those of us that follow
| Supreme Court decisions, and it's a tragic episode for those
| whose human rights they are taking away (and their loved
| ones).
| HideousKojima wrote:
| In Thomas's mind, one has long-standing historical precedence
| where the other doesn't.
|
| Interracial marriage has existed for pretty much all of human
| history (though race as a concept likely didn't, at least not
| the way it is perceived in modern times). Heck you even have
| Moses marrying an Ethiopian woman and his siblings spoke out
| against him over it and were punished by God for it (see
| Numbers chapter 12).
|
| Gay marriage, on the other hand, has near zero historical
| precedence outside of a few cases with Roman emperors and
| stuff like that.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Ignoring the fact that originalism as practiced is an
| embarrassing judicial philosophy,
|
| > Interracial marriage has existed for pretty much all of
| human history
|
| is not the answer to the question originalism is asking. It
| asks whether there is a historical precedence for
| _protecting_ that action as a right.
|
| You don't need to look any farther than this very ruling!
| Abortion has been practiced since the beginning recorded
| history (and likely much longer) and books like the bible
| even instruct you on how to perform one. That history has
| no bearing on Alito or Thomas.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >books like the bible even instruct you on how to perform
| one
|
| Not really, that depends on which translation of Numbers
| 5 you're looking at. It's not clear at all that the
| "Ordeal of Bitter Water" was supposed to induce a
| miscarriage.
| liminal wrote:
| If GP is in fact referring to the _sotah_ , then it would
| contradict their argument even more because it is
| explicitly the husband having power over the woman's body
| without needing her consent or even any justifying
| evidence.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_bitter_water
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > then it would contradict their argument
|
| to be clear, its pretty irrelevant to the argument
| because the bible is just one such example of the history
| of abortion. There are hundreds more and if it would help
| you can pretend I mentioned one of those instead.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > In Thomas's mind, one has long-standing historical
| precedence where the other doesn't.
|
| That would be an anomaly in setting judicial precedent. If
| legal precedent was formally acknowledged for historical
| reasons, then we would be having a really long conversation
| on civil rights, _all_ civil rights.
|
| And the issue may not be gay marriage, but straight up
| sodomy laws, which were introduced as religious inspired
| laws, most extensively Judeo-Christian. For these to stand,
| we would need to ignore the separation of church and state.
| celticninja wrote:
| Slavery has historical precedence. Wtf does that matter?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Well... we actually have a constitutional amendment
| directly banning slavery, and no such amendment for
| interracial marriages which are never mentioned
| constitutionally. It's easy to resolve from a purely
| constitutional perspective.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| From a purely judicial perspective, slavery is explicitly
| abolished in the US Constitution, via amendment.
|
| The approach that Thomas favors is "text, history, and
| tradition". The words - as written - taken in light of
| what the author(s) intended and what was happening at the
| time.
| jjgreen wrote:
| Except for prisons
| jacobolus wrote:
| The approach that Thomas (and the court majority) favors
| is "do whatever I personally want, then hunt for a
| justification, however tortured."
| maxerickson wrote:
| With modern medical knowledge, abortion is safe. Does
| that make an unwanted pregnancy forced labor?
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/society/abortion-
| ethics-ge...
| whoahwio wrote:
| > Gay marriage, on the other hand, has near zero historical
| precedence outside of a few cases with Roman emperors and
| stuff like that.
|
| Unsure if you're presenting that as the human history that
| exists "in Thomas's mind" or actual history
| giarc wrote:
| Lawrence is a sodomy case. Can't tell me people just
| figured that out in the past 50 years.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| And laws against sodomy have... you guessed it... long-
| standing historical precedence. Though in the case of
| sodomy laws banning it aren't as historically universal
| as the practice of interracial marriage was.
| showerst wrote:
| Loving v. Virginia was decided in 1967.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Abortion also has a deep historical precedent. People have
| been doing them for at least a thousand years.
|
| Gay marriage has existed for as long as marriage has, it's
| just best documented when it involves emperors.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_same-
| sex_marriag...
|
| But you know what doesn't have a long historical
| precedence? Automatic weapons, or protecting money as
| speech.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Money has been used for speech since the invention of
| money.
|
| I'll grant you automatic weapons though
| BatFastard wrote:
| Semi automatic
| xdennis wrote:
| > Abortion also has a deep historical precedent.
|
| It has, but not as a right. The Hippocratic oath
| specifically bans it:
|
| > Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause
| abortion.
|
| -- Hippocratic Oath (AD 275, or earlier)
| cryptonector wrote:
| Just to be clear, no SCOTUS case has yet stated that
| citizens are entitled to own fully automatic firearms,
| and it seems to me exceedingly unlikely that they would.
| Heller talks about how to decide what kinds of firearms
| can be prohibited, and strongly indicates that you can't
| ban 9mm handguns because they are the most popular
| firearm for self-defense and so on. It's hard to see how
| one can extend Heller and this case to say that you
| cannot prohibit fully automatic firearms.
| kennywinker wrote:
| The constitution was written in 1787. Guns were all
| muzzle loaded at that time. The automatic/semi-automatic
| distinction is meaningless to the constitution. Why would
| it draw a line at automatic and not at post 1820
| percussion cap weapons?
| joshuaheard wrote:
| The "it wasn't invented at the time they wrote the
| Constitution, so the Constitution doesn't apply to it"
| argument has been debunked long ago. Otherwise, freedom
| of speech would only apply to parchment and quill pens.
| The whole point of a court is to interpret the
| Constitution with new facts and situations that arise.
| kube-system wrote:
| Originalism was rejected by the court for the longest
| time, but we have since appointed new judges to the court
| who don't reject those arguments. They used originalist
| arguments to overturn the NYC gun ban yesterday.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" The whole point of a court is to interpret the
| Constitution with new facts and situations that arise."_
|
| You're describing the "living constitution"[1] view,
| which has not been the dominant position among Supreme
| Court justices for some time.
|
| Now they're all "strict constructionists"[2], who think
| the opposite of what you describe: that the constitution
| should be interpreted just as it was written.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Constitution
|
| [2] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_constructionism
| [deleted]
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| Abortion has existed for pretty much all of human history,
| too.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| And laws against abortion have existed for most of human
| history as well. Most haven't been outright bans on it,
| but there have been plenty of rules about who can get
| them and how all the way back to Hammurabi.
| [deleted]
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > Most haven't been outright bans on it, but there have
| been plenty of rules about who can get them and how all
| the way back to Hammurabi.
|
| This sounds like it needs a source.
|
| As far as I understand, anti-abortion laws started
| getting traction in the 1800s. Before that, these were
| scattered and mostly religious inspired. Also, Hammurabi
| doesn't make any references to voluntary abortions.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> As far as I understand, anti-abortion laws started
| getting traction in the 1800s. Before that, these were
| scattered and mostly religious inspired.
|
| The court found otherwise, you can read the majority's
| evidence in their opinion at https://www.supremecourt.gov
| /opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf starting on page 17:
|
| "The "eminent common-law authorities (Blackstone, Coke,
| Hale, and the like)," Kahler v. Kansas, 589 U. S. ___,
| ___ (2020) (slip op., at 7), all describe abortion after
| quickening as criminal. Henry de Bracton's 13th-century
| treatise explained that if a person has "struck a
| pregnant woman, or has given her poison, whereby he has
| caused abortion, if the foetus be already formed and
| animated, and particularly if it be animated, he commits
| homicide." 2 DeLegibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae 279 (T.
| Twiss ed. 1879); see also 1 Fleta, c. 23, reprinted in 72
| Selden Soc. 60-61 (H. Richardson & G. Sayles eds. 1955)
| (13th-century treatise)."
|
| They go on for a few pages going over common law before
| discussing the historical record in the US.
| anon291 wrote:
| Equal protection cannot protect that which is unequal. For
| example, I doubt an equal protection challenge to unequal
| lengths of maternity / paternity leave would stand, given the
| obvious difference in what's happening. The sexes, when it
| comes to things like business participation and innovation,
| may be equal in ability. However, if one views marriage as a
| precursor to reproduction -- the historical view of marriage
| -- then it's quite clear that the sexes are not equal,
| whereas the races (for whatever conception of race you have)
| are.
|
| It has been abundantly clear to everyone that a black man can
| impregnate a white woman. And a black woman can have children
| with a white man. If this act (reproduction) is what marriage
| is about, then the sexes are not equal, and thus not worthy
| of equal protection. A man cannot impregnate a man. Whereas,
| any race can impregnate / be impregnated by any other race as
| far as we can tell.
|
| If you have evidence to the contrary (that both sexes are
| identical when it comes to reproduction, which is the
| historical view of marriage Thomas may adhere to; or that
| various races cannot interbreed), then please do share.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| You're not suggesting this, but your line of reasoning can
| be applied to prevent people who are sterile from getting
| married.
|
| Couples without children can adopt children, regardless of
| the gender of the parents.
| anon291 wrote:
| Historically, those with obvious sterility (castrated
| men, impotent men, women without vaginas) could not get
| married. In the Catholic church, which still adheres to
| roman marriage laws, these are absolute impediments to
| marriage. In fact, permanent impotence is an impediment
| to marriage in many US states today. A marriage can be
| undone if the man was found to be impotent before the
| marriage was contracted, and the impotence is permanent
| medically.
|
| Here's a Utah law firm offering advice on how to annul
| your marriage should you have found the man you married
| to be unable to have sex: https://www.isfma.com/law-and-
| order/when-ending-a-marriage-o...
|
| Here's a review of case law in BC from the 2000s:
| https://disinherited.com/family-law-matters/annulment-
| for-no...
|
| Scientifically, one cannot know if you're sterile until
| you've tried. There's no 'test' for sterility that truly
| works or that there hasn't been an exception too.
| Legally, once a marriage is fully consummated, it's more
| permanent than if it weren't. Historically, a marriage
| that was consummated could not be dissolved and was
| considered permanent at that point, so even if you later
| found out (usually after many years) that you couldn't
| have kids, the marriage would continue. Similar to how
| old people stay married.
|
| I'm giving an historical view on marriage. Not saying how
| things should be. You seem incredulous at this view, but
| it was the prevailing view of marriage in Europe and the
| West for thousands of years.
| anthony_romeo wrote:
| What do you actually believe then?
| anon291 wrote:
| AlexandrB wrote:
| By this logic, should marriage between a man and a woman
| who cannot conceive be protected? Why or why not?
|
| > However, if one views marriage as a precursor to
| reproduction -- the historical view of marriage...
|
| The historical purpose of marriage is the exchange/pursuit
| of status and resources[1]. Reproduction was an inevitable
| outcome of lack of contraceptives. The idea of reproduction
| being the _primary_ purpose of marriage is pretty recent.
|
| [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200505/marr
| iage-...
| anon291 wrote:
| 'Cannot conceive' is a difficult definition, since you
| can't know until you've tried in many circumstances.
| Historically in the West, consummation of the marriage
| rendered it permanent. But anyway.
|
| Historically, and actually still today, if you have
| actual reasons you can't conceive (for example, if a man
| cannot get an erection due to permanent and incurable
| impotence), then yes, the marriage can be declared
| anulled. Annulment is different from divorce because it
| makes it such that the marriage never existed at all at
| anytime. In other words, yes, certain conditions
| preventing conception can be used to claim that a
| marriage was fraudulent.
|
| In certain legal jurisdictions, a castrated man cannot
| marry. While that may not always be true today, it has
| been the case historically. Prior to the modern day,
| people did operate under the assumption that those who
| certainly could not conceive could not marry, but of
| course, they didn't have the full understanding of
| conception we do.
|
| > The historical purpose of marriage is the
| exchange/pursuit of status and resources
|
| Yes, and the purpose of status and resources is to pass
| those along to your children. Also your article mainly
| talks about 'love' and marriage not reproduction.
|
| > The idea of reproduction being the primary purpose of
| marriage is pretty recent.
|
| This is completely baseless. Thomas Aquinas writes about
| the purpose of marriage as being for procreation. Given
| that at the time he wrote he represented an organization
| that represented the majority of moral thought in
| Europe... it's hard to actually believe these ridiculous
| claims. Moreover, status and resources were the main
| pursuit of the rich. The poor still married... usually
| for kids.
|
| Source: https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5049.htm
|
| > It would seem that the "sacrament" is not the chief of
| the marriage goods. For the end is principal in
| everything. Now the end of marriage is the offspring.
| Therefore the offspring is the chief marriage good.
|
| Given that Aquinas is also pulling from historical
| sources (in this cases the Sentences by Peter Lombard),
| it's extremely likely this idea -- written very clearly
| in the 13th century -- originated well before then.
| What's modern is the claim that the chief aim of marriage
| in previous centuries was status / resources. Everyone in
| previous centuries understood that the way in which
| marriage produced those goods was children. A woman from
| one family marrying into another noble family would have
| little claim over her new status if the couple were
| unable to produce offspring. If a man had no offspring to
| inherit, the status and resources would end.
|
| MORE SOURCES FROM EVEN EARLIER
|
| In the 5th century, Augustine of Hippo clearly indicates
| in his treatise 'On the Good of Marriage' that offspring
| are one of three benefits of marriage (along with
| faithfulness and the sacrament of matrimony itself). In
| the summa, Aquinas attempts to argue which of these is
| the 'chief' good of marriage. Thomas believes the
| sacrament of matrimony itself is the chief good. Now,
| most here don't necessarily have the religious view of
| marriage (nor do they need to), but aside from the
| sacrament, it's faithfulness and offspring that remain.
| Nowhere there is status and power. And these men are
| again writing on the predominant moral system of the
| Western world for the past thousand years.
|
| Going to secular philosophers, Aristotle (from whom
| Aquinas derived a lot) also consistently writes that
| marriage is for children. His other aims of marriage are
| community stability and pleasure. Again, nowhere does
| status and power appear.
| tootallgavin wrote:
| race is a belief
| tootallgavin wrote:
| The concentration of melanin in one's skin is not important
| foodforthots wrote:
| Principal component analysis over genotypes and
| phenotypes inevitably reveals major differences along the
| axes commonly known as race.
| hemogloben wrote:
| Not a belief, just totally consistent originalism. Well
| known fact the founders supported interracial marriages.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It's a well-known fact among constitutional scholars that
| the founders supported abortion too. https://www.washingt
| onpost.com/history/2022/05/15/abortion-h...
|
| This isn't about originalism. This is about the sitting
| judges' religious beliefs.
| peteradio wrote:
| Read that article and it does not give any founders
| opinion on the subject.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| You're right. i posted the wrong article. The point of
| that article is that abortion was so widespread and
| unregulated that most founders wouldn't even think it
| worth their time to write down their opinion about it.
|
| This is the droid you're looking for:
| https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099542962/abortion-ben-
| frank...
|
| It reiterates the thesis of the first article: "It just
| wasn't something to be remarked upon. It was just a part
| of everyday life."
| judge2020 wrote:
| For reference, his opinion stated "we should reconsider all
| of this Court's substantive due process precedents", while:
|
| > Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil
| rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court
| ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the
| Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth
| Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I think it's fair to say it's not clear that without
| substantive due process Loving would have been ruled the
| same.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Well, it's doubtful that Thomas wouldn't find a way to
| sustain the ruling in Loving w/o using substantive due
| process. I mean, for obvious reasons.
| treis wrote:
| Equal protection is not substantive due process. Gay
| marriage & interracial marriage are on far firmer ground
| because of the right to "equal protection of the laws". Not
| that the conservative wing won't try but they're going to
| have to torture logic to do it.
|
| Substantive due process is far shakier. It's Justices
| deciding what rights they think people should have and then
| working backwards as best they can to justify them. The
| back to back gun rights & abortion rulings lays it bare.
| There's just no intellectually honest way of finding a
| right to an abortion but not a right to bear arms.
|
| IMHO, the substantive due process was the wrong way about
| this. It was a shaky foundation and as more rights were
| found the logic got shakier. They should have used the
| right to peacefully assemble and based most of these
| substantive due process cases on them.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" they're going to have to torture logic to do it"_
|
| This is literally 99% of a Supreme Court justice's job.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| They just tortured logic in the past few days. They
| removed Roe because they decided that amendments that
| have been interpreted for decades to give people the
| right to privacy don't actually do that textually at the
| same time that they struck down a NY law because they
| claim that people have the right to defend themselves,
| which is nowhere to be found anywhere in the
| Constitution.
| djbebs wrote:
| Did you miss the second amendment?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Only _District of Columbia v. Heller_ decided that the
| right to bear arms was independent of an official
| militia. No doubt such ruling could eventually be
| overturned by SCOTUS if they so choose.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| [deleted]
| Vvector wrote:
| Thomas - "...in future cases, we should reconsider all of this
| Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold,
| Lawrence, and Obergefell. ... we have a duty to "correct the
| error" established in those precedents"
|
| Griswold - contraceptives
|
| Lawrence - same-sex sexual relations
|
| Obergefell - same-sex marriage
| rob74 wrote:
| I hope all current Republican voters who are in a same-sex
| relationship or are using contraceptives remember this when
| they vote in November...
| cronix wrote:
| Just like how the people who are upset about this ruling
| can be upset that when their party controlled all 3
| branches numerous times, they never put abortion into the
| constitution to firmly protect it, or the other "rights"
| you mentioned. Instead they use it as an emotional club
| every election to get votes, but did nothing to protect it
| when they had the power to do so.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Your comment trivializes how difficult it is to pass a
| constitutional amendment.
|
| An amendment on an issue this polarizing would never get
| the requisite support from enough states, no to mention
| that it doesn't even matter if you control three branches
| of government to pass an amendment, only Congress is
| involved in the process.
| toyg wrote:
| The political point is valid, though. There have been
| multiple windows for Democrats to pass federal laws that
| would have helped solidify these rights. Nothing was
| done, because cultural arguments help both sides in the
| electoral theatre.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Except it isn't valid, because while there was a Supreme
| Court precedent, such a law would be superfluous, and
| while there now isn't, such a law would've be repealed
| the moment republicans regain control of the congress.
|
| Do you really think that a Republican controlled Congress
| for the majority of the 2010s would have allowed such a
| law to remain on the books?
| toyg wrote:
| _> such a law would be superfluous_
|
| Do you really think no superfluous law is ever passed...?
| The books are full of them.
|
| _> such a law would've be repealed the moment
| republicans regain control of the congress_
|
| Maybe, or maybe it would have increased Democratic
| majorities and forced Republicans to face a politically
| dangerous repeal or even a major policy switch.
|
| Politicians are ready to go with the flow... see for
| example gay marriage in the UK, which was cautiously
| introduced by Labour as a separate formulation and then
| brought into full existence, with great fanfare, by a
| Conservative Party that had been staunchly against it for
| decades prior.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > Do you really think no superfluous law is ever
| passed...?
|
| A comment ago you were complaining about political
| theater, how is passing superfluous laws anything but
| political theater?
|
| > Maybe, or maybe it would have increased Democratic
| majorities and forced Republicans to face a politically
| dangerous repeal or even a major policy switch.
|
| This suggests to me that you aren't very familiar with
| the last 50 years of American political history.
| [deleted]
| sseagull wrote:
| > they never put abortion into the constitution to firmly
| protect it
|
| Neither party has had the votes to do that in a while
| (2/3rds in both the House and the Senate). It must also
| be ratified by 3/4ths of the states (38 right now).
|
| Not going to happen for a long time.
|
| Edit: Quick scan show the last time a party had 2/3rds
| majority in both was 1965-1967 (https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat...)
| noasaservice wrote:
| The number you're looking for is 3/5 . And they did
| codify that one.
|
| The founders had no qualms about strongly
| disenfranchising people. The founders were _NOT_ good
| people by any measurement.
| zht wrote:
| the existence of groups like the log cabin Republicans make
| this seem unlikely...
| klyrs wrote:
| Log Cabin Republicans are no longer welcome in the party,
| at least not universally -- they were banned from the
| Texas Republican Convention.
| [deleted]
| voisin wrote:
| So doesn't this simply create two Americas, those with
| regressive laws and those with progressive laws, and people can
| choose between them and the market will show which laws attract
| people that create economic value?
|
| I see half of the US becoming economically fallow as a result
| of this decline into dystopia.
| maccolgan wrote:
| How did you even think there was one America?
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| I see both.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Yes, which will make the red areas redder and blue areas
| bluer and further perpetuate the national political division.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| Well, poor people are less likely to be able to travel to get
| abortions where it's legal. So higher infant mortality,
| higher maternal mortality, and more kids in the foster
| system, putting a strain on a likely already small (because
| red state) budget.
|
| But otherwise, I agree, this will just further the red
| states' economic bankruptcy.
| matthewfelgate wrote:
| Sorry but the USA is mental.
|
| Why have a unelected supreme court making political decisions?
| remarkEon wrote:
| I'm assuming you're not from here. I know the Opinion is >200
| pages, but it's pretty clear that SCOTUS is doing exactly what
| you want: abortion regulations are returned to the State
| legislatures, where the people's elected representatives get to
| make them - not the Court.
| timbit42 wrote:
| If it were elected it would be more political. Perhaps a better
| way would be to allow each party to prioritize a list of
| potential judges and appoint the one closest to the middle of
| each list.
| rory wrote:
| Agreed, the legislative branch should push through a right to
| abortion matching the European standard (12-14wks). If our
| politicians were less cynical and self-serving, this would have
| already happened in redundancy to _Roe_.
| dimator wrote:
| The real question is, what kind of draconian laws will they start
| hatching to make abortion tourism (flying to a state where it's
| legal, then coming back) illegal. How do you legislate that? Are
| people still free to go to another state if they want? Are they
| getting arrested as soon as they come back?
|
| The next case they'll hear is about Mississippi v Some Nonprofit
| That Pays For Abortion Flights.
| kgwxd wrote:
| My guess is they'll try to outlaw home pregnancy test and start
| requiring doctors to report any positives. Wouldn't be
| surprised if someone already tried to pass such a bill
| somewhere.
| curiousllama wrote:
| This is a good point - it's how the Texas law was written.
|
| And not just travel - self managed abortions are cheap, safe,
| and the most common of all abortions nowadays. They can just
| mail you the pills, and its literally safer than ibuprofen.
|
| You're going to see a lot of cases about "Can [provider,
| citizen, org] in [Legal_State, Legal Country] provide [medical
| care, advice, money, other_help] to [person, organization] in
| [Illegal_State]"
| windows2020 wrote:
| You don't legislate that. That's the point of states.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| Oh you sweet summer child!
| showerst wrote:
| There are already bills introduced in four state legislatures
| to do that, and more are surely on the way.
| ncallaway wrote:
| And if they do legislate it? Since they are already trying?
|
| What then?
| kadoban wrote:
| They absolutely will and already are. There will be loopholes
| or lax enforcement for the rich and white, but the poor and
| non-white will have those options restricted and prosecuted.
| dang wrote:
| This thread has 3000 comments and will probably end up with a lot
| more. If you want to read them all, you need to click 'More' at
| the bottom of the page, or like this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31862258&p=2
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31862258&p=3 [etc.]
|
| If you're adding comments or intending to, please make sure
| you're up on the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| nabla9 wrote:
| The Roe v. Wade established certain rights to privacy.
|
| This decision overturns the argument that Roe v. Wade was based
| upon and rights it established.
|
| Overturning Roe v. Wade opens the door for banning contraception,
| interference with the right to marry (interracial relationships
| can be banned), family relationships, right to intimacy, the
| right to personal control of medical treatment. It will even have
| data collection limit consequences.
| dotdi wrote:
| https://archive.ph/pqtwO
| ABeeSea wrote:
| This Supreme Court is coming for contraceptives and same-sex
| marriage next. We are headed towards a theocracy.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I'm curious to ask some pro xhoice folks, respectfully, how they
| reconsile the fact that they believe abortion is murder, and also
| at the same time are seemingly pro military, war, and pro
| militarization of thr police.
|
| I'm genuinely curious how those two world views can coexist in
| the same mind.
|
| So a soldier who kills in the name of their country, even in a
| conflict that we can all agree was at best morally debatable,
| like the first Iraq war, or Vietnam. How is that different than a
| person getting an abortion to avoid a known bad outcome?
| sirbutters wrote:
| Because they are hypocrites (it's a fact, not a judgement). And
| it's interesting because hypocrites is one of the things that
| Jesus specifically calls out in the Gospel and seem to have
| much disdain for them. As a Catholic, I practice my faith with
| as much common sense as I can, to not judge, and forgive, as
| Jesus wanted us to.
|
| As such, I am against the death penalty, against "preemptive"
| wars (of course defending your territory being invaded is
| justified), against 2nd amendment, and support women's right
| for abortion. To me, this is common sense that aligns with
| Jesus' message.
|
| I cannot picture the loving Christ looking at a 13 year old
| child pregnant because of rape/incest and go "this new life is
| a miracle and it was my will". I reject this notion of "every
| conception was God's will and is sacred".
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Are they all like that?
|
| It's easy to want to paint with a wide brush, especially in
| times of crisis. One of my teachers was pro-life and anti-war.
| There's no need for such a conundrum.
|
| Otherwise, frankly, they probably haven't thought about it
| deeply or support the military for cultural or economic
| factors.
| Jonnston wrote:
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's not that I can't fathom the general case you describe.
|
| A specific example: A rape victim is obviously traumatized by
| being raped and does not want to carry her aggressors child
| to term. In that case the enemy is inside her.
|
| It's the same in war. The single most important thing I
| learned from my grandfather and his time in WWII was that the
| individual combatants are not evil, or bad, they're following
| orders of bad, evil leaders. In war the poor foot soldier in
| front of your rifle is not the enemy, they are the same as
| you.
|
| I'm not comparing enemies in war to babies. I'm pointing out
| the nuanced humanity of it all and highlighting synergies or
| disconnects in our thinking around these complex, human
| subjects.
| Jonnston wrote:
| I'm not saying that I hold these views myself, I think that
| these are straightforward generous readings that you can
| take of common conservative positions.
|
| Killing in war is bad, even evil, but there is no other
| way. It's a lesser evil than the alternative. Killing
| Germans in WW2 was bad, but the alternative was worse.
|
| Forcing a woman to carry a child to term is bad, even evil.
| It produces a great deal of suffering. The alternative is
| to kill an unborn child, which is worse. Therefore select
| the lesser of the two evils.
|
| Again, I don't subscribe to these views, but it seems like
| a pretty coherent position to me.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Thank you. This is exactly what I was looking for.
| flaviojuvenal wrote:
| Plenty of discussion about that on contemporary philosophy. You
| should just search a bit:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
| iancmceachern wrote:
| This all seems to support abortion in most cases. Am I
| misinterpreting?
| flaviojuvenal wrote:
| Sorry, thought you're asking about pro-life positions.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Heh, I know so many suburban Republicans who claimed this day
| would never come.
| giarc wrote:
| I don't know... they voted for a person who spoke about this in
| their campaign. Hard to say it wasn't going to happen.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Who are the judicial activists?
| [deleted]
| krnlpnc wrote:
| It's depressing to watch the USA continually fail to keep up with
| the progress of other first world countries. Often times even
| taking steps backwards like this.
|
| There are so many actual issues deserving of this attention. In
| what universe is _removing_ rights a priority?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Most other first world nations have more restrictive laws on
| abortion. Yes, even Western Europe.
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| > _Only seven of the 59 countries allow elective abortions
| after 20 weeks, the group found: Canada, China, Netherlands,
| North Korea, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam._
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/...
| InTheArena wrote:
| You are aware that the US position was maximalist and far in
| excess of all but 4 European states?
|
| Or that this doesn't actually make abortion illegal?
| trasz wrote:
| Perhaps it's time to stop politely tolerating fringe ideas just
| because they are backed by some religion. Being against abortion
| rights is a moral equivalent of antivax.
| qalmakka wrote:
| This is the final chapter of a decade-long saga which basically
| boils down to the Republicans obtaining votes from Evangelicals
| and other Christian denominations in order to give them what they
| wanted. In exchange for that, they would use their power to cut
| taxes, regulations and let the riches become richer and richer at
| the expense of everyone else.
|
| I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right now,
| and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never gave
| to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal about the
| fact that greed was not compatible with salvation. I'd like to
| see Evangelicals and other Christians being as vocal for social
| justice as they were for abortions and same sex marriage, but I
| guess they do care about putting woman back in the kitchen as
| indentured servants more than they do about social justice.
| d23 wrote:
| Christianity's true face has been shown. I've rarely seen it to
| have anything to do with the teachings of Christ.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Do you paint other religious groups with that same broad
| brush? I'm sure you supported similar rhetoric about Muslims
| post 9/11.
| d23 wrote:
| I've been immersed in it most of my life. I can't say the
| same about Muslims because I never was one.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| I can't agree that being part of a group, especially one
| so large and diverse, gives you purchase to make sweeping
| generalizations.
| spacemadness wrote:
| This isn't really Christianity collectively. Lots of what's
| happening in America is due to an American heretical brand of
| Christianity with its own motives outside the teachings of
| Christ.
| koheripbal wrote:
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Yet abortion is _not_ forbidden in The Bible. In fact, The
| Bible provides explicit instruction on how and when to
| perform an abortion.
|
| Equating abortion to murder is a modern interpretation.
| MatthewORyan wrote:
| It does nothing of a sort. Stop lying.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Numbers 3:39-40 Genesis 2:7 Numbers 5:27
|
| I'm not lying.
| svieira wrote:
| * Numbers 3:39-40 is taking an account of those of
| circumcisable age (e. g. those who are inducted into the
| covenant between God and Israel). That says nothing about
| their humanity.
|
| * The "ruah" of God is not the breath we take in with our
| lungs - and even if it were, that says how God created
| Adam, not how God created their children. Jeremiah 1:5
| and Luke 1:44
|
| * Numbers 5:27 - floor dust and burnt grain will not
| cause a woman to miscarry. Lying about the truth in front
| of the Truth Himself is grounds for punishment, but from
| God alone. Acts 5:1-10
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > That says nothing about their humanity.
|
| To you. But that's your interpretation.
|
| > even if it were, that says how God created Adam, not
| how God created their children.
|
| When one turns to The Bible for an answer about when
| conception becomes life, this is the clearest answer
| given. Arguing that it's not a clear enough answer
| supports my point.
|
| > Jeremiah 1:5
|
| > > Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before
| you were born I set you apart
|
| You can still interpret that as development happening in
| the womb (not life yet) prior to the event that defines
| life (birth). I personally find that a clearer reading.
| Otherwise there is no reason to talk about birth as a
| second event.
|
| > > As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my
| ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
|
| Now The Bible has contradicted itself. Until now, life
| began at breath, but now we have a fetus leaping for joy.
|
| We still have an unanswered question: when does the soul
| enter the body? At first breath? When the fetus is
| developed enough to move? When the heart develops enough
| to beat? When the blastocyst sticks to the uterine wall?
| When the zygote starts multiplying? When the DNA from the
| sperm is copied next to the DNA from the egg?
|
| Was it just this instance that the fetus became a living
| person (with a soul) early?
|
| None of these questions is answered clearly enough that I
| would be willing to base the law on it.
|
| > floor dust and burnt grain will not cause a woman to
| miscarry.
|
| I didn't say it would, _the book did_.
|
| > Lying about the truth in front of the Truth Himself is
| grounds for punishment, but from God alone.
|
| Is that a threat? How petty. But wasn't it The Bible
| itself lying here and not me? So you are using the book
| to threaten... the book?
|
| Have fun with that. Just don't expect me to play along.
| svieira wrote:
| >> Lying about the truth in front of the Truth Himself is
| grounds for punishment, but from God alone. > Is that a
| threat?
|
| Not a threat - a description of what is going in Numbers.
| The woman is taking an oath before God that the child she
| is carrying is hers. If she lies, she is lying to God. I
| don't believe you are lying, I think you are genuine -
| which is a very good thing. I hope and pray that "you are
| not far from the Kingdom of God" could very well be said
| of you.
|
| As to "life", "breath", "personhood", "ensoulment", and
| "birth" - how deep do you want to go?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > I hope and pray that "you are not far from the Kingdom
| of God" could very well be said of you.
|
| Personally, I hope to get as far away from "The Kingdom
| of God" as I can.
|
| Why? Because ideas that I don't believe in like "soul"
| and "sin" are being used to oppress me in the name of
| that very Kingdom.
|
| Being genuine is not enough. This is about life and
| death.
|
| Living breathing thinking feeling loving hoping yearning
| people are going to endure pain and even death because of
| this ruling.
|
| All because people like you believe so strongly in a
| modern interpretation of an ancient collection of novels
| that don't even say what they have interpreted.
|
| > As to "life", "breath", "personhood", "ensoulment", and
| "birth" - how deep do you want to go?
|
| To me, it's not so much about the distance as the
| journey. I would rather live a short life in liberty than
| a long one in oppression.
|
| How far do you, and the rest of the conservative
| Christians behind this decision, want to push us? How far
| will be bend to your collective whims?
|
| Today, the answer is clearly, "Too far."
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Do not _murder_.
|
| The claim that abortion is forbidden "in all major
| religions" is false.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion
| Covzire wrote:
| As a Christian what strikes me is that very few who are
| free wish for slavery, and very few who are alive wish they
| had been aborted. Wealth makes this a virtually ironclad
| rule, and they'll have no excuse for killing those before
| they could find a voice or ability to defend themselves.
| monocasa wrote:
| It's not in Judaism, and in fact wasn't during Jesus's
| time.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right
| now, and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never
| gave to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal
| about the fact that greed was not compatible with salvation.
|
| Maybe so, but apparently it's been condemned from the earliest
| times in Christianity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of
| _Christian_thought_o....
|
| I don't really know the Bible, but I'm guessing Jesus probably
| didn't spend a lot of time condemning literal murder either, so
| it's probably not safe to assume that means he thought
| preventing greed is more important than preventing murder.
| pxc wrote:
| The very same paragraphs talk about it being comparable among
| early Christians to such 'grave sins as contraception and
| sterilization'. How should this inform the relative weight of
| the use of condoms and murder, for contemporary Christians?
|
| This doesn't at all support the notion that Christianity has
| always been concerned with abortion _as a corrolary to
| murder_ , which is at the center of contemporary conservative
| religious discourse on the issue.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| In 2016, Republicans who went to church weekly were far less
| likely to vote for Trump, than those who rarely or never went.
|
| That means the lower taxes and less regulations were likely
| desired for their own sake not as a trade off.
|
| Christians crazily believe Christ was conceived by the Holy
| Spirit and was God incarnate within the womb. As crazy as that
| may be, it logically follows they would adamantly be against
| ending human lives before they're born.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| The fascinating thing about all this is the power of human
| manipulation. I grew up in a deeply religions area of the
| Midwest, the Bible Belt. Everyone was a hardcore Christian.
| However, as a youngster, I don't recall anyone talking about
| abortion. No mention of it. Back then churches would organize
| to help feed poor people and spread the word. That was it.
| Then, sometime around the mid-80s, everyone started talking
| about abortion. It seemed like that's all anyone talked about.
| And the tone changed, too. It went from, "Let me show you the
| way" to "You're going to rot in hell!"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is the final chapter
|
| No, its not.
|
| The use of state power to exterminate trans people is the next
| chapter, and its already well under way. More broadly, much of
| the next _series_ of chapters is using selective application of
| "religious liberty" to establish unique and particular
| entitlement for favored Christian groups across the board, by
| dismissing the sincerity of other beliefs and /or judging the
| burdens imposed on them by a different subjective standard in
| applying the "substantial burden" test than is applied on
| favored Christian beliefs.
|
| Viewed even more broadly, the focus is on dismantling
| substantive anti-discrimination protections for non-favored
| groups extending beyond religion by similar means (as is the
| case for the above trends, we've already seen some elements of
| this, such as the judicial dismantling of much of the Voting
| Rights Act; but that is just the beginning, there is much more
| to come.)
|
| EDIT: Heck, this isn't even the end of _this_ chapter, if one
| considers the way this is part of the integrated campaign
| against sexual and reproductive freedom and the right of
| privacy established in the line of cases running (through Roe)
| back to _Griswold v. Connecticut_ , which are all under attack,
| and span issues beyond abortion to include contraception, same
| sex marriage, sodomy laws, etc.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| That.. seems excessively alarmist. It is on par with Sirius
| XM Channel channel reacting to the news by saying, and I am
| paraphrasing, 'they are going after all our rights next'.
|
| I might agree in an abstract manner it is not a final chapter
| the same way just imposing red flag laws is not the end goal
| for gun control activists, but the paragraphs that follow are
| a little out there.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That.. seems excessively alarmist.
|
| Then you aren't paying attention to the actual legislation
| being passed in States, the advocacy of leading members of
| the Republican Party, and even _the things explicitly
| stated in the writings of Supreme Court justices on this
| case_.
|
| > It is on par with Sirius XM Channel channel reacting to
| the news by saying, and I am paraphrasing, 'they are going
| after all our rights next'.
|
| Thomas literally (to anyone who understands the scope and
| impact of the Court's substantive due process
| jurisprudence) said that in his concurrence.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is possible. I am not an expert in this area so I do
| not pay it as close an attention is it may warrant. That
| said, can you provide any links that would confirm your
| statements? The little I know is about Kavanaugh and
| Barrett and neither is an extreme in their writings (
| although there are some unflattering bios on the net ).
| Which SCOTUS member are you referring to?
|
| edit re concurrence:
|
| I am going through SCOTUS blog(1) and the actual text(2)
| and I am not seeing the same thing you do. Could you
| elaborate a little?
|
| (1)https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/06/supreme-court-
| overturns-c... (2)https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2
| 1pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
| ben7799 wrote:
| I would be curious if this decision hurts the Republicans going
| forward.
|
| Religious Americans essentially held their noses to vote for
| Republicans just to get this issue rammed in.
|
| Now that they have gotten what they wanted, are they still
| going to vote for Republicans with the same transactional
| decision process? Or are they now going to say the Republicans
| can no longer offer them anything additional and now the
| problems with Republicans being immoral and unchristian become
| too large?
|
| Once Christians have an abortion ban do they become focused on
| helping the poor and other issues which were pushed by Jesus
| and whose teachings more closely align with progressive
| agendas? Or are they hypocrites and will vote for the
| Republicans to give the Pharisees & Rich of the world more
| power?
| spacemadness wrote:
| Where are you getting that religious Americans held their
| noses to vote Republican? That is not the mental model I have
| of people religious enough to ban abortion.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Now that they have gotten what they wanted, are they still
| going to vote for Republicans with the same transactional
| decision process?
|
| Yes; that's why Thomas's concurring decision openly threatens
| the gay marriage, contraception, etc. decisions. (He left
| Loving v. Virginia off the list, though. For some reason.)
| There's plenty more red meat to throw to the Republican base
| as far as SCOTUS is concerned.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Republicans aren't very strongly against those things (as
| they are abortion). So it's not going to energize them to
| such an extent.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Republicans aren't very strongly against those
| things...
|
| I'm sorry, Republicans aren't strongly against gay
| marriage?
| aquadoggy wrote:
| The first president to go to into office already
| supporting gay marriage was a republican (his name was
| Donald Trump).
|
| https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/23/opinion/23brun
| i-n...
| joshstrange wrote:
| He held up a flag and that makes him pro-gay-marriage? Is
| that all it takes? Some people are so stupid it hurts.
|
| The 2016 and 2020 platform both said that marriage is
| between 1 man and 1 women, they didn't mince words.
| Pretending Republicans won't try to overturn gay marriage
| is about as stupid as the people who said they would
| never overturn Roe v Wade.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The official 2016 and 2020 platforms for the Party said
| otherwise. Actions speak louder than words.
| MandieD wrote:
| They will be if their various noise machines spin them up
| to be.
|
| Southern Baptists largely didn't care about abortion
| before the 1970s, even seeing it as a good thing in some
| cases. From The Baptist Press, who of course now spouts
| the party line that abortion is terrible and this SCOTUS
| decision is wonderful:
| https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-
| library/news/southern-...
| joshstrange wrote:
| It's literally part of their national party platform
| (banning gay marriage). I cannot believe that people
| honestly think that Republicans won't be chasing banning
| contraceptives, gay marriage, and trans rights next.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Abortion isn't the only issue Republicans use. We still have
| gun rights, "small government", "socialism", healthcare,
| drugs, human trafficking, etc.
|
| Next on the list are LGBTQ+ rights, especially hormone
| therapy for teenagers, and contraceptives that may destroy or
| discard a zygote or blastocyst. Overturning Roe means
| allowing government to invade every healthcare decision and
| apply any arbitrary religious dogma to it.
|
| The fear of abortion was used as a very effective tool for
| _engagement_. The more people sit and listen to people
| "argue" about an "issue" on Fox News or at church, etc., the
| more politically active they become.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| It likely won't affect things much, or they wouldn't have let
| it go through. They will now be focusing on _protecting_ this
| new status quo; "don't let liberals re-instate abortion and
| kill children!!!" etc
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I think the system is broken if the personal affiliations of
| supreme court judges plays such a big part in the outcome of
| cases.
|
| It should be about the law, not about politics. They're
| supposed to put that stuff aside when they take a legal office.
| Trias politica and all.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| You must be new
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Not new. Just naive.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| Laws are the result of politics. I think it doesn't make
| sense to say you can interpret/reason about laws in a non
| political way.
| svieira wrote:
| This literally was about the law. Ruth Ginsberg held that Roe
| v. Wade as a bad decision.
|
| https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-
| ginsbur...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Ruth Ginsberg held that Roe v. Wade as a bad decision.
|
| This is a _very_ misleading reading of that critique.
|
| Ginsburg would've preferred the right to abortion be
| established a) explicitly a right of women, not a right of
| doctors to practice and b) via many incremental decisions,
| making reversal harder.
|
| Practical critique; not "bad law", but "not secure enough
| to trust". As the recent decision demonstrates quite
| effectively.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention
|
| That is misrepresenting the argument. There's a lot of people
| that believe that abortion is the killing of a human being. And
| killing another human being is, most definitely, on the list of
| "bad things" for every flavor of Christianity. For a lot of
| them, killing one human being (not in self defense) to save
| another is still on that list; because only God is allowed to
| end life.
|
| You may not agree that an unborn child is a human life, but the
| people that are against abortion for actual Catholic religious
| reasons do believe it. And do believe it is against their
| religion, and against any reasonable set of morals.
| qorrect wrote:
| > for every flavor of Christianity.
|
| I wonder what methodist tastes like. I bet it's something
| saucy like spicy queso.
| pxc wrote:
| The standard line in conservative politics (that abortion is
| _murder_ ) isn't supportable by the text of the Old
| Testament, which outlines _distinct_ punishments for murder
| and for inducing a pregnant woman (unsolicited) to abort.
| Causing an abortion isn 't even sin in the Old Testament; it
| just yields a fine. And it's true that Jesus doesn't
| explicitly address any of that to supersede or revise it.
|
| The 'valid Catholic reason' for the a doctrine of ensoulment
| that prohibits abortion is just papal authority. Different
| popes, saints, and schools within Catholicism have had
| different beliefs on ensoulment; it's not like the
| _reasoning_ has been decisive here.
|
| Fucking up other people's lives for the sake of obeying a
| series of 'infallible' flip-floppers is _in fact_
| embarrassing and not respectable.
|
| And even from a religious perspective, criticizing particular
| sects of Christianity as unmoored from their own sacred texts
| and traditions with respect to this issue is a perfectly
| valid line of critique of those sects and their adherents.
| That's what the GP is essentially doing, informally asking
| what the rational connection to the sacred texts and
| tradition even are on this issue. Just because the Catholic
| church has an answer to that question doesn't mean it's
| satisfactory.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Conservative governance in general uses Biblical teachings
| purely for show. In an effort to set modern society back to
| the 1800s, they are using what they believe to be an
| unassailable source for their actions.
|
| As recently as the late 1970s, evangelicals and Southern
| Baptists were at worst ambivalent about abortion rights.
| The anti-abortion stance of that particular set of people
| is tied pretty heavily to opposition to desegregation.
| pxc wrote:
| This is a great point to emphasize in this thread, since
| it otherwise happens to focus on Catholicism. This
| cynical use of religion to grouns conservative policy in
| beliefs not adressable by normal public debate is not at
| all limited to Catholicism.
| cupofpython wrote:
| LocalH wrote:
| "For a lot of them, killing one human being (not in self
| defense) to save another is still on that list; because only
| God is allowed to end life."
|
| Horseshit, or the religious conservatives would also abolish
| the death penalty federally. Instead, the more Republican
| states tend to be the ones who wish to expand the death
| penalty. Look at the history of the death penalty in Texas,
| and who has historically been "eligible" for it.
|
| It's all about control. These people believe America to be a
| "Christian" nation first and foremost. Their ultimate goal is
| to push America into that direction.
|
| I believe within the lifetime of my generation's kids, we
| will see a push to repeal the First Amendment, at least the
| religious part of it. Although knowing how American
| Christians have historically handled freedom of speech, more
| than likely they'll try to gut the whole thing.
| pxc wrote:
| I do know some individual Catholics who reject the death
| penalty for the same reason that they would not themselves
| ever seek or endorse abortion, but I don't see the same
| phenomenon in national politics.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| The Church rejects the death penalty. It's literally a
| part of their catechism.
| pxc wrote:
| Yes, and the use of Catholic doctrine by politcal
| conservatives is cynical and selective.
|
| That's what I meant-- it's not as hard to find regular
| Catholic believers who are consistent in rejecting both
| abortion and the death penalty as a matter of their
| commitment to their religion as it is to find politicians
| who are the same way.
| [deleted]
| redeux wrote:
| There's neither scientific fact nor biblical teaching to
| support this position though. I often see "Thou shall not
| murder" as a defense for antiabortion policies, but it takes
| an unsupported leap to call it murder to begin with. Genesis
| says that life begins at first breath, which is far after
| most societies consider abortions legal and moral.
|
| There's also no indication that people even used to think
| that life began in utero, and that anything less than a fully
| formed infant was alive and capable of surviving.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| > scientific fact
|
| "Science"(whatever that means) doesn't really weigh in on
| what "personhood" is.
| nvahalik wrote:
| > There's also no indication that people even used to think
| that life began in utero
|
| You obviously haven't read a bible to any depth.
|
| God talks about "nations" being in the womb of Rebekah. He
| opened/close the womb of Rachel and of others in scripture.
|
| Samson was a Nazerite "from the womb".
|
| Job says that God "made him" in his "mother's womb".
|
| I could go on and on. Please read up on this some more,
| your argument is very ignorant of what scripture actually
| says about this.
| redeux wrote:
| A reference to the womb does not imply life.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| Scripture actually says that God recognized certain
| people _before_ they were even conceived.
|
| God is omniscient though, so I don't think that's a
| useful standard for the cops to use when deciding who to
| throw in jail.
| f154hfds wrote:
| See my comment elsewhere in this thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31866064
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Genesis says that life begins at first breath
|
| It says no such thing. It says that Adam's life began upon
| first breath. Adam was also created as a full grown man, so
| it's clearly not an example for human life as a whole. The
| Bible doesn't teach that every man comes to life at first
| breath any more than it teaches that every woman comes from
| the rib of a man (from https://www.str.org/w/does-bible-
| teach-life-begins-first-bre...)
|
| The Bible does say, in multiple places, clearly imply that
| life begins in the womb. For example, when John leaped for
| joy in his mother's womb, announcing the coming of the
| Lord.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What "science" says is that we can keep a fetus alive that
| had the misfortune of being born at... 24 weeks, I think?
| But the number keeps moving - it used to be 28.
|
| So at least at some distance after conception, yes, medical
| science supports seeing a fetus as a human, with life of
| its own.
| klyrs wrote:
| And it's the current Supreme Court's prerogative to establish
| that specific religion, and forbid religious practice of,
| say, Judaism where the life of child and mother are weighed
| compassionately and abortions are permitted in certain cases.
| cupofpython wrote:
| the supreme court did not ban abortion. It removed abortion
| as a legal right. It means people cannot use the power of
| the federal government to overrule their own state
| legislature on the topic of abortion.
|
| If you understand how the US Government works, then you
| understand that the Supreme Court cannot establish
| _ANYTHING_ by _removing_ laws. (ie overturning previous
| decisions).
|
| What the Supreme court did was allow for the POSSIBILITY of
| a fully Catholic US State to practice Catholic religion
| with respect to abortion. It ALSO allows a fully Jewish
| state to practice Jewish religion however they want with
| respect to abortion.
|
| They actual problem caused by overturning Roe v Wade is
| that some states who's laws are _already_ catholic will
| regain the power to stop abortions in their state. That 's
| it. California, New York, etc, are absolutely and
| completely unaffected by this decision, for example.
| klyrs wrote:
| > They actual problem caused by overturning Roe v Wade is
| that some states who's laws are already catholic will
| regain the power to stop abortions in their state.
|
| Quite the motte and bailey you've got there. Do you think
| that this court will make an about-face and suddenly
| recognize the constitutionality of the Establishment
| clause? Textualist/originalist, my ass.
| cupofpython wrote:
| this feels like semantics?
|
| Catholic people will make catholic laws. They wont
| literally be catholic laws.. but common sense would allow
| you to see them as such. There's nothing wrong with that
| either. The state does not need to recognize them as
| catholic laws and requires the laws be articulated and
| produced independent of the religion.
|
| you cannot make a law that says "You must treat the poor
| the way Jesus would" but you can make a law that says
| "You cannot refuse life saving medical treatment to
| someone for being poor". Under Separation of Church a
| State can still create their set of laws to be 1:1 with
| the teachings of their religion. They just have to
| actually do that.. make the set of laws. they cant say
| "follow rules in the bible". The laws supersede the
| bible. Make the laws match the bible if you want people
| to follow the bible. So that's what these states are
| doing.
| klyrs wrote:
| > they cant say "follow rules in the bible".
|
| Only, they _are_ saying the quiet part loudly now. And
| Clarence Thomas has been arguing that individual states
| can establish religions for at least two decades less
| three days[1]. Law _is_ semantics.
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/00-1751
| cupofpython wrote:
| > Law is semantics.
|
| Right, but that's also the point I was making. People
| think creating a law based on the beliefs of religious
| people violates the separation of church and state. It
| doesnt. the semantic nature of the law is relevant here.
|
| I was highlighting that by saying you could make a state
| that _effectively_ is a religious state using the current
| system. since the semantics are still there and must be
| accounted for, this prevents it from actually being a
| religious state.
|
| By adhering to the semantics, no amount of religious
| belief can lead a state to violate the constitution..
| even if the state bases every single one of its laws on
| religion. And if they try to, then the federal government
| has authority to enforce otherwise.
| slg wrote:
| Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun
| laws like the court did yesterday? Why does the idea that
| abortion extinguishes life and therefore supersedes all other
| rights not apply in other situations in which someone's
| rights will lead to death? Either life is sacrosanct or it
| isn't. Why are rights to guns more important than life but
| rights to bodily autonomy aren't?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Because "killing someone" and "owning something that can
| kill someone" are VERY different things. Pretending that
| isn't the case is ridiculous. It is entirely possible to
| argue that what/how to limit ownership of "things that can
| kill people" is a much bigger gray area than "thou shalt
| not kill".
|
| To be absolutely clear, I'm in favor of stricter gun laws
| and I don't believe in absolute bans on abortion. I just
| hate it when people claim that anyone that does want a ban
| on abortion is a hypocrite or out to control everyone else.
| There are plenty of people that believe that abortion is
| murder, and that believe is entirely consistent with their
| views. They're not all bad people, they just have a
| different view of the world than us. And anyone that tries
| to lump them all in the evil bucket IS the problem.
| remarkEon wrote:
| The court didn't "remove" gun laws yesterday. What they did
| was decide that states cannot have "may issue" laws and
| deny permits for arbitrary reasons. 2A is an enumerated
| right in the Constitution, and so there's a pretty high
| burden to restricting the exercise of that right.
| Incidentally, "may issue" laws traditionally were used to
| deny certain classes (usually black Americans) the ability
| to exercise their rights.
|
| >Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights
| to bodily autonomy aren't?
|
| This strawman is bandied about a lot, but it deliberately
| misrepresents what is actually in the Opinions if you so
| choose to read them.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You may be trying to compare very different things.
| Abortion by definition ends (aborts) a life. Having a right
| to own a gun does not automatically do that ( although it
| most certainly could ).
|
| We keep balancing stuff like that all the time. The seeming
| major difference here is that guns are explicitly mentioned
| in the constitution, while abortion is not ( and was
| invented from other amendments ).
| dpbriggs wrote:
| It's rhetorically interesting to reach and point at this
| result as if it's some binary gotcha.
|
| For those who believe that abortion is murder, that's it.
| They don't need to care whether a state's gun laws are
| compatible with the US constitution.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of
| gun laws like the court did yesterday?
|
| > situations in which someone's rights will lead to death
|
| Not all people are utilitarians, especially religious
| people.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Broadly, there's two types of views regarding justice and
| how to construct a moral society: systemic responsibility
| vs individual responsibility. For the systemic
| responsibility view, you pull any and every lever to result
| in more preferable outcomes. For example, the response to
| rampant gun violence is more gun control. Here it makes
| sense to ask why we are not pulling every lever to prevent
| deaths from gun violence as we are deaths from abortion.
| This is in contrast to the individual responsibility view.
| Here, the response to immoral behavior is punishment for
| the wrongdoer only. Systemic issues are not relevant. In
| this case, there is no contradiction to punish women who
| get abortions and not increase restrictions on guns. (Of
| course, individuals will have views that are varying
| combinations of the two.)
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's interesting how the "individual responsibility"
| mechanism works by depriving people of agency.
|
| Not gun owners of course, but the victims of gun
| violence.
| xeromal wrote:
| I think many of them would argue self-defense is not the
| same thing as an abortion in most cases.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" There's a lot of people that believe that abortion is the
| killing of a human being. And killing another human being is,
| most definitely, on the list of "bad things" for every flavor
| of Christianity."_
|
| A lot of them seem to have no problem with killing human
| beings in war, or in executions, or killing done by police,
| or the killing of various human beings they hate (from
| "druggies" to gays to muslims or Mexicans).
|
| As George Carlin said:
|
| _" Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from
| conception to 9 months. After that, they don't wanna know
| about you. They don't wanna hear from you. No nothing! No
| neonatal care, no daycare, no Head Start, no school lunch, no
| food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're pre-born,
| you're fine, if you're preschool, you're fucked."_
| [deleted]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" I guess they do care about putting woman back in the kitchen
| as indentured servants more than they do about social justice"_
|
| Just poor women. Rich women will still be able to travel out of
| state (and out of country, if need be) to get an abortion.
|
| They'll also be able to hire a maid, cook, and nurse to do all
| their household chores for them.
|
| It's the poor who will be most screwed, as usual.
| voisin wrote:
| > I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right
| now, and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never
| gave to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal
| about the fact that greed was not compatible with salvation.
| I'd like to see Evangelicals and other Christians being as
| vocal for social justice as they were for abortions and same
| sex marriage, but I guess they do care more about putting woman
| back in the kitchen as indentured servants more than they do
| about social justice.
|
| It isn't about religion. It's about power and control. We need
| to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and
| everything to do with power over others. Nietzsche is more
| relevant here than Jesus.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| The voters who support the policy believe it is about the
| lives of unborn children.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| > The voters who support the policy believe it is about the
| lives of unborn children.
|
| No. It is old people wanting to stop young people having
| sex. It is about increased the biological risks associated
| with sex. It is about people who believe that sex should
| only ever be for procreation. It is about the oldest issue
| in history: old people not wanting young people to enjoy
| life.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I really want to talk with someone who believes this
| because I want to know what's the core of it. Is it that
| unborn children are considered the purest form of humanity?
| Is it that they're afraid of population decline/collapse
| and want more children in the world? What fears or other
| emotions drive the desire on the deepest levels?
| svieira wrote:
| :raises-hand: Emotion is not the driver, reason is. Two
| syllogisms:
|
| 1. Innocent people _ought not_ be killed. Children are
| innocent people. Therefore, children ought not be killed.
|
| 2. What is conceived in a woman is an innocent young
| human being. Young human beings are children. Therefore
| (given syllogism #1) children in utero ought not be
| killed.
|
| Those syllogisms can lead to emotion, but they are not
| based on it.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| While I don't agree with your premise that emotion is not
| the main driver for the vast majority of people, I'll go
| with it:
|
| - At what point do you believe it becomes a person?
| Viable to survive outside of the womb, heartbeat,
| insemination?
|
| - How do you define innocent, as one who does not have
| actions that cause harm to another, one who does not have
| intent to harm another, or something else?
|
| - If defined as one who does not have intent to harm
| another, how do we know what the unborn child's intent
| is? Do you assume that the child is not developed enough
| to have intent? At which point does the child develop
| intent?
|
| - What if you would consider the child already dead from
| other causes and needs to be extracted, should the mother
| be allowed to have it removed? What if the baby is an
| ectopic pregnancy, growing outside of the womb and likely
| to cause significant harm or death to the mother, is the
| assumption that the mother is not as innocent as the
| unborn child and therefore we should prioritize the
| child?
|
| I'm ok and even excited to take a reason-based approach
| (ironically stating how I have have feelings about taking
| a reason-based approach), I just hope if you want to go
| down that path, that you will go deeper down it with me.
| krapp wrote:
| The core of it, as with most terrible, regressive things
| in American culture and politics, is Conservative
| Christianity. It's also why Republicans oppose
| contraception and why many Christians believe
| masturbation is a sin.
| babyshake wrote:
| I believe it largely has to do with a widespread
| inability to cope with the fact that heaven doesn't
| exist. Death is in fact the end.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yeah, I've often wondered that. Is it the worry that if
| the baby dies in the womb, it will no longer go to
| heaven? Because if the unborn baby is considered to be
| one of the "most innocent" humans, then wouldn't the baby
| automatically go to heaven? And isn't the assumption that
| heaven is better than life on earth?
|
| Or is it about wanting the mother to also go to heaven,
| and believing that if she did this, she would not go?
|
| I appreciate you pointing out there may be a deep
| existential fear and doubt of the existence of heaven
| that drives people to this and oh how I wish we people
| talked more about our doubts, especially as they relate
| to religion. One of my favorite TED talks was about how
| doubt is essential to faith: https://www.ted.com/talks/le
| sley_hazleton_the_doubt_essentia...
| krapp wrote:
| > Is it the worry that if the baby dies in the womb, it
| will no longer go to heaven?
|
| According to a lot of American Christian doctrine, yes.
| The Bible teaches that humans are sinful beings not
| because of what they do, but because sin is an immutable
| part of human nature. There's no such thing as an
| "innocent" baby where the doctrine of original sin is
| concerned - all humans deserve hell by default. So unless
| the baby is born, baptized and saved by grace through
| faith in Jesus Christ (which can only happen through
| their consent and free will, you can't "save" an unborn
| baby as a loophole) it will burn in Hell for eternity
| like any other unsaved soul.
|
| Although I'd suspect most Christians simply believe life,
| in terms of a divine soul and part in God's plan, begins
| at conception. To accept that a fetus is simply a "clump
| of cells" would be too close to accepting a naturalistic
| (non-theistic) view of biology. To interfere with
| procreation and birth is to commit murder for the same
| reason that shooting someone in the head is committing
| murder - only God has the right to decide when and how
| life can be taken.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| negroni wrote:
| The notion of having some kind of moral high ground based
| upon religious principle is absurd. The Bible is rife with
| Godly demands for the murder of all sorts of folk including
| children (1 Samuel 15:3).
|
| Specifically, Numbers 5:20-27 prescribes ritualistic
| abortion if a woman has cheated on her husband. A thorough
| reading of the Bible gives one the understanding doesn't
| care about fetuses or children. He cares about the
| subjugation of women and everyone in their "proper" place
| in His hierarchy.
| schmichael wrote:
| Regardless of what the Bible actually says there is
| undeniably a massive religious component to the anti-
| abortion movement.
| Miner49er wrote:
| This isn't logical though. People will still get abortions,
| all this will change is _who_ can get abortions. So it 's
| clearly about control.
| jonhohle wrote:
| I would imagine the states that outlaw abortions will
| have significantly fewer. Is there any evidence that
| comes close to suggesting the rate of abortions is the
| same now as prior to RvW? America has an abortion rate in
| line with former Soviet countries and exceptionally
| higher than most of the western world. It has
| disproportionally harmed the population that it
| supposedly "helps". The eugenicist roots of the founders
| of the largest supporter should be evidence enough for
| the goals of that movement.
| rswail wrote:
| Maybe that rate of abortion, as it was in Soviet
| countries, is due to the lack of contraception and family
| planning in the US. That is tied to the structure of the
| health system.
|
| Why is it that people that want to outlaw abortion, and
| are willing to pay for the policing and prosecution
| resources necessary to enforce that law aren't willing to
| invest the same amount into contraception that would have
| a similar effect.
|
| Is it better to clean up after an oil spill, or ensure
| that the spill doesn't happen in the first place?
| ModernMech wrote:
| The logic that a fetus is a person comes from the
| inevitability of birth starting at conception -- as long
| as no one interferes, a human person will eventually be
| born. Therefore, ending the pregnancy early means that
| person will never be born, so it's tantamount to killing
| a newborn baby.
|
| Once you accept a fetus is a person, this same logic can
| also be extended to argue that life starts at
| ejaculation; impeding sperm from fertilizing an egg
| prevents the birth of a person, and is therefore
| tantamount to murder the same way abortion is.
|
| It's much more a tenuous an argument, which is why it's
| only made by the most extreme people. But I guess that
| explains why Clarence Thomas is pushing to make
| contraception illegal today.
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| > Why is it...
|
| Because it's more exciting to punish Bad People for doing
| Bad Things than it is to create systems where the Bad
| People don't want or need to do Bad Things as much.
| Jcowell wrote:
| I see no merit in a society that allows unwanted unloved
| children to be born and lives to now be chained down for
| 18 years minimum. I
|
| would rather a productive person today then a who knows
| what 20 years in the future.
| MandieD wrote:
| Other well-off western countries have much cheaper and
| convenient access to hormonal birth control. In the
| country I live in, Germany, a month's supply of pills is
| about 10 EUR retail, no insurance. On the public
| insurance the vast majority of women have, they're 5
| EUR/quarter. For women and girls under 20, they're free.
|
| Should you end up pregnant, it's illegal to fire you for
| _any_ reason, and you must either be accommodated or put
| on paid leave. During that first year of Covid, any nurse
| or doctor or other employee that had to work with the
| public was put on paid leave if pregnant if something
| non-public-facing couldn't be found for them.
|
| We also get 2/3 of our previous net salary for up to a
| year after the birth to stay home with our babies, and
| that was as a mother with a well-employed husband. There
| is further assistance for women in harder circumstances.
|
| Granted, abortion is (was?) more strictly controlled
| here. You have to go for "conflict counseling," but it's
| available from both of the major churches (the Lutheran
| church's organization aims to help you if you want to go
| through with the pregnancy, but will give you information
| on the costs and logistics of termination), other
| religious associations, as well as secular organizations
| with a pro-choice point of view (e.g.: ProFamilia). After
| the 12th week, however, you can only get an abortion if
| your life or health is in danger, or the fetus has a
| serious abnormality. Yes, Down Syndrome is an accepted
| ground for termination, but social support services for
| mentally-handicapped children and adults are far more
| comprehensive and reliable here than in the US.
|
| Result? One of the lowest abortion rates in the world
| among countries where women (mostly) have bodily
| autonomy.
| LocalH wrote:
| Illegal abortions don't get recorded in the same way as
| legal ones do, so the "statistics" are meaningless.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If abortions are bad, then it's good if fewer people get
| them, whether or not the reduction is spread evenly
| across different demographics.
| pstuart wrote:
| If abortions are bad then providing birth control and
| sexual education to prevent unwanted pregnancies would be
| good, right? But those are going to be gutted next.
|
| Hmmmm....
| Jcowell wrote:
| I would think programmers of all people can understand
| complex problems do not have simple solutions. There are
| variables to weigh, numbers to be analyzed.
|
| And that's not even getting what is "good" and "bad" and
| if a laws purpose is to outright outlaw them without
| thinking of other measures and consequences.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If drugs are bad, then it's good if fewer people get
| them, whether or not the reduction is spread evenly
| across different demographics.
|
| Therefore it's okay to use racially-targeted methods of
| enforcement and arrest poor, ethnic minorities, etc. as
| long as we get at least a little drug reduction out of
| it.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| a lot packed into that if - eg you are including
| categories such as rape victims who are expected to die
| in childbirth, feel like you should be explicit in the
| true extent of what you're advocating
| josephcsible wrote:
| When would someone who's expected to die in childbirth be
| saved by an abortion but not by an emergency C-section?
| Jcowell wrote:
| If the emergency C-section is to get the non viable fetus
| out , how is that still not an abortion?
|
| The only alternative I can think of is that a women
| should carry the non viable fetus into term for 9 whole
| months instead of getting it out of her as soon as she
| can.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Modern hospitals can save babies born as early as 22
| weeks. If a full-term birth would kill the mother, then a
| date between 22 weeks and full term should be chosen that
| maximizes the chance that both mother and child survive.
| MandieD wrote:
| Because they didn't have their body subjected to those
| last, most difficult months of pregnancy.
|
| My own surprise (but very wanted!) pregnancy was easy the
| first few months - I even skied up through week 16, but
| around week 30 I started developing back pain and
| intermittent numbness in some of my toes that is still
| around, after nearly two years and lots of physical
| therapy.
|
| And I was always considered to be having a "healthy"
| pregnancy, and was pretty healthy beforehand. Only
| unusual thing is that I was 40.
|
| For a more extreme but still realistic hypothetical, I
| have a severely physically disabled friend who weighs
| about 60 lbs and requires regular mechanical breathing
| assistance. She is, as far as she knows, just as capable
| of getting pregnant as I am. She also knows that she
| would not survive more than a few weeks of pregnancy.
|
| There are many people capable of becoming pregnant who
| live somewhere between these two extremes.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Ah, but this is where it gets fun. Different power
| centers see abortions from different perspectives. The
| state wants ( and benefits from ) more taxpayers, while
| corporates benefit from ensuring workflow is not
| interrupted by biological needs.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| If abortions are bad, why are the same people who want to
| ban abortions the ones who want to ban contraceptives?
| That would do a _lot_ more to reduce abortions in reality
| than any law can.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| That's a straw man. Only 6% of Americans think birth
| control should be illegal,
| https://today.yougov.com/topics/health/articles-
| reports/2022....
| Clubber wrote:
| >If abortions are bad, why are the same people who want
| to ban abortions the ones who want to ban contraceptives?
| That would do a lot more to reduce abortions in reality
| than any law can.
|
| I would imagine they believe the point of sex is to
| conceive. Both those things prevent conception.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree. They are not actually trying to reduce the
| number of abortions, they are taking a religious/moral
| position.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| There are people for whom this is about control. There
| are people for whom this is about preventing murder. The
| two groups, while they may overlap, are not the same;
| they just vote the same on this topic.
| overrun11 wrote:
| We don't use this standard of reasoning for anything
| else. If abortion is murder then it ought to be banned
| regardless of how effective the ban may be.
|
| Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder. Any
| argument that sidesteps the morality of abortion is not
| going to convince anyone.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| If you drink and drive and cause a car crash that
| requires you give a blood transfusion is it murder to
| refuse? I think hardly anyone would say that, because
| society has decided the right of bodily autonomy is
| paramount. I don't see abortion as any different from
| refusing to save someone you hurt in a car crash you
| caused.
| aftbit wrote:
| In this _particular_ case, I think it would indeed be
| considered vehicular homicide if you drove drunk and
| killed someone. If you could and did save them by giving
| a blood transfusion, then you would likely still be
| guilty of some crime for hitting them in the first place,
| but not homicide.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| But that doesn't change anything - even if this person is
| a criminal, you still would not be allowed to use their
| blood for a transfusion without their concent. No
| additional crimes would result from the refusal itself.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Sure, change drunk to really tired and reconsider.
| overrun11 wrote:
| In the United States a warrant is sufficient for a
| compulsory blood test to check blood alcohol levels. If
| we accept that proving guilt in court is an appropriate
| reason to violate bodily autonomy than so too would
| saving the life of someone who's been endangered by your
| actions.
|
| Morally however, I also do think it's wrong to not give
| the blood transfusion because the burden is small and the
| cost of not doing so is large. Whether it rises to the
| level of murder is a tougher question that I think would
| depend on intent.
|
| Do you think a suicidal pilot has the right to stop
| flying a plane mid-flight even if she knows that no one
| else on the plane will be capable of landing it?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > If we accept that proving guilt in court is an
| appropriate reason to violate bodily autonomy than so too
| would saving the life of someone who's been endangered by
| your actions.
|
| But we haven't decided that saving the life of someone
| who's been endangered by your actions is an appropriate
| reason to violate bodily autonomy. That's the whole
| point, society has decided that you can refuse to give
| the transfusion, even it leads to a death you essentially
| caused.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Society has already decided that proving guilt in a drunk
| driving case is a sufficient reason to violate bodily
| autonomy. I argue that saving a life is far more
| important than proving guilt for a fairly petty crime,
| therefore by the already accepted standard, it would be
| permissible to force the transfusion for this purpose.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Do you think a suicidal pilot has the right to stop
| flying a plane mid-flight
|
| Interesting example, but I don't think such a pilot
| whould cares about rights.
|
| The better question might be - what could you do to force
| such a pilot to fly the plane, and it appears that you
| could only plead - they would not be afraid of being shot
| (which is illegal anyway), and torture is very clearly
| illegal.
| overrun11 wrote:
| I agree it would be difficult to force a pilot to fly a
| plane, in this way it's not quite analogous. However,
| imagine if by some miracle the plane is landed without
| the pilots help- passenger happens to be a pilot,
| stewardess talked over the radio how to execute a crash
| landing etc. Should the pilot be charged with any crime
| upon safely reaching the ground?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Most people believe you are obligated to provide basic
| care (food, water, shelter). Anything above that is not
| an obligation and not murder. That is not to say you
| shouldn't go above that, but just that it is not murder
| if you don't provide anything above the basics.
| missingrib wrote:
| >I think hardly anyone would say that
|
| On the contrary, I think it would be very popular to say
| that someone who directly caused the crash out of
| negligence should be required to give blood to save the
| victim.
|
| You're referring to a version of the violinist argument:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion#The_v
| iol...
|
| Your version is actually pretty similar to a normal
| pregnancy (the woman brought about the pregnancy through
| her actions and now has to decide whether its morally
| okay to stop the babies' use of her body).
|
| I think it's very hard to justify abortion along these
| lines and might be easier just to try to show that the
| fetus is non-human and doesn't have rights.
| nick__m wrote:
| It's not murdered, the amass of dividing cells called a
| fetus isn't viable on it's own. When that fetus is
| unwanted, abortion is comparable to removing a tumor.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| <<Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder. Any
| argument that sidesteps the morality of abortion is not
| going to convince anyone.
|
| This is an interesting comment. It is not your job to do
| anything unless you are actually paid by an entity that
| has a vested interest in an outcome. Your argument
| structure does not have to follow predetermined steps
| ordained by the high priests. All these arguments are not
| going to convince anyone. For better or worse, most have
| already made up their minds a long time ago. Just to make
| it all more confusing, GPT-chan showed clearly you simply
| cannot trust online fora ( or, frankly, based on Amazon's
| raise the dead skill, phone conversations ) to have real
| humans anymore ( although you could argue, this was clear
| during last net neutrality debate and how comments there
| were not written by individuals).
|
| But going back to the crux of your argument, I disagree.
| This is HN. Morality will not impress people here.
| Rational discourse is a path forward if it is intended to
| sway anyone.
| divided wrote:
| Abortion is clearly not murder. Treating it as such has
| horrible implications.
|
| Let's start with the belief that life starts at
| conception. With this belief, a fetus is equivalent in
| protection to a newborn. Following this, voluntarily
| ending it is murder.
|
| Then what about miscarriage? If a newborn were to die
| under unknown circumstances, there should be an
| investigation. Should then all pregnant people be
| investigated for potential negligence or abuse for this
| already traumatizing situation? 1/3 to 1/2 of all
| fertilized eggs never implant. Should these be
| scrutinized? I cannot see how one can say a fetus and
| newborn deserve equivalent protections and then fail to
| give them.
|
| Further, what about support for abortion exceptions for
| incest or rape? If the pregnancy in this scenario went to
| term and the child was born, one wouldn't then support
| that murdering the newborn was OK.
|
| If you don't believe these things, then you don't believe
| newborns and fetuses deserve equal protection. You only
| happen to believe specific fetuses deserve one specific
| protection.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| > Then what about miscarriage?
|
| This argument has always struck me as odd. A miscarriage
| is, for lack of a better word, a random natural event.
| People die from random natural events all the time.
| divided wrote:
| Do you really believe all miscarriages are random and
| that none are due to alcohol, drugs, malnutrition, or
| other reasons?
|
| Now hopefully in the future the argument won't strike you
| as odd.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > what about support for abortion exceptions for incest
| or rape?
|
| If you've been paying attention, exceptions for incest
| and rape are being thrown out of the window in most red
| states. That was a pre supermajority compromise. Now that
| the supreme court is a conservative supermajority, the
| compromise position is no longer desirable for
| conservatives. They have the power and they are using it.
| divided wrote:
| I'm aware and it's terrifying. Traditionally most anti-
| abortion advocates supported the exception, and I still
| believe most Republican voters support the exception.
|
| But they elect extremists to govern.
|
| I'd like to believe being more aware of the extremism
| would temper voters towards moderation, but I fear
| instead history proves the voters are more likely to have
| their views shift towards extremism.
| hash9 wrote:
| > Then what about miscarriage? If a newborn were to die
| under unknown circumstances, there should be an
| investigation.
|
| Most states have laws regarding causing miscarriage via
| assault, even California so there are investigations
| already.
| divided wrote:
| You've missed the point in the quote you pulled. Assault
| is hardly an unknown circumstance.
|
| To draw the parallel to a newborn, some pass away from
| SIDS, some from abuse, some from malnutrition.
| Investigations are performed in suspicious circumstances.
| Sometimes it truly happens to be random or unknown or
| unpreventable.
|
| If one were to treat fetuses the same, wouldn't one want
| to verify there was no abuse or neglect? I.E. the causes
| are unknown, it could be a random natural event, it could
| be due to someone's actions, the only way to know is to
| investigate. To my knowledge, nobody currently gets
| investigated for a miscarriage of unknown cause. One can
| only hope it stays that way.
| Glide wrote:
| States have have recently passed laws have added in
| exceptions for the things you've brought up.
|
| Also looking up the definition of abortion in this case
| is important:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/data_stats/abortio
| n.h... For the purpose of surveillance,
| a legal induced abortion is defined as an intervention
| performed by a licensed clinician (e.g., a physician,
| nurse-midwife, nurse practitioner, physician assistant)
| within the limits of state regulations, that is intended
| to terminate a suspected or known ongoing intrauterine
| pregnancy and that does not result in a live birth. Most
| states and reporting areas that collect abortion data
| report if an abortion was medical or surgical. Medical
| abortions are legal procedures that use medications
| instead of surgery.
| divided wrote:
| I'd like to engage, but I'm unsure what your point is.
|
| Adding exceptions is antithetical to the belief it is
| murder. One does not get to murder another person because
| they were a child of incest. On the other hand, not
| adding an exception for abortion is monstrous.
|
| If you agree that forcing a woman to give birth to a
| child of rape or incest is monstrous, then maybe you'll
| agree abortion isn't murder. If you think it's not
| monstrous, I hope it never happens to you or someone you
| love just to be taught a hard lesson in empathy for
| others.
|
| I'm unsure why you're quoting the definition of a legally
| induced abortion and why you feel it important to your
| argument.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > We don't use this standard of reasoning for anything
| else.
|
| Yes, we do. All kinds of things are viewed as immoral and
| not criminally punished, or punished less than things
| viewed as equally or more immoral, because of the
| perceived social cost/benefit of the alternative.
|
| It is _murderously insane_ to consider only the problem
| addressed and not the impacts of the policy response in
| setting government policy.
| rswail wrote:
| > Your job is to argue that abortion is not murder.
|
| Sure, and _your_ job is to argue that abortion causes the
| death of a viable human life.
|
| Murder is defined as "the unlawful premeditated killing
| of one human being by another."
|
| Abortion isn't that.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Yeah I reject that definition and am not particularly
| considered with dictionary definitions when determining
| what is moral.
|
| By this definition we couldn't consider any killing
| sanctioned by the state to be murder.
| overrun11 wrote:
| You'll need to carve out a definition of "viable" that
| excludes late term fetuses that could survive outside the
| womb but includes born babies that cannot survive without
| the care of adults.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| The wealthy/connected are probably better at getting away
| with murder/theft/rape/etc too, it doesn't mean we should
| legalise it in the name of equality. Also, nothing
| prevents further restrictions on abortion in the future,
| for those that still can get them.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| I just felt a eudisturbance in the Force, as if all the
| angels in heaven erupted in joy...
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Angels aren't real, and neither is heaven, my friend.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| You cannot think otherwise until the Holy Spirit -- who
| also doesn't exist? -- draws you. Peace, my friend.
| voisin wrote:
| But suddenly upon birth these same children need no
| societal protection?
|
| I think it is convenient to point to the importance of the
| lives of unborn children but until the same protection is
| applied to children post-birth it seems like a convenient
| cover for controlling women.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _But suddenly upon birth these same children need no
| societal protection?_
|
| This is a straw man argument. No one is arguing children
| need no societal protection. Look at the push for Head
| Start under Bush, for example.
|
| https://georgewbush-
| whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/earlychi...
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Who cares what you're arguing? It's about what you're
| doing, and the only thing that conservatives get out of
| bed for is restricting abortion. Where's the massive
| conservative push for easing the burdens of child care
| through social support?
| nmz wrote:
| That's the trap of America, All of the third world knows
| the type of logic America is founded on. Keep the
| servants weak so you can rule over them. They make the
| rules, and they make the loopholes. This sets the
| culture, which in turn creates morality. Unfortunately
| for them, we know their law is not based on ethics.
|
| Legal basis? With enough mastery, it can be whatever you
| want it to be.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > and the only thing that conservatives get out of bed
| for is restricting abortion.
|
| They get out of bed for denying care that empirically has
| a massive effect of reducing suicide for trans people,
| too.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| Their stance is that abortion is killing babies. If
| that's what you believe, it's easier to get out of bed to
| stop baby murder than to help make child care more
| affordable.
| claytongulick wrote:
| Because most conservatives believe that charity is a
| private, not government matter.
|
| This is could be a reason that religious folks and
| conservatives donate much more to charity, even though
| their income is less [1].
|
| For cases like childcare, they believe that burdened
| families are best served by a close community coming
| together to help each other, rather than government
| programs.
|
| [1] https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/resource/stati
| stics-o...
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Conservative populism is usually DOA. They are very bad
| at creating social programs.
| InTheArena wrote:
| All government has become profoundly bad - but medicare
| expansion and NCLB, and AIDS in Africa bills probably are
| not quite as bad as most.
| sangnoir wrote:
| The modern-day Evangelical Christian voting block does
| not have Bush Republicans. Not by a long shot. Bush made
| overtures to Hispanics[1], that simply can't happen
| today.
|
| 1. A block that also skews religious, and socially
| conservative - that could totally work. There's only one
| problem with that in the present day.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Are you sure about that?
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/14/texas-special-
| electi...
| elmomle wrote:
| I don't think it's a straw man. You show me the big
| evangelical movement centered around adoption of children
| who would have otherwise been aborted. Which, you know,
| would be the obvious Christian answer here, rather than
| forcing your will onto others.
| splitstud wrote:
| koheripbal wrote:
| ...said no one ever.
|
| This is just a dishonest argument.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Actions speak louder than words.
| hatware wrote:
| What action comes before a pregnancy?
| r_harriso wrote:
| Guess you'll never find out.
| hatware wrote:
| Haha incel funny lol
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| aftbit wrote:
| Why? Guns kill (order of magnitude) about 4,000 children
| each year[1] in the USA. There are (order of magnitude)
| about 800,000 abortions each year[2] in the USA. If you
| are one of the people who believes that unborn child
| lives are worth the same as adult lives, then you should
| be 200 times more concerned about abortion than gun
| violence.
|
| 1: https://wisqars.cdc.gov/fatal-reports
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_t
| he_Uni...
|
| Here's how to set up WISQARS for that report:
| 2020, United States Firearm Deaths and Rates per
| 100,000 All Races, Both Sexes, Ages 0 to 18
| ICD-10 Codes: W32-W34,X72-X74,X93-X95,Y22-Y24,
| Y35.0,\*U01.4
| RC_ITR wrote:
| The propaganda win of the century is classifying chemical
| abortions (roughly half of that 800k) as abortions.
|
| It's a pill that basically forces a woman to have a
| period regardless of whether there's an embryo in the
| lining or not. You can only do it before an embryo even
| resembles a human being.
|
| And yet, it's as at risk as anything else.
| aftbit wrote:
| I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing!
| ModernMech wrote:
| Guns outpaced accidents for the first time as the leading
| cause of death for children in 2020. Now that abortion is
| illegal in half the country, will those same conservative
| abortion crusaders direct their attention to saving kids
| from guns? Somehow I don't think so, but I guess we will
| see...
| bmelton wrote:
| Abortion is not now "illegal in half the country" -- it
| may become so, but it isn't that today and this decision
| didn't make it that today
|
| Moreover, guns may have outpaced automotive deaths, but
| they have not outpaced "accidents" writ large.
| leereeves wrote:
| > But suddenly upon birth these same children need no
| societal protection?
|
| > ... until the same protection is applied to children
| post-birth ...
|
| The same protection _is_ applied to children post-birth.
| It 's still illegal to kill those children after they're
| born.
|
| ---
|
| Edit to respond to comments, because I'm "posting too
| fast":
|
| Yes, the conservative position on social programs seems
| inconsistent with being pro-life to someone who believes
| that government benefit programs are not only helpful,
| but are the primary mechanism to help the needy.
|
| But not to people who believe, like Reagan, that "the
| nine most terrifying words in the English language are,
| 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.'"
|
| They don't look to the government for help for themselves
| and they don't see it as a mechanism for helping others.
| For that, they prefer family, church, charity, and
| community.
|
| They also generally believe, contrary to some extreme
| positions that have been exaggerated by their opponents,
| that:
|
| "we would not consider it immoral for a woman to accept
| treatment that is necessary to save her life, but which
| may end the life of her preborn child."
|
| https://www.focusonthefamily.com/family-qa/abortion-and-
| heal...
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Sure, but the (conservative) states pushing the new anti-
| abortion laws are also cutting back social programs,
| especially ones aimed at single mothers. "Just get a job,
| freeloader!" One can't claim to be pro- _life_ and then
| refuse to provide support for those new lives.
| criddell wrote:
| I don't think they want to support fetuses (through
| prenatal care) either. I think it's just about protecting
| the "life". Pro-life people don't see a difference
| between killing a 3 month old baby and destroying a fetus
| at 3 months.
|
| Anyway, I think that's mostly irrelevant. Say
| conservatives decided that abortion would be banned
| nationwide but there would be comprehensive social
| programs to care for pregnant women and children. The
| banning of abortion would still be a terrible idea.
| [deleted]
| typon wrote:
| Generally this argument holds very little water beyond
| making a gotcha-style bad-faith argument.
|
| People understand that murder is illegal - but life isn't
| just two states. Alive or Dead. If we were living in
| 20,000 BCE then maybe we could be forgiven for thinking
| this way, but we live in an advanced, modern,
| (presumably) ethical civilization where life is about
| flourishing and giving everyone opportunities to thrive.
|
| Focusing on the fetus's rights, yet condemning children
| to a life that's designed from the start to prevent
| flourishing is the conundrum people are referring to and
| pointing out the hypocrisy of.
| overrun11 wrote:
| The substance of this argument is essentially "If you
| don't support every social policy I do then you do not
| have any basis to object to what you believe to be
| murder."
|
| Obviously absurd and far beneath the level of rigor I'd
| expect on HN.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Nope, the substance of the argument is "You aren't doing
| this to protect life, you are doing this to punish women
| for having sex".
|
| Because, if protecting life was truly the goal you are
| after, then you'd do a whole lot more to actually, you
| know, protect life, long after the child is born.
| rswail wrote:
| But it _is_ legal to kill women suffering sepsis from
| having to keep a fetus that has died without getting a D
| &C.
|
| It's legal to force a raped child to carry a pregnancy to
| term even if they will suffer lifetime damage or fatal
| injuries.
|
| It's legal to force a raped child or woman to carry to
| term a child that is the result of incest and may suffer
| a lifetime of genetic damage and disability.
|
| It's a nonsense argument that is premised of the falsity
| that a fertilized ovum is somehow a "child". It is not.
| mildmotive wrote:
| The reality is that the vast majority of abortions are
| not done because of rape or incest.
|
| > smaller proportions of women in 2004 than in 1987 said
| that having a baby would interfere with their job or
| career (38% vs. 50%), that they were not mature enough
| (22% vs. 27%), that their husband or partner wanted them
| to have an abortion (14% vs. 24%), and that they and
| their partner could not or did not want to get married
| (12% vs. 30%). In both surveys, 1% indicated that they
| had been victims of rape, and less than half a percent
| said they became pregnant as a result of incest. [1]
|
| The large number of unborn children that have been killed
| because of them being perceived as an economical burden,
| or other personal reasons cannot be ignored. But you
| ignore all this injustice and make it seem like abortion
| is all about dealing with rape and incest, while these in
| reality only account for ca 1% of all abortion cases.
|
| I'm saying killed because we still have a large portion
| of abortions happening in the second (10-15% worldwide
| [2]) and third trimesters.
|
| The point here is that a woman's freedom does not
| override her child's right to live. But you seem to think
| otherwise.
|
| [1]
| https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2005/reasons-us-
| wom...
|
| [2] https://www.uptodate.com/contents/overview-of-second-
| trimest...
| trashtester wrote:
| The positions above are extreme. Now I'm pro choice to
| begin with, but I imagine that MOST people on the right,
| even a lot of normally Pro Life people, think that it's
| not fair to deny abortions in situations as above. (Even
| if they do think the fetus is "somewhat" a child.)
|
| If the Pro Choice movement starts a campaign aimed
| specifically at changing federal law to allow abortions
| in the situations above, I believe they have a fair
| chance of getting 60% within 1-2 election cycles.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Starve a child, deny them education, deny them
| healthcare, freeze them in the winter, allow other
| children to purchase AK47s and shoot them, deny them
| housing and all the sudden it becomes a fiscal matter and
| not one of religion or fundamental rights.
|
| The law may protect kids from being directly killed
| consequence free. However, indirectly, these good
| Christians support everything right up to that (spare the
| rod, spoil the child).
|
| Edit: To respond to your edit, since you don't want to
| take the time to actually respond.
|
| Reagan was good with the short quips, yet hardly someone
| you should look to for a "pro-life" attitude. He actively
| impeded AIDs research because "ewe, gay people". He has
| blood on his hands and invoking him in an argument about
| the sanctity of life is ridiculous.
|
| Further, saying "Oh, let the churches feed the hungry".
| What would you do for the child of an atheist parent?
| What would you do if the church (like many of them do!)
| imposes strict morality clauses before aid is given. What
| if there is no church giving such aid in a community?
|
| Why do you think there is child starvation in the united
| states? Because not enough kids know about their local
| churches and community centers?
|
| It's also laughable that the same people who cheer on
| dumping 800 billion dollars into the most powerful
| military in the world are somehow afraid of the
| consequences of what happens when that money goes into a
| program to feed children. So what, the government is only
| scary when the money DOESN'T go towards guns? What kind
| of backwards thinking is that?
| ModernMech wrote:
| > they prefer family, church, charity, and community.
|
| So where is the child who is raped and impregnated by her
| uncle, priest, or coach supposed to turn?
| rhino369 wrote:
| They would say to two of three that didn't rape them.
|
| Is the government really doing all that much for those
| victims? Our justice and foster care systems are pretty
| badly run. Democrats want to throw more money at the
| broken systems. Republicans want to tear them down. I'd
| support reforming them, but that is much easier said than
| done.
| l33t2328 wrote:
| No pro-lifers think infants deserve no societal
| protection.
|
| I've never heard this stance put forward.
| delecti wrote:
| They may not actively think infants deserve no societal
| protection, but they sure are passive about actively
| enforcing any protection.
| josephcsible wrote:
| There are zero places where abortion is banned but post-
| birth infanticide is legal, and nobody wants to make that
| the case anywhere.
| geekbird wrote:
| What is allowing the mother to die because abortion is
| against the law but "post birth" abortion? Or do you
| think that the lives of women already born should take a
| back seat to the potential life of a fetus?
| josephcsible wrote:
| When is letting the mother die the only way to save her
| child's life?
| kdtsh wrote:
| This argument is obtuse. The contradiction is that it is
| considered a matter of personal responsibility as soon as
| a newly born infant suffers from abuse, malnourishment,
| poverty, and/or neglect, but before birth it is a matter
| of moral principle that the child, however unwanted, is
| born.
| josephcsible wrote:
| But child abuse and neglect are already illegal, and we
| already have programs like WIC.
| kdtsh wrote:
| Where did I say anything about the legality of child
| abuse and neglect?
| josephcsible wrote:
| If that's not what you meant, then I don't understand
| what contradiction you're trying to point out.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/24/states-set-to-ban-
| abortion-a...
| josephcsible wrote:
| None of those states want to make post-birth infanticide
| legal.
| biohacker85 wrote:
| The argument "you only care about people before they are
| born" is what you find on reddit and is made in bad
| faith. This argument compares what is perceived as murder
| with minimizing government assistance after birth.
| Whether they are right or wrong is irrelevant as they
| believe their position before and after birth to be for
| the benefit of the child and therefore "pro-life".
|
| edit: fixed typo
| tomjen3 wrote:
| If I object to you murdering a homeless person, should I
| be obligated to help him get a good life?
|
| That is essentially the same argument, just applied to
| somebody who is very much human.
|
| I don't support this ruling, but I don't believe that
| argument is any good.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If I object to you murdering a homeless person, should
| I be obligated to help him get a good life?
|
| Yes.
|
| (Actually, the latter obligation attaches _whether or
| not_ you have the former belief, but if you don't believe
| that the entity involved actually is a "person" whose
| life has value, it _explains_ , but does not justify, why
| you would not also feel the latter obligation.)
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| You don't support this ruling, but the only thing you
| have to say about it is in its defense. Fascinating
| Kranar wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. I am not going to defend an invalid
| justification for a position just because I agree with
| that position, and furthermore when people spread
| misinformation in support of my position, I will work to
| refute it.
|
| If anything, it's more important to me that I refute
| misinformation in support of things I believe as opposed
| to argue against positions I disagree with.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| There is still a few of us left that care about truth
| above signalling.
| trashtester wrote:
| This. Kudos for pointing out irrational arguments from
| "your" side. Too many political arguments end up in
| tribalism, where all that matters is loyalty-signalling.
|
| Btw, I agree with you. I believe women should be free to
| choose until the fetus is able to live independently of
| the mom.
|
| This is because I don't think a 3 month old fetus is
| equivalent to a person.
|
| But IF you agree with the premise that a fetus is a
| person, it follows that they should have the same
| negative rights as other people (freedom from being
| killed, for instance), that does NOT mean that the person
| has to think that every person should have a large set of
| positive rights (ie rights imply that tax-payers should
| provide welfare for all people).
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Honestly I don't care if a fetus is a person. I can be
| dying of cancer and it is still up to you to choose if
| you consent to a bone marrow donation. No country on
| earth will require you to make that donation, even though
| it would be less harmful to you than the average
| pregnancy.
|
| This is what solves the dillemma for me, others may
| differ.
| trashtester wrote:
| > Honestly I don't care if a fetus is a person.
|
| Maybe you really do not care. After all, neonaticide has
| been a common practice for poor mothers all over the
| world, in places where there were no welfare states or
| orphanages to take children that nobody could or would
| care for.
|
| And neonaticide doesn't evern require an active act. You
| can just leave the child in the forest, to be taken by
| frost or animals.
|
| But for a lot of people, it makes a big difference
| whether they consider the fetus an actual person, or just
| a lump of cells.
| ModernMech wrote:
| In fact that's not really the argument being made.
|
| If you listen to the pro-forced-birth side, they claim to
| be speaking for and defending the most vulnerable
| "people" (if we are to admit their premise) in our
| society. They are advocates for the innocent, and
| abortion needs to be illegal to protect their vulnerable
| rights. You can see them all over TV today and the
| internet saying just this.
|
| In fact fetuses are not the most vulnerable "people";
| they have significantly more protections than newborn
| children. Aside from guaranteed food and shelter, fetuses
| also have the full support of a political party and
| religious institutions.
|
| Newborn children are guaranteed neither food nor shelter.
| In America, we even separate newborns from their mothers
| depending on their immigration status. We've even jailed
| children and put them on trial. Gun deaths are the
| leading cause of death for children and that's a problem
| the pro-forced-birth party doesn't want to fix.
|
| So all this talk about "protecting the vulnerable
| children" is clearly just disingenuous. It's not about
| protecting the vulnerable at all. It's about a religious
| conservative powergrab and we know this by how quickly
| Clarence Thomas invites challenges to contraception and
| gay marriage, on the basis of the Dobbs decision.
| trashtester wrote:
| > Newborn children are guaranteed neither food nor
| shelter.
|
| I'm not American, so I don't know these things. Can you
| document a single newborn child that, with the knowledge
| of the government, is starving to death outdoors?
| liminvorous wrote:
| The ability to rely on another person's body to keep you
| alive is clearly a positive right if it exists, which I
| think no one believes in general, some but people believe
| in the specific case of pregnancy, because it's
| "natural". Plenty of things we believe are violations of
| rights are also "natural" so I don't think this is a
| consistent position to take, of course people don't
| generally pick their ethics for consistency.
| trashtester wrote:
| > The ability to rely on another person's body to keep
| you alive is clearly a positive right if it exists
|
| That is one way to frame it. Usually, though, abortion
| requires someone to actively kill the fetus.
|
| And there is another problem with this argument. The
| sacrifice it takes for the woman to carry the baby for 9
| months may not be the real reson people have abortions.
| Rather, I imagine, the real reason is that they don't
| want what happens AFTER the child is born.
|
| Let's consider a similar argument: A ship crew on an oil
| tanker going from Saudi Arabia to Huston discovers an
| uninvited "passenger" hiding in the ship. A 5 year old
| girl, let's say. Do they have an obligation to feed this
| girl until they reach LA, or can they throw her
| overboard?
|
| Now, from a purely postive rights argument, one could say
| they're not allowed to throw her overboard, but they also
| are not required to feed her. But we all know that's not
| going to happen.
| avs733 wrote:
| This is correct and illustrative of why the power centric
| version of Christianity in this country needs to be
| actively removed from all positions of influence.
|
| All data shows that outlawing abortion does nothing to
| reduce abortion. It only makes it occur later in pregnancy
| and makes it more dangerous.
|
| It's time we just call religious fascism what it is because
| this month has shown the scorched earth approach it takes
| in this country to its demand of power.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _All data shows that outlawing abortion does nothing to
| reduce abortion_
|
| The abortion rate in the US was far lower pre-Roe. It
| went up 5x in the decade after it was nationally
| legalized.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_
| Uni...
| jimkleiber wrote:
| The link says that the CDC compiles data on legal
| abortions only, so I don't know how much those numbers
| prove the point.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| The numbers went up because people started coming out of
| the closet and admitting that, yeah, they were doing
| something that was previously illegal but was now legal.
|
| It doesn't mean that fewer of them were doing it before
| it became legal. They were doing it and hiding it.
|
| It's the same as when gay people finally started coming
| out of the closet, once the laws and stigmas against
| being gay were reduced. Now they could finally admit what
| they were doing all along, with less fear of being
| stigmatized, arrested, imprisoned, or killed.
| avs733 wrote:
| As explained by others your interpretation of data is
| wrong.
|
| That doesn't stop this falsehood from being repeated and
| it is one of many points of intellectual dishonesty that
| characterize the anti abortion movement.
|
| Assuming you brought this to the discussion in good faith
| I would encourage you to reflect on your information
| sources because one side of this debate has shown a
| willingness to lie, mislead, cheat, and commit violence
| in support of their ideology. Personally I have found
| that ideologies that behave like that do so consistently
| and will choose to mislead to get what they want. That is
| a helpful heuristic for guiding how I interpret their
| arguments and attempts to support them with data.
| qalmakka wrote:
| "Yes, hello, I'd like to report the crime I've
| committed". Come on. That's the exact same reason why
| there are no openly gay people walking in the streets in
| Saudi Arabia. You don't report something that you did
| illegally.
| divided wrote:
| Wrong and naive.
|
| Wrong because Roe v Wade was decided in 1973, the rate
| went from roughly 14 to 23 (a 64% increase).
|
| Naive because as Jim said, the article clearly states the
| numbers are voluntarily given and therefore would not
| include illegal abortions. And the recording started in
| 1969, so it wouldn't be surprising for it to take time
| before clinics even began reporting. In other words,
| abortions in states where it was legal probably didn't
| DOUBLE between 1970 and 1971, but rather reporting of
| them improved.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Fargoan wrote:
| Religious tolerance is ok up to the point where they
| start pushing their beliefs on everyone else.
| Fargoan wrote:
| Also, you are deliberately cutting off the end of the
| sentence in your quote.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What does the Constitution say about religious tolerance?
| The founders seemed to have a stronger opinion on keeping
| religion out of politics.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Not really. Most of the states literally had state
| religions. Almost all of the founders were religious and
| wrote about it. John Adams even said the Constitution was
| only fit for a religious people.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| And yet, they made it the very first amendment, so any
| state with their own religion should have had it struck
| down quickly. Also, the term "separation of church and
| state" did in fact start with the founders. Who were
| mostly deists, not at all like today's Evangelical
| Christians.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >And yet, they made it the very first amendment, so any
| state with their own religion should have had it struck
| down quickly.
|
| This is just incorrect. Before the 14th amendment the
| bill of rights did not apply to states.
|
| >Also, the term "separation of church and state" did in
| fact start with the founders.
|
| It started with a single founder not founders. Have you
| read Jefferson's letter? I would imagine you haven't if
| you think it meant a state couldn't have a state religion
| or that they couldn't push religious laws (not that
| abortion is strictly a religious thing).
|
| >Who were mostly deists, not at all like today's
| Evangelical Christians.
|
| Do you have a list? I am not sure that mostly is
| accurate. Episcopalianism (is that how you spell it?) was
| quite popular.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > This is just incorrect. Before the 14th amendment the
| bill of rights did not apply to states.
|
| "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States
| which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all
| Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the
| Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law
| of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound
| thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any
| State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
|
| I forgot about that brief time before the civil war when
| states felt like they could pick and choose which parts
| of the Constitution applied to them. Why do you think it
| only applies to the bill of rights, though?
|
| I find it darkly humorous that it took an amendment to
| the Constitution to really drive home that the
| Constitution actually applies to everyone in the US. That
| seems like a bit of circular logic, but at the point of a
| gun it worked.
|
| Imagine if states could just choose that the second
| amendment did not apply to them today. Ha!
| _-david-_ wrote:
| States couldn't pick and choose what to follow per se.
| The Constitution and the Bill of Rights for the most part
| only applied to the federal government. This is well
| documented.
|
| Quoting the Constitution is pointless since it doesn't
| prove anything. If the federal government has the
| authority to do something then it is the law of the land.
| What you are missing is that the Constitution only allows
| like 10 things (I made up 10, but it is close to that).
| Anything other than those 10 things were left to the
| states (10th amendment).
|
| Barron v. Baltimore was a Supreme Court case (that was
| decided unanimously) that made it clear that the Bill of
| Rights did not apply to the States. After the 14th
| amendment (though not immediately) something called the
| Incorporation Doctrine became the mainstream opinion.
| This was the process of applying the amendments to the
| states which only could happened due to the 14th
| amendment.
|
| Prior to the 14th amendment states could ban guns though
| several of states had similar provisions to the 2nd
| amendment in their constitutions. Assuming they either
| amended their state constitution or never had the right
| in their constitution they could ban guns.
|
| That was the entire purpose of the the way the US was set
| up. The federal government has a basic setup mostly to
| ensure defense of the nation (and a few other things like
| weights and measures) and the States deal with everything
| else. If a state wanted to ban guns they could. If you
| wanted to own guns you could move to a state that allowed
| gun ownership.
|
| The US was intended to be closer to 50 distinct countries
| than one nation with 50 administrative regions like we
| have today.
| LocalH wrote:
| Downvoted for the disingenuous quote.
|
| The full quoted sentence, emphasis mine:
|
| "This is correct and illustrative of why _the power
| centric version of Christianity in this country needs to
| be actively removed from all positions of influence_. "
|
| They're not saying that all religion is bad. However,
| religions have their place, and it is not in positions of
| power. Historically, the religiously-motivated have used
| their power to enforce their brand of religious belief
| above others. _All_ religion should be banned from
| government, period.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > They're not saying that all religion is bad. However,
| religions have their place, and it is not in positions of
| power. Historically, the religiously-motivated have used
| their power to enforce their brand of religious belief
| above others. All religion should be banned from
| government, period.
|
| Do you think that religious people should be denied the
| right to vote or hold office? Because if you want "all
| religion should be banned from government, period,"
| that's what you'll need to do. Otherwise, only actions
| can be controlled, not motivations.
| LocalH wrote:
| If that's what it takes, so be it (regarding holding
| office, at least - voting is not something I would
| restrict in that way). This government is not supposed to
| let religion dictate policy. If a person can't
| demonstrate that they can consistently legislate or rule
| on law without letting their religion interfere, then we
| should not allow them to hold such positions. Human
| rights are what is important here, and we are seeing the
| result of unfettered access of organized religion to
| government - we roll back hard fought legal rulings. Look
| at the history of other nations that let religion rule
| the day - that power becomes useful then as a tool for
| oppression. Look at the modern world theocracies. They
| usually have abhorrent track records of human rights for
| women, homosexuals, people of the "wrong" ethnicity, and
| a whole range of other traditionally oppressed people.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Do you think that religious people should be denied
| the right to vote or hold office?
|
| > If that's what it takes, so be it (regarding holding
| office, at least - voting is not something I would
| restrict in that way).
|
| Shades of "you can vote for whoever you want to represent
| you, so long as they're a Communist who will govern
| according to the will of the party."
|
| > This government is not supposed to let religion dictate
| policy.
|
| I think you have a _serious_ misunderstanding of the
| establishment clause.
| pstuart wrote:
| It needs to be removed from the law -- personal faith is
| fine. A simple test for those that disagree: are you okay
| with Islamic Law becoming codified in our legal system
| too?
| babyshake wrote:
| If this was really about unborn children, their solution
| would be to make contraception as widely available as
| possible and same for Plan B and methods to detect and
| eliminate pregnancy as early as possible. The life begins
| at conception crap is just plain nonsense.
| pstuart wrote:
| And Sex Ed too ;-)
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| They're lying
| jklinger410 wrote:
| There are many conservatives in power who are lying, but
| there more people who live next door to you who genuinely
| believe it.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| No they don't. Because they don't act on it. They believe
| it just deeply enough not to ask why their actions are
| wildly inconsistent.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| By that logic - If I'm not willing to help someone else
| raise their children, I must (for consistency) allow them
| to murder their children if they wish to do so.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If we take it to the logical extreme of "murder" and
| "help" - absolutely.
|
| If their children were about be run over by a train, you
| could easilly save them by pressing the "STOP" button and
| you just watched while eating popcorn, then yes.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| So not helping single parents is the same as sitting by
| as a train runs over their children?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| so killing a single fertilised egg is same as murder?
|
| Neither comparison is reasonable.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Wildly inconsistent how? I'm asking in good faith and
| would like an example of an actual logical inconsistency,
| not a meme non sequitur about AR-15's or free healthcare.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Exactly this, a hundred times. Their actions betray them.
| If they actually thought there were half a million babies
| being murdered every year, tens of millions since Roe,
| they would have done something actively to stop it.
|
| If there were 500,000 five-year-old kids being murdered
| every year, with the explicit approval of the government,
| there would be a civil war.
|
| The fact that the overwhelming majority do not do
| anything is proof positive that they do not believe
| abortion is equivalent to murder.
|
| You can't simply claim, oh, I believe in democracy, or I
| believe in the rule of law in the face of a government
| that actively murders hundreds of thousands of children.
| No one has such a deep attachment to the rule of law for
| its sake as to tolerate 500,000 explicitly-legal child
| murders.
| svieira wrote:
| > If they actually thought there were half a million
| babies being murdered every year, tens of millions since
| Roe, they would have done something actively to stop it.
|
| By that argument, no abolitionist except for John Brown
| actually believed that chattel slavery was wrong. No
| suffragettes except the anarchists actually believed that
| women should have the right to vote. No blacks in the USA
| in the 1960s actually believed they were equal in dignity
| with their white brothers.
|
| Non-violent responses to violent outrages are a very
| Christian approach to the problems of evil. That doesn't
| mean there's no suffering involved. Pro-life activists
| are regularly arrested, assaulted, battered, and
| insulted. Pro-life organizations spend millions of
| dollars (gifted in charity by hundreds of thousands of
| pro-life people) every year helping woman who find
| themselves in difficult positions choose life and give
| their children a better life after birth. Time and
| treasure poured out for a cause are a better measure of
| the importance of a cause that the total weight of
| bullets expended in overcoming the other side.
| jlmorton wrote:
| That's not remotely true. There were several million
| people involved in active efforts to undermine and end
| slavery through direct action, including through actions
| like the Underground Railroad, rebellions like Stono, and
| of course it ultimately did lead directly to civil war.
| svieira wrote:
| There's been plenty of direct action by pro-life people
| that wasn't violent ranging from prayer vigils / sit-ins
| / Red Rose Rescue through to pregnancy centers and
| education.
|
| The side that triggered the Civil War was the side that
| was in the wrong, so I'm not sure what truth you are
| pointing to there.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Note that I do not claim that pro-life activists have no
| serious moral aversion to abortion. I believe that they
| do. I think pro-life activists believe unborn fetuses
| have certain rights worthy of protection.
|
| However, their rhetoric goes much further than that.
| Their rhetoric says that abortion is equivalent to
| murder, and thus justifies curtailing inalienable rights
| held by women.
|
| The right of self-defense of others is something very
| close to universally accepted. If there were an
| equivalent number of five year old kids being aborted, we
| would not see milquetoast efforts like sit-ins and prayer
| vigils, actions with both little consequence and impact.
|
| I believe Eric Rudolph believed abortion is murder. But
| all those people at prayer vigils, sit-ins, Red Rose
| Rescue, and pregnancy centers do not. They see it as
| something bad, but less than murder.
|
| If a half million five year old kids are being murdered,
| you can't just go about your life and attend an annual
| March for Life protest. What kind of a person doesn't do
| more? This is systematic, legal, mass-scale child murder
| we're talking about.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I think they are just very stupid, and lying to
| themselves. But this is such a deep stupidity, you can't
| just say their beliefs aren't real.
|
| If this belief of theirs isn't real, none of them are.
| Which I think is actually true. They believe in nothing.
| peteradio wrote:
| > No one has such a deep attachment to the rule of law
| for its sake as to tolerate 500,000 explicitly-legal
| child murders.
|
| That's where you are wrong. What action exactly are you
| looking for that would make you respect their beliefs?
| Apparently its outside the law.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Any political system that allows for the murder of half a
| million five year old children is very obviously not
| legitimate. If ever there were a justification for
| outright civil war, this would be it. It doesn't matter
| one bit whether it's a democracy, or the will of the
| majority.
|
| Any argument otherwise could equally justify any
| genocide.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Yes, I think that was the point. If people genuinely
| believed that abortion is the same as murder, they would
| have revolted against the government a long time ago.
| They don't really believe it.
|
| What they do believe, however, is that any woman who may
| need an abortion was being promiscuous, and should be
| punished for her actions. They absolutely believe that.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > If there were 500,000 five-year-old kids being murdered
| every year, with the explicit approval of the government,
| there would be a civil war.
|
| Precisely this -> It is a common technique that someone
| believes in Position A because of reason X, but reason X
| is unacceptable to the wider society and won't win
| debates. You make up reason Y to rationalise your
| Position A.
|
| Peole will debate you on reason Y and be wondering why
| they can't convince you despite demonstrating that reason
| Y is wrong. They can;t convince you because you don't
| care about Reason Y, it's just a ruse. Often your
| followers also know that reason Y is a ruse, at least the
| ones who are not totally stupid.
|
| In the Brexit debate, you would have people claiming that
| it's about national sovereignty and 'all them bloody EU
| laws', but they wouldn't be able to name a single EU law.
| They never knew and cared about EU law, they had a
| problem with immigration.
|
| If at least the country was discussing immigration, maybe
| they could discuss if it's cheaper to give some extra
| money to people who are affected by immigration or suffer
| the collateral damage of Brexit.
| hotelEcho28 wrote:
| Why shouldn't pregnant women deduct these "children" from
| their tax obligation like any other child? Especially after
| Roe is overturned. Surely a pregnant woman counts as a
| caregiver to these "unborn children" and entitled to a tax
| credit?
|
| That would help the children these voters are so concerned
| about!
| nick__m wrote:
| Unborn, _unwanted_ , _unsupported_ and _unloved_ children,
| you left the important part out !
| ed_balls wrote:
| Some voters may, but the main goal is to manage society.
|
| It's a perfect replacement subject for income inequality,
| debate about guns, foreign policy like isolationist
| movement.
|
| Because of the electoral system, Republicans in Texas had a
| big issue with immigrations from "blue states" - they could
| loose it forever. This is an existential threat for them -
| first fight was Heartbeat bill. Now they have a perfect
| tool to slow down the process or even reverse it.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| If people from blue states really wanted to make a
| difference, they'd move to low-population states like
| Wyoming and Montana. It's the Senate that's the ultimate
| roadblock, not the House.
| ed_balls wrote:
| > really wanted to make a difference
|
| most people don't care, they won't move for that. But
| Covid/Remote work/housing is pushing them, hence Rep.
| went all-in.
| clint wrote:
| They might believe that they "believe" this, but their
| actions say otherwise.
|
| Actually believing something and thinking you believe
| something are two wildly different things.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It isn't about religion. It's about power and control. We
| need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and
| everything to do with power over others. Nietzsche is more
| relevant here than Jesus.
|
| We, as a society, need to stop constantly creating straw men
| like this.
|
| Opposition to abortion is certainly about religion, or at
| least morality. Sure some politician can exploit morality to
| cynically gain power to accomplish other things, but that
| doesn't mean the voters are doing that. The voters are just
| caught in (many) moral dilemmas, and are therefore forced to
| make bad choices.
| ineptech wrote:
| > Only a quarter of evangelicals in the United States
| believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, according
| to a new poll showing that a majority of self-identified
| Christians in the U.S. identify as "pro-choice" and less
| than half of evangelicals identify as "pro-life."
|
| https://www.christianpost.com/news/less-than-half-of-us-
| evan...
|
| It's not a "religious issue" when the members of the
| religion are split along party lines just like everyone
| else.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| If you don't believe that there is some immortal soul
| endowed at conception then it is extremely unlikely that
| you'll oppose abortion.
|
| It is absolutely religious.
| ineptech wrote:
| Why isn't it a "science issue" because the pro-choice
| side is based on science? Or an "age issue" because old
| people are far more pro-life than young people?
|
| I'm not here to argue semantics. The point I'm here to
| make is that the people who call it a religious issue are
| trying to claim legal protection that is undeserved.
| "That law violates my religion!" is not a compelling
| argument when half of your religion supports it.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Why isn't it a "science issue" because the pro-choice
| side is based on science?
|
| What now? Has "science" become a nonsense word that only
| used to lend authority to nonscientific policy?
|
| > The point I'm here to make is that the people who call
| it a religious issue are trying to claim legal protection
| that is undeserved.
|
| That's not what's going on _at all_.
|
| What's actually happening is something along the lines of
| "my religion says X is morally wrong, therefore I support
| making X illegal" (or more accurately "my religion
| teaches Y, which I understand makes X morally wrong,
| therefore I support making X illegal").
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> It isn't about religion. It's about power and control.
|
| The difference? Politics and religion are both about
| controlling the actions of people. It may be done for good or
| ill, but it is always about control.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Yes, it is about power and control in the same way that
| society's prevention of the sexual abuse of children is about
| power and control. That's what laws are about: power and
| control.
| voisin wrote:
| No one says we prevent sexual abuse of children because of
| Jesus.
| ikiris wrote:
| Especially all the priests who would be convicted if so.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Well, first of all, it is a foundational principle of
| democracy that you can vote how you like for _whatever
| reason_ you like. You can vote for a rule that every
| governing board have at least one woman because you hate
| men!
|
| But as a matter of fact, Christians who are Christians in
| more than name only do _everything_ of import because of
| Jesus -- or because of biblical teaching more generally.
| I believe that I should tell the truth because of Jesus.
| I believe that divorce is wrong because of Jesus. I
| believe that those who take a life should forfeit their
| own because of Jesus (Gen 9.6).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Christians who are Christians in more than name only do
| everything of import because of Jesus
|
| I am not sure Jesus would agree
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Most Christians agree that the Apostle Paul speaks
| authoritatively for Jesus (that's actually the definition
| of an apostle), and Paul said:
|
| "Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do
| all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10.31).
| geekbird wrote:
| If you need a demigod and a book of fiction to tell you
| not to lie, cheat and kill then you aren't a very good
| person underneath.
|
| Morality and ethics are not the exclusive purview of
| Christianity, or even religion in general. Atheists and
| agnostics don't need a bible to tell right from wrong.
|
| In fact, religion is often used as an excuse to subjugate
| others, which is what they're doing by overturning RvW.
| They are subjugating women of breeding age as baby
| factories and unpaid child minders whose life course is
| decided on whether a man ejaculates in her and fertilizes
| an egg or not (whether she wanted him to or not.) If she
| catches, her life is no longer hers. It now belongs to
| the state as a incubation vessel for a potential citizen,
| and her wishes are now unimportant.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| First of all, I need a full-fledged God, not a mere
| demigod, and it is a factual error to call the Bible or
| the Koran or the Book of Mormon a book of fiction. You
| can, from your omniscient point of view, call it _false_
| , but it is not a work of fiction if its author believes
| it to be true.
|
| You may be right; perhaps atheists and agnostics don't
| need a Bible to tell right from wrong, but that isn't
| something even atheists themselves have agreed on. The
| whole angst of the European existentialist movement had
| to do with the realization that without a god everything
| and anything was permissible (including abortion, one
| assumes).
| joshstrange wrote:
| > We need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus
| and everything to do with power over others.
|
| I can promise you that this has quite a bit to do with
| religion. My parents both voted republican because "Billy
| Graham's son endorsed Trump" and before Trump they voted
| republican for this issue among others. I fully understand
| that elected republicans are just paying lip service to
| religion/abortion but they have their constituents completely
| fooled (or happy with their cognitive dissonance).
| InTheArena wrote:
| Interestingly enough - Evangelicals where typically left of
| center prior to Roe v. Wade (even in states where abortion
| was legal). My hope is that things return to a more
| historical norm now that Roe V Wade can actually be "a fair
| fight" (to use Scalia's language)
| dorfsmay wrote:
| > It isn't about religion. It's about power and control.
|
| Power and control is what organized religions have always
| been about.
| qorrect wrote:
| What possible argument against abortion exists besides
| "religion" ?
| emilsedgh wrote:
| What enabled this is large populations who voted republican
| purely for this cause due to religious reasons.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| A continually tried and tested truth is that mixing
| religion and politics is likely to end up in disaster. This
| applies everywhere across the globe.
| willcipriano wrote:
| This is simply a matter of law. The justification for Roe Vs
| Wade doesn't hold water, it never did, it asserts a right to
| privacy that apparently only applies in the specific case of
| abortion and not in warrantless surveillance or any other
| matter. It was a legal fiction.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| And this reasoning also applies to same sex marriage, and
| inter-racial marriage. And guess what? SCOTUS is now
| gunning for both. Congratulations America, welcome to the
| 1960s
| avs733 wrote:
| Oh not this nonsense again. If this were true than it would
| be easy for the current court to write an alternative
| opinion upholding the right as a liberty interest.
|
| They didn't because the argument you are repeating is
| wrong, as well as made in bad faith to undermine obviously
| correct legal analysis.
|
| You are a victim of propaganda and it makes me sad.
| dang wrote:
| Your comments in this thread have been breaking the site
| guidelines. Can you please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make
| your substantive points thoughtfully, as they request?
| That means without name-calling, personal attack, and
| flamewar--especially religious flamewar, which you've
| been crossing into elsewhere.
|
| For example, your second sentence here would have been
| fine on its own, or as the nucleus of a more thoughtful
| comment. The other sentences are the ones that break the
| guidelines. I understand that on a fraught topic like
| this, it can be next to impossible not to write such
| things. But then one should edit them out. That's what I
| do, or try to.
|
| Edit: it looks like your comment history contains a fair
| bit of ideological battle. Please make sure you're not
| using HN primarily for that, because that's the line at
| which we ban accounts (regardless of which ideology is
| being battled, or battled for).
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=co
| mme...
| krapp wrote:
| "Simply a matter of law" is a meaningless statement. All
| rights, including Constitutional rights and the laws which
| support them, are legal fictions. Roe v. Wade held water
| simply because the Supreme Court decided it did, until
| today when the Supreme Court decided it didn't.
| voisin wrote:
| Maybe the answer is that there shouldn't be warrantless
| surveillance?
| willcipriano wrote:
| Legal trickery and wordplay like the kind used in Roe Vs.
| Wade is what enables it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Here is another one that thinks laws could be written in
| a programming language and are simple IF_ELSE clauses
| camgunz wrote:
| It's the 4th Amendment. Justice Douglas in _Griswold v.
| Connecticut_ :
|
| > "Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts
| of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of
| contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions
| of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship."
|
| If your counterargument is "the word privacy isn't in the
| Constitution", my rejoinder is "neither is 'assault
| rifle'".
| willcipriano wrote:
| Why is this right to privacy exclusive to activities
| around reproduction? Where else do you enjoy this implied
| right of privacy? Why not quote the direct text that
| provides this right to privacy if it's so clear and
| obvious?
| fzeroracer wrote:
| It's also part of the 9th amendment. The point is that
| the courts ruled that people have an implicit right to
| privacy within their own home. That's literally why it
| exists, because it was to directly counter people who
| take the constitution at face value as being the ONLY
| rights it gives.
| pkulak wrote:
| But I can be prohibited from doing all sorts of things in
| my own home.
| camgunz wrote:
| The Court's job is to balance your right to privacy with
| the state's interests. Let's say you're running a meth
| lab: meth is very bad for people, it's hard to cook it
| safely and you might grievously harm others in your house
| or those nearby. Therefore, if law enforcement has
| probable cause to enter your home (e.g. they have an
| informant who's provided evidence), they can obtain a
| warrant for the express purpose of ascertaining whether
| or not you have a meth lab. If you don't have a meth lab
| but you are smoking weed (in a State where that's not
| legal), they can't arrest you, because that's not what
| the warrant is for. Hooray 4th Amendment!
| pkulak wrote:
| Sure, but I said "prohibited", not searched. Even in your
| example, I'm federally prohibited from smoking weed in my
| home.
| camgunz wrote:
| The War on Drugs is uniquely stupid, though there is an
| argument that the state has a compelling interest in
| making sure its citizens aren't all addicted to drugs.
|
| The legal theory on which the right to privacy mostly
| stands is called "substantive due process", which more or
| less says the state can't abridge your liberties without
| trying pretty hard not to. So liberties here can be
| contraception use, or drug use. Indeed _United States v.
| Oakland Cannabis Buyers ' Cooperative_ had the coop
| arguing that the Controlled Substances Act "violates the
| substantive due process rights of patients, and offends
| the fundamental liberties of the people under the Fifth,
| Ninth, and Tenth Amendments". This has generally (and
| maybe oddly) been at odds with the Commerce Clause,
| pretty well typified by _Wickard v. Filburn_ where the
| Court held that even though Filburn was only growing
| wheat on his own land for his own use, the US could
| impose a quota on him because it was regulating the price
| of wheat federally. This extends interpretation of the
| Commerce Clause from mere interstate commerce to
| production _and_ consumption. Here 's a good quote:
|
| "Hence, marketing quotas not only embrace all that may be
| sold without penalty, but also what may be consumed on
| the premises."
|
| I'm not an expert, but I believe this is the
| constitutional leg on which the CSA stands: the gov't can
| regulate what you consume. I'm personally sympathetic to
| the substantive due process challenge argument, but
| probably still too young to be on the Supreme Court. Call
| your senator! :)
| camgunz wrote:
| It's not, see _Lawrence v. Texas_ (same-sex
| relationships) and _Obergefell v. Hodges_ (same-sex
| marriages).
|
| You should honestly just read _Griswold_ [0]. It is a
| strikingly conservative opinion if, for example, you
| think privacy is also about "the government has to show
| a compelling governmental interest to regulate firearms".
| Here are some gems:
|
| "The association of people is not mentioned in the
| Constitution nor in the Bill of Rights. The right to
| educate a child in a school of the parents' choice --
| whether public or private or parochial -- is also not
| mentioned. Nor is the right to study any particular
| subject or any foreign language. Yet the First Amendment
| has been construed to include certain of those rights."
|
| "In NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U. S. 449, 357 U. S. 462 we
| protected the 'freedom to associate and privacy in one's
| associations,' noting that freedom of association was a
| peripheral First Amendment right. Disclosure of
| membership lists of a constitutionally valid association,
| we held, was invalid 'as entailing the likelihood of a
| substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner's
| members of their right to freedom of association.' Ibid.
| In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where
| privacy is protected from governmental intrusion."
|
| "The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in
| the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations
| from those guarantees that help give them life and
| substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516--522, 81
| S.Ct. 1752, 6 L.Ed.2d 989 (dissenting opinion). Various
| guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of
| association contained in the penumbra of the First
| Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in
| its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers 'in
| any house' in time of peace without the consent of the
| owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth
| Amendment explicitly affirms the 'right of the people to
| be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
| against unreasonable searches and seizures.' The Fifth
| Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the
| citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may
| not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth
| Amendment provides: 'The enumeration in the Constitution,
| of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or
| disparage others retained by the people.'"
|
| "In presenting the proposed Amendment, Madison said:
|
| 'It has been objected also against a bill of rights that,
| by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of
| power, it would disparage those rights which were not
| placed in that enumeration, and it might follow, by
| implication, that those rights which were not singled out
| were intended to be assigned into the hands of the
| General Government, and were consequently insecure. This
| is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard
| urged against the admission of a bill of rights into this
| system, but I conceive that it may be guarded against. I
| have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the
|
| Page 381 U. S. 490
|
| last clause of the fourth resolution [the Ninth
| Amendment]."
|
| "Madison himself had previously pointed out the dangers
| of inaccuracy resulting from the fact that 'no language
| is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every
| complex idea.' The Federalist, No. 37 (Cooke ed.1961) at
| 236."
|
| I could go on. I urge you to read it.
|
| [0]: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/
| xdennis wrote:
| > assault rifle
|
| They've been banned since 1986, since "assault rifles"
| are full auto. Presumably you mean "assault weapon" which
| is fuzzy media-talk for scary weapon.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _The right of the people to be secure in their persons ,
| houses , papers , and effects, against unreasonable
| searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no
| warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported
| by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
| place to be searched, and the persons or things to be
| seized._
|
| Where do you see abortion rights there?
| camgunz wrote:
| Like all rights, I see the Constitution forcing a
| balancing of state interest vs. individual liberty here.
| No right is absolute, and the Constitution outlines some
| examples of basic rights and their limits.
|
| 4A is pretty good at this. People have a right against
| unreasonable searches and seizures without probable
| cause. While the state's interest is implicit here, it's
| obviously law enforcement. This balances the state's
| interest in enforcing laws with the individual right
| against unreasonable searches and seizures.
|
| In _Griswold_ , the Court couldn't justify the state's
| interest in enforcing anti-contraception laws given its
| necessary invasion of privacy. Other concurrences found
| the right to privacy in other Amendments (the 9th and the
| 14th), but regardless of where you look, all of these
| Amendments lay out an individual liberty vs. a state
| interest.
|
| Courts are faced with the unenviable task of taking a >
| 200 year old document and applying its precepts to a
| world that would bewilder its authors. Different
| philosophies try to do this in different ways; Scalia
| famously pushed originalism, but even he essentially
| writes out slavery, Native American disenfranchisement,
| and the chattel status of women in the 18th century, and
| other originalists are even less consistent.
|
| Other justices look for the core liberties ineffably and
| imperfectly silhouetted by the Constitution--a document
| defining the most free nation ever yet made--in order to
| keep the flame of liberty burning. What originalists miss
| about the Constitution was that it was an _extremely
| radical_ document. If we are to be consistent with the
| spirit of the US at its founding, we have to preserve
| that dedication to liberty and human rights.
|
| Should what was once the beacon of liberty be tethered to
| what liberty meant 250 years ago? Is that a fitting
| destiny? Would Madison or Jefferson be proud of such an
| outcome?
| onething wrote:
| >...Scalia famously pushed originalism, but even he
| essentially writes out slavery, Native American
| disenfranchisement, and the chattel status of women in
| the 18th century, and other originalists are even less
| consistent.
|
| I am no legal scholar by any means, but wasn't Scalia's
| argument that if the people don't like the social
| contract (i.e. the constitution), the people should
| change it via amendments vs having judges change it? I
| think he would say he did not "essentially writes out
| slavery..." but rather the 13th, the 19th amendments etc.
| wrote those out of the constitution.
| camgunz wrote:
| Yeah, he's pretty crafty.
|
| > if the people don't like the social contract (i.e. the
| constitution), the people should change it via amendments
| vs having judges change it.
|
| This only makes sense when you dovetail it with
| originalism. The Bill of Rights isn't supposed to grow
| infinitely. Madison didn't even want it (if you're into
| appeal to authority to Founders). But when you make the
| dual arguments of:
|
| - the Constitution only means what it literally says,
| according to its time period
|
| - the only way to expand interpretation is to literally
| change it with Amendments
|
| you completely ignore the 9th and 10th Amendments.
|
| Originalism is largely a smoke-screen to roll back
| rights. _Dobbs_ is a great example of this, it heavily
| relies on "eminent common-law authorities" (only eminent
| as the result of conservative opinions pushing them into
| the catalog):
|
| "We begin with the common law, under which abortion was a
| crime at least after "quickening"--i.e., the first felt
| movement of the fetus in the womb, which usually occurs
| between the 16th and 18th week of pregnancy."
|
| Concluding:
|
| "The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion
| is not deeply rooted in the Nation's history and
| traditions."
|
| Well, the problem with the originalist take on this is:
| women. couldn't. vote. End of debate! Haha.
|
| It's probably also worth saying our understanding of
| medicine, conception, and pregnancy was pretty
| rudimentary back then. Why in God's name would we look
| back to that time period for wisdom on this?
|
| Well, it's because in those days "it was a crime". Pretty
| convenient.
|
| > I think he would say he did not "essentially writes out
| slavery..." but rather the 13th, the 19th amendments etc.
| wrote those out of the constitution.
|
| He doesn't incorporate this into his analysis though.
| Here's what he writes in _Heller_ regarding "Right of
| the People" in 2A (he quotes a Rehnquist opinion he
| concurred with to start):
|
| "'"[T]he people" seems to have been a term of art
| employed in select parts of the Constitution... . [Its
| uses] sugges[t] that 'the people' protected by the Fourth
| Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments, and to
| whom rights and powers are reserved in the Ninth and
| Tenth Amendments, refers to a class of persons who are
| part of a national community or who have otherwise
| developed sufficient connection with this country to be
| considered part of that community.'
|
| This contrasts markedly with the phrase 'the militia' in
| the prefatory clause. As we will describe below, the
| 'militia' in colonial America consisted of a subset of
| 'the people'--those who were male, able bodied, and
| within a certain age range. Reading the Second Amendment
| as protecting only the right to 'keep and bear Arms' in
| an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the
| operative clause's description of the holder of that
| right as 'the people.'"
|
| His argument is that "the people" means "everyone", and
| that "the militia" only meant "male, able bodied, and
| within a certain age range". But "the people" actually
| only meant white, land-owning men; it excluded women,
| free Black Americans (largely denied the franchise), and
| Native Americans.
|
| I think you would probably argue that, OK sure 1789
| wasn't wonderful if you weren't a white guy, but we can
| extrapolate, now that the franchise and civil rights have
| been extended and incorporated to the States, that "the
| people" means everyone.
|
| But this is exactly the opposite of what Scalia's
| arguing. He's saying _because_ "the people" meant
| everyone, we must understand 2A as applying to everyone.
| In doing so, he ignores that 2A allowed white men to be
| armed, but did not allow women, free Black Americans or
| Native Americans to be armed. "The people" absolutely did
| not mean everyone, and the Founders were well aware.
|
| In short, he ignores the fundamentally oppressive
| construction of the Constitution when it was written, and
| substitutes an imaginary regime where all enjoyed the
| right to bear arms. It was never so, and hearkening back
| to such a non-existent time is a daydream.
|
| Such is the problem with originalism. It idealizes men
| and a time period that were far from ideal. Looking to
| this period for wisdom inevitably starts to strip rights
| away from marginalized groups. And that's what we're
| seeing here.
| rswail wrote:
| > The right of the people to be secure in their persons
| ... against ... seizures, shall not be violated.
|
| By what power does the government enforce the seizure of
| a person's reproductive system and require it to be used
| to breed another life?
| dpbriggs wrote:
| In a lot of countries around the world, after the first
| trimester. I'm sure some existing abortion laws at the
| state level have similar restrictions.
|
| Why use this sort of rhetoric? The legal backing of Roe
| v. Wade wasn't about that at all.
| treis wrote:
| That's the basis of many of these laws and unfortunately
| it's obviously illogical. Even if we accept that as an
| unreasonable search that makes the search
| unconstitutional. Not the law.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| 'assault rifle' is an abstract term that doesn't have any
| meaning.
| MandieD wrote:
| Child-shredder, then, because that's the effect it had on
| those 10 year olds in Uvalde.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Appeal to emotion is not a valid argument.
| nmz wrote:
| Do you "feel" that's incorrect then?
| MandieD wrote:
| How was that an emotional argument? I was just stating
| the effect the weapon had on a bunch of those kids, not
| how awesome the weapon looked, or how powerful I feel
| owning one.
| willcipriano wrote:
| We can call the cops "Child-shredder protectors" as well,
| as the only shooting they prevented that day was one of
| the officers going in after his wife, who was killed.
| They didn't even try to open the door to the classroom,
| just stood around and made damn sure that nobody else did
| anything.
|
| You want to disarm yourself in light of that news?
| baseballdork wrote:
| How about "semi-automatic" then?
| vinyl7 wrote:
| The amendment uses the word "arms" which includes every
| time of fire arm. It doesn't say "keep and bear muskets"
| just as much as it doesn't say "keep and bear semi-
| automatics".
| multjoy wrote:
| I mean if you're going to be pedantic, what about "well
| regulated militia"?
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Maybe every US citizen is the militia. Part of the point
| of the 2nd amendment is that the citizens have the power
| to hold the government accountable, both at the ballot
| box and the ammo box.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > The amendment uses the word "arms" which includes every
| time of fire arm.
|
| Can you buy Carl Gustaf 8.4 cm recoilless rifle? M114 155
| mm howitzer? Mortars? They are all firearms.
| camgunz wrote:
| This line of reasoning has to explain how we can regulate
| things like:
|
| - Javelin missile launchers
|
| - aerosolized bioagents
|
| - jet fighters
|
| - land mines
|
| but not sniper rifles.
|
| Again, if you're going to extrapolate what "arms" meant
| in the late 18th century, you have some choices:
|
| - personal arms of the day (muskets, cannons, bayonets)
|
| - personal arms of the current day (missile launchers
| [0])
|
| - weirdo arms of the current day (drones, gases and
| bioagents, dirty bombs, white phosphorous)
|
| Originalism isn't helpful to us here, it turns out.
|
| [0]: https://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/rocket-
| launchers.p...
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > it asserts a right to privacy that apparently only
| applies in the specific case of abortion
|
| False.
| monocasa wrote:
| It's not just abortion, there's tons of case law around the
| implied right to privacy in the constitution.
| yndoendo wrote:
| Religion is the ruler's favorite tool
|
| This is seen very Authoritative Governments and Dictatorships
| because it allows for the exploit of self-identity. People
| often create their self-identity around a religion and if you
| try to talk about any logical flaws with their statements or
| show them whole evident of facts proving them wrong they will
| still stick with their religion because they then would
| destroy their self-identity. When religion becomes self-
| identity then the person stops living reality and in a
| religious dream-like state.
|
| Look at Benjamin Franklin, US Founding Father, was a
| Christian but didn't self-identity and also wrote a section
| in a book, Every Man His Own Doctor: The Poor Planter's
| Physician, how to perform an abortion.
|
| He is an example of self-identity that goes beyond religion.
| But also the self-identity factor can also be tie not to
| religion but political parties or other extreme identities
| leading to group think.
|
| With high confidence, and hopefully a good study is done, a
| high percentage of people that gave power to the anti-
| abortion / anti-liberty movements are self-identified with
| religion over other aspects.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Obligatory Tim Kreider comic on this point:
| https://i.redd.it/u9c8patjifb51.jpg
| georgia_peach wrote:
| toyg wrote:
| Not disagreeing, but this comes from further back than a
| decade. It goes all the way at the very least to Gingrich, when
| Republicans locked on the religious vote by attacking the
| "immoral conduct" of Bill Clinton. It worked so well that
| they've made it a structural element of their strategies. You
| can see the traces of this even in the political allegory of
| clintonism that is The West Wing - this episode was filmed in
| year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VHK1NXIBw
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I don't think it's right to place blame totally on evangelicals
| and other Christians. The Republican platform is reactionary
| top to bottom. This is further reflected in Republican
| politician's votes.
|
| What I'm saying is, this happens even without fervent support
| from the religious right.
|
| This also likely isn't the final chapter, as the opinion also
| gives thoughts to overturning rulings related to contraception
| and same sex marriage.
| jawns wrote:
| > while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest
| mention
|
| Did the U.S. Constitution give abortion the slightest mention?
|
| No, the right to abortion was inferred from a right to privacy,
| which was inferred from several amendments that did not
| explicitly mention abortion or privacy. The Ninth Amendment
| does makes allowance for rights that aren't explicitly
| enumerated, but it doesn't really give any guidance on how to
| know what those are.
|
| Similarly, many Christian denominations recognize that Jesus
| didn't need to explicitly mention every single moral issue for
| the Church to develop doctrine around them. Heck, even the
| doctrine of the Trinity, a core doctrine of mainstream
| Christianity, requires some level of inference from Scripture.
|
| So if your argument is that Jesus needed to explicitly mention
| abortion for there to be any justifiable Christian doctrine
| about it, you're applying a different standard than the
| standard that was used to define a constitutional right to
| abortion in the first place.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| As far as Christianity goes, equating Abortion to murder has
| only recently become the popular interpretation. Not only is
| it written multiple times in The Bible that life begins at
| breath, The Bible even contains instructions on how and when
| to perform abortion.
|
| As far as the constitution goes, amendments are treated as
| part of the text, not gotchas. The constitution protects your
| right to keep the contents of your pockets and your home
| private. Why not the contents of your uterus?
| turdit wrote:
| "I'd like to see Evangelicals and other Christians being as
| vocal for social justice as they were for abortions and same
| sex marriage, but I guess they do care about putting woman back
| in the kitchen as indentured servants more than they do about
| social justice."
|
| right. the people who really care about social justice are the
| atheists, muslims, jews, hindus, etc. thanks for making this
| important point.
| tuckerman wrote:
| There's not a large number tyrannical Hindus, Jews, Muslims,
| or Atheists gerrymandering their way into office to push
| their religious nonsense into laws that threaten my life in
| the United States. I think singling out Christians is
| perfectly fine in this case.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| To be fair, we'll never know all the things Jesus said since
| it's not like he wrote an autobiography or anything. All
| records of him were selected and written by other people, who
| may or may not have been comprehensive.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| My understanding is that abortion is a major social justice
| issue for Christians. So you would want to engage with them on
| their social justice priorities and strategies, finding
| overlap, and so forth. At least that's how I approach these
| dialogues regarding policies of lower levels of government.
| avs733 wrote:
| Why is there never an expectation that Christian's engage in
| dialogue and civility about this issue? There is never a
| demand they convince the pro choice people just that they be
| allowed to control and threaten them. Calls for dialogue are
| just part of the intentional narrative created to undermine
| peoples rights.
|
| Rights do not necessitate dialogue.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Of course there has to be a mutual expectation in
| successful dialogue. I was just replying to someone who
| seemed not to realize both sides have the same concept of
| civil/social justice. Those realizations can be helpful for
| those trying to communicate with political opponents. It
| sounds like you have no interest, and that's fine.
| f154hfds wrote:
| I'm a Christian and I've engaged people many times on this
| platform about this very issue. In fact your insinuation is
| so contrary to the truth I find it hard to believe you
| could possibly believe it in good faith!
|
| Let me start with this: why should we as rational human
| beings assume life doesn't begin at conception? Is there a
| more logical place to ascribe life beginning, whether it be
| human or otherwise?
| rswail wrote:
| For the sake of argument, assume that life does begin at
| conception.
|
| However _murder_ is defined as taking the life of a
| _human being_. Conception is not a logical place to
| ascribe the beginning of a human being.
|
| As an example, is the loss of a zygote, or a blastocyte,
| or an ectopic implantation to be considered the death of
| a human being?
| f154hfds wrote:
| I might not understand your question. If life begins at
| conception, then of course a zygote is a human being and
| that zygote not making it would be a death by definition.
| Before implantation etc, you might never know that human
| being existed. So discovering you killed that zygote
| without knowing it isn't the same as abortion just like
| accidental manslaughter isn't murder.
| SigmundA wrote:
| You can go to prison for manslaughter. So should women
| who's body naturally aborted which happens quite
| regularly (30-40%) [1] be charged with manslaughter?
|
| Birth control actually prevents implantation rather than
| conception every once in a while [2], would taking birth
| control be considered manslaughter if proven it prevented
| implantation rather than conception? This is actually
| what many are worried about now that Roe v Wade is down,
| Griswald vs Connecticut could be up next.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscarriage
|
| [2] https://www.guttmacher.org/antiabortion-activists-
| their-own-...
| f154hfds wrote:
| I do believe there's a case to be made that
| 'abortifacient' birth control should be regulated more
| carefully, and used for the protection of the mother
| instead of as a general-use contraceptive. Though this
| kind of manslaughter can't practically result in
| prosecution, so at the end of the day the use of
| abortifacients might have to be on the conscience of the
| potential mother (and father).
| SigmundA wrote:
| So you seem to be saying that anyone taking hormonal
| birth control could be technically commit a crime
| (manslaughter) but it's just not feasible to prosecute?
|
| What about spontaneous abortion (miscarriage)? If the
| women is found negligent such as taking excessive risks
| (smoking, drinking, excessive age, some strenuous
| physical activity) they are also technically committing
| manslaughter correct? Again regardless of how viable it
| is to prosecute such a crime, are they committing a
| crime?
| f154hfds wrote:
| It's only a crime if there is a law criminalizing it, and
| I can see reasons why a just state would not make laws
| about abortifacients for several reasons not the least of
| which being it's unreasonable to prosecute such an
| offense.
|
| It is both wrong and a crime to forget your child in a
| hot car to the point where they die. It isn't murder but
| it would be on your conscience regardless of whether the
| state prosecuted you or not. As I believe the unborn have
| an equal right to life as the born children it makes
| logical sense to enact laws such that crack use resulting
| in deformed children is a prosecutorial offense
| tantamount to neglect of born children. Of course, there
| is also criminal negligence vs. accidental crimes and all
| of that still applies.
|
| EDIT: miscarriage isn't abortion, I'm not sure about its
| relevance to the discussion?
| xeromal wrote:
| Probably not. The line is vague, but I'll say there's
| precedent that a murderer who kills a mom and her unborn
| child gets charged with two murders. Or in the instance
| of that mother that was detained by the police roughly
| and lost her unborn child in the process. In these cases,
| the women/families want the child so the unborn baby
| becomes a human for the sake of argument, but I think a
| lot of people can see that rationale being a bit weird,
| yeah? A human is a human whether someone wants them to be
| or not.
| parrellel wrote:
| So, what do you think of the lack of biblical support for
| your position?
| f154hfds wrote:
| Are you trying to say a lack of evidence is evidence of a
| lack? But there is plenty of evidence nonetheless:
|
| Maybe the most clear case comes in this way:
|
| Christians believe that human beings are chosen by God
| just as much as they choose God (both must be true to be
| saved). This is most clear in Romans 8:29-30.
|
| > For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be
| conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might
| be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he
| predestined he also called, and those whom he called he
| also justified, and those whom he justified he also
| glorified.
|
| So God does decide who to save, he "foreknows" them,
| whatever that means. Now there are several examples of
| people being called by God, many of which happen before
| they are born.
|
| Jeremiah is called by God before his birth in Jeremiah
| 1:5:
|
| > Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before
| you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a
| prophet to the nations.
|
| Paul is called by God before his birth in Galatians 1:15:
|
| > But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and
| who called me by his grace, ...
|
| These are just some examples, there are more references
| to unborn in the Bible. The argument goes like this: if
| it's wrong to kill another being imbued with the image of
| God, fully capable of being foreknown by Him, called,
| predestined, justified and glorified, it is equally wrong
| to kill them before birth as opposed to after birth and
| the Bible makes no distinction between the two in terms
| of how this process works, evidenced by the above
| passages.
| parrellel wrote:
| When does the Bible say life begins? What are the
| punishments laid out in the Bible for causing an
| abortion?
|
| Weird Calvinist predestination silliness aside.
| f154hfds wrote:
| I can also include this interesting verse, Ecclesiastes
| 11:5:
|
| > As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the
| bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not
| know the work of God who makes everything.
|
| Quite simply, according to the Bible life begins at
| conception, our capacity for good and evil begins at
| conception, God chooses us at conception and our status
| of being in the 'image of God' starts at conception.
|
| The above verses and doctrine are not 'Calvinist',
| Calvinism is the belief that God's choice is the primary
| cause of salvation as opposed to man's choice, but that
| distinction is irrelevant here.
| parrellel wrote:
| Please look elsewhere in the thread for more explicit
| textual refutation of your views...
| f154hfds wrote:
| If you're referring to the reference to the law on
| accidental harm to pregnant mothers in Exodus it's
| irrelevant to the question of when life begins. I can
| think of many reasons why courts would be lenient about
| sentencing regarding harm of unborn compared to born
| human beings. For example, if you when driving
| accidentally bump a man on the road and he dies but he
| was a hemophiliac, is it not just for a court to take
| that into account when sentencing? You did kill the man,
| but extenuating circumstances give the chance of
| leniency, justly deserved.
| [deleted]
| pxc wrote:
| > why should we as rational human beings assume life
| doesn't begin at conception?
|
| 'Life begins at conception' is just a nominally
| secularized reference to the doctrine of ensoulment, not
| a concept that is morally relevant to question of whether
| abortion should be legally permissible (or even
| interesting).
|
| If we cared about the mere fact of life in the relevant
| way, we'd be interested in legal restrictions on pulling
| weeds. If the concern was with living tissue with human
| DNA, we'd be fretting over amputations. Even in the case
| of human life, not every end to human life is an
| equivalent of 'murder' to be categorically prohibited to
| the exclusion of all other considerations. And even if we
| grant that abortion is always morally wrong, it _still_
| does not automatically follow that categorical legal
| prohibition is a sound social response to the moral
| issue.
|
| There's an expansive philosophical literature on the
| ethics of abortion that actually seeks to identify and
| address the moral core of the issue and its relation to
| law. The phrase 'life begins at conception' is just a
| political slogan for a religious dogma that very, very
| quickly falls apart when you try to use it ss an actual
| starting point for reasoning about abortion policy.
| Trotting it out pretty much represents a refusal to
| engage in good faith with secular thought on the issue.
| f154hfds wrote:
| I agree that 'human life' and 'ensoulment' are linked,
| but I of course disagree on your casual dismissal of my
| question. Maybe I can ask another question:
|
| If murder is wrong for the born, what about the unborn
| makes that wrong lesser?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest
| mention
|
| In his defense, Jesus came to fulfill the old law and not
| abolish it, as directly stated by himself. The old law has the
| 5th commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," which in the times of
| Jesus was unanimously interpreted to cover abortion (Psalm 139
| being one reason why) and Jesus, by not speaking against this
| interpretation (unlike other interpretations), left that view
| unchanged.
| qalmakka wrote:
| The old testament also banned eating shrimp and that people
| working on Saturday should be stoned, so I kind of see lots
| of cherry picking here. It's also highly ambiguous if the
| fetus should be considered a human being or property (see
| Exodus), but that's not the point.
|
| The core point was that most of the message and teachings of
| Jesus were clearly, unambiguously about social justice and
| charity, and yet modern Christians care way more about Old
| Testament moral rules than the actual Christian message, what
| Jesus clearly cared about the most, the last, the meek, the
| poor.
|
| The modern Christian votes for racist ultra-rich that only
| profess hate towards everyone that's different from them in
| order to get abortion and gay marriage banned. That's the
| worst corruption of the Christian message possible, in my
| opinion, and makes those people phony believers to my eyes.
| They use their as an indentitarian way to distinguish them
| from the others, which is absolutely at odds with the
| ecumenical message of Jesus Christ.
|
| Care about the young not being able to start families first,
| about those who are in need and can't make their ends meet,
| and then take care of the rest.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > what Jesus clearly cared about the most, the last, the
| meek, the poor.
|
| You could say it is a matter of perspective, as to the
| Christian, the unborn child is the most last, the most
| meek, the most poor, and the most helpless compared to any
| person including the mother, and thus logically requires
| precedence.
|
| Is the fetus a child or is it not? If it is not, then the
| mother should take precedence. If it is, in fact, a child,
| then it must be protected as such.
|
| @timbit42 Not true. https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=3
| 1863293&goto=threads%...
| timbit42 wrote:
| According to the Bible, the fetus is not a child. Look at
| the Jewish position on abortion for the details.
| electrondood wrote:
| Genesis 2:7 - Life begins at first breath.
|
| Exodus 21:22-23 - Abortion isn't murder. It's property
| damage.
|
| Numbers 5:11-31 - The biblical version of the "abortion
| pill", used to test a wife's fidelity.
| charonn0 wrote:
| Immediately after receiving the 10 commandments, Moses orders
| the Israelites to slaughter their friends, family, and
| neighbors who worshiped the golden calf. And God approved.
| mcphage wrote:
| And then God send them to genocide their way through the
| promised land.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > "Thou shalt not kill," which in the times of Jesus was
| unanimously interpreted to cover abortion
|
| Then how do you explain this:
|
| - When the Bible commands abortion: https://www.patheos.com/b
| logs/slacktivist/2018/02/03/bible-c...
|
| - How to perform an abortion, according to the Bible:
| https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allsetfree/2021/11/how-to-
| perf...
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| You are incorrect. The bible does not support fetal
| personhood. The bible clearly gives fetuses a lower moral
| valence than a living person and discusses that an accident
| that results in a stillbirth is not equivalent to "killing a
| person". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Modern Judaism differs from Historical Judaism in this
| respect. For example, the "Rabbinic sources" sounds
| historical... but then the first person quoted lived in the
| 1700s.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| I wasn't referencing modern judaism, I was referencing
| the word of god itself, which clearly does not support
| any notion of fetal personhood.
| haubey wrote:
| >unanimously interpreted to cover abortion
|
| Exodus 21:22-23 recounts a story of two men who are fighting
| and injure a pregnant woman, resulting in her subsequent
| miscarriage. The verse explains that if the only harm done is
| the miscarriage, then the perpetrator must pay a fine.
| However, if the pregnant person is gravely injured, the
| penalty shall be a life for a life as in homicides.
|
| Jesus was Jewish and fetuses aren't considered persons under
| Jewish law.
| bjourne wrote:
| That is wrong. Fetuses are considered "living beings" under
| Jewish law and abortion is generally not permitted.
| _Exceptions_ are made for pregnancies which threatens the
| life of the mother. See f.e. https://www.chabad.org/library
| /article_cdo/aid/529077/jewish...,
| https://aish.com/48954946/,
| https://forward.com/news/501397/what-does-jewish-law-say-
| abo... This view is not materially different from the
| evangelical Christians' view which often also allow
| abortion if the mother's life is in danger, if the
| pregnancy was the result of rape, if the fetus is deformed
| and nonviable, etc.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > Jesus was Jewish and fetuses aren't considered persons
| under Jewish law.
|
| A counterargument would be that the Jewish law does not
| address whether they are persons, but rather focuses on the
| fine being the solution to the matter. The law also only
| addresses if the incident should occur by accident (the
| miscarriage being a side effect), whereas deliberately
| inducing a miscarriage was not included.
|
| EDIT: Adding more information (also due to reply timers):
|
| @DangItBobby The verse in question:
|
| "When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so
| that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the
| one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's
| husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges
| determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life
| for life."
|
| A few notes.
|
| 1. The law only addresses unintentional injury, and does
| not address intentional injuries.
|
| 2. The law does not specify "injury." It could mean an
| injury that occurs to the pregnant woman, the unborn child,
| or both. One way to interpret the passage is that if the
| woman is caused to have an early delivery, then the penalty
| is a fine, but any further injury to the child is covered
| under the _lex talionis_ law of "an eye for an eye."
|
| 3. The law actually calls the fetus a "child," and takes
| foregranted that the woman "is with child" which pretty
| clearly shows that the personhood was taken foregranted.
| monocasa wrote:
| No, it's explicitly covered under Jewish law and has been
| for millennia. Under that the fetus is an organ of the
| mother under her complete bodily autonomy.
|
| It doesn't say "with child" in the original Hebrew,
| that's added in your translation.
|
| The way it's translated into English these days directly
| from the Hebrew is
|
| > If men strive, and wound a pregnant woman so that her
| fruit be expelled, but no harm befell [her], then shall
| he be fined as her husband shall assess, and the matter
| placed before the judges. But if harm befell [her], then
| shall you give life for life.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| > The law also only addresses if the incident should
| occur by accident (the miscarriage being a side effect),
| whereas deliberately inducing a miscarriage was not
| included.
|
| Nope, that's covered. In the verse, accidental damage to
| the human mother was punishable by death.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| > The law actually calls the fetus a "child," and takes
| foregranted that the woman "is with child"
|
| And yet... If the woman is harmed, it's treated as if you
| harmed a human (eye for an eye), but if the fetus is
| harmed, there's a fine. It's quite clear that the fetus
| is not anywhere near the same importance in this law, not
| that this should have anything to do with modern law.
| [deleted]
| jtthe13 wrote:
| Register and vote at all elections: https://www.vote.org/
| YPPH wrote:
| As an Australian, a few things about the SCOTUS absolutely shock
| me, aside from the obvious issue of politicisation.
|
| I've only skimmed the judgment, but Roberts CJ convincingly
| points out that there was no need for the court to completely
| overturn Roe. It would suffice to jettison the viability
| standard. Going further was completely unnecessary to decide the
| case.
|
| On the other hand, Thomas J took the occasion, without having
| heard complete argument on the respective issues, to opine that
| other substantive due process rights should be reconsidered.
| Including Griswold (no banning controceptives), Lawrence (no
| banning sodomy), and Obergefell (no banning gay marriage). This
| is simply astounding.
|
| The second is the sheer hypocrisy of the members of the court who
| decry judicial activism while, in the next breath, engaging in
| the same.
|
| I wish you luck for the future, Americans.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| In my opinion, It's up to the federal government to make
| federal laws, not the supreme court. Democrats had _plenty_ of
| time to put the right for abortion into a law and pass it. Now,
| they have a platform on which to run for the next election,
| convenient...
|
| Politicians delegate too many decisions to the SCOTUS because
| they don't want to govern, well the SCOTUS isn't supposed to
| govern in their place.
|
| If nothing can get done at Washington, then the problem is at
| Washington itself, not the supreme court.
| zrail wrote:
| The problem as always is the silent filibuster. If
| obstructionists in the senate actually had to stand up and
| defend their obstruction more things would get done.
| prpl wrote:
| Laws like that would only be possible in certain years where
| there's a majority across all 3 branches (e.g. 2008) and
| neutered when the other branch is in power.
|
| Arguably a supreme court decision is more stable.
|
| A constitutional amendment would be most stable but we will
| never get to that level of state support
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| I would buy this as an argument if the Court, when presented
| with ways to absolutely improve the legislative situation,
| add more checks and balances to the legislature, and make it
| more democratic, doesn't turn around and do the opposite
| (gerrymandering and Citizens United are two obvious
| examples).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| i think it's a twrrible decision, but you have a point
| policians can keep kicking issues into the long grass-
| ultinately it will land on scotus and they have to make a
| decision
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| "Judicial activism" refers to striking down state laws. In this
| case they upheld a law.
| ncallaway wrote:
| That's nonsense.
| threeseed wrote:
| Does that equally apply to gun rights ?
|
| The states can ban abortion but not ban concealed carry.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Yes I would say the gun rights decision was judicial
| activism.
| ADifferentKyle wrote:
| I've never heard such a limiting definition for judicial
| activism. It's typically understood more broadly as a
| criticism of American judges who, according to some, go
| beyond their duties of "interpreting law" and instead create
| it. To borrow from conservapedia (a resource I wouldn't
| otherwise defend, except in this limited case), it's "when
| judges substitute their own political opinions for the
| applicable law, or when judges act like a legislature
| (legislating from the bench) rather than like a traditional
| court."
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Judicial activism is altering laws according to what the
| judge likes, usurping a legislative role. The supreme court
| striking down state laws is the typical form of such abuse
| because the typical supreme court case is deciding whether a
| certain new law has a problem.
|
| Roe vs. Wade is practically almost the same as a law that
| allows abortion, the other threatened precedents cited in the
| other comments are similarly almost laws that allow various
| rights, and so there is very little "upholding" of existing
| laws in this demolition and threatened demolition of
| "liberal" norms.
| avs733 wrote:
| I mean...no it doesn't.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Roe stood for years because the decision directly tied it to
| the right to privacy (via the 9th and 14th amendments), because
| that right "is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision
| whether to terminate her pregnancy". The Supreme Court reverses
| itself in this Dobbs decision; skimming the final decision, it
| attempts to tear down the original justification, but I'm not
| seeing an argument beyond "we think they were wrong", which is
| a pretty awful rationale for the Supreme Court.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > "we think they were wrong", which is a pretty awful
| rationale for the Supreme Court.
|
| What exactly are you looking for that would count as a
| rationale that doesn't boil down to "we think they were
| wrong"?
| katabasis wrote:
| If Republicans take back congress and the presidency in the next
| election cycles, a national abortion ban becomes a serious
| possibility. This is not just a "red states" issue.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/us/anti-abortion-movement...
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| A federal abortion ban (or legalization) may be
| unconstitutional.
|
| Depends on how effectively they can link it to interstate
| commerce or one of the other powers given to the federal
| government in the constitution.
|
| Also depends on how the current supreme court feels about the
| commerce clause. I am not sure if they have ruled on anything
| involving that recently.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| They would have to get rid of the filibuster, which seems
| unlikely.
| alangibson wrote:
| Thomas will be remembered as SCOTUSs right wing sleeper agent.
| He's been irrelevant legislative furniture for so long that
| people nearly forgot about him. Then his time finally came. Now
| Roe is overturned. Griswold and Obergefel may well be next.
|
| The only good that may come of this is a return to fighting
| issues out in the democratic sphere. Libs beloved Supreme Court
| won't save you now.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's a flood of stories on this. A sampling mostly gleaned
| from HN's New queue:
|
| Obviously a flood of articles and takes coming. I'm just catching
| what I can here....
|
| SCOTUS ruling:
| <https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf>
| (PDF)
|
| EFF Statement on Dobbs ruling:
| <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-statement-dobbs-a...>
|
| We're Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We're Going
| Somewhere Worse
| <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/we-are-not-goi...>
|
| Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, ending 50 years of federal
| abortion rights <https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/24/roe-v-wade-
| overturned-by-sup...>
|
| Overturning Roe vs. Wade could affect IVF
| <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-overturning-roe-v-wa...>
|
| Obama Statement on the Draft Supreme Court Decision to Overturn
| Roe vs. Wade <https://barackobama.medium.com/my-statement-with-
| michelle-on...>
|
| Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade Abortion-Rights Ruling
| <https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-24/supreme-c...>
| (Use https://archive.today/ for paywall.)
|
| Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, ending right to abortion
| upheld for decades
| <https://www.npr.org/2022/06/24/1102305878/supreme-court-abor...>
|
| Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade; states can ban abortion
| <https://apnews.com/article/abortion-supreme-court-decision-8...>
|
| Supreme Court Overturns Roe vs. Wade
| <https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-overturns-...>
|
| Roe vs. Wade Overturned
| <https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-06-24/supreme-co...>
| shmde wrote:
| USA is a third world country in a gucci belt. Change my mind.
| bshoemaker wrote:
| I have grown to hate edgy comments that are like "Well actually
| now it is just a state's issue and Roe v Wade was poorly
| decided!".
|
| You're not edgy & insightful. The impact of this decision isn't
| just pushing pieces around a chess board. It's scared women &
| girls around the country, it's women dying who wouldn't have
| otherwise.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| There was 40 years for abortion to be codified in law. Blame
| the legislators, not the court.
| karpierz wrote:
| There was no need to codify it into law, as it was already
| law! That's the whole point of a court ruling!
|
| Roe v. Wade determined that the Constitution itself implied
| abortion as a right, meaning that there already was a law on
| the books which protected abortion.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| It's not the job of the court to make laws. At one point
| the court decided that abortion fell under the 14th A, then
| they decided it didn't. Congress should have made access to
| an abortion a real law.
| karpierz wrote:
| It's the job of the court to interpret the consequences
| of the existing laws.
|
| At one point, the court determined that access to
| abortion was a right, according to the 14th amendment.
| Meaning, that the 14th amendment was, among other things,
| a law that granted the right to access abortion services.
|
| Later, the court decided to override their precedent, and
| declare that the 14th amendment did not grant the right
| to access abortion services.
|
| I think you need to define what a "real law" is, and how
| the 14th amendment doesn't qualify in this context.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| How exactly is discussing how this came to be some edgy and
| hateful thing? People want to understand and discuss the
| current crisis.
|
| If you want to discuss the human impact make that comment, or
| frankly, you're visiting the wrong sort of forum.
| krnlpnc wrote:
| "My body my choice" a favorite phrase of conservative anti-
| vaxxers and anti-maskers.
|
| How hypocritical that this belief doesn't apply to someone else's
| right to choose.
| npteljes wrote:
| It becomes less hypocritical if you consider that they think
| that the fetus is another's body. It then becomes an issue of
| deciding upon someone else's life - which would be murder of
| course.
|
| One thing I think they don't get, or care about, is the
| personal and societal consequences of having to keep unwanted
| pregnancies - mainly how much it makes life more difficult for
| everyone involved. And that with the difficulty, it comes
| degraded social relationships, unhappiness, substance abuse and
| crime.
|
| Another thing I think they miss is that lots of people will
| have abortions regardless. Affluent people will have the safe
| abortions, and the less fortunate will have risky, potentially
| life-threatening, horrible abortions. Where there's a will,
| there's a way, so again, crime increases, and the desperate
| women's health will be in danger, becase the procedure has to
| go unchecked.
| ausbah wrote:
| even if you consider the fetus at any stage to be a living
| human being entitled to certain rights, it is _in_ another
| body of which the "person inside" should have no say over
| because its not their body
|
| it would be like if you woke hooked up to another person who
| was relying on your body to survive. sure they're a person,
| but you never consented nor have to continue giving consent
| for them to use you in that manner
| krnlpnc wrote:
| > with the difficulty, it comes degraded social
| relationships, unhappiness, substance abuse and crime.
|
| The cynic in me sees this as an intended effect. American
| companies want cheap labor and maintaining an impoverished
| working class helps provide it.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| For those who say this is the logically correct decision, how
| exactly did you conclude that?
|
| -
|
| USA Constitution
|
| 14th Amendment
|
| Section 1
|
| ...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...
|
| -
|
| The constitution clearly says that states cannot enforce laws
| that deprive citizens of their lives and liberties.
|
| Now, states have renewed authority to deprive at-risk women their
| right to life-saving medical procedures. Please explain to me how
| this doesn't violate 14A.
| andonisus wrote:
| You do not have a right to life saving medical procedures. You
| do not have a right to an abortion. There is no law or
| constitutional amendment that grants this. This is the flaw in
| your reasoning.
|
| That being said, I believe women SHOULD have a right to get an
| abortion enshrined in law. It is up to our re-elected
| representatives to achieve this, not for the courts to invent
| rights thereof.
| deathanatos wrote:
| You might not have a right to them, but those procedures
| exist, and citizens would like to avail themselves of those
| procedures. They could even do so, except for the state's
| intervention: and that intervention thus deprives the citizen
| of "life, liberty".
| andonisus wrote:
| You left out the "without due process" part. The due
| process is the state enacting laws to restrict access.
|
| Of course, congress could pass a law enshrining the rights
| to an abortion tomorrow. This would grant and preserve this
| right for all Americans, regardless of state, due to the
| supremacy clause. Hopefully, this does happen.
| deathanatos wrote:
| I left it out, as I didn't find it relevant to respond to
| that particular comment.
|
| A simple drafting of a law is not the whole of "due
| process"; the very Roe v. Wade encapsulates that. (Of
| course, now overturned.)
|
| But also, take the cases of forcing a women to have a
| child she did not have a say in (rape) or which will kill
| her (e.g., ectopic pregnancy). These seem pretty close to
| bill-of-attainder type situations, but also, due process.
|
| I'd also argue you need to overcome the equal protection
| clause; bodily autonomy seems to me like a right that we
| generally honor -- we do not force organ or blood
| donations upon people -- yet, here, we strip that right
| from one sex in particular?
| andonisus wrote:
| Agreed on bodily autonomy. It is my guess that the court
| would strike down laws that restrict abortion wholesale
| (when challenged), but who knows.
|
| Of course, this is only applicable if the Congress fails
| to act; were they to pass a law that enshrines the right
| to bodily autonomy, there would be no issue.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| Did you read the amendment? There doesn't need to be explicit
| protection for medical procedures or abortion. 14A protects
| people from being deprived of life and liberty by state
| action or legislation. Eliminating access to abortion can
| deprive someone of their life and / or liberty, so
| eliminating access to abortion contradicts 14A.
| andonisus wrote:
| > nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty,
| or property, without due process of law
|
| There is no federal law granting the right to abortion.
| Therefore, states may have enact their own laws to either
| affirm or restrict access to abortion. This process is due
| process.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| I feel like I am talking to a brick wall.
|
| Any state law that deprives someone of life and / or
| liberty is unconstitutional.
|
| If someone needs a life-saving abortion, the state cannot
| deprive that person their constitutional right to life.
| andonisus wrote:
| I could say the same about you. There is no right to an
| abortion. Therefore the state is not depriving a person
| of anything.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| Have a nice day.
| andonisus wrote:
| You do the same!
| blindmute wrote:
| > Any state law that deprives someone of life and / or
| liberty is unconstitutional.
|
| It's not. It's literally not. Stealing food is illegal,
| even if you were going to die of starvation without it.
| Breaking into someone's home is illegal, even if you were
| going to freeze to death outside. And now, in some
| states, abortion is illegal, even if you were going to
| die from giving birth.
|
| States or congress should pass a law allowing abortions
| if that's the will of the people. The court should not
| invent a law out of nothing; this ruling is legally
| correct.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Roe v Wade didn't argue that. You can argue that independently
| if you wish - but it was not a justification for it.
|
| Also, people who oppose Abortion believe that this is the
| government _taking away_ a life. Which would also be at odds
| with the constitution.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| You are incorrect.
|
| "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 ... in
| the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is
| broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether to
| terminate her pregnancy."
|
| -- Roe, 410 U.S. at 153
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I'm not taking a stance for or against your argument. I'm
| simply point out a logical gap that doesn't make this as simple
| as your suggesting.
|
| The root of the issue is not the rights provided by the 14th
| amendment, but when, exactly, those rights apply during the
| process of conception, gestation, and birth. This is further
| complicated by the fact that scientific advances enable
| situations that our founders could have never predicted.
|
| I see two facts that are very clear:
|
| * A person cannot exist without conception.
|
| * At some point during pregnancy, a baby can survive as an
| independent living human. The youngest living baby was born on
| day 132 of pregnancy.
|
| Unfortunately, that leaves a massive grey area and your opinion
| on those is likely highly personal - including religion and
| living situation.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| This doesn't affect the reasoning. American women are
| indisputably citizens and people, whereas fetuses are not.
|
| The existence of this grey area doesn't preclude obvious
| constitutional rights.
| brigandish wrote:
| > American women are indisputably citizens and people,
| whereas fetuses are not.
|
| Foetuses are _disputably_ citizens and people. There 's
| your grey area.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| Did you read my comment? I don't dispute the existence of
| the grey area.
| brigandish wrote:
| Yes, I read your comment, thanks. You didn't appear to
| making reference to the same grey area that was referred
| to in the comment you responded to. It's not often that I
| see absolutism and the acknowledgement of a grey area
| within the same breath so do forgive my mistake, if it is
| one.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| What absolutism are you talking about?
| brigandish wrote:
| > American women are indisputably citizens and people,
| whereas fetuses are not.
|
| It reads very black and white to me.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| Do you dispute that American women are citizens and
| people?
|
| Do you recognize that there isn't consensus about whether
| fetuses are citizens and people?
| brigandish wrote:
| You could waste less of our time if you were either
| clearer in your writing, if you feel you've been
| misunderstood, or you just got to the point.
|
| Answering rhetorical questions though, nope.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| My claims are concise and straightforward, so I don't
| know what you're talking about. I also didn't ask any
| rhetorical questions.
|
| Like I said in another comment, I'm done with this
| conversation, have a nice day.
| deathanatos wrote:
| I suppose you can dispute anything then, but the upthread
| comment is right, and the same amendment of the
| Constitution is pretty clear about it:
|
| > _All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
| and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of
| the United States and of the State wherein they reside._
| brigandish wrote:
| You've only taken half of the statement, it was:
|
| > Foetuses are disputably citizens _and people_
|
| Citizens is one part, people is the other. Whether a
| foetus is a person, whether it has _constitutional
| personhood_ , was argued by Texas in the original Roe v
| Wade case. You may also note that the difference between
| person and citizen has been debated many times before in
| constitutional law. From [1]:
|
| > Thirty years ago, Bickel made a statement about the
| relationship between citizenship and personhood in
| American constitutional law that is well known among
| scholars of immigration and citizenship. He said: "It has
| always been easier, it always will be easier, to think of
| someone as a noncitizen than to decide that he is a
| nonperson."
|
| > What is expressed here is both a descriptive and
| normative claim about the significance of the category of
| citizenship in our constitutional system. Bickel argued
| that, as a historical matter, the Constitution has never
| set much stock by the category of citizenship; that one
| of the most disastrous aspects of Dred Scott was that it
| treated the denial of rights to slaves and free blacks as
| turning on their lack of citizenship; that the framers of
| the Fourteenth Amendment came close to entrenching this
| mistake, constitutionally, via passage of the privileges
| or immunities clause of section 1, which might have
| appeared to make rights contingent upon citizenship; but
| that, in the end (by way of Slaughterhouse,7 which
| eviscerated the clause), "innocence was restored." And
| Bickel concludes by expressing satisfaction with this
| state of affairs: "I find it gratifying ... that we live
| under a Constitution to which the concept of citizenship
| matters very little."
|
| In important ways, Bickel is descriptively right. True,
| citizenship status is still quite significant in a
| variety of settings, and conflicts between citizenship-
| and personhood-based groundings of rights persist in
| various contexts. Still, for a great many purposes, the
| "right to have rights" is not contingent on the
| possession of citizenship status. In the international
| arena, it is largely persons who are the subjects of
| human rights
|
| [1] https://academic.oup.com/icon/article/8/1/9/682631
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _You 've only taken half of the statement, it was:_
|
| Because I was only responding to that half of the
| statement. The argument for banning abortion must stand
| without it. Your insistence on it was why I chimed in.
|
| What you're now alluding to is a different claim than the
| one I responded to: that a. a fetus is a person (as you
| both seem to agree, disputable) and that even if we
| concede that question, the rights of the fetus _outweigh_
| those of the woman; taking some of the bills and laws
| that have passed in the various states, at the extreme,
| that it 's fine to deny to a woman bodily autonomy, even
| where it will put her through great trauma, up to and
| including death.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| That second "fact" is not a fact. Baby is the term we use to
| describe children soon after they are born. Did you mean
| fetus?
|
| Fertilized eggs have the potential to become fetuses, and
| fetuses have the potential to become babies, but fertilized
| eggs are not fetuses, and fetuses are not babies.
|
| I think the spirit of your argument is that we cannot decide
| when to call a fetus a human. Like I mentioned in another
| comment, this grey area does not preclude undisputed humans
| from their constitutional rights.
| mminer237 wrote:
| 279 days into a pregnancy, the baby can survive fine
| outside the mother's womb. If it's born the next day,
| nothing physically changes about the baby whether it's
| inside the womb or outside. It's literally a baby. Yet in
| roughly half of the liberal states, it's perfectly legal to
| kill that baby for any reason while it's inside, but the
| next minute when it's outside you'd get life in prison for
| killing it. How is that logically consistent?
| wizofaus wrote:
| What methods are there of killing an unborn baby a day
| before it would otherwise be born that wouldn't cause
| massive harm to the mother? What examples of this
| actually occurring do you know of? Personally I agree
| that ethically, intentionally killing the foetus/baby
| just before birth is not significantly different to doing
| so just after birth. But it doesn't mean the same legal
| protections make sense, given the very practical
| differences between either act. Perhaps the only scenario
| where they're not so different is where the mother is
| already dead. That we might need laws against anyone
| actively killing an unborn baby in such a case (given
| they'd obviously require active intervention to survive
| more than a few minutes) seems a little farfetched.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| First, you can't call a fetus a baby just because it can
| become a baby. (Just as you can't call a child an adult
| just because it has the potential to become an adult.)
|
| Second, pregnancy varies from person to person. You can't
| reasonably assume that all fetuses that are 279 days old
| will survive and become healthy babies.
|
| Third, there are substantial physical differences between
| fetuses and babies. I'm sure you're aware that fetuses
| receive most of their nutrients through the umbilical
| cord, whereas babies do not.
|
| Maybe I'm wrong and you're right, maybe "nothing
| physically changes about the baby whether it's inside the
| womb or outside." Let's test this hypothesis. Go feed a
| baby through its belly button and see how that works out.
| noelsusman wrote:
| The rights provided by the 14th amendment are exactly the
| issue. Today's ruling does not strike a balance between the
| rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn child. It
| eliminates the rights of the mother.
|
| There is a massive gray area, and Roe/Casey dealt with it
| just fine. Prohibiting restrictions early on in pregnancy and
| allowing restrictions later in pregnancy seems like a good
| solution to the competing interests at play.
| portpecos wrote:
| > Today's ruling does not strike a balance between the
| rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn child.
|
| Striking a balance between the rights of a mother and child
| is not the job of the Judicial branch. That's a job for the
| Legislative branch.
|
| The court's job was to determine if the Constitution
| prohibits the State from making their own state-wide
| decisions about regulating or permitting abortion.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Those aren't mutually exclusive jobs. If you determine
| that the Constitution does prohibit states from
| eliminating access to abortion, then you as the court
| must step in and adjudicate the competing interests
| between the mother and the unborn child. Balancing
| competing rights is a huge part of what the courts have
| always done.
|
| Fundamental rights like life and liberty should not be
| subject to the whims of political majorities in
| legislative bodies. This is a fundamental pillar of our
| system of government. It's a big reason why we have a
| Constitution in the first place.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Now, which is more important life or liberty and property of
| owner of the host body in pregnancy. And if life is is more
| important should we force organ transplants? After all at least
| there is lot of spare kidneys around... Maybe half a lung is
| also workable.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| This is a separate conversation, but I believe organ donation
| should be an opt-out system.
| batmansmom1 wrote:
| If you believe that life begins at conception you could say
| that abortion deprives that "unborn person" of their right to
| life, as long as carrying the fetus to term would not put the
| life of the mother at risk.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| The government doesn't believe that life starts at
| conception. Otherwise you'd be able to get tax deductions for
| an unborn fetus. This has nothing to do with when life
| begins. This has everything to do with population control and
| with religious fundamentalism.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| If you believe a fetus is a person, then you are simply
| incorrect.
| mminer237 wrote:
| What is the difference between a baby in the womb on day
| 280 versus the same baby an hour later outside the womb?
| One is called subhuman and often perfectly legal to kill
| for any reason, and a person would get life in prison for
| killing the other.
| syspec wrote:
| One has a birth certificate,
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| That is one of many differences.
| gobrewers14 wrote:
| > If you believe that life begins at conception
|
| Someone believing life begins at conception is a reason for
| THEM to not get an abortion, it is not a reason for the
| government to outlaw it.
| mminer237 wrote:
| How would you differentiate this argument for abortion
| versus for slavery? Should it be legalized, and the
| government just tell people not to do it if it violates
| their conscience?
|
| In the eyes of roughly half the country, it's plainly
| injust to allow anybody to murder what they believe to
| clearly be a human being just because the other half
| believes they're subhuman.
|
| It's the government's job to punish injustice, even if the
| actors don't believe they're being unjust. Very few people
| in prison will say they did anything wrong. In their eyes,
| their crime was justified. Everybody thinks they're doing
| the right thing. Like it or not, it's the government's job
| to determine if that's true or not in many cases.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| I don't have the energy to continue engaging with these
| conversations, but I'd just like to point out one
| inconsistency in your comment.
|
| "In the eyes of roughly half the country..."
|
| 61% of the country believes abortion should be legal. 39%
| is closer to 1/3 than 1/2.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-
| six-i...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 39% is closer to 1/3 than 1/2.
|
| 37% is even more closer to 1/3; I wouldn't count the 2%
| that don't have a position with the pro-ban faction.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| True.
| gobrewers14 wrote:
| > How would you differentiate this argument for abortion
| versus for slavery?
|
| Slavery unambiguously violates the autonomy of another
| human being.
|
| If it could be demonstrated scientifically what life is
| and when it begins and that happens to be at conecption,
| then yes, abortion should be outlawed. But we don't know
| this. In a free and open society, in the absence of
| knowledge, we should default to people making their own
| choices; we should default to freedom and not
| restriction.
| brigandish wrote:
| To deprive someone of life is a crime, hence, someone who
| believes life begins at conception is advocating against
| unlawful killing, and crimes are certainly the purview of
| the state and society.
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| The issue here is that this belief is not based in
| reality. A fertilized egg is not a human.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Are you willfully misrepresenting other arguments?
| There's a curious pattern in these threads of you ducking
| out of conversations when nuance is attempted.
|
| The remainder of the reasonable discussion around this
| topic is centered around the blurry point between
| inception and when viable birth is possible. The vast
| majority of people would classify a fetus, minutes before
| birth, being aborted as murder.
|
| As well, in most countries restrictions occur at some
| point in the pregnancy (recognition of the trade-off
| between bodily autonomy and the rights of the unborn). In
| my country that happens to be nine weeks unless there's
| an emergency.
| brigandish wrote:
| > Someone believing life begins at conception
|
| That's the claim, not whether a fertilized egg is a
| human.
| [deleted]
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| 14A gives protections to citizens and persons, not lives.
| brigandish wrote:
| Please don't quibble, it's not worth anyone's time, yours
| as much as anyone's.
|
| I'd like you to explain the personhood and citizenry
| rights of the non-living. Regardless, from section 1 of
| the 14th amendment[1]:
|
| > nor shall any state deprive any person of _life_ ,
|
| Did you not think to check it first?
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv
| Jason_Protell wrote:
| I've entertained this discussion in good faith, yet now
| you're belittling my diction and accusing me of wasting
| time.
|
| I'm done here.
|
| Have a nice day.
| gobrewers14 wrote:
| I don't give a shit what other people believe. People
| believing in things is not a sufficient condition for the
| government to prohibit something.
| brigandish wrote:
| This ruling does not prohibit anything. Regardless, in a
| democracy other people's beliefs are entirely a
| sufficient condition in what the government will do.
| Maybe not sufficient _reasoning_ for you, but again, it
| 's a democracy, not your fiefdom.
| gobrewers14 wrote:
| > This ruling does not prohibit anything
|
| Missouri just banned abortion as a result of this being
| overturned, so yes, it does.
|
| > other people's beliefs are entirely a sufficient
| condition in what the government will do
|
| False. Other people's beliefs are a necessary condition.
| If I convince 51% of the populace geminis are evil and
| should be imprisoned, this is not a sufficient condition
| for the government to implement this policy. We would
| need to scientifically demonstrate that astrology is in
| fact true. This is the sufficient condition. The
| necessary condition is a majority believing it. Likewise,
| having an objective, unambiguous, scientific definition
| of what life is and when it begins is the sufficient
| condition for outlawing abortion and a majority believing
| that is the necessary condition. A characteristic of a
| free society is not one where the government creates laws
| based on the whims of particular religious groups.
| schappim wrote:
| Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31862197
| Agamus wrote:
| My first thought when I read the news:
|
| "Dang. Poor Dang".
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'm pro-choice but I still believe that this is the right move.
|
| > "My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the
| momentum on the side of change," Ginsburg said. She would've
| preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a
| process that included state legislatures and the courts, she
| added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a
| right to privacy, rather than women's rights.
|
| https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsbur...
| lghh wrote:
| So you believe that doing the wrong thing for the right reason
| is better than doing the right thing for the wrong reason? That
| intent matters more than outcome? And that laws being
| structured in a way you specifically find compelling matters
| more than the morality of a law?
| margalabargala wrote:
| If we're speaking about what one should use as guiding
| principles, then it seems that if one acts for the "right"
| reasons, then that usually result in doing the right thing
| and only unusually results in doing the wrong thing.
|
| Whereas if one acts for the "wrong" reasons, then that will
| only rarely result in doing the "right" thing.
|
| One can look back at the original Roe v Wade and say "The
| right thing was done here, the outcome was good", but having
| that sort of consequentialist outlook tends to blind people
| to the downside of having the right things done for the wrong
| reasons- which is as we see here, those wrong reasons can in
| the future easily lead to the undoing of the right thing.
|
| The original Roe v Wade decision meant that Congress never
| had to pass a law that explicitly nationally legalized
| abortion. If they had, the current situation wouldn't exist.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I think we can have some nuance here. As individuals I
| believe we have the leeway to do the right thing for the
| wrong reasons. But once we get to the level of government and
| acting in accordance with laws, I believe that acting for the
| right reasons (i.e. following the laws) is the only option
| that can lead to long term outcomes.
|
| For the government to selectively follow laws, saying that in
| this case they don't apply since they don't give us the right
| result, makes a mockery of the very idea of having laws.
| [deleted]
| coryfklein wrote:
| The Roe vs. Wade decision was the wrong way to solve the
| problem because it specifically set the stage for decades
| where the legislature _didn 't_ enshrine abortion as a right,
| and thus left it up for grabs to be taken back away only
| decades later. Ruth Bader Ginsburg argues that if Roe vs.
| Wade had been less sweeping, that the existing cultural
| movement in favor of women's rights would have naturally led
| to the protection of this right on a more fundamental and
| long lasting level.
| standardUser wrote:
| You believe it is right on a technicality, but don't care to
| factor in the women who are guaranteed an early, unnecessary
| death because of this ruling?
| andonisus wrote:
| People are guaranteed early, unnecessary deaths when they
| cannot afford expensive medical treatments for their rare
| conditions. Or insulin for their diabetes. Or housing for
| their family.
|
| Where in our constitution and laws are these things codified
| as rights? They are not.
|
| In the same way, abortion is not a right. But I believe it
| should be. This is an issue that our elected officials must
| decide, not the courts.
| bryans wrote:
| None of your analogies are applicable. Somebody dying
| because their personal circumstances made receiving medical
| care difficult or impossible, is patently different than
| dying because _someone else_ was allowed to _deny_ them
| medical care by imposing their personal religious beliefs.
| andonisus wrote:
| How is pregnancy not a personal circumstance? Anyway, you
| are right that they are not directly comparable because
| pregnancy and abortion are such unique things. I suppose
| the most similar analogy I could think of is a doctor
| refusing to perform a surgery which has a high chance of
| outright killing a patient and a smaller chance of
| treating the issue.
|
| Either way, there is no constitutional right to an
| abortion, and that is the fundamental issue. Call your
| representatives and demand them to take action on
| codifying the right to abortion.
| bryans wrote:
| > How is pregnancy not a personal circumstance?
|
| Pregnancy does not, in and of itself, prevent access to
| medical care. So while it is a personal circumstance, it
| is entirely inapplicable within the context of care being
| intentionally prevented.
|
| > I suppose the most similar analogy I could think of is
| a doctor refusing to perform a surgery which has a high
| chance of outright killing a patient and a smaller chance
| of treating the issue.
|
| Not analogous, at all. That's a medical professional
| making a single medical decision based on medical
| information. That surgeon is not _preventing_ the patient
| from finding another surgeon who will perform the
| procedure. Whereas what you 're suggesting, is that
| freedom of religion should give politicians the right to
| make a singular blanket medical decision on behalf of
| everyone in their state, present and future, without any
| situational knowledge or medical reasoning.
|
| It's not a constitutional right to abortion. It's a
| constitutional right to not have personal liberties
| stripped by the states which are enumerated in the
| Constitution. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion and
| right to privacy are all enumerably applicable to
| preserving this liberty. The ability for anyone to impose
| their personal religious beliefs on a population violates
| all of those rights.
| andonisus wrote:
| I don't know why you keep bringing up religion, I have
| not mentioned it at all. Perhaps you are conflating the
| reason for some states passing of anti-abortion laws with
| the law itself.
|
| Either way, the federal government does not grant this
| right, therefore it is up to states to decide.
|
| > It's a constitutional right (9th amendment) to not have
| personal liberties stripped by the states which are not
| enumerated in the Constitution. Freedom of speech,
| freedom of religion and right to privacy are all
| enumerably applicable to preserving this liberty.
|
| None of these rights apply to abortion. If anything,
| there should be an enumerated right to bodily autonomy.
| bryans wrote:
| > I don't know why you keep bringing up religion, I have
| not mentioned it at all.
|
| The only objection anyone has to abortion is based on
| religious beliefs. So, you didn't need to mention it.
| It's the foundation of the entire issue -- that religious
| beliefs can be imposed on a population as law. Saying
| that it's irrelevant to the discussion betrays an
| ignorance of the subject at hand.
|
| > None of these rights apply to abortion. If anything,
| there should be an enumerated right to bodily autonomy.
|
| The enumeration does not need to specifically reference
| the word to be applicable. For a different example, the
| 4th amendment doesn't contain any verbiage about police
| officers opening a trunk during a traffic stop, but the
| declaration that they must have probable cause still
| applies. In the exact same way, to assert religious
| beliefs that affect someone else's medical care violates
| all of the rights I listed.
| andonisus wrote:
| > The only objection anyone has to abortion is based on
| religious beliefs
|
| Uh...what? I am not religious (agnostic/atheist) but I
| object to abortion after a certain amount of time except
| in the cases of grave bodily harm or being the product of
| forced reproduction (idk what the site rules are on
| certain language, but I trust you understand what I
| mean). I believe that the unborn baby is a viable human
| life at some point and that abortion without a
| justifiable reason after that point would be equivalent
| to murder. I also believe many people also feel the same
| way I do.
|
| > The enumeration does not need to specifically reference
| the word to be applicable
|
| Yes, but we are in disagreement on which rights are
| applicable in this case.
| bryans wrote:
| > I believe that the unborn baby is a viable human life
| at some point and that abortion without a justifiable
| reason after that point would be equivalent to murder.
|
| That's the entire point! You're _not_ objecting to
| abortion. You 're objecting at _some point in time_ and
| only when it 's medically unjustifiable. But those moral
| thresholds are different for every individual and there
| _are_ medically justifiable situations, which is exactly
| why no individual should be able to impose their personal
| beliefs as a law which declares those medical situations
| as unjustifiable.
|
| You're welcome to have moral objections and believe they
| are the most correct or reasonable, but they have no
| bearing on the concerted efforts of religious groups and
| individuals to outright ban access to medical care. And
| that's the discussion at hand, which you keep
| conveniently ignoring. Many people have _total_
| opposition to _all_ abortions in _all_ situations and
| specifically for religious reasons, which is what actual,
| real-life politicians are implementing _as we speak_.
|
| Someone else having an abortion (whether you believe it's
| murder or not) doesn't infringe on _your_ rights. But you
| imposing your beliefs in a way that affects someone else
| 's medical care is _absolutely_ infringing on _their_
| rights. These are fundamental concepts of our democracy.
| andonisus wrote:
| Just because everyone may not be be able to agree on
| exactly when that viability threshold is or what reasons
| are justifiable does not mean we should not attempt to do
| so. Almost all states (and other countries) where
| abortion is legalized still have reasonable limits on
| when they may be performed (e.g., not after second
| trimester). I think we would both agree that an abortion
| of an otherwise viable and healthy baby one day before
| expected delivery would be unethical.
|
| The religious arguments for banning all abortion for any
| reasons are not sound and I would not expect such laws to
| pass scrutiny when challenged in court (but who knows
| nowadays).
|
| Many things people do don't infringe on my rights.
| Someone murdering another person doesn't infringe MY
| rights, but it is still wrong. A parent beating their
| child doesn't infringe my rights but is still abuse.
|
| All this being said, I support the right of a woman to
| receive an abortion, within reason. It is up to our
| elected officials to codify this right. It is not, nor
| should it ever be, the responsibility of the court to
| attempt to enshrine a right that does not exist through
| case law.
| standardUser wrote:
| "Where in our constitution and laws are these things
| codified as rights?"
|
| Um, how about Roe v Wade and the TEN times the Supreme
| Court upheld RvW since it was decided, including as
| recently as 2016? The court just blew up precedent with a
| ten ton nuke and you're arguing hey, it was just good
| jurisprudence!
| andonisus wrote:
| Do you understand the difference between the constitution
| and the courts? The court does not invent rights, nor
| should it. It is the federal government's responsibility
| to codify rights, and it is the courts responsibility to
| affirm them.
|
| Separate but equal was precedent for a long time as well,
| would you be arguing the same for that?
| standardUser wrote:
| You're ignoring what I said, which is that a right
| established by the highest court, and ten times affirmed
| by the highest court, including as recently as 6 years
| ago, just obliterated that entire history in a ruling
| that is guaranteed to carry a toll in human health and
| human lives.
|
| "The court does not invent rights, nor should it."
|
| It has established many specific rights that are not
| articulated in the Constitution or codified in laws. Most
| still stand.
|
| "Separate but equal was precedent for a long time as
| well, would you be arguing the same for that?"
|
| I'm confused, how many vulnerable women died as a result
| of that?
| andonisus wrote:
| > You're ignoring what I said, which is that a right
| established by the highest court, and ten times affirmed
| by the highest court, including as recently as 6 years
| ago, just obliterated that entire history in a ruling
| that is guaranteed to carry a toll in human health and
| human lives.
|
| All of this posturing is irrelevant to the fact that the
| right which was granted did not follow from the arguments
| being made. Our courts should follow sound reasoning when
| establishing unenumerated rights. They also should not
| care about what the impact would be downstream of their
| decisions; their reasoning should stand on its own.
|
| > It has established many specific rights that are not
| articulated in the Constitution or codified in laws. Most
| still stand.
|
| And some no longer do.
|
| > I'm confused, how many vulnerable women died as a
| result of that?
|
| Impossible to say, but it had to be a non-negligible
| amount. Either way, that has no bearing on which way the
| court should rule.
|
| The laws represent the will of the people via their
| elected representatives. The court adjudicates these laws
| and their validity as it relates to our constitution.
| mgfist wrote:
| And my criticism on RBG is she should've stepped down when
| Obama was in office instead of dying and giving Trump an
| appointee.
| roflyear wrote:
| Ginsburg was an idealist.
| gsibble wrote:
| I'm pro-choice as well and think this was the right decision.
| Roe created a Constitutional right that didn't exist. All this
| does today is correct that mistake.
|
| As a big believer in states' rights, I"m glad to see more
| rights returned to their voters and legislatures. As was
| frequently told to me, "If you don't like it, you can move to
| another state." And I did.
|
| Furthermore, this decision gets rid of the viability precedent
| so more extreme liberals states are now free to pass all the
| 3rd tri-mester up-until-the-moment-of-birth abortion laws they
| want, free of any potential legal challenges.
|
| This gives states and their voters, the citizens, the people
| the right to choose. And I'm all for that.
| [deleted]
| dryanau wrote:
| Could you explain this a bit more please? (I'm not from the US
| so I'm possibly missing something but your comment is
| surprising at a broad strokes level)
|
| Edit: I see you've edited your post already with a quote which
| is helpful.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Sorry for the late edit.
|
| I basically see people holding states more accountable now.
| State politicians who are pro-life are on notice. They can no
| longer cry about it and blame the federal government. The
| issue is now on their plate- and it's a thorny one. People
| need to vote.
| whoahwio wrote:
| I'm not sure the political currents present in America
| today indicate that states won't eagerly trample the
| right's of their citizens. Especially considering the
| voting restrictions and minoritarian rule pet projects of
| the right.
|
| America is also rife with examples of the federal
| government intervening to protect citizens from their
| states -- Brown v Board, or most extremely the Civil War.
|
| "People need to vote" is insufficient for regressions on
| issues that affect people's livelihoods. For example, Texas
| has a larger democrat-voting population than many blue
| states, "just voting" won't do anything to improve their
| livelyhood in the foreseeable future.
| _ph_ wrote:
| That sounds good in theory, but we know about the states
| where the republicans seemingly cannot be voted out of
| office - not helped by all their changes to the election
| system to prevent that. But indeed it would be ironic, if
| the public reaction to this were that strong so that a lot
| of red states turn blue. But I don't have too high hopes.
| Too many people in the whole spectrum don't see a ban of
| abortion affecting them while it is too easy to be "pro
| life".
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Here is a thought: I'm a pro-choice New Englander. If
| those states like Kentucky are so strongly pro-life, then
| who am I to push my New England center/lib culture onto
| them?
|
| It's liberating in a way- I don't need the whole country
| to subscribe to living like me or holding the same
| beliefs and that's okay.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| This is not a state issue or a cultural issue, it is an
| individual issue.
|
| It does not matter what people in Kentucky think. They do
| not have the right to an opinion on another person's life
| decisions. Even if every person in Kentucky, or every
| person on the planet believed abortion is wrong, that
| would not impact an individual person's right to an
| abortion. Abortion is outside the scope of what
| governments can legitimately legislate, because
| individuals have sovereign control over their bodies.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > They do not have the right to an opinion on another
| person's life decisions.
|
| The other side says that the fetus is a person with
| rights that are being trampled. And around and around we
| go forever. I am personally pro choice but I do
| understand that this is 100% my own subjective opinion.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| To what extent are you willing to let other states
| restrict rights of US citizens because their cultural
| majority is different from yours? Is there a line?
| Perhaps 330 million people is too many to have in a
| single culture.
|
| I am starting to come around to that view myself. The
| mythology of America has been dying for some time, and
| accelerating dramatically in the last few decades.
| Without that mythology to bind us together, it may be
| that we are more different than we thought. Arguably the
| majority of people in the southeast, for example, do not
| share the same values as people in the northwest. Maybe
| they should not try.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Our mythology has always been life, liberty, pursuit of
| happiness. Freedom of speech and religion. Democracy.
| Rule of law. They aren't as radical and in vogue today
| but this was and still is our "mythology", IMO.
| sha256sum wrote:
| I think that's an idealized interpretation of a young
| country that spent it's first 100 years believing
| humanity is attached to skin color, fought a brutal civil
| war over that before spending its next 100 years
| preventing most of them from entering commerce, and its
| last ~50 years incarcerating as many of them as possible.
| And things like shadow wars in Cambodia do not look good
| on a country proclaiming "rule of law". So perhaps that's
| how you perceive it's shared methodology, but certainly
| not "how it has always been".
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Mythology does not equal reality. It's a target to aim
| for. No countries "mythology" matches their reality.
| toyg wrote:
| My theory is not that mythology kept you together, but
| that there was enough cultural and physical space to
| peacefully ignore each other if anyone so wished, simply
| by moving a bit further away. Communications were slow
| enough that they could be digested or ignored more or
| less at will.
|
| The problem is that, between natural population growth
| and the rise of the internet, both the cultural plane and
| the physical one have largely run out of space.
| Figurative "midwest zealots" just cannot live their lives
| ignoring "coastern heathens" even if they'd like to, and
| viceversa. And so the fights have broken out and will
| likely continue for a long time.
| e40 wrote:
| > People need to vote.
|
| Ahmen to that. We wouldn't be in this situation if liberals
| took voting as seriously as conservatives.
|
| I've seen 100's of comments over the last year about how
| "I'm done voting because the student loans were not
| forgiven" ... I don't think the next period in America is
| going to go very well.
| peteradio wrote:
| Are you at all concerned that now that this becomes a State
| level issue we move the wedge from a single federal level
| to 50 different wedges clogging up legislatures? We've been
| arguing about Roe for half a century, will this lead to
| resolution or is it a metastasization? Just an initial
| thought I had, even though I agree on all your points.
| threeseed wrote:
| But the Supreme Court just banned the rights of states to
| decide how they apply gun laws. Specifically, New York was
| prevented [days ago](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-
| court-gun-law-new-york-...) from deciding how concealed
| carry should be implemented.
|
| Surely you can see the hypocrisy in only being in favour of
| state rights when it suits you.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think that it's more complicated than that. My take
| away was that NY gun laws allowed people to concealed
| carry with approval but were basically denying lawful
| approvals which ran afoul of the second amendment.
| polski-g wrote:
| It ran around of the 14th amendment. Only people who
| donated money to the right politicians got approved for
| CCL. NY is still free to regulate handgun carry
| requirements, they just can't deny permits arbitrarily.
| _dain_ wrote:
| It isn't hypocrisy, because there is an amendment that
| says you have a right to a gun, and there isn't one that
| says you have a right to an abortion.
| remarkEon wrote:
| You should read the actual opinion, and not the "summary"
| that this journalist put together. They didn't "ban the
| rights of states to decide how they apply gun laws".
| Simply that certain types of "may issue" permitting are
| at odds with 2A, because they deny Americans the exercise
| of an enumerated right for arbitrary reasons.
|
| Permit Requester: I want to carry a pistol outside the
| home for self defense reasons.
|
| Issuer: I don't believe your self defense claims are
| legitimate.
|
| Requester: Why?
|
| Issuer: I don't have to tell you.
|
| _SCOTUS enters the chat_ : This is no longer allowed.
|
| There's a big difference in how you framed it, how that
| journalist framed it, and what actually happened. There
| is no hypocrisy here.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| As much as it pains me to point this out, you cannot draw
| much of an analog between abortion and gun laws when it
| comes to states rights, because guns are protected by the
| Constitution very explicitly, abortion is not.
| lovich wrote:
| 10th amendment
| User23 wrote:
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The original Roe v Wade ruling, regardless of opinion on the
| outcome, was widely viewed as being based on a weak and
| poorly reasoned judicial argument. The risk of leaving
| defective judicial reasoning as precedent is that it enables
| a whole class of undesirable legal outcomes in the future
| unrelated to abortion. For this reason, it was expected that
| the Supreme Court would eventually fix this mistake. This
| ruling doesn't outlaw abortion, it merely moves it outside
| that court's jurisdiction and leaves it to other parts of
| government to decide.
|
| I support this ruling for this reason even though I am
| against outlawing abortion.
| rat87 wrote:
| It wasn't. This ruling is not about the constitution it's
| about power. Roe vs Wade was fine. This ruling is based on
| the fact that Republicans after decades got 6 extreme
| social conservatives on the court who decided they don't
| like Abortion
| mvts wrote:
| do you think the supreme court did this because they share the
| same opinion as rbg? I think this Case was maybe a wonky
| solution for the Problem but it was the only one you Americans
| Had.
| danpalmer wrote:
| They definitely did not.
|
| RBG thought that Roe v Wade won for the wrong reasons, but
| didn't want to repeal it because of the damage she knew it
| would cause - she wanted to roll-forward rather than roll-
| back.
|
| This court, or at least the conservative majority, are very
| much in favour of rolling-back, and I suspect are only
| vaguely in favour of letting the legislature pass laws
| because they know that there will be challenges to those laws
| that they can then get involved in, meanwhile they have
| shifted the overton window of women's rights.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| It's important to note that the idea that Roe was decided
| incorrectly, is a myth perpetuated by fedsoc and other
| reactionaries. And the liberal legal academics did nothing
| to counter it.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It's not a myth.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Only if you buy in to the reactionary attack on
| substantive due process in general. And it's a mistake to
| think if Roe were decided any other way, that it still
| wouldn't have been overturned. Reactionaries do a great
| job of smuggling their politics as socially acceptable,
| fictional legal frameworks like textualism, even though
| they clearly abandon that whenever it is in conflict with
| their politics.
| danpalmer wrote:
| To clarify, I think it was the right decision, for a weak
| but correct reason. Ideally it would have been decided
| for the reasons of bodily autonomy.
| keneda7 wrote:
| I am confused here. Are you saying these are all myths?
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-wade-
| aborti...
|
| https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-
| ginsbur...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/06/ruth-
| bader...
|
| Seems to me RGB did feel that ruling was weak and should
| have decided based on equal protections not privacy.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The problem is that even if abortion rights are re-established
| on stronger footing in the future, a whole lot of people are
| going to get hurt in the meantime.
| smm11 wrote:
| I'm just glad it's down to the states to decide what's right for
| their state.
|
| Right?
| Spivak wrote:
| Really good point, but why stop there? Why not individual
| counties, or individual townships, or individual neighborhoods,
| or _gasp_ individual people?
| timwaagh wrote:
| The problem I see is that due to the former ruling there never
| has been any political decision on it ensuring us women go back
| to the fifties now
| kryogen1c wrote:
| What a disappointing showing from HN. 120 comments and so little
| substantive discussion or truth-searching. Everyone rushing to
| share their feelings and no one trying listen.
|
| I have thoughts I'd like to discuss, but apparently this isn't
| the place to do it.
| rvz wrote:
| > Everyone rushing to share their feelings and no one trying
| listen.
|
| There you go.
|
| It is also quite clear that the Supreme Court of the United
| States doesn't care about their feelings. All you get here is
| reactionary takes, outrage, screeching and a mixture of
| trillions of emotions on display.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Yes frankly this website is not capable of entertaining certain
| contrarian ideas. Which of course are only contrarian in the
| narrow societal bubbles they occupy.
|
| I blame the downvote mechanism for rewarding echo chambers and
| punishing outlier opinions.
|
| /Shrug.
| fullshark wrote:
| The only place you might see substantial discussion is a
| message board for legal scholars/students. The next week
| minimum online in almost all americancentric forums is going to
| be about primal screaming from one side, and arrogant gloating
| from the other.
| criddell wrote:
| > The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the
| views of the voting majority.
|
| That's warped by the fact that rural votes count more than urban
| votes thanks to the electoral college.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31864204.
| troyvit wrote:
| And the Senate. But another question I don't see answered much
| is, why are rural blocs so different in their moral stance from
| urban ones, and what can we learn from it?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I grew up in rural Utah with plenty of religious
| conservatives. I spent 3 hours a week in church with them.
|
| Now I live in SLC.
|
| I've gotten to know a lot of different people and their
| perspectives.
|
| Some are obsessively political, and no doubt will be
| celebrating this decision. They will spend 3 hours
| congratulating each other for it the day after tomorrow.
|
| Others are quietly moderate. They believe in many of the same
| Christian values, but don't see it as government's place to
| enforce them.
|
| A few are more loudly moderate. They will take the time to
| present a different perspective and actually argue for it.
|
| The combination of these three creates a social dynamic that
| supports anti-abortion legislation and other conservative
| political goals. Despite it not being the desire of every
| person in the community, that is what the community at large
| will support politically. Those who disagree don't have the
| means or support to be represented.
|
| Meanwhile, in the city, I walk around the corner to the trax
| station, and see a handful of homeless people going about
| their lives. They ask for help finding their way to court or
| therapy. They ask for change because they can't get it on
| their own.
|
| What I have learned is that rural conservative communities
| are self serving. Conservative ideas are promoted,
| represented, congratulated, etc. Critical perspectives are
| either silently held, or spoken to deaf ears.
|
| The fallout of conservatism can't make a home there, and must
| instead walk away to the city where she can beg for
| begrudgingly given change.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| I'm sure there are plenty of conservatives who _would
| like to_ argue for this decision, but aren 't prepared to
| make that argument, because it's not about logic to them:
| it's about belief.
|
| Maybe that's because the conservative with the compelling
| argument feels unwelcome. Or maybe it's because the
| compelling argument doesn't exist.
|
| Making a less compelling argument under the guise of
| "devil's advocate" is more comfortable, because when you
| are writing a flawed argument you don't have to fix the
| flaws: you can let them sit there.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| orthecreedence wrote:
| I moved from an urban are to a rural one. I now constantly
| feel like the rules of the county (permiting and all that)
| are being decided by people who have no clue whatsoever what
| it's like to live where I do. On top of this, you get people
| who are into doing things like redrawing the districts so
| that each one has an equal representation based on
| superficial characteristics like skin color while ignoring
| more pressing things like geography concerning wildfires and
| infrastructure. It's definitely a "clueless city folk trying
| to legislate things they don't understand" vibe.
|
| That said, my moral/political stances haven't changed much,
| in fact I'm becoming more radical as time goes on. Who knows
| if it's because of living here or if it would have happened
| in the city anyway. Probably a mix.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Valid concern. You don't like being told what to do with
| your body/property by someone else that doesn't understand
| those concerns, and isn't impacted by their own decisions.
| It seems like you would have a lot of empathy for all the
| women who are in the same position today.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Yes, I do have a lot of empathy for them. I think the
| original Roe vs Wade decision was probably the best moral
| and legal compromise we could have made, and the fact
| that people take issue with it says more about their
| twisted need to control or shame others than their
| supposed moral fortitude. This is a dark day for a lot of
| people and an upsetting signal for the direction the
| country is moving. I'm not thrilled about it.
| runarberg wrote:
| A large part of the rural working class don't have the right
| to vote, because they are migrant workers. And even if they
| do have the right to vote, they have don't have any real
| chance of electing someone that represents their interests.
| Political candidates tend towards the owning class and tend
| to cater to the owning class.
|
| Then when you don't have a chance to vote for someone that
| represents your interests, your second best chance is voting
| for someone that matches your ideology. And ideology can be
| easily persuaded. The democratic party's ideology obviously
| matches the ideology of the business class (or the coastal
| elite if you will), so what you are left with is the
| republican party. And ideology is easily persuaded so you
| start believing in the conservative talking points they use
| to pursue your vote.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Nothing. There is no equivalency, there is nothing to learn
| from it. Rural block voters can go about not getting same-sex
| marriages and not getting abortions and it won't impact
| anyone else, just like other people having same sex marriages
| and getting abortions doesn't impact them, aside from their
| desire to control how other people live their lives.
|
| edit: My point - since it seems I was not clear - is "rural"
| people that object to the activities that Roe, Lawrence,
| Olbergefell, and Griswold allowed can individually decide to
| not do those things. They should not be able to compel other
| people to make the same decisions. Abortion was correctly
| determined to be a federal right. So are same-sex marriage,
| contraceptives access, and the choice to have oral or anal
| sex (that's literally what Thomas explicitly talks about
| wanting to overturn, the right to engage in "sodomy" as
| determined in Lawrence vs Texas). People that don't like
| these things should _NOT DO THEM_ and leave the rest of us
| the hell alone.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Nothing. There is no equivalency. Rural block voters can
| go about not getting same-sex marriages and not getting
| abortions and it won't impact anyone else, just like other
| people having same sex marriages and getting abortions
| doesn't impact them, aside from their desire to control how
| other people live their lives.
|
| That's libertarian BS that misunderstands moral beliefs
| about collective "how society should be" as individualist
| "what actions I take." It's also usually hypocritical, as
| I'm guessing you wouldn't be fine with rural county clerks
| going about not registering same-sex marriages, since it
| "doesn't impact you."
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > That's libertarian BS that misunderstands moral beliefs
| about collective "how society should be" as individualist
| "what actions I take."
|
| This is you dictating how _I_ behave - which I find a
| much larger pile of BS, personally.
|
| > It's also usually hypocritical, as I'm guessing you
| wouldn't be fine with rural county clerks going about not
| registering same-sex marriages, since it "doesn't impact
| you."
|
| This is not fucking hypocritical - once is a personal
| moral belief, that a person is welcome to either choose
| or not (abortion). The other is a clearly defined job you
| have been hired to do.
|
| It is not hypocritical to insist that you do the job you
| are being paid to do - even if you disagree with parts of
| it. If you disagree so strongly that you feel you cannot
| do the job - Great. Stop fucking doing it.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > This is you dictating how I behave - which I find a
| much larger pile of BS, personally.
|
| Societies dictate how their members behave in significant
| ways according to moral beliefs. It's always been that
| way and it always will be. The libertarian solution is BS
| in this context, because it appeals to libertarian morals
| that aren't actually held by the people who are being
| complained about.
| ben_w wrote:
| If I were to take their words at face value, this group
| considers abortion to be murder. Because I don't expect an
| argument of the form "if you don't like murder, don't do
| it" to have a good outcome, I would instead focus on the
| fact that in all other regards bodily autonomy is so
| important that we are not obligated to perform even safe
| procedures such as donating blood in order to save the
| lives of others, and indeed this respect for bodily
| autonomy (in the USA) also extends to organ donation after
| death being opt-in rather than opt-out.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Not to be harsh, but who cares what they think? Other
| major religions differ, and flat out contradict these
| viewpoints. It's a question of someone's religious
| doctrine, not federal law. We don't favor a particular
| religious viewpoints in the US - that is explicitly in
| the Constitution.
| ben_w wrote:
| This group happens to have enough power that saying "who
| cares what they think" leads to them doing exactly what
| you don't want them to do. The only way I know to reduce
| that power while retaining your system of government is
| to make an argument which actually convinces them, which
| requires you to care what they think, both in order to
| understand their motivations well enough to actually
| construct an argument with this effect, and as an
| indicator of how much progress you're making with it.
| esyir wrote:
| And people wonder why decisions can be made and
| polarization continues to increase.
|
| "Who cares what they think indeed"
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| They believe they should dictate the behavior of other
| people, that's fundamentally asymmetrical to the
| counterpoint. The "other side" is not advocating
| compulsory abortions, they are advocating individual
| freedom to make a deeply personal decision. The people
| that want to ban abortion for all people are taking away
| rights from people they disagree with. Who cares what
| they think, indeed.
|
| If I want to disband and illegalize the Southern Baptist
| Convention because I sincere believe they are heretics,
| who cares about my sincerely held beliefs about what
| others should do? I should should just not go to a
| Southern Baptist church.
| irrational wrote:
| Their response would be that it isn't that simple. That
| baker in Colorado (I think it was Colorado?) who refused to
| make a cake for a gay wedding was sued. Republicans see
| this and say that it isn't as simple as not participating
| in an action since you will still be forced to do things
| against your conscience.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Pardon me, you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterp
| iece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
|
| _" In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled on narrow grounds
| that the Commission did not employ religious neutrality,
| violating Masterpiece owner Jack Phillips's rights to
| free exercise, and reversed the Commission's decision.
| The Court did not rule on the broader intersection of
| anti-discrimination laws, free exercise of religion, and
| freedom of speech, due to the complications of the
| Commission's lack of religious neutrality."_
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| bradleybuda wrote:
| What about their minor children? What about their minor
| children who have been raped (possibly by their parents or
| relatives)? Sadly, these are not theoretical concerns
| cupofpython wrote:
| speaking quickly with broad strokes that really have a lot
| more underlying nuance than im implying:
|
| there is a greater sharing of ideas in urban locations. more
| progression happens. they fail to spread the progression to
| rural locations.
|
| It is a dynamic and evolving ecosystem and we are failing to
| educate and / or motivate rural locations to care about these
| things properly.
|
| Instead urban culture usually acts superior, makes demands,
| and assume what they believe should be obvious and by not
| coming to the same conclusions immediately during a
| confrontation that means rural people are evil.
|
| Rural people double down on the beliefs because at the end of
| the day nothing really matters and they might as well stick
| to something that gives them a sense of belonging since they
| very obviously do not belong with urban culture.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| Who pays the bills?
|
| (UK: we have similar issues about 'left behind' towns who
| are heavily subsidised by large cities)
| prometheus76 wrote:
| Just because people don't share your worldview doesn't mean
| they're uneducated or that education is the way to change
| their minds.
|
| "...at the end of the day nothing really matters..." is the
| exact kind of worldview that rural people would prefer stay
| in the cities. If by "educating" me, you want to make me
| into a solipsistic nihilist, you can keep your education to
| yourself.
| cupofpython wrote:
| The only education in this thread that I would like to
| distill onto the rural populations is that Freedom of
| Choice does not take away your ability to have babies on
| whatever terms you want, nor does it remove your ability
| form a community with like minded people where abortions
| are frowned upon and everyone agrees not to get them and
| anyone who does is exiled from the community.
|
| It does however mean someone has the right to choose
| whether or not they want to be a part of your community,
| and takes away your ability to use state and federal
| resources to enforce your choice as being more important
| than someone else's choice.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| One, your choices also affect the people around you. Two,
| before the overturn, state and federal resources have
| been used to enforce and support those who choose to
| abort their babies, which is just the mirror of what you
| said, which negates your argument from that point. Three,
| all that happened is that now it becomes a state issue
| rather than a federal issue. Don't like your state? Move.
| Need an abortion but can't in your state? Get a flight or
| hop in a car.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Don't like your state? Move. Need an abortion but can't
| in your state? Get a flight or hop in a car.
|
| Texas and Missouri would like a word.
|
| Texas: snitch on someone who had an abortion anywhere,
| and get paid.
|
| Missouri: "Conspiracy to commit an abortion" is now a
| crime. The conspiracy happens when you get in your car or
| book the flight.
| cupofpython wrote:
| In my initial post I was obviously aware that I was not
| going to paint a perfect picture of my opinion in this
| text forum. but sure, ill bite.
|
| One - no shit, pro-choice has considerably less
| consequences on the people around you than pro life does.
|
| Two - Nothing is invalidated, I made a sound argument
| that you are free to disagree with using your own sound
| argument. Using resources to _support_ someones choice
| _is not the same_ as using resources to _take away_
| someones choice. Abortion can be legal, and your state
| can still control to what extent resources will be used
| to support it.
|
| Three - Yes I understand. I directed my previous message
| at rural people. the ones who decide on the laws.
| However, you advocate for people to go get an abortion in
| another state. that is pro-choice in spirit, isnt it? Why
| do you care if they cross a state border to get an
| abortion? If you are pro-choice, dont you want your state
| law to reflect that?
|
| >Need an abortion but can't in your state? Get a flight
| or hop in a car.
|
| except for the fact that "your" state can put you in jail
| for committing a crime if you do this.
|
| I agree though that people should try to leave the state
| (entirely) if it has unagreeable laws and the majority in
| that state wants to preserve them. I also think the
| prolifers in my state should stop standing outside
| planned parenthood and move to a different state also.
| It's pretty dumb that people try to be a part of their
| community and improve it rather than move somewhere that
| already agrees with them, right?
| judge2020 wrote:
| Urban populations tend to include more low-income earners,
| who are more likely to favor receiving more assistance from
| their government, as such is likely to increase their quality
| of life. Rural blocks tend to earn enough to live
| independently and provide for themselves, so their QOL is
| likely to increase more with taxes being lowered rather than
| assistance programs they'd be means-tested against (or at
| least presume they would be).
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Red States (made of rural blocks) collect FAR more federal
| subsidies per capita than blue states. Practically every
| blue state contributes positively to the federal budget
| while practically every red state siphons federal funds,
| ie. "welfare."
| turdit2 wrote:
| neilc wrote:
| Curious if you have any evidence for that claim. Looking
| at https://www.card.iastate.edu/ag_policy_review/article/
| ?a=107 (Figure 1) suggests that rural vs urban
| unemployment rates have historically been quite similar;
| if anything, unemployment rates in rural areas were
| slightly higher than in urban areas. That changed during
| COVID but that appears to be a historical anomaly.
| Larrikin wrote:
| What does looking at people on the sidewalk have to do
| with your point? Especially in a major city where there's
| a massive amount of different jobs with all kinds of
| different hours and days worked.
|
| If you want to stereotype you can make the exact argument
| about a rural trailer park.
| cozzyd wrote:
| There are plenty of rural poor, but providing services to
| them is logistically difficult.
| troyvit wrote:
| I wonder if churches take up the slack of providing
| social services in rural areas, increasing their sway in
| rural communities ...
| judge2020 wrote:
| But there tend to be fewer rural poor per-capita compared
| to rural middle/upper class per-capita, which is why
| election maps tend to show blocks of blue in metro areas
| with red elsewhere.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Income and voting patterns are much less correlated than
| other factors. Income differences do not explain the
| rural-urban divide. The highest income counties in the US
| are... not red.
| tshaddox wrote:
| And the Supreme Court. For each Supreme Court justice, have a
| look at the portion of voters who voted for the president who
| appointed them and the senators who confirmed them.
| slillibri wrote:
| No, the Senate represents each state equally. Everyone seems
| to confuse the Senate and the House of Representatives and
| what each represents.
| criddell wrote:
| California has two orders of magnitude more people than
| Wyoming. I'm not sure they should have equal senate power.
| slillibri wrote:
| Because the Senate represents the state, not the
| population of the state. That is why California has more
| representatives. Every state is equal in the Senate. This
| is basic civics.
| adamrezich wrote:
| there seems to be, broadly, an inherent difference in mindset
| in populations based upon their densities.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| That rural voters live different lives than urban voters?
| There isn't much commonality between them, other than almost
| everyone agrees they want the government to keep its nose out
| of their business.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| api wrote:
| The urban vs. rural thing is so extreme I really feel like
| more effort needs to be put into understanding it. There
| really are no red states or blue states. There are states
| with more urbanized populations that tilt blue and states
| with more rural populations that tilt red. There are very few
| exceptions.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| And those few exceptions are in the context of socialists
| or socialist lites who successfully appealed to agrarian
| voters over economic issues. Social issues are never a
| winning play for dems with rural voters
| cozzyd wrote:
| Cultural path dependence? Rural voters in places like Vermont
| are maybe not so different in moral stance from urban voters.
| green50 wrote:
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| I remember all the times I was called a poor sport for bringing
| up Brendan Eich's support of Prop 8 right here on HN, any time
| Brave came up.
|
| "You won! Take the W and move on."
|
| There is no win when the same people who supported Prop 8 were
| working hard to prevent marriage equality, and end it once it
| happened, and working hard to fight the very underpinnings for it
| and other rulings _like_ Roe vs. Wade. This is why I refused to
| move on for so long, but eventually the downvotes and flags and
| screaming won over, and I gave up. And we lost.
|
| For now.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Separate abortion from Roe v. Wade. The big challenge has been
| that Roe v. Wade was horribly decided. Even RBG thought so. Roe v
| wade gave the Supreme Court the right to make law without
| reference to any text in the constitution. Casey tried to change
| the justification but it still was a disaster. Sadly it is far
| from the only time the Supreme Court has made things up out of
| whole cloth that has had massive societal implications - see
| separate but equal, Dredd Scott, etc, bush v gore. Citizens
| United.
|
| Getting rid of roe v wade kicks the issues to legislatures.
|
| I may be the only hopeful one - but removing this from unelected,
| lifetime judges who seem to forget that a democracy is no place
| for kings and queens may ultimately result in abortion returning
| to the path it was on before roe v wade - a non-controversial
| issue decided by elected officials.
| lanstin wrote:
| Pence just asked for federal legislation banning all abortions.
| So I think you are wrong to say the Republicans are trying to
| return it to the states, thy are trying to ban it.
|
| Note that a man is not required to donate blood to save an
| adult human, even if there is no risk to him. The equal
| protection clause extends that right to your own body to women,
| and that is fairly sound constitutional reasoning.
|
| The constitution doesn't mention a million specific things, but
| it protects our freedoms anyways.
|
| A democracy is a place to gradually expand equal protection of
| the laws to all people. Each change seems radical to the people
| accustomed to undemocractic flaws, but the outcome has been
| very successful these last few hundred years.
| vinay427 wrote:
| > Pence just asked for federal legislation banning all
| abortions. So I think you are wrong to say the Republicans
| are trying to return it to the states, thy are trying to ban
| it.
|
| It's worth mentioning that the constitutionality of such a
| law seems highly questionable based on the current leanings
| of SCOTUS. States' rights work both ways, and (not a lawyer)
| I would assume an incredibly broad interpretation of
| interstate commerce would be needed to hold up a federal ban
| on abortions.
| lovich wrote:
| Why would you assume any precedent for behavior matters
| from a court that's issued a majority opinion overturning a
| case where multiple of the co-signing justices had declared
| it settled case law?
|
| They just overruled the NYC gun ban. They will pick and
| choose whatever they want
| avalys wrote:
| The US Federal constitution contains a right to bear
| arms, which supersedes the NYC law which stated ordinary
| citizens could not "bear arms" in public without
| justifying an exceptional need.
|
| There is no analogous constitutional right for abortion.
| Roe v. Wade inferred it from a "right to privacy", which
| also does not exist in the text.
| lovich wrote:
| The US Federal Constitution contains the 9th amendment
| which guarantees that the enumeration of specific rights
| in the Constitution cannot be construed to deny any other
| right not enumerated in there, but that doesn't matter
| for these courts.
|
| They have become openly partisan and will pick and choose
| whatever suits their political leanings. Once they got a
| majority on the court they no longer need to play ball
| with the other side
| monocasa wrote:
| The basis of the decision wasn't ultimately in states'
| rights, but instead the view of a lack of constitutional
| protection against abortion bans.
|
| The legal theory almost explicitly allows for a federal ban
| in addition to the state bans that tieggered today.
| vinay427 wrote:
| I believe that's my point. From what I understand, an
| incredibly broad interpretation of something like the
| interstate commerce clause or another enumerated power
| would seem necessary for such a federal ban to supersede
| state laws permitting abortions.
| monocasa wrote:
| Not quite. The ruling is specifically setup to allow a
| federal ban against it's challenges. The wording allows
| several avenues, my bet is on expanding the existing
| federal murder charge that has plenty of case law
| supporting it to fetuses at the moment of conception.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > Note that a man is not required to donate blood to save an
| adult human, even if there is no risk to him. The equal
| protection clause extends that right to your own body to
| women, and that is fairly sound constitutional reasoning.
|
| Why did Roe v Wade rely on an unwritten right to privacy
| rather than the equal protection clause then?
| lanstin wrote:
| I will defer to the explanation in chapter sixteen of
| https://www.amazon.com/Allow-Me-Retort-Black-Constitution-
| eb...
|
| Something to do with some bad uses of substantive due
| process stuff in early 1900s.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > Note that a man is not required to donate blood to save
| an adult human, even if there is no risk to him. The
| equal protection clause extends that right to your own
| body to women, and that is fairly sound constitutional
| reasoning.
|
| Just one comment away from implying that this case is
| straightforward, and you're bringing up esoteric case law
| from 100 years ago. I don't point this out to denigrate
| you, but to highlight just how complicated law can be,
| particularly when it comes to landmark SCOTUS decisions.
| I thought I heard on the news that the majority opinion
| was 90 pages long, but I can't find a reference. However
| detailed it was, for the next month, literally millions
| of people will be on Twitter making 280-character-limited
| reductio ad absurdum comments about it.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| UPDATE: The decision is 231 pages.
| https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/read-supreme-
| court-...
| kokanator wrote:
| The US government can compel a man to sacrifice their
| entire body ( and blood ) for the greater good of other
| citizens should they wish. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.sss.gov/
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is has been brought up a few times, but is largely a
| non-sequitur. First, if WWIII broke out, I doubt women
| would be exempt from a draft (e.g. see Israel where
| service is mandatory for women). Second, this is
| comparing exceptional circumstances where there is,
| presumably, an existential threat to the state vs. a
| situation that can reasonably be expected to occur in a
| person's lifetime (pregnancy).
|
| The draft is also a temporary measure. As with other
| wartime restrictions of civil liberties, like curfews or
| rationing, it would not be tolerated if continued outside
| the context of a war.
| sophacles wrote:
| Let me guess, you're in a group that is not normally outcast
| for existing?
|
| Gradual expansion of equal protection only makes sense if:
|
| 1. you are already protected
|
| 2. you benefit from unequal protection.
|
| 3. You want to appear "nice"
| lanstin wrote:
| I was arguing for expansion in opposition to restricting
| equal protection. It would be much better if the US
| protected equal protection for all people immediately in
| 1790 but it didn't. I would like to argue that the
| Republicans are a threat to the progress made in the latter
| half of the twentieth century without defending the
| previous systems as being good, but merely good enough to
| enable improvements via the Civil Right movement, gay
| power, womens lib, labor unions, etc.
|
| If you have a plan for full equality, sign me up. I have
| seen some calls for a general strike on Twitter today, but
| I am unpersuaded that will happen this week.
|
| Here on ycombinator even getting people to understand that
| the value of their labor is being taken and their orgs are
| racist and sexist is not an easy sell.
| sophacles wrote:
| > but merely good enough to enable improvements via the
| Civil Right movement, gay power, womens lib, labor
| unions, etc
|
| The rulings underpinning several of these are called out
| as "up next" by Thomas' concurring opinion.
| irae wrote:
| I am neither Republican or Democrat. I am Brazilian and
| moderate. But I would not go as far as saying any party
| is a threat. In society, all changes that were made too
| fast resulted in unexpected consequences. We might be in
| times of extreme polarization, but in general, having
| opposing views in politics forcing changes to be slower
| than the Democrats would want and faster than what
| Republicas would, benefit us all in the end.
| lovich wrote:
| That is claim with zero backing. The center between any
| two arguments is not some superior choice because it's
| between the two sides.
|
| If two wolves and a sheep are deciding on lunch would the
| sheep consider only having two legs eaten a better deal
| for everyone?
| lanstin wrote:
| I would argue that the US is suffering from an inability
| to legislate due to the polarization. The two parties do
| not share the same idea of what problems we have, and
| they are not arguing over how to fix them. You have one
| side saying we should do something about global warming
| and the cost of education and gun deaths and the other
| side saying women should submit to their husbands and
| gays are causing social breakdown in the country and the
| Democrats are drinking the blood of children to live
| longer.
|
| The Senate allows a minority to stop the majority from
| tweaking the laws in an iterative process, and holds the
| society back from doing things that require laws, like
| carbon tax or cap n trade, or even fixing clear bugs in
| ACA. We don't have much internet relevant laws passed in
| the last twenty years, yet the internet and its conflicts
| have changed quite a lot since Napster. We can't change
| the law to let people rebuild flood destroyed buildings
| on higher ground. All we do is tweak the budget numbers
| and appoint judges. It makes prospective solutions
| extremely tilted compared to even a good compromise of a
| law.
| shakezula wrote:
| This is the problem with politics today in America.
| Republicans win by saying No to everything, while
| everyone collectively loses because of our inability to
| get anything done. And then Democrats get blamed for it
| anyway, whether it was their legislation or not.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| When you believe God is on your side, you can justify
| almost any behavior to accomplish your goals, functional
| democracy be damned.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| _Gott mit uns_ (God is with us), as the Nazis put it
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > The equal protection clause extends that right to your own
| body to women
|
| No it doesn't
|
| Here's the clause:
|
| "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
| subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
| United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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."
|
| Where is a guaranteed right to abortion in this? You said Roe
| "is fairly sound constitutional reasoning", but I don't see
| you reading a Roe from this without some serious mental
| gymnastics
|
| Also:
|
| > Note that a man is not required to donate blood to save an
| adult human, even if there is no risk to him. The equal
| protection clause extends that right to your own body to
| women, and that is fairly sound constitutional reasoning.
|
| Donating blood != killing a fetus
|
| If you consider equating the two "fairly sound constitutional
| reasoning" then that speaks for itself
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Donating blood != killing a fetus
|
| I don't think that's the argument the earlier post is
| making. They are arguing that you cannot be compelled to do
| something to save some else's life even if it won't harm
| you, and doubly so without due process.
|
| However, I think viewing someone's body as their own
| property is a better way to frame this. If you decide a
| fetus is trespassing in your body, where should the state
| intervene? The state couldn't force you to harbor someone
| in your home during a winter storm, even if you left your
| door unlocked and kicking them out would surely result in
| them freezing to death. If you believe that a fetus has
| adverse rights against the body it's growing inside of,
| then you need to make that case.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > I don't think that's the argument the earlier post is
| making. They are arguing that you cannot be compelled to
| do something to save some else's life even if it won't
| harm you, and doubly so without due process.
|
| Choosing not to kill a fetus != saving someone else's
| life
|
| Using the two interchangeably is like building a house on
| top of sand
| gusgus01 wrote:
| Following the viewpoint of the parent commenter, you are
| not choosing to kill the fetus. You are choosing to stop
| letting the fetus have residence inside your body (your
| property) and choosing to stop providing it with free
| nourishment. It's the lack of the fetus's ability to fend
| for itself that causes it to perish.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| This is in line with my argument, but I actually mean
| something more direct than that. I mean you have the
| right to kill someone living inside of you, because you
| have property rights over your body and rights to the
| security of your person. Before viability, the only means
| of evicting a fetus, or in other words securing your
| person, is to kill the fetus. I think that is a
| fundamental right.
|
| Just as you have the right to defend your home with
| lethal force, you also have the right to evict by lethal
| force a fetus.
|
| I don't think it does us any good to shy aways from the
| uncomfortable aspects of t he free exercise of these
| rights.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > Following the viewpoint of the parent commenter, you
| are not choosing to kill the fetus. You are choosing to
| stop letting the fetus have residence inside your body
| (your property) and choosing to stop providing it with
| free nourishment. It's the lack of the fetus's ability to
| fend for itself that causes it to perish.
|
| Mental gymnastics. Excluding cases of rape (where
| abortion should be protected), the fetus is there because
| of the mother's decision to have sex.
|
| Quoting the parent:
|
| > However, I think viewing someone's body as their own
| property is a better way to frame this. If you decide a
| fetus is trespassing in your body, where should the state
| intervene? The state couldn't force you to harbor someone
| in your home during a winter storm, even if you left your
| door unlocked and kicking them out would surely result in
| them freezing to death. If you believe that a fetus has
| adverse rights against the body it's growing inside of,
| then you need to make that case.
|
| Ofc, if a mother decides to have a child and then not
| provide it with "free nourishment", it's the child's
| fault for being defenseless. /s
|
| The child isn't just some random guest in "a mother's
| house", it's there because of a decision she made.
|
| Do you seriously think that if someone let a starving
| child into their (actual) house then let the child starve
| to death instead of doing anything, that person shouldn't
| be charged with a crime?
| teolandon wrote:
| Those two situations are not comparable.
|
| Obviously there are alternative options to safely get the
| starving child in your house help. You can easily call
| the police, CPS, etc to take care of it with no danger to
| your own body.
|
| You cannot do the same with a fetus inside your body.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| You aren't compelled to allow someone to stay in your
| home just because you previously invited them in.
|
| Ideally, people would successfully use other means of
| contraception and they VAST majority of the time they do.
| But there are myriad reasons someone may come to the
| decision that they cannot carry a child to term. I firmly
| believe that being compelled to do so violates security
| in one's person. There's a long tradition in English
| common law preceding the US constitution that holds basic
| the same concept to be true. Historically common law
| allowed abortion up to the "quickening", which today we
| might call viability even though it differs a bit.
|
| Fundamentally I don't think the state should be able to
| tell you what to do with your own body. Many important
| rights flow naturally from this basic premise. I think
| this is a principled approach rather than working
| backwards from an outcome.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That's precisely why I think an argument from property
| rights and self-ownership is more morally, legally, and
| philosophically sound, as I said. Your body is the most
| intimate and important property you have, to be secure in
| your person is one of the most fundamental rights. Being
| forced to host another life within your body and an
| infliction of suffering by the state, and in my view a
| violation of the right to security in one's person. I
| think that is a right that supersedes the rights any
| fetus may have, as unfortunate as we may feel the outcome
| to be.
|
| Moreover, there are a lot of places where we morally and
| legally permit people to kill, that doesn't mean that we
| like killing or condone it in general.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| prionassembly wrote:
| > If you decide a fetus is trespassing in your body,
|
| I think I remember the UN Charter on the Rights of the
| Child stating that (1) children are not the property of
| their parents and (2) parents have a responsibility for
| its well-being.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm not arguing that children are property, but rather
| your own body is. When a born child leaves your body,
| then they can no longer infringe upon your right of self
| ownership. I don't see a conflict here.
| jungturk wrote:
| The argument is that a state is denying the woman's liberty
| and/or denying them the privileges due to citizens on
| behalf of a party that is neither person nor citizen.
|
| (Obviously the conferring the status of personhood on the
| unborn is a subject of debate).
| sporkland wrote:
| noelsusman wrote:
| RBG had her criticisms of Roe, but a quick reading of her
| critiques would clearly show she would be with the dissent
| today, not the majority.
|
| Reproductive rights are essential to women's liberty and
| equality, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The unborn
| child has a competing right to life that is also guaranteed by
| the 14th Amendment. Roe/Casey balanced these competing
| interests well, and today's decision blows that up and
| eliminates any notion of reproductive rights for women.
|
| Rights are not supposed to be subject to the whims of political
| majorities.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Rights are not supposed to be subject to the whims of
| political majorities.
|
| They kind of are, when they're controversial and as weakly
| justified as Roe was.
|
| The Democrats really botched this, when they put all their
| efforts into puffing up Roe than creating other supports.
| noelsusman wrote:
| If anything controversial rights should have even more
| protection from political majorities, not less.
| [deleted]
| cryptonector wrote:
| Yes. In fact, this ruling might well lead to an end of
| Republican majorities in red States, and to multi-decadal
| Democrat rule. Certainly that is likely if: a) public opinion
| is strongly in favor of some legal abortion, and b) Republicans
| ignore that and move to ban all abortions.
|
| In 1992 Republicans ran on abortion and lost badly. In 1994
| they ran on everything-but-abortion and won big. So there is
| precedent for them to lose badly if they overplay their hand
| now.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I don't see this really having any impact on voting patterns.
| Voting demographics are largely over-determined.
|
| Republicans lost in 92 because of the "economy stupid" and,
| after sixteen years of incumbency, the pendulum swung to
| "throw the bums out." They were trotting out "Family Values"
| when people had actual concerns about their material
| conditions as we were in a relatively minor recession.
| lovich wrote:
| In 1992 they had to win the majority of the vote in elections
| to win seats, but they have innovated around that restriction
| in the past 30 years, so no, there isn't a good expectation
| that this will make them lose
| mywittyname wrote:
| I think the opposite, and this ruling is the precursor to a
| lifetime of Republican rule at the Federal level and in all
| but the most blue states.
|
| Next up on the chopping block will be voting rights. SCOTUS
| will act to ensure that disenfranchisement is perfectly legal
| and that attempts to help disenfranchised people vote are
| illegal.
|
| We are currently in a recession that will likely turn into a
| depression of epic proportions. Republicans are going to walk
| away with the midterms and next presidency. They will use the
| food/stability crisis we are as justification for further
| attacking blue states and attempting to bend them.
|
| That's assuming they don't just impeach Biden then throw him
| and his staff in prison once they have control of the Senate
| and House.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| From 2008-2010, the Democratic party had the chance to enshrine
| abortion into the law of the land. They even had a perfect
| vehicle, the ACA, in which to do it, since it already dealt
| with healthcare rules. They declined.
| function_seven wrote:
| There is a 0% chance ACA would have gone anywhere if it
| included protections for abortion.
|
| 0%. Democrats did not in fact have a "perfect vehicle" nor
| did they have a chance to enshrine abortion into the law of
| the land.
| delecti wrote:
| Both parties benefited from abortion being a wedge issue that
| wasn't under legislative control. The dems knew that if they
| enshrined it in law, then the GOP could campaign on undoing
| that legislative imposition.
|
| The GOP just plays politics better though, so now they're a
| dog who caught the car they were chasing. The dems have a
| chance to make that backfire on the GOP in the midterms, but
| they're awful at getting or wielding power, so I'm skeptical
| they will.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This is honestly the reason why the DNC chose to gamble on
| Roe rather than seizing one of the opportunities they had
| in the last 50 years to write a law.
|
| It's a sleazy move, and I'm not sure why they think people
| don't see what they are doing.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Do you think the ACA would have been more or less likely to
| pass if it had mentioned a federal right to abortion (which
| would have benefited zero people for the next decade)?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The ACA would probably have had equal chances. It was
| passed on a party line vote anyway. Besides, nothing
| stopped them from passing a right to an abortion otherwise.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| The ACA was already getting a lot of challenges and multiple
| attempts to repeal it from day one. I imagine that throwing
| abortion protections into the mix was deemed to be a poor
| tactical choice at that moment because it would enflame many
| of the ACA's political opponents further and perhaps bring
| new adversaries into the fold.
| [deleted]
| mburns wrote:
| ~25% of House Dems crossed the aisle to vote on a Republican
| amendment to the ACA to ban federal funding of abortion[1].
| While that specific amendment failed in the Senate, it still
| forced a handshake deal that Obama would issue an EO to that
| effect.
|
| It seems very unlikely that the ACA could have been passed if
| it enshrined abortion rights.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupak%E2%80%93Pitts_Amendment
| vitruvian_man wrote:
| While I'm a strong supporter of abortion rights, I agree with
| this logic.
|
| If anything, this will force conservatives to solidify and
| clarify their views on abortion which will allow voters to
| decide where they land on the spectrum of abortion rights.
| Whereas before, conservatives just deferred to "abortion bad.
| look at supreme court decision".
|
| Also, is it not the case that most Americans support some
| abortion rights? Thus, this could force conservatives to move
| center on the abortion spectrum in order to appease their
| constituents.
| fassssst wrote:
| Which is why they're simultaneously trying to make it harder
| to vote.
| joshstrange wrote:
| As if any of the "abortion bad" people rail against it only
| because it was a supreme court decision. We'd see the same
| fervor if it was a law. I've never hear someone say "I'd be
| fine with abortion if it was a law instead of a supreme court
| decision". I'm sure you can find someone making that argument
| but the vast majority (90%+) don't care. In fact I bet you
| could say "The Roe v Wade law" and most people wouldn't bat
| an eyelash because they just consider it "established
| precedent" and law vs court decision is irrelevant for them.
| troyvit wrote:
| I can think of one person who said that:
|
| > The seven to two judgment in Roe v. Wade declared
| "violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
| Amendment" a Texas criminal abortion statute that
| intolerably shackled a woman's autonomy; the Texas law
| "except[ed] from criminality only a life-saving procedure
| on behalf of the [pregnant woman]." Suppose the Court had
| stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most
| extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as
| the Court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the
| subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every
| state law then in force. Would there have been the twenty-
| year controversy we have witnessed[?]
|
| [1] https://time.com/5354490/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-
| wade/
|
| (edited to add forgotten source)
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| >I'm sure you can find someone making that argument
|
| > I can think of one person who said that:
|
| congratulations, really pushing the boundaries of what is
| possible here.
| troyvit wrote:
| Yep I misread your comment. My apologies.
| interestica wrote:
| Did you forget to actually link to source?
| troyvit wrote:
| Yep I did. Thanks for catching. I added it.
| interestica wrote:
| Thanks for link! Really interesting added context for an
| outsider (Canadian)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Agreed, it will also make democracy more granular and for the
| lack of a better word: authentic. Citizens can vote their way
| for pro or anti Abortion issues and kick out electives that
| do not support their preferences.
| lanstin wrote:
| Until they use their political tools that worked to
| suppress so many popular things to supress democratic feed
| back cycles as well.
| lanstin wrote:
| Or to solidify their dedication to minority tule,
| specifically minority rule of one particular anti-science
| religious sect over the majority in a formerly pluralistic,
| science and education and hard work based society.
|
| Stop educating people on biology (and in the post genome
| sequencing world), stop women from having reproductive
| control, stop LGBTQ folks from participating without fear,
| stop the free thinking people, stop it all in the name of
| that olde time religion (which itself is mostly a modern
| nostalgic reconstruction).
|
| Very harmful to our ability to focus and succeed on
| technological transformation.
| munificent wrote:
| _> a formerly pluralistic, science and education and hard
| work based society._
|
| While today is certainly a dark day for the US, that paints
| an inaccurately rosy picture of the past to make us look
| even worse than we are today.
|
| Our literacy rate has never been higher, belief in
| evolution is at an all time high, more people have college
| degrees, and access to accurate information has never been
| easier. We are in a short-term downswing on many axes, but
| the long term trends are towards science and education.
|
| You are absolutely correct that we are more polarized than
| we have been since the Civil War.
| lanstin wrote:
| Bless you for that. Unironically. I keep telling my kids
| you have to judge things in the 100 years over hundred
| years metrics, but have been feeling rather bleak today,
| also with the midterms looking like the anti-democratic
| forces may well win.
|
| Also, due to having to argue basic shit like the value of
| a pluralistic educated democracy when we have the
| physical problem of climate change bearing down and
| really wanting our attention. I marched for Roe v Wade in
| 1988 the first time, protested against stupid wars in
| 1986, helped build what I thought would tie humanity
| together in an enlighten network of discourse in the 90s
| as a programmer, had kids in the 2000#, and now back to
| Roe v Wade. Meanwhile the CO2 is 420 ppm and we haven't
| got a damn Mars 100 picked out yet (Sci fi reference
| there). I want Red Mars with more realistic population
| distribution, not Parable of the Sower.
| lovich wrote:
| Bud, It's been downhill for almost the entirety of
| millennials and for the entirety of the younger
| generations lives.
|
| 22 years of downhill might be short term for a nation but
| it's not for people
| munificent wrote:
| I often imagine what it must have been like to be born in
| the 1920s. By 1945, you would have lived through a
| Depression and the worst war the world had ever seen by a
| large margin. You would have entered a world where a few
| button presses could wipe out all life on Earth. You
| watched the rise of communism. The economy of your
| adulthood was worse than what you were born into. It must
| have seemed like the arrow of progress had permanently
| broken and humanity was doomed.
|
| And yet, without knowing it, ahead of you was the Civil
| Rights Act, the women's liberation movement, the
| environmental movement and the Clean Air Act, increased
| support for interacial relationships, gay rights.
|
| In the midst of that dark time, it would have been hard
| to believe any of those could be ahead of you. Who knows
| what could be ahead of us now?
| mwcampbell wrote:
| And then we ended up calling those people (born in the
| 1920s) the greatest generation. Sure, maybe the greatest
| generation is always just the generation that's about to
| die. But maybe the combination of hardship and
| opportunity also had something to do with it. So maybe
| we've got another "greatest generation" in the making.
| lovich wrote:
| That sounds a lot like https://www.thesecret.tv/ and I've
| already discounted the idea. Everything ends eventually.
| lowercased wrote:
| > is it not the case that most Americans support some
| abortion rights?
|
| Most Americans support some form of universal access to
| health care as well - some variation of single payer, or
| public option, or similar. That is nowhere reflected in
| state-level policy in many many states.
| inlined wrote:
| And most Americans support additional restrictions on
| access to guns like background checks, red flag laws, and
| banning assault rifles. Unlike abortion, those rights are
| being taken away from the legislators due to a horrible
| interpretation of the second amendment
| lanstin wrote:
| And pot. And legal protections for workers in the
| workplace. Still, the Dems seem like weirdly ineffective
| standards bearers for all this, plus the Senate and
| gerrymandering.
| babypuncher wrote:
| > Also, is it not the case that most Americans support some
| abortion rights? Thus, this could force conservatives to move
| center on the abortion spectrum in order to appease their
| constituents.
|
| One would hope, but they have only been veering further to
| the right on this issue. In the past year, multiple states
| have passed the most extreme abortion laws this country has
| seen over half a century. Texas will literally throw women in
| jail if they are caught leaving the state to get an abortion.
|
| But those evil Democrats want to teach kids that there is
| nothing wrong with being gay, so I guess it equals out?
|
| I do not know how any sane person can still support the GOP,
| especially after the Jan. 6 insurrection and this SC ruling.
| snoopy_telex wrote:
| > Also, is it not the case that most Americans support some
| abortion rights? Thus, this could force conservatives to move
| center on the abortion spectrum in order to appease their
| constituents.
|
| 13 states have trigger laws going into effect with this. It's
| not going to move the needle at all. The red states will ban
| it. Blue won't. And it'll still be a hot button topic in the
| reversed states. Red candidates in blue states will want to
| outlaw it. Blue candidates in red states will want to allow
| it.
| cryptonector wrote:
| On the contrary, it may well move the needle if Republicans
| overplay their hand and piss off the electorate.
| ncr100 wrote:
| The law is (was) not perfect.
|
| The distribution of Americans who support the right to
| abortion is also not even.
|
| In States where the distribution of "anti" outweighs "pro"
| all citizens will lose the right. So human rights are
| lessened in the United States.
|
| It is a tragic day.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Roe V. Wade has decades of precedent. Even if the ruling was
| "horribly decided," this is not a good look for the legitimacy
| of the court.
|
| Especially at a time when the country is more polarized than
| ever. This is just horribly timed and will further split this
| country apart. This will be our century's dredd scott - the
| court "thought" this would settle the issue. But it won't:
|
| "Although Taney and several other justices hoped the decision
| would permanently settle the slavery controversy, which was
| increasingly dividing the American public, the decision's
| effect was the opposite."
| snoopy_telex wrote:
| Roe was also a basis for many other ruling and this opens for
| them to be overturned as well.
|
| THOMAS, J., concurring
|
| "For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all
| of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including
| Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell."
| koboll wrote:
| If he was to apply a logical framework to his reasoning
| then overturning Obergefell would mean also overturning
| Loving and dissolving his own marriage.
|
| But he isn't particularly interested in that, because he is
| a political hack.
|
| Thankfully, he is at least wrong about Obergefell, which
| was decided on different, and much firmer, grounds than the
| right-to-privacy cases. But carrying out the logic from
| this decision to others does indeed threaten Griswold and
| Lawrence, and especially Griswold, which was basically the
| direct precedential precursor to Roe.
| saxonww wrote:
| Also the Pierce case that prevented laws requiring kids
| to attend public school. I'd love to know how many
| federalist society members send their kids to private
| schools.
| Sandworm5639 wrote:
| Thomas really is a conservative extremist and I agree that
| his concurrence is very concerning. But no one else joined
| his opinion and the majority explicitly stated that all
| those cases shouldn't be affected(because of how abortion
| affects "two lives").
| dragonwriter wrote:
| _Griswold_ (which articulated the right to marital privacy,
| which prevented laws banning contraception for married
| couples) was precedent for _Roe_ , not vice versa.
|
| _Obergefell_ and _Lawrence_ rested more strongly on
| _Griswold_ directly (or through other non- _Roe_ cases)
| than on any innovation from _Roe_ , as I recall.
|
| (Note that Thomas' explicit attack on "all of this Court's
| substantive due process precedents" strikes much more
| deeply, though, than just the _Griswold_ line of privacy-
| related cases; the incorporation of the Bill of Rights as
| applicable against the States is substantive due process,
| and even the application of even the rational basis test
| requiring some connection to some legitimate public purpose
| for any legal distinction, are all part of the substantive
| due process precedent of the Court. I guess, if this Court
| wasn't nakedly partisan and selective in its logic, this
| could be a hopeful sign for Dems on state gun control,
| since if there were a serious reconsideration of that
| precedent the incorporation of the second Amendment - the
| only Amendment with a purpose clause explicitly stating
| that it is for the _benefit_ of the states - against the
| States would be on the weakest ground of any of it.)
| masklinn wrote:
| Fwiw Roe was not precedent for griswold, griswold was the
| precedent for roe.
|
| More generally griswold was one of the landmark decisions
| at the core of finding a (non-enumerated) constitutional
| right to privacy.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Here's the larger context of what Thomas wrote:
|
| >The Court today declines to disturb substantive due
| process jurisprudence generally or the doctrine's
| application in other, specific contexts. Cases like
| Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479 (1965) (right of
| married persons to obtain contraceptives)*; Lawrence v.
| Texas, 539 U. S. 558 (2003) (right to engage in private,
| consensual sexual acts); and Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.
| S. 644 (2015) (right to same-sex marriage), are not at
| issue. The Court's abortion cases are unique, see ante, at
| 31-32, 66, 71-72, and no party has asked us to decide
| "whether our entire Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence must
| be preserved or revised," McDonald, 561 U. S., at 813
| (opinion of THOMAS, J.). Thus, I agree that "[n]othing in
| [the Court's] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on
| precedents that do not concern abortion." Ante, at 66.
|
| >For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all
| of this Court's substantive due process precedents,
| including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any
| substantive due process decision is "demonstrably
| erroneous," Ramos v. Louisiana, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020)
| (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7), we
| have a duty to "correct the error" established in those
| precedents, Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___
| (2019) (THOMAS, J., concurring) (slip op., at 9). After
| overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the
| question would remain whether other constitutional
| provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive
| due process cases have generated. For example, we could
| consider whether any of the rights announced in this
| Court's substantive due process cases are "privileges or
| immunities of citizens of the United States" protected by
| the Fourteenth Amendment.
|
| >To answer that question, we would need to decide important
| antecedent questions, including whether the Privileges or
| Immunities Clause protects any rights that are not
| enumerated in the Constitution and, if so, how to identify
| those rights. See id., at 854. That said, even if the
| Clause does protect unenumerated rights, the Court
| conclusively demonstrates that abortion is not one of them
| under any plausible interpretive approach. See ante, at 15,
| n. 22.
|
| This is actually in important and interesting legal
| question, because the Court has largely side stepped
| determining a mechanism for how to identify those rights,
| and did so in Roe.
| padjo wrote:
| Roberts's concurrence essentially says that too. Honestly his
| concurrence reads more like a dissent to me.
| jungturk wrote:
| Roberts' concurrence was in ruling against Casey (decided
| 6-3).
|
| He did not concur with overturning Roe - that was decided
| 5-4.
| splitstud wrote:
| lamontcg wrote:
| We're going to wind up breaking up The Union one way or another
| in the coming years.
|
| Time to start planning on how violently we do that or not -- to
| consider this unthinkable is going to be the path of more
| violence and not less.
|
| To all the centrists who are trying to spin all this as nothing
| to get worried about -- either you're secretly perfectly happy
| with everything going on and you're not much of a centrist in
| reality, or else you're still in denial that you've lost.
| Political polarization is here to stay and will only get worse,
| and centrists equating what the right is doing now with the "far
| left lunacy" of universal health care share a massive chunk of
| the blame even though they'll never accept it.
| thriftwy wrote:
| (edited) It's not like you had any more urgent issues than this?
|
| That move greatly reinforces Galkovsky's position that USA is now
| a Latin American country not unlike Brazil; and indeed, Latin
| American countries also deeply care about this (non)issue and
| have abortion laws inappropriate to their general level of
| economical and human development.
|
| The problem being, at least Brazil recognizes that it is Brazil
| and knows how to run Brazil.
| rg111 wrote:
| Religious issues are how you get votes. And that is how you can
| be in power to help your crony capitalist friends.
| lom888 wrote:
| I wish we saw more comparison between the US and Latin America
| in online discourse. There is an excess of references and
| analogies made to the emotionally salient topics of the US
| Civil War, the Civil rights period and Europe from 1918 to 1945
| when discussing the current American situation and a dearth of
| comparison to Latin America. The frequent comparison of Trump
| to a dictator instead of to a populist president in the Latin
| American mold is an example.
| qalmakka wrote:
| It's a simple vote exchange, you know. People got triggered
| badly by Roe and "liberal" rulings that actually enshrined the
| right of women to have a sexual life and control their own
| life, so they made a pact with the Republicans to overturn it.
| In exchange for that, the Republicans had a free hand to cut
| taxes to rich people and ensure that poor people stayed poor.
| thriftwy wrote:
| That's so many read flags in one place that it resembles May
| 1st on the Red Square.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Leaving this here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770 as
| someone who lived through that.
|
| Also check out this film
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Months,_3_Weeks_and_2_Days about
| the reality on the ground.
|
| Congratulations, America! Lots of states will now offer the same
| reproductive rights as communist Romania during the Cold War. So
| much freedom!
|
| Also, some US states will now have a stricter abortion law than
| even some fundamentalist islamic countries. What a great day for
| American liberty.
| chewmieser wrote:
| Here's the article linked in case you don't have a NYTimes sub:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/24/us/roe-wade-abortion...
| chx wrote:
| On Jun 6, this blog post was written
| https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/how-america-collapsed-and-b...
| describing how the three-world split post World War II became a
| four-world-split now. You have Western social democracies as
| first, Russia and China on the wings as second, developing as
| third and the two fallen countries being USA and UK as fourth.
| Worse than the third. The trajectory is not upwards but down.
| This is but another step ... down. More will follow. And no,
| voting won't save you for multiple reasons: one, Democrats won
| both chambers of Congress and the White House and look what they
| have achieved. Two, Republicans are relentlessly rigging the
| vote. Three, soon they won't accept the results anyways.
|
| All this to say: flee if you can.
| whateveracct wrote:
| These new Trump Justices pretty clearly put the Bible's values
| above the Constitution's. Especially Amy Coney Barrett. It's
| gonna be a rough few life sentences for those of us who think
| Christianity is asinine.
| insickness wrote:
| It's a shame the abortion debate is overtaken by radicals on both
| sides when the majority of Americans would prefer laws similar to
| most European nations: legal abortion within the first trimester.
| ausbah wrote:
| its not really "both sides" when only one side is having a say
| in how the ruling is handed down
| insickness wrote:
| Yeah, that's how the supreme court works. Previously it was
| the other side who handed down a ruling.
| ausbah wrote:
| yes so right now there is no debate, its one side imposing
| their beliefs unilaterally. there is no "both sides" when
| only one side has power
| insickness wrote:
| Democrats control the House, Senate and Presidency.
| That's hardly one-sided.
| ausbah wrote:
| and conservatives control SCOTUS, which is the party we
| are discussing here.
| insickness wrote:
| Congress can make new laws or constitutional amendments,
| so SCOTUS is not all we're discussing here. Nor did
| SCOTUS take away the rights of states to allow abortion.
| There is no "one side" having their say on this matter.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > radicals on both sides
|
| Spare me...
|
| > legal abortion within the first trimester
|
| And one party is pushing to make it 6 weeks (or less) or no
| abortions at all. Tell me more about "both sides".
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from
| https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/24/us/roe-wade-abortion...
| (which is more of a feed) to what looks like a reasonable
| article.
|
| The ruling itself is at
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf, via
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31863903.
| swayvil wrote:
| This is a distraction. Pure and simple.
|
| A distraction from rampant inflation, censorship, who's
| responsible, etc.
| fredgrott wrote:
| A lot of people are missing a very important core issue
|
| What Alito and others did by over turning a previous supreme
| court ruling is open the bad box in that any time a majority
| changes on the supreme court there will be an attempt to over
| turn past rulings not based upon law but based on feelings of the
| court.
|
| the only sliver lining is that there is growing evidence that at
| least 3 supreme court justice might be impeached by year-end.
| urmish wrote:
| Who is to say the previous ruling was not based upon 'feelings
| of the court'?
| londgine wrote:
| Regardless of my opinion on whether states should be able to
| restrict abortions, I really didn't like Roe vs. Wade. This
| should be a law that congress votes for/against and be held
| responsible for by their voters.
|
| I wonder how such a legal framework would work if the court could
| go to their respective law makers and say that the law is unclear
| in this case and require them to vote on it. Then, rather than
| Roe vs. Wade being passed in the first place, the supreme court
| would order congress to vote for/against a new law forbidding
| states from being able to restrict abortions.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| This is just the first step towards the conservatives' ultimate
| goal: making abortion illegal nation-wide.
|
| They'll gleefully wave goodbye to "states' rights" when it suits
| them.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| People who are responsible for this are evil scumbags and a
| blight on a society. There is simply no other way to put this.
| [deleted]
| adamrezich wrote:
| has anyone done a comparison chart of the various "trigger laws"
| in different states? I ask because the other day someone on
| twitter accused my state of being "anti-semetic" for not allowing
| abortions when the pregnant woman's life is at risk, and a quick
| google search revealed that this is actually false:
| 22-17-5.1. (Section effective on the date states are recognized
| by the United States Supreme Court to have the authority to
| prohibit abortion at all stages of pregnancy) Procurement of
| abortion prohibited--Exception to preserve life of pregnant
| female--Felony. Any person who administers to
| any pregnant female or who prescribes or procures for any
| pregnant female any medicine, drug, or substance or uses or
| employs any instrument or other means with intent thereby to
| procure an abortion, unless there is appropriate and reasonable
| medical judgment that performance of an abortion is necessary to
| preserve the life of the pregnant female, is guilty of a Class 6
| felony. (Section 7 of SL 2005, ch 187, as amended by SL 2005, ch
| 188, SS 1, provides: "This Act is effective on the date that the
| states are recognized by the United States Supreme Court to have
| the authority to prohibit abortion at all stages of pregnancy.")
| Source: SL 2005, ch 187, SS 6.
|
| https://sdlegislature.gov/Statutes/Codified_Laws/2047216
|
| are there any states where this is NOT the case?
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Gee, no shit. It dominates the mainstream news. Why post it on a
| tech-news site?
| mikewarot wrote:
| I almost lost my wife due to the Catholic Hospital's policy
| against D&C procedures. Had the OBGYN not put his career on the
| line, and over-riding the prohibition on the procedure, she would
| have died. Now that same hurdle can become risking prison.
|
| A few years later, we were blessed with a child who is doing
| well. I would have neither if not for Roe v. Wade.
|
| This isn't about abortion, it's about denying healthcare!
| seydor wrote:
| i m very happy for you but this is about abortion, a right that
| every civilized person should enjoy. i m not even american but
| this is bad
| danity wrote:
| The U.S. should pass a law rather than relying on a court
| decision. Roe v Wade was a poor decision from a legal
| standpoint. For example, why were abortions in the first
| trimester considered due process under the 14th amendment but
| in the last 2 trimesters they were not? The court should not
| be creating the law, the legislature should be doing that.
| Pass a law in the U.S. legislature and that will take
| precedence over state law (see the Supremacy Clause in the
| U.S. Constitution).
| heretogetout wrote:
| The way I see it the courts are there to ensure our civil
| rights are not violated by laws. A law that "allows"
| abortion doesn't really make sense in that light. Unless
| the law is a prohibition on passing laws restricting this
| right, I guess, although that would be silly.
| _justinfunk wrote:
| The way you see it, unfortunately, does not make it so.
|
| The constitution limits how the government can infringe
| on the rights of the people. If the courts say that a
| right to abortion is not in the constitution, then amend
| the constitution to add it.
|
| Until that point, it is up to the representatives of the
| people (i.e. the legislature at the state or federal
| level) to make laws.
| heretogetout wrote:
| I think we're in agreement on the core concepts here. We
| may disagree on what specific rights the constitution
| protects, but I'm not certain.
| nickff wrote:
| It would be difficult to pass a pro-choice (or pro-
| abortion) federal law which complied with the constitution,
| as the 'right' doesn't fall under any of the enumerated
| powers, and seems to be clearly within the power of the
| states. It seems like the only way to have a federal right
| to abortion is to have a constitutional right (like Roe v.
| Wade).
| dahfizz wrote:
| > It seems like the only way to have a federal right to
| abortion is to have a constitutional right (like Roe v.
| Wade).
|
| A constitutional amendment would be ideal, but seems very
| unlikely.
|
| I don't see why the Congress couldn't write laws
| guaranteeing access to abortion, though. We have laws in
| that vein, like the ADA.
| [deleted]
| kokanator wrote:
| It is important to note the position was that of the Hospital
| and not a legal position. All laws in place or being
| contemplated allow for abortive procedures in medical
| emergencies such as when the mothers life is in danger.
|
| For instance, the Mississippi law which was the impetus of the
| recent SCOTUS ruling has the following language:
|
| "[e]xcept in a medical emergency or in the case of a severe
| fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally or
| knowingly perform . . . or induce an abortion"
|
| There are issues with the ICD10 codes related to D&C procedures
| as they reference or include the word 'abortion'. This should
| be resolved by the AMA.
| mattnewton wrote:
| This is a lot of room for selective enforcement even in the
| Mississippi law. All it takes are criminal penalties for a
| doctor to hesitate or even refuse to perform potentially life
| saving operations. And that's not even looking at laws like
| the one in Oklahoma which doesn't have this carve out. Edit:
| OK has a stricter form of this carve out for medical
| emergencies, I misspoke.
| lelandfe wrote:
| OK does have that carve out, see my sibling comment.
| 31835843 wrote:
| This presumes that every hospital in the US knows the laws.
| Far from the case.
| altacc wrote:
| Their lawyers know the laws and they write hospital
| policies that stop them getting prosecuted and losing their
| license to operate, so will err on the side of the law, not
| patients.
| lelandfe wrote:
| > All laws in place or being contemplated allow for abortive
| procedures in medical emergencies
|
| SB 612[0] in Oklahoma made abortions a felony, punishable by
| up to 10 years in prison. I'm not sure how many doctors will
| feel comfortable making that call.
|
| ...Especially considering HB 4327 then empowers _citizens_ to
| stage witch hunts against those providers. Imagine developing
| a reputation for performing abortions in that situation.
|
| [0] Which defined a "medical emergency" as "a condition which
| cannot be remedied by delivery of the child in which an
| abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant
| woman whose life is endangered" - a high bar to clear.
| https://legiscan.com/OK/text/SB612/id/2564710
| kokanator wrote:
| Do you mean a stringent bar? A bar that is hard to
| identify?
|
| Full text of "emergency": "Medical emergency" means a
| condition which cannot be remedied by delivery of the child
| in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a
| pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical
| disorder, physical illness or physical injury including a
| life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising
| from the pregnancy itself."
|
| This is very clear a covers all possible situations where
| the pregnant woman's life would be in danger.
|
| This is very straight forward. If however, you mean to say
| it restricts abortions too far, you are arguing a different
| point.
| lelandfe wrote:
| I believe you're underselling how straightforward this
| is, and you've actually already got it a bit wrong:
|
| > covers all possible situations where the pregnant
| woman's life would be in danger
|
| The woman's life being in danger is the second clause.
| The first is that an abortion is _necessary_ to address
| it.
|
| It is a mighty task to prove that an abortion was
| necessary, and empowered citizens can frivolously bring
| lawsuits.
| [deleted]
| major505 wrote:
| I`m not american, but lets be honest. Is not a constitution right
| because is not in the constitution. States can now do their onw
| diligence about the subject. So it`s not the end of the word for
| pro-choise people.
| showerst wrote:
| The problem is that it just exacerbates an already major
| problem in America: access to healthcare is based on where you
| live and how wealthy your parents are.
|
| Wealthy republicans can just fly their teenage daughters to a
| blue state, while poor people will inevitably end up getting
| back-alley abortions.
| juve1996 wrote:
| You're kidding yourself if you think the fundamentalists will
| stop at the states.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Wealthy people will have access even under a federal ban.
| [deleted]
| curiousllama wrote:
| >Is not a constitution right because is not in the
| constitution.
|
| "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall
| not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
| people." - 9th Amendment, in its entirety.
|
| In other words: there is an entire Amendment specifically
| dedicated to refuting this argument. People have rights, even
| if they're not specifically written in the Constitution.
| xdennis wrote:
| Yes, the argument is bad, but he's right.
|
| The 9th amendment says some rights aren't mentioned. But
| abortion couldn't be one of those rights because abortion was
| banned in some states.
| curiousllama wrote:
| > But abortion couldn't be one of those rights because
| abortion was banned in some states.
|
| Abortion was not, in fact, banned when that amendment was
| written. The first full ban was in New York in 1829. [1]
|
| Besides, the legal issue is not whether abortion is one of
| those rights per se, but rather whether privacy is an
| implicit right (almost certainly), and whether family
| planning (abortion, yes, but also contraception & choice of
| sex partner) is a sufficiently private decision that the
| government is restrained from regulating it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_St
| ates#....
| mywittyname wrote:
| The preceding amendments are examples of the types of
| freedoms given the people, and the types of limitations
| imposed on the governments. Then it goes on to say, this is
| not an exhaustive list of rights for people, but is an
| exhaustive list of rights to the federal government.
|
| The right to potentially life saving treatment sounds an
| awful lot like those enumerated in the first amendment, and
| the right to not have the government force you to go
| through an potentially deadly and avoidable situation
| sounds in the spirit of the eighth amendment.
| foodforthots wrote:
| This is an accurate viewpoint. The overwhelming majority of
| states permit abortion and are not going to backtrack. The
| federal government has not banned abortion, and their legal
| ability to do so would be Constitutionally sketchy at best.
| There is a clear democratic path to settling the abortion issue
| in the states.
|
| The news here isn't a Supreme Court overriding voters, but
| devolving the decision of abortion rights to voters in the
| states and their elected representatives.
| invokestatic wrote:
| It's actually written in the Constitution that we as Americans
| enjoy many rights that aren't explicitly written in the text.
| It's in the 9th amendment and 14th amendment due process
| clause.
|
| The 14th, to me, encompasses everything that it means to be
| American: self-autonomy. The right to marry outside our race,
| the right to choose our sexual partner, the right to birth
| control are established in the due process clause.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The right to marry outside our race, the right to choose
| our sexual partner, the right to birth control are
| established in the due process clause.
|
| Lest they be accused of inconsistency, this Supreme Court
| likely intends to remove any existing protections for those
| rights as well.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Abortion wasn't made illegal in most states until the mid
| 1800s. Benjamin Franklin even published information on what
| can be used to perform an abortion in one of this books.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| > It's meant to protect liberties that were traditionally
| respected at the time of its ratification, _but were not
| all necessarily written down. Abortion was not one of those
| -- in fact it was flatly illegal (almost?) every single
| state at the time, and continued so into the 20th century._
|
| The text I emphasized above is false.
|
| After independence, the US adopted English common law,
| which "hazily" prohibited abortion after "quickening"
| (fetal movements usually first felt around 15-20 weeks'
| gestation), but lacked an actual written statute banning
| this. The first anti-abortion laws were introduced in
| Connecticut in 1821 (precipitated by a womanizing preacher
| who got one of his many young female fans pregnant,
| insisted she abort the fetus before marrying him because
| it'd damage his reputation, tried and failed medicine and
| then "mechanical" means, caused stillbirth, all without
| technically breaking any law): https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Abortion_in_the_United_States#...
|
| The Ninth Amendment was ratified in 1791: https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| the_solenoid wrote:
| I thought we have inalienable rights, and the constitution is
| there to carve out where we DONT have them.
|
| http://www.notguiltynj.com/our-constitution-doesnt-give-
| us-r...
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| The issue there is the reactionaries who claim to be
| 'textualists' and 'originalists' have all but decided the
| ninth amendment is meaningless.
|
| Scalia said, "the Constitution's refusal to 'deny or
| disparage' other rights is far removed from affirming any one
| of them, and even farther removed from authorizing judges to
| identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges' list
| against laws duly enacted by the people".
|
| Of course, anyone with a brain can see that Scalia was the
| first to abandon textualism or the reactionary idea that
| judges should not engage in 'judicial activism' whenever they
| came in conflict with conservative policy.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > The right to marry outside our race, the right to choose
| our sexual partner, the right to birth control are
| established in the due process clause.
|
| The rights to choose your sexual partner and marry outside
| your race are also established in the Equal Protection
| clause, which gives them a stronger basis in the constitution
| than birth control and abortion which solely rely on
| substantive due process.
| lesstyzing wrote:
| If the constitution is so vague that different judges will
| interpret it completely differently (and it "encompasses
| everything that it means to be American"), you need to fix
| the constitution. Having judges interpret vague things the
| way the people of the day want is a recipe for...exactly
| what's happening now.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's not the end of pro-choice nor is it the right-wing victory
| that people think it is.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Thomas literally wrote in concurrence that this decision also
| implies that Lawrence, Obergefell, and Griswold are on the
| chopping block next.
| polski-g wrote:
| Those cases created rights out of thin air and said rights
| are supported by huge majorities of the country. It would
| be trivial to pass a law actually codifying them. Not so
| with universal abortion, because it's not popular at all: h
| ttps://twitter.com/Peoples_Pundit/status/152150922486134374
| ...
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| That data is different enough from other poll data that
| I've seen that I have to call biased sampling.
| polski-g wrote:
| It's very close to polling which breaks the question down
| more narrowly than simply "do you support abortion".
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Please make sure to read the Thomas opinion in full and not
| just any excerpts without context that may be flying around
| social media.
| teachrdan wrote:
| Are you able to make a substantive argument here? Can you
| quote anything from Thomas's decision to suggest he does
| not want to revisit anti-sodomy laws, gay marriage, and
| trans rights? Otherwise your post looks like a low-effort
| way to refute OP's argument with absolutely no evidence.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Until it actually happens I don't care. Almost anything can
| happen. There is not enough time in the day to get worked
| up over everything that can happen.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| > This doesn't affect me therefore I don't care about my
| fellow citizens.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Wild speculation about the future doesn't affect anybody.
| generj wrote:
| You do realize this exact same argument was made for
| decades as the Federalist Society worked to make today's
| ruling happen?
| anonymouswacker wrote:
| More work needs to be done, but this is a start.
| danso wrote:
| Ruling:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I'm surprised there's been no call for a general strike. I think
| we would have seen one had Trump successfully illegally seized
| power and when the draft opinion leaked I was expecting rumblings
| of the idea of a general strike to start.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I would thoroughly support a general strike.
|
| I would both participate, and donate to strike support funds.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I'm seeing a lot of misunderstanding here about what this
| decision means in practical terms. It doesn't just ban abortion
| in red states -- it de facto will kill or harass a lot of women
| who don't want abortions but cannot carry a pregnancy to term.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-medicine/what-th...
|
| Women are now officially second-class citizens in the red United
| States.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Insightful article and interview with the least bias I've seen on
| this subject:
|
| https://quillette.com/2019/05/21/rethinking-abortion-advocac...
|
| https://m.soundcloud.com/therightsideirl/interview-coleman-h...
| [deleted]
| tamaharbor wrote:
| The Supreme Court never had the authority to even hear the
| original Roe v. Wade case. It has always been a states rights
| issue. Glad to see the current Supreme Court returning to the
| constitution and rule of law.
| 3qz wrote:
| This was inevitable. The law isn't well justified. Abortion
| depends on privacy rights? It makes no sense...
| Glyptodon wrote:
| The 1st amendment is so valuable against the state imposition of
| religious dogma...
| incognitoes wrote:
| mmaunder wrote:
| I strongly recommend reading Ruth Bader Ginsberg's thoughts on
| Roe v Wade in 1992 - expressed about a year before she became a
| Supreme Court justice.
|
| She describes Roe as a "breathtaking" decision and as
| interrupting a process already underway. Her discussion starts on
| page 1198 in this PDF which is a rewarding read if you have the
| time.
|
| I'm not advocating either way - I merely hope to present Justice
| Ginsbergs eloquent views (in 1992) on the matter for further
| discussion here.
|
| https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/ECM_PRO_059254.p...
| incomplete wrote:
| yeah, thanks for the link and i recall (from years ago) reading
| about her thoughts on the subject. roe v wade was a sweeping
| judgement that (depending on how you looked at it) guaranteed
| women's rights at the expense of state autonomy WRT laws.
|
| because of the states' rights issue, plus moral "conservatism",
| roe V wade was an easy target and i'm not surprised it was
| reversed.
|
| fwiw, i'm a lefty and think that this is a terrible decision
| w/consequences that won't take long to be felt around the
| country
| the_solenoid wrote:
| It should have been codified into law decades ago, but
| EVERYONE with few exceptions loves to fundraise off of it.
|
| Want to know how you know the US will backslide? I Said it a
| decade ago - when R's are willing to pull the trigger on Roe,
| it will be because they are going for everything.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It should have been codified into law decades ago,
|
| If its not a 14th Amendment right, what is the
| Constitutional basis for codification? An expansive view of
| the Commerce Clause? That's...not going to fly with the
| same politico-judicial faction that would hold it isn't
| protected by the 14th Amendment.
|
| Codification is a sideshow.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| From Kavanaugh's concurrence:
|
| "On the question of abortion, the Constitution is
| therefore neither pro-life nor pro-choice. The
| Constitution is neutral and leaves the issue for the
| people and their elected representatives to resolve
| through the democratic process in the States or Congress
| -- like the numerous other difficult questions of
| American social and economic policy that the Constitution
| does not address".
|
| ...
|
| "After today's decision, the nine Members of this Court
| will no longer decide the basic legality of pre-viability
| abortion for all 330 million Americans. That issue will
| be resolved by the people and their representatives in
| the democratic process in the States or Congress."
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I'm disappointed with the decision, but it's an obvious
| reaction to what conservatives view as "the extreme
| left/progressives" pushing too far/hard. "...when the
| pendulum swings too far in one direction it will go back"
| (RBG)
|
| I'm an independent and I share many views with both R's and
| D's. However I can say that at the extremes of each party -
| they're fucking it all up for all of us.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That's an overly dramatic take. My prediction is that
| Republicans will now begin losing seats in red State
| legislatures precisely because of this decision.
| lovich wrote:
| The republicans have already indicated they are done with
| democracy. Why would they care if the voters don't like
| it? They'll just change the electors to whoever picks
| what they want
| ryan93 wrote:
| No they wont
| lovich wrote:
| They believe they can. They tried last election and
| they'll try again as they had zero fucking consequences.
| If you think they wont try you are either one of them or
| have your head in the sand.
|
| Edit: It was also frequently stated that "no, they wont"
| when people were worried about the conservatives
| overturning roe v wade, but here we are!
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >That's an overly dramatic take. My prediction is that
| Republicans will now begin losing seats in red State
| legislatures precisely because of this decision.
|
| Unlikely.
|
| cf.:
|
| https://www.cesifo.org/en/node/60300
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/13/least-
| thr...
|
| https://www.evcnational.org/partisan-gerrymandering
|
| https://changetherules.org/gerrymandering-united-states/
| mgkimsal wrote:
| 'now begin'
|
| If it happens, and it's because of this decision, I don't
| think it'll be felt for a while. Certainly I don't expect
| any backlash this election cycle, and probably no real
| consequences from this in 2024. I suspect that, to the
| extent negative effects are felt from this, there will be
| years of blaming those effects on 'liberal policies' and
| demonizing democrats some more. I'm pessimistic, but
| think we'll have a generation before there's any real
| backlash against the Republican Party over this issue
| (and by then, the party largely won't look the same as it
| does today anyway).
| cryptonector wrote:
| It could be felt in November, or in 2024. 2026 at the
| latest.
| 31835843 wrote:
| mikkergp wrote:
| Really? I was under the impression that we've split
| enough geographically that the citizens of red states
| would support this decision.
| permo-w wrote:
| this may come across as emotional, and I suspect it is, so feel
| free to downvote me. but that person, dead or alive, is
| completely non-grata to me. she is a big part to blame for
| allowing the court to become so heavily conservative. if she
| had stood down in Obama's early years, when she was asked to,
| it would be a 5-4 split, and a good chance that they wouldn't
| have had the balls to follow through with this
| jungturk wrote:
| Roberts' concurrence did not extend to overturning Roe - he
| stopped at Casey.
|
| In your hypothetical, Roe would still be the law of the land
| today.
| jonwithoutanh wrote:
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Agreed. RBG's refusal to step down was a massive blunder. She
| had too much of a cult of personality around her, and it went
| to her head.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| I'll try my best to phrase this delicately, as I understand
| it's an emotional topic for Americans right now, but perhaps
| RBG chose not to step down because she knew that the action
| of stepping down was inherently political, and after years on
| the court, had decided to avoid setting a precedent of
| Blue/Red judges tactically stepping down when their
| respective party is in power.
|
| Who knows what her real reasoning may have been, but that's
| my interpretation.
| [deleted]
| hunglee2 wrote:
| my condolences to my friends in the US, this is a backwards step
| [deleted]
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| For anyone struggling with how to meaningfully help, I decided to
| make a donation to the Yellowhammer fund. I have no association
| with them (see my comment history and profile, I am a robotics
| engineer in California) but I searched for abortion funds that
| serve the South where people will be hit hardest by this, and
| found them.
|
| https://www.yellowhammerfund.org/
|
| In their words: "The Yellowhammer Fund is a 501(c)3 abortion fund
| and reproductive justice organization serving Alabama,
| Mississippi, and the Deep South. We envision a society in which
| reproductive decisions are made free from coercion, shame, or
| state interference, a society in which individuals and
| communities have autonomy in making healthy choices regarding
| their bodies and their futures. We commit ourselves to community
| education and empowerment, policy advocacy, and the development
| of systems of mutual aid to ensure that our friends, families,
| and neighbors never go without the things they need."
| unsui wrote:
| Reading the various discussions on HN, it is obvious that HN
| skews male.
|
| The vast majority of threads are either regarding the
| interpretation of legal frameworks and their implications, or
| asserting a-priori values on start of life and following the
| rational implications thereof.
|
| No-where do I see any discussions, or even caring about, how this
| affects women directly: the ability to govern their own bodies,
| their reproductive (and civil) rights. Or just the fact that they
| are de-jure 2nd-class citizens.
| AlimJaffer wrote:
| Well said. Too much of the debate on here is around logical
| fallacies rather than the direct impact this will have on women
| - particularly those who are poor and unable to travel for safe
| abortions in other states.
|
| Banning abortion only makes access to safe abortions harder -
| if the right wing want to reduce abortions, making
| contraceptives freely available has been proven to dramatically
| reduce the abortion rate as evidenced in Colorado[1].
|
| [1] - https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-
| justice/2019/06/05/aborti...
| tjs8rj wrote:
| "If you really want to reduce murders, you can't outlaw it,
| that just lets rich people murder. Instead, you make guns and
| other self protection widely available"
|
| To anyone who is convinced abortion is baby murder, this is
| what you just said. This argument only ever makes sense if
| you treat the fetus like a non entity and believe the
| opposition to abortion is purely hatred of female autonomy.
| The vast majority of Americans in favor of some abortion
| restrictions (which 75% of Americans are) have that opinion
| not because of the above but because they believe that fetus
| becomes a person at some point between conception and birth.
| AlimJaffer wrote:
| Except that contraception prevents conception from ever
| occurring? Your analogy is fundamentally flawed, and
| there's no point in arguing in good faith with people who
| equate contraception to murder.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| Shouldn't the legal analysis of a legal opinion be the norm?
| Facts don't care about your feelings.
| eric_cc wrote:
| I think it's totally fair to respond to this in multiple ways.
| Legal and economic repercussions are important discussions. So
| is the practical impact to women. There is no reason to
| belittle people for considering various aspects of this ruling.
| feet wrote:
| The impact on women, the human impact, should come before
| everything else
|
| But of course the slave owning framers of the constitution
| didn't care about that, considering the whole slave thing, so
| the federalist society judges that have been placed on the
| supreme court won't either
| hellojesus wrote:
| I would argue that legal consistency should be the
| priority.
|
| The legal argument is simple:
|
| - The Constitution enumerates federal powers.
|
| - Abortion is not enumerated federally (Article 1 Section
| 8)
|
| - 10th Ammendment states that anything not explicitly
| enumerated to the federal gov or explicitly denied to the
| States is the legal territory of the States
|
| This reversal doesn't ban abortion across the US. It
| returns the decision to the states, where it should be
| legally.
|
| If we want a federal solution, we need an ammendment. This
| is exactly the same as how prohibition required an
| ammendment to ban alcohol.
|
| Emotions, morals, etc., while important for driving the end
| result, still must comply with the legal system.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| > Emotions, morals, etc., while important for driving the
| end result, still must comply with the legal system.
|
| This is exactly backwards
| hellojesus wrote:
| It's not backwards.
|
| I'm arguing that those things should drive policy and
| laws, but we can't implement contradictory laws, and we
| can't just ignore existing laws when making new ones.
|
| Instead we need to revise, rescind, or modify laws in
| compliance with existing ones. Otherwise there is no
| point to having laws to begin with.
| feet wrote:
| Yea, the legal system did not make humans. We made it to
| serve us and our purposes but now its being used to
| stifle the populace and profit off those less fortunate
| jyrkesh wrote:
| > This is exactly the same as how prohibition required an
| ammendment [sic] to ban alcohol.
|
| Can't wait for SCOTUS to apply the same logic to drug
| prohibition, which is also not at all an enumerated
| federal power (assuming the same logic that alcohol
| regulation isn't one either).
| hellojesus wrote:
| Agreed! I just finished writing a comment to someone else
| specifically stating that Schedule 1 drugs should be
| handed the same result as R v. W just got!
| feet wrote:
| Great point! The CSA and DEA are unconstitutional, when
| will the supreme court declare it as such?
|
| Oh they won't, because they're activist judges with an
| agenda not some impartial arbiter of the constitution
| hellojesus wrote:
| Totally agree!
|
| Though the one point I will make is that the federal
| government is enumerated the power to regulate interstate
| commerce, so while they can't ban the substances, they
| could make it illegal to transport them over state lines.
| Such is the reason you still can't take mj from one legal
| state to the next.
| feet wrote:
| You're right they do, but the whole thing has been a
| giant way to shit on the fourth amendment and attack
| people that those in power don't like.
|
| We should still be able to have bodily autonomy and
| consume whatever substance we want. Just like women
| should have bodily autonomy and not be forced to carry
| pregnancies against their will
| iostream24 wrote:
| You conveniently ignore the 9th amendment in your
| incorrect analysis. The 9th amendment literally stands
| your conclusion on its head.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Maybe because it's just unanswerable? We're not talking about
| the right to pierce their ears or vote. We're talking about the
| termination of a living organism. I am pro-choice, but an
| intelligent mostly pro-life friend of mine tasked me to ask the
| most ardent activists on their side to answer, "when does human
| life begin?" It's a simple question to state, and yet many on
| the pro choice side absolutely refuse to grapple with it. It's
| become a great shibboleth question to find who is beyond
| reasoned debate on this issue. Yes, we are male. Yes, we
| acknowledge their is a thorny rights issue. There's also the
| question of rights of the organism being aborted. And the
| science of what a "viable" fetus is has progressed greatly
| since the 1970s. This is an uncomfortable conversation to have,
| but no one has a right of gender to say it can't be had.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Transgender men are speaking out loudly about this on social
| media right now, as they are also obviously impacted.
| epylar wrote:
| The overwhelming majority of men can't get pregnant.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > The overwhelming majority of men can't get pregnant.
|
| Human males obviously can't get pregnant, only human
| females.
| coward123 wrote:
| Consider this a bit of code switching. Many of us _absolutely_
| are concerned about what this means for women, but we also know
| that this forum skews male and a particular kind of male. So we
| are making the argument here that resonates with this forum.
|
| You are right though that more people overall - even those who
| skew conservative and pro-individual rights, should realize
| that if you take away rights from women, and then homosexuals,
| and then people who want to be married to someone of a
| different race... where does it end in terms of stripping away
| individual rights? I'd argue that if you view women's health
| care as a matter of individual freedom and rights, then is that
| not the same argument being made in interpreting the 2nd
| amendment as not about militias (IE: a standing army) but the
| rights of the individual? If I can tell women they can't have a
| set of health care services, what's stopping the government
| from telling men that they can't have a different set of health
| care services?
| hellojesus wrote:
| Rights has a very specific meaning in the US legal system.
| Abortion is not listed as a right in the Constitution, and it
| therefore is not a federal right.
|
| We can argue that it should be, but now we're talking about
| an ammendment, which is legally necessary and the real
| conversation the nation should be having.
|
| *I don't think it could ever qualify as a right. Rights are
| negative, not positive. You could not guarantee the right to
| an abortion because now you're guaranteeing someone to the
| right to have someone else do work for them. Instead, it
| would need to be enumerated as a negative right, meaning that
| there would be federal protection against the outlawing of
| abortions.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> is that not the same argument being made in interpreting
| the 2nd amendment as not about militias (IE: a standing army)
| but the rights of the individual?
|
| Militia does not mean standing army. From the Supreme Court
| Heller decision
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf, page
| 2:
|
| "The "militia" comprised all males physically capable of
| acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists
| feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in
| order to disable this citizens' militia, enabling a
| politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The
| response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient
| right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal
| of a citizens' militia would be preserved."
|
| You can read pages 1 and 2 of that decision to see the
| summary of the Supreme Court's argument for why 2nd Amendment
| rights are individual rights.
| coward123 wrote:
| There are many that would say _Heller_ was an activist
| court making up law and completely overlooked precedent in
| _Miller_ , in the same way the current court is overturning
| decades of precedent in another issue.
| armitron wrote:
| > the ability to govern their own bodies
|
| I see this frequently repeated, but it's clearly sophistry,
| similar to the language trick in a comment below where "It's
| not a baby, it's a fetus" is used to subvert reality.
|
| Women can very well govern their own bodies, but a 6 month old
| baby is definitely not "their own body" and one can very well
| understand why large portions of society would want to see it
| protected against abuse.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| It's not a baby, it's a fetus. The potential for being a baby
| is not a baby. And by what mental contortion is it not a
| woman's body? You're obviously not speaking from the position
| of having your life and health put at risk by carrying
| something that puts the greatest strain on a human body most
| will ever endure.
| lolinder wrote:
| My wife believes exactly the same as the OP, and she is
| most definitely speaking from that perspective. :)
|
| This isn't a gendered issue, it's a worldview one. There's
| a _very_ small skew towards males preferring it be illegal,
| but it 's not enough to write off all opposition as male:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-
| opini...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There's a very small skew towards males preferring it
| be illegal
|
| Women favor legality by +28 percentage points
|
| Men favor legality by +17 percentage points
|
| That's...not a particularly small gender skew.
| lolinder wrote:
| That's not how to read these numbers. Your way of
| counting doubles the actual gender gap.
|
| 63 percent of women say abortion should be legal in
| all/most cases.
|
| 58 percent of men say abortion should be legal in
| all/most cases.
|
| That's an ~5 percentage point gender gap, not a 10
| percentage point gap.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It's a 11 percentage point margin shift, and that is the
| correct way to view it. While neutral is a small position
| on this issue because it has high salience and is
| polarizing, neutral is a valid choice (which is also why
| the difference in "should be legal" is not identical to
| the difference in "should be illegal".)
| lolinder wrote:
| Ah, that's a fair approach.
|
| I was thinking of it this way: Hallucinaut assumed that
| armitron was male, because a female would never make that
| argument. However, 46% of people who believe that
| abortion should be illegal in almost all cases are
| female, which makes Hallucinaut's assumption very bad.
|
| Your approach is valid in other contexts, but I don't
| think it's the most relevant to the question I was
| addressing.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Fetus literally means unborn baby. The only difference
| between a fetus and a baby 10 minutes before birth is
| position in space (one's in a womb). Would you support
| abortion 10 minutes before birth? A day? A week? At what
| point are you just murdering a baby?
| ajford wrote:
| And development, which you seem to skip over. Most people
| draw the line at third trimester, which is generally when
| a fetus is viable outside the body.
|
| A fetus in the first or second trimester isn't capable of
| life outside the mother's womb. A vanishingly small
| percentage of people are even considering late-term
| abortions, but that's what you seem to be fixated on in
| all these threads.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| swayvil wrote:
| HN is full of coders. It's for coders, run by coders. Coders
| are 99% male.
| belorn wrote:
| This would then be an excellent time to introduce universal
| human rights. Reproduction should only occur through consent,
| and no one should be forced to be a parent against their will.
| Any action done to our own bodies or action people ask that we
| perform with our bodies should require continuously consent.
| Any negative outcome to society of people not providing consent
| should be address by the government in the form of social
| support.
|
| It is also about time that we abolish all laws that makes
| distinctions based on gender and sex. That way there won't be
| any 2nd-class citizens encoded in law that is based on gender.
| human_person wrote:
| Not only that but once half of the population has lost bodily
| autonomy why would anyone believe that their rights are safe?
|
| Today a woman can be compelled to use an organ in her body to
| keep another person alive.
|
| What's to stop the court from ruling that if you have 2 kidneys
| you can be compelled to donate one to keep someone else alive?
|
| What happens when a deadbeat dad is the only match for a child
| with organ failure? Why shouldn't they be compelled to give up
| an organ to keep their offspring alive?
|
| Libertarians should be in the streets protesting the loss of
| bodily autonomy. And all of us should be afraid.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _Libertarians should be in the streets protesting the loss of
| bodily autonomy. And all of us should be afraid._
|
| I agree, but I also tend to think this battle was lost when
| the SCOTUS refused to reject the "individual mandate". When
| you've reduced the notion of individual agency to the level
| that the State can dictate what items you must purchase, this
| is an entirely logical consequence.
| usrn wrote:
| If you take libertarinism to it's extreme like that then
| they should be protesting the lack of freedom of
| association as well but none are doing that either.
| peter422 wrote:
| Fortunately there is nothing else the state forces you to
| purchase so this is a very clean ideological point you are
| making.
| jkepler wrote:
| Libertarians should be protesting against violence toward
| the unborn child... libertarianism's core principle is
| nonviolence towards others.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I've always held that one can make a principled, well-
| reasoned Libertarian argument both for OR against
| abortion, based on the grounds you just cited. But I've
| also personally always held that there is no objective,
| universal standard for deciding exactly when to consider
| that unborn entity a "child" which has rights and against
| which it makes sense to speak of violence being
| conducted. That being the case, I don't find any value in
| adding the specter of State violence to the mix. I'd
| rather leave this whole situation to the mother, her
| family, medical professionals and others supporters.
|
| This is why I'm a Libertarian who largely opposes
| abortion on a purely personal level, but is 100% pro-
| choice on a political level. But at the same time, I can
| respect those who hold the other position based on the
| NAP. I'd just argue that with no objective way to resolve
| the dispute, it's best to _not_ bring the State into it.
| lfpeb8b45ez wrote:
| One of the reasons abortion is difficult to talk about is
| that it is the intersection of multiple rights. The principle
| of bodily autonomy you mention is foundational to our
| conception of liberty in the US. In this case, however, it
| intersects with the principle that human life should not be
| actively ended without extraordinary reason.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Capital punishment is legal in 27 states, 20 of which
| support the death sentence, why is that not inextricably
| linked with abortion?
| endisneigh wrote:
| I've never understood this take - other than rape (in which
| abortion should be allowed imo), why is it a loss of bodily
| autonomy? Women choose to have sex consensually, no?
| mindcrime wrote:
| I don't understand your take. Do you assume that all
| consensual sex happens with the intention of reproduction?
| endisneigh wrote:
| The intention isn't relevant - sex leading to kids is
| hardly some unknown fact. Other than rape, in which case
| agency is removed, why is conception not the point in
| which the choice is made?
|
| Is your opinion that anyone can reneg on known
| consequences of their actions?
|
| Don't misunderstand, women should have a choice in what
| their bodies are used for. My assertion is, other than
| rape, they already have it with respect to having a kid
| or not.
| nomel wrote:
| I think it's often misunderstood at how incredibly hard
| it is to stop reproduction.
|
| For example birth control pills are 99% effective. From
| the NHS:
|
| > When taken correctly, the pill is over 99% effective at
| preventing pregnancy. This means that fewer than 1 in 100
| who use the combined pill as contraception will get
| pregnant in 1 year.
|
| So, if you're in a relationship for 5 years, that's 1 in
| 20. For my group of people I know, this matches up pretty
| well.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _The intention isn't relevant - sex leading to kids is
| hardly some unknown fact._
|
| That's ridiculous. Many people engage in sex using
| contraceptives design to prevent pregnancy, but we all
| know that contraceptives aren't 100% reliable. So the
| possibility of any given sex act leading to kids is
| absolutely an "unknown".
|
| And that's before getting into the point about how, in
| many places in the world, knowledge of (or access to)
| contraceptives is withheld from portions of the
| population to begin with. For that matter, there are some
| (mostly very young, I expect) who don't understand the
| whole "sex leads to kids" thing.
| nomel wrote:
| I think it's often misunderstood at how incredibly hard
| it is to stop reproduction.
|
| For example birth control pills are 99% effective. From
| the NHS:
|
| > When taken correctly, the pill is over 99% effective at
| preventing pregnancy. This means that fewer than 1 in 100
| who use the combined pill as contraception will get
| pregnant in 1 year.
|
| So, if you're in a relationship for 5 years, that's 1 in
| 20. For my group of people I know, this matches up pretty
| well. I have one friend who has three children. They were
| all conceived while on birth control.
| drdaeman wrote:
| I don't agree or disagree with the consequences part,
| but...
|
| > sex leading to kids is hardly some unknown fact
|
| Oh, I'd wish. There are people who still - in the 21st
| century - do not have like basic knowledge about sexual
| wellness and have very weird (and sometimes very
| dangerous) ideas about contraception, safety and risks of
| pregnancy. I mean, it's hard for any educated person to
| believe in this shit, but I've met or read some pretty
| insane opinions. Like people who genuinely believe really
| weird nonsense such as that virgins cannot get pregnant
| their first time. And they aren't malicious folks (well,
| maybe some are, of course) - just awfully misinformed.
|
| Humanity is in a very weird place. On the one hand we've
| walked on the Moon and about to conquer nuclear fusion
| power, but on the other hand we've just climbed down from
| the trees and learned how to make a fire.
| morelisp wrote:
| We're only 8 years out from "legitimate rape"! How in the
| world can anyone think legislators and jurists
| themselves, let alone young people, are receiving
| sufficient information about sex and pregnancy?
| unop wrote:
| > Women choose to have sex consensually, no? Consent to sex
| doesn't imply consent to pregnancy (or even the consent to
| carry to term after) - it just doesn't follow, even with
| the risks of pregnancy.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sex inherently has the risk of pregnancy no?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why do you think I hate women? In any case women nor men
| have full autonomy over their body anyway. See Buck v
| Bell.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Buck vs Bell is a fucking travesty. You consider it
| acceptable that the State can sterilize 'feeble minds'
| because an old man in 1927 said it was cool?
|
| How about the realization that the law is an ass, and we
| need to stand up for human rights?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Do you believe prison in general to be acceptable? Why or
| why not?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| I wasn't aware that having a baby was a crime, but yet,
| failing to birth it appears to be now. nb: Women have
| gone to jail for miscarriages as a result of such women-
| hating laws.
|
| My thoughts on the prison system are not relevant to
| supporting that a women can do whatever she wants with
| her body.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Women can and do already choose what to do with their
| body. And rape is already illegal. The current blind spot
| is that abortion is not federally allowed in the case of
| rape.
|
| And if you're talking about bodily autonomy of course
| prison is relevant.
|
| https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-
| library/abstracts/acres-sk...
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| endisneigh wrote:
| How does this ruling change the fact that women can
| generally choose who to have sex with, and therefore when
| to get pregnant and have birth?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Why is it "choose to have sex" and not "choose not to use
| contraception"? And what about the case where one uses a
| contraceptive and it fails?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| I get it, you hate women and want to punish them for
| having sex with you. Please reflect on your position.
|
| Your position is horrendously misogynistic, and if you do
| not understand why, you should talk to some women.
| Probably don't lead with your sentence as you are likely
| to get hit in the face.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'll tell my wife, what do you make of women who support
| this ruling? Do you _hate_ them? Lol
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| No, I dont hate them, in fact she is completely within
| her rights to determine what happens to her own body.
| What she does not have is the right to say what another
| woman does with her body. However, if she believes that
| she can force another woman to give birth because of her
| own beliefs, she is wrong, and her beliefs are dangerous
| and wrong.
|
| I feel sorry for the anti-abortion women. I would say
| they are trapped in a broken world, confused by weird
| cults (xianity is actually pro-abortion, and the xian
| bible includes recipes), manipulated by controlling
| people.
| simondw wrote:
| It's a loss of bodily autonomy because, well, that's what
| bodily autonomy is. The government is compelling you to use
| (and risk) your body for a particular purpose.
|
| That's a separate question from whether that loss of bodily
| autonomy is _justified_.
|
| > Women choose to have sex consensually, no?
|
| Well, yes, sometimes. Maybe you could be more explicit
| about how you think that justifies the loss of bodily
| autonomy?
|
| For example, maybe you have a principle like "If you played
| a necessary role in the creation of a person, then you can
| be compelled to use your body to support their life." Do
| you think fathers should be compelled to donate blood or
| organs to their offspring?
| endisneigh wrote:
| My argument is that no autonomy is lost since the
| potential consequences of the actions are known
| beforehand.
|
| No more or less than eating certain foods or consuming
| certain beverages.
| schiffern wrote:
| > the potential consequences of the actions
|
| Being forced by the State (ie at the point of a gun) to
| carry a pregnancy to term is not an inevitable
| "consequence". It's a choice.
|
| Women have a long history of using abortifacients to
| terminate pregnancy, so there's nothing "natural" or
| inevitable about forced birth.
| endisneigh wrote:
| What? For most of history birth is the inevitable outcome
| of pregnancy. Women aren't being forced to give birth.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For most of history birth is the inevitable outcome of
| pregnancy.
|
| Induced abortion has, from documentary evidence, been a
| thing for _at least_ ~3500 years, and even without
| induced abortion very many pregnancies historically ended
| in miscarriage (still the case) and /or maternal death
| (much less the case, now, but still a concern.)
| endisneigh wrote:
| Miscarrying is a very great point, as is still births.
| But my point in general is that once you're pregnancy
| your body "finishing" is the inevitable outcome,
| intervention notwithstanding.
|
| We do have still work to do in making the end of the
| pregnancy the desired one (healthy baby), yes.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But my point in general is that once you're pregnancy
| your body "finishing" is the inevitable outcome,
| intervention notwithstanding.
|
| I think you mean something other than "inevitable" here,
| since "inevitable" means "cannot be avoided", such that
| if A and B is the inevitable consequence, than B must
| happen with 100% certainty.
|
| But childbirth isn't even approximately an inevitable
| consequence of pregnancy.
| endisneigh wrote:
| That's a fair point.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This creeps close to an "appeal to nature". For most of
| human history once your heart stopped death was the
| "inevitable" outcome, but this is not a good argument for
| defibrillators being morally wrong.
| schiffern wrote:
| Okay, so you don't know the history of medicine. That's
| not uncommon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_abortion
|
| In Roman times, Silphium was such a popular abortifacient
| that the plant was over-harvested to extinction.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium_(antiquity)
| endisneigh wrote:
| The fact of the matter is that other than rape, by
| definition, women are consenting to an activity that will
| put them at high risk for getting pregnant.
|
| Your argument is effectively that people should be able
| to reneg on the consequences of actions if those
| consequences are not desirable.
| simondw wrote:
| > people should be able to reneg on the consequences of
| actions if those consequences are not desirable
|
| I think you've gone a little too broad with that
| principle. If I ask a taxi to take me somewhere, I can
| get out if I notice the driver is drunk. If I
| accidentally spill a glass of water, I can clean it up.
| And so on.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Your argument is effectively that people should be
| able to reneg on the consequences of actions if those
| consequences are not desirable._ "
|
| Well, yes.
|
| Why did you say _" other than rape (in which abortion
| should be allowed imo)"_? Either you think the foetus has
| value and needs to be brought to term, or you don't. That
| makes it seem that you aren't deciding based on the value
| of the foetus or the importance of all life, but rather
| want to assert superiority and punish women for having
| sex. What difference does it make to the importance of
| the foetus if the pregnancy was rape or not? Why does
| _that_ make more difference than whether the pregnancy is
| wanted or not?
|
| You can eat meat from murdered animals every day, you can
| pierce or tattoo your body or kill brain cells with
| alcohol, you have the right to return a $5 plastic toy
| for a refund, but if your birth control fails you can't
| kill 10 cells. Has it any more soul or value at that
| stage than the hair or fingernails you cut off without a
| thought, or the dead skin you shed, or the spit you spit?
| Why does it have more value than _the woman_?
| schiffern wrote:
| > people should be able to reneg on the consequences of
| actions if those consequences are not desirable.
|
| That's literally the entire basis of modern medical
| intervention, yes.
| simondw wrote:
| You're still conflating "pregnancy" with "pregnancy that
| you're forced to carry to term." The former is
| necessarily a potential consequence of having sex; the
| latter is not.
|
| I'm still curious what principles you think justify the
| enforcement of the latter, and especially why they don't
| cover things like the OP's forced organ donation
| scenario.
|
| Edit: Just to expand on the first point, I think there's
| some circular reasoning going on here.
|
| If the claim is "people should be forced to carry a
| pregnancy to term," you can't support that with "because
| people should endure the consequences of their actions"
| if "consequences of their actions" means "being forced to
| carry a pregnancy to term."
|
| Because then you're just saying "people should be forced
| to carry a pregnancy to term because people should be
| forced to carry a pregnancy to term."
| guelo wrote:
| Following your example, if after you ate something the
| state forced you to digest it and outlawed inducing
| vomiting then you would have lost body autonomy. You're
| not in control of your body anymore.
| lolinder wrote:
| > What happens when a deadbeat dad is the only match for a
| child with organ failure? Why shouldn't they be compelled to
| give up an organ to keep their offspring alive?
|
| If you can come up with a way to loan someone an organ for 9
| months and then get it back when you're done with it, then
| this argument would be coherent. As is, I'd re-evaluate it if
| you have any intention of persuading someone on the opposite
| side of this issue.
| peter422 wrote:
| Persuasion isn't that important when the vast majority of
| the public already agrees with you.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Voted up. Reading comments here I feel like I'm watching Robert
| McNamara describe the hundreds of thousands of casualties that
| were required to win the second world war as if they were just
| figures on paper. Lives are going to be destroyed by this and
| women will be going to prison for what many civilized countries
| consider a fundamental right.
| xwdv wrote:
| HN is about technical, objective things and those other points
| you mentioned are mostly emotional subjective topics. It would
| be strange to see them discussed here at any significant
| length.
| Comevius wrote:
| It would be strange not to. Technology exist for people. Most
| choices in computers and software are made to accommodate
| people. We are in the people business. You need to understand
| people to be able to produce things for them.
| jmull wrote:
| I was about to post a reply that engages with your claims,
| but now I'm thinking you're not serious (I don't want to use
| the T-word here, but that's what I'm thinking.)
|
| If you're serious, could you explain your claims?
| runarberg wrote:
| The first paragraph of the HN guidelines:
|
| > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
| interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If
| you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be:
| anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
|
| Societal issues are apparently high up in what good hackers
| find interesting along with technical things.
| least wrote:
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| I think if you take this to heart, you might interpret what
| they're saying as a defense of HN readers; that they are
| more inclined to talk about the technicalities of this
| decision rather than the effect it may have on women
| because that is something they can comment on.
|
| Tact may also play a role in why people hesitate to make
| comments of empathy, especially since simply expressing
| your disdain for the decision isn't particularly
| substantive. I'm certain many of the people that are
| choosing to talk about other aspects of the decision are
| wholly empathetic to the people this affects.
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| I often hear about "my body - my choice".
|
| But after spending nine months in woman's body the child
| becomes the part of her life for twenty next years. Should it
| rather be "my life - my choice"?
| lolinder wrote:
| There are millions of parents who _long_ to adopt a baby[0].
| Having a baby does not _necessarily_ imply raising them.
|
| [0] https://www.americanadoptions.com/pregnant/waiting_adopti
| ve_...
| notch656a wrote:
| If the other parent doesn't consent to an adoption it
| usually can't happen. Then you either have to raise the
| child directly through your labor (custody) or indirectly
| through your labor (child support).
|
| There are lots of people raising children against their
| will with no mechanism to relieve them of that duty, even
| if they revoke consent to raise the child in any form.
| spacemadness wrote:
| It skews male and generally consists of a very well paid group
| of people that have never had to struggle economically. This is
| the wrong place to find lots of empathy toward disempowered
| groups of people.
| usrn wrote:
| screye wrote:
| At first I felt personally attacked. But there is some
| truth to what you're saying. There is deeply rooted
| pragmatism among Indian immigrants, no denying that.
|
| The reductionism is a necessary part of online forum based
| discourse. No one has the time to engage in hours long
| holistic discussions on a topic. A comment can at most
| aspire to capture 1 point well, and reductionism is the act
| of identifying the one act that has a disproportionate
| importance within the discussion.
|
| Speaking abstractly about an unquantifiable rights allows
| you to pat your own back, but such discussions turn into
| ingroup signaling and adhominems instead of leading to
| productive discussion.
|
| Most Indians come from a scarcity economy where bad
| decisions are catastrophic. This means that you must have
| skin in the game when championing an idea, because failure
| means starvation.(allow me some hyperbole). The society
| doesn't suffer delusion for too long.
|
| Abortion rights are good. Yes, I believe that too.
| Republicans are actively interfering with women's control
| over their own bodies and that bad. Yes, I agree there too.
| Throw in specific anecdotes to appear nuanced.
|
| Now what ? You still need to address the elephant in the
| room. Indians might point to it a little 'austistically',
| but it is an elephant, in your room. The nuance can wait.
| usrn wrote:
| See, this is my point. The topic is fundamentally nuanced
| and heavily connected to tradition and religion. You
| can't just ram through this with reason alone.
|
| I don't want to personally attack anyone but I know a
| number of first generation Indian immigrants. They're
| great people but all of them seem to reject the
| conservative view of American politics (the one held
| overwhelmingly by the people who lived here before) as
| "backwards." It might be because of their experiences in
| India, I don't know. It's really frustrating though to
| have people come into your country and try to change
| things like that while calling you stupid for protesting
| it. Tradition often exists for a reason and it can take a
| lot of work and empathy to unwind that. If you're going
| to come into a new country and participate in their
| politics you should work hard to make sure you understand
| their tradition (and I recognize that's hard, I don't
| blame immigrants for not doing since I would probably do
| the same, but it's really frustrating to see it over and
| over again and that's why I call it out here
| occasionally.)
|
| EDIT: I can back up my personal experience with
| statistics [1] Although interestingly enough it says that
| later descendants tend to be even more left leaning.
|
| [1]
| https://carnegieendowment.org/files/IAAS_full_final.pdf
| mise_en_place wrote:
| Strange, that hasn't been my experience at all. All the
| first generation Indian immigrants I know tend to be
| center-right, with a few who are libertarian in their
| thinking. My parents were registered Democrats but I
| would consider my father center-right still, he voted for
| Reagan as he had suffered under stagflation.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > On top of all of that software developers tend to be
| pragmatic and reductionist to a fault so their politics are
| often way oversimplified.
|
| This a million times. They also frequently suffer from
| "Engineer's Syndrome":
|
| https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-
| Enginee...
| npalli wrote:
| Curious what you imply by readers being Indian Immigrant.
| Ironically, the abortion rights in India now are far more
| favorable for women than the US even though India is very
| religious and economically backward. Indian society has
| come to the conclusion that unwanted pregnancies burden
| women disproportionately and they should have the right to
| decide.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_India
| leereeves wrote:
| > This is the wrong place to find lots of empathy toward
| disempowered groups of people.
|
| That's unfairly dismissing the possibility that a pro-life
| position could be motivated by empathy for the unborn, who
| are completely powerless.
|
| We can do better than demonizing people who disagree.
| autoexec wrote:
| We can rule out empathy for most of pro-life folk, by what
| disturbingly little empathy they have for those same
| children post-birth.
| godshatter wrote:
| I'm not one of the "pro-life folk" (I think it's more a
| question of where the lines should be drawn), but I'm not
| seeing a lot of empathy here on this site for the fetus,
| which if left alone (barring medical problems) will one
| day become a fully-fledged person with all the rights we
| now currently possess.
|
| Exactly when it stops being a bundle of cells that can be
| removed without thought or empathy and becomes a "baby
| about to be born" where it should not be treated so
| negligently is in my mind the real question here. And
| don't ask me to tell you where that line is, because I
| have no idea.
|
| I just hate that there is no room for nuance on this
| topic, no matter which "side" you talk to.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| The pro life position is really simple: 1. Baby murder is
| wrong 2. Abortion is murdering a baby 3. Therefore
| abortion is wrong
|
| That's it. There is no requirement to meet some perceived
| bar of empathy beyond that for this to be a good faith
| argument.
|
| "I bet you think shooting innocent people in the head is
| wrong, but yet you don't volunteer at the soup kitchen
| every weekend, so do you ACTUALLY care about innocent
| people or are you just trying to control others?" Do you
| see how that's a ridiculous non-sequitur? That's the
| argument you just made against pro life people.
| iostream24 wrote:
| You polemically insisting that a fertilized egg is a baby
| is the basis of your reductionist " view outlined above.
| Blatant antidemocratic power grabs and attempts to
| replace democracy with theocracy rank rather low on my
| moral scale.
|
| This Supreme Court has also just thrown out Miranda
| rights out the window and stomped on New York's attempt
| to limit concealed weapon carries.
|
| States rights my foot!
|
| It's unfair that Obama couldn't even get Merrick Garland
| appointed with two terms in office, but Trump GOT THREE
| JUSTICES JAMMED THROUGH IN ONE TERM! Unprecedented and
| dangerous. They all lied to congress about their
| intentions during confirmation too. Immoral!
|
| You will surely reap the whirlwind from what you sowed
| haswell wrote:
| > _The pro life position is really simple..._
|
| > _That's it. There is no requirement to meet some
| perceived bar of empathy beyond that for this to be a
| good faith argument._
|
| You seem to be saying that because the argument is
| simple, it's in good faith, but this is not how good
| faith arguments work, nor is it aligned with the common
| understanding of "good faith".
|
| Pregnancy is not simple. The circumstances surrounding
| conception are often not simple. The post-birth reality
| for many kids is anything but simple. Our
| medical/scientific understanding of the development of a
| fetus is anything but simple.
|
| To simply ignore the 2nd and 3rd order effects that
| result from the "simple" position of a pro life person is
| to willfully ignore the complexity of this issue. This
| willful ignorance by definition renders the argument
| unqualified to be considered good faith.
|
| The simplicity of an argument is not an excuse for
| ignoring the complexity of the issue. In general, a "good
| faith" argument is built from a foundation of common
| understanding between all involved parties. A good faith
| argument acknowledges complexities and offers its own
| solutions. A good faith argument isn't made by covering
| one's ears and pretending those complexities don't exist.
|
| To claim that "X argument is good faith because it's
| simple" is in itself a bad faith argument, or at best,
| uninformed about what good faith is generally expected to
| mean in discourse.
| autoexec wrote:
| There's a difference between not volunteering at the soup
| kitchen every weekend even when you don't like innocent
| people getting shot in the head, and actively fighting to
| stop staving people from getting food when you say you
| don't like innocent people getting shot in the head.
|
| You can have a deep respect for innocent life and not be
| willing or able to spend weekends in a soup kitchen. You
| can't have a deep respect for innocent life while working
| to keep innocent lives from being able to survive.
|
| "Baby murder is wrong" unless it's murder by exposure
| because the child was homeless, "screw the homeless!" the
| pro-life say or by starvation because screw the hungry!
| or by cancer, because screw the sick if they can't afford
| obscene medical costs! Pro-life people generally, don't
| care at all about the life of babies. They don't even
| care about murder. If baby food companies are killing
| kids by poisoning them with heavy metals they'll still
| decry any government regulations that would prevent that
| or hold baby food companies accountable. The Free Market
| can murder babies all day long. School shootings? No, we
| can't have sensible gun control laws proven to work in
| basically every developed nation around the globe! The
| pro-life say we just have live with those murders,
| nothing can be done! So tragic!
|
| They want to claim the moral high ground but they are
| buried deep under their own filth.
| floxy wrote:
| Just for the non-US persons reading along, below are a
| few US Federal government programs for poor people. Some
| states (most?) have additional programs as well for some
| things, or supplement federal programs. -
| WIC (https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic)
|
| >The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women,
| Infants, and Children (WIC) provides federal grants to
| states for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and
| nutrition education for low-income pregnant,
| breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women,
| and to infants and children up to age 5 who are found to
| be at nutritional risk. WIC serves about half of all
| infants born in the United States. - Food
| Stamps (SNAP -
| https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-
| assistance-program) - Medicaid (Health care for
| poor people) https://www.medicaid.gov/ - Section 8
| subsidized housing (https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/710)
| trs8080 wrote:
| Are you of the belief that the conservatives who support
| overturning Roe also support WIC, SNAP, Medicaid, and
| Section 8 housing? Because the traditional conservative
| viewpoint is that these programs should be completely
| eliminated.
|
| I believe this is what OP is referring to - the same
| people who supposedly believe in the sanctity of human
| life are also the first to cut any programs that support
| it. So it's difficult to take their "pro-life" arguments
| in good faith.
| camgunz wrote:
| It's not unreasonable to ascertain people's positions by
| their actions.
|
| "pro-life" really isn't as simple as you're making it
| sound. Only something like 15-18% of Americans support a
| total ban on abortion with no exceptions. So if we're
| limiting "pro-life" to only that position, then it's by
| definition a pretty extreme position, in fact most people
| would call it ridiculous: it's so extreme that it's very
| easy to ridicule.
|
| If we widen a little to allow exceptions, well is that
| really "pro-life" anymore? Then you get into situations
| where you have to say, "well I think it's a life,
| therefore ending that life is killing, but the pregnant
| person will die if forced to carry the fetus to term,
| so... I guess killing is OK?". It's pretty weird.
|
| Further, if the goal of pro-life Americans is to lower
| the number of abortions, here are policies we know work:
|
| - sex education
|
| - access to contraception
|
| - support for parents and children (financial,
| educational, medical/mental health)
|
| Oddly very very few pro-life Americans support any of
| this, which forces us to question their motives.
| zackees wrote:
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| "We're pro-life." It's like, well what does that make me?
| You know what I mean? You're so pro-life! You're so pro-
| life, do me a fucking favor. Don't block med clinics,
| okay? Lock arms, and block cemeteries. Let's see how
| fucking committed you are to this premise. "She can't
| come in." "She's ninety-six, she was hit by a bus!"
| "There's options!" "What, do we got to have her stuffed?
| What are you talking about, she's dead!" "We're pro-life,
| get her out of that casket! Get her out! She's not going,
| we're pro-life people. There'll be no death on this
| planet."
|
| -- Bill Hicks, 1993
| leereeves wrote:
| What are you or Bill Hicks trying to say there?
|
| If it were possible to prevent deaths of old age or to
| resurrect the dead, would you be against it?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| The earlier part is:
|
| "Boy, I've never seen an issue so divisive. You ever see
| it, it's like a civil war, isn't it? Even amongst my
| friends, who are all very intelligent! They are totally
| divided on abortion! It's unbelievable! Some of my
| friends, for instance, think these pro-life people are
| annoying idiots. Other of my friends think these pro-life
| people are evil fucks. How are we going to come to a
| consensus? You ought to hear the arguments around my
| house; "they're annoying, they're idiots, they're evil,
| they're fucks!" Brothers, sisters, come together! Can't
| we once just join hands and think of them as evil
| annoying idiot fucks?" -- Bill Hicks, 1993
| feanaro wrote:
| It's not like being born is some great prize that is
| fundamentally worth acquiring. That's your evolutionary
| reflexes speaking.
| themitigating wrote:
| Does having empathy in one situation change a lack of
| empathy in another?
|
| The parent didn't claim a lack of empathy for all
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| [deleted]
| tablespoon wrote:
| > There is no valid pro-life position. Its all anti-
| women, anti-human rights, anti-humanity.
|
| That's an extremely strong statement. It's the kind of
| thing someone firmly ensconced in a bubble would say. Is
| what you say true, or do you just lack the imagination or
| empathy to think of one?
| karpierz wrote:
| > That's an extremely strong statement. It's the kind of
| thing someone firmly ensconced in a bubble would say. Is
| what you say true, or do you just lack the imagination or
| empathy to think of one?
|
| All this says is: "What you are saying could or could not
| be true."
|
| Why write so much to say so little?
|
| If you think they're "ensconced in a bubble", say it. If
| you think they "lack ... imagination" or empathy", then
| say it.
|
| Don't do this motte and bailey stuff of: "have you
| considered that you sounds like someone who's wrong?"
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If you think they're "ensconced in a bubble", say it.
| If you think they "lack ... imagination" or empathy",
| then say it.
|
| You didn't understand what I was attempting, and
| proceeded project some other intention onto me.
|
| > Don't do this motte and bailey stuff of: "have you
| considered that you sounds like someone who's wrong?"
|
| Your paraphrase is a misreading.
| karpierz wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not very bright. Why don't you try explaining
| things explicitly, so simpler folk like me can
| understand?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Sorry, I'm not very bright. Why don't you try
| explaining things explicitly, so simpler folk like me can
| understand?
|
| You shouldn't lecture people about how they should say
| things when you can only speculate about what they're
| trying to do.
| deeviant wrote:
| > It's the kind of thing someone firmly ensconced in a
| bubble would say.
|
| You would have to be "firmly ensconced in a bubble" to
| think you have the right to force a women to carry their
| rapists baby. Or to even think you have the right to tell
| a women what to do with her body in the first place.
| feet wrote:
| I'd like you to lay out, very specifically, why what is
| essentially an extension or growth has more rights than a
| fully formed and independently living human
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Its true. The only lack of empathy is by those that wish
| to tell a women what they can do with their body because
| they hate women. Its really simple. Want an abortion?
| Cool. Don't want an abortion? Cool. Anything else is none
| of your business!
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Its true. The only lack of empathy is by those that
| wish to tell a women what they can do with their body
| because they hate women. Its really simple. Want an
| abortion? Cool. Don't want an abortion? Cool. Anything
| else is none of your business!
|
| You know, there are a lot of pro-life women. Do you think
| they have those beliefs because they hate themselves?
| Abortion is a complicated issue, it's only "really
| simple" if you ignore a bunch of stuff and/or fill your
| head with slogans.
|
| You'd be on firmer ground if you said something along the
| lines of "there is no valid pro-life position [ _for me_
| ]."
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| I stand by that there is no position that is acceptable
| to anyone accept their own body. You don't get to decide
| what other people do.
|
| Yes I do think they hate themselves, or at least hate
| their sex, their world or their (nonexistent) God. It is
| intrinsic to the rights of women to do what they want to
| do with their own body. I accept that a anti-abortion
| woman does not want to have an abortion herself. I accept
| that a pro-abortion woman does want an abortion.
|
| Its a complicated issue only to the parties involved.
| Lets not make it more complicated by taking away
| autonomy.
| FpUser wrote:
| You can disagree for sure and I respect that (assuming you
| are woman and it is your decision what to do). But when men
| (predominantly) order women to prison for abortion - fuck
| those men. There is no need to demonize, they are already
| there.
| nverno wrote:
| I have serious doubts how well someone is paid has anything
| to do with their ability to feel empathy. I do think making
| broad, negative generalizations is a sign of lack of empathy
| however.
| AnonMessiah wrote:
| There have been several studies on the correlation between
| income/wealth and empathy. https://blog.ted.com/6-studies-
| of-money-and-the-mind/
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm curious (since you mention things skewing male), do you
| believe that a man who gets a woman pregnant should have to
| support the child? Why or why not?
|
| As for the reproductive rights, as long as contraception is
| legal (and who knows what will happen next) isn't the choice at
| conception? Contraceptives should be untaxed and widely
| available.
|
| People talk about Roe v Wade as if women spontaneously get
| pregnant against their will and are forced to care for the
| baby.
|
| That being said women who are raped should be able to get an
| abortion imo
| notch656a wrote:
| Personally, no. Consent can be revoked. Involuntary servitude
| is a violation of the 13th amendment. IMO a child can be
| abandoned without any moral guilt, so long as you leave them
| to their own devices or surrender them to someone else rather
| than say physically attacking them.
|
| I actually find abortion a much trickier subject because
| there's an eviction involved, and it becomes a trickier
| subject because some physical force is typically needed to
| remove the entity.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| The only person it is tricky for is the mother, who is the
| only person in the universe whos opinion matters on
| abortion, and we must abide by the decisions of the
| individual.
|
| Anything else is absolute horror of biological control and
| loss of bodily autonomy, and should be rightfully ignored,
| and anyone that thinks differently needs to think about
| minding their own business and not making a difficult thing
| more difficult. Those that use the legal system to enforce
| their hatred of women? Get off the planet please.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Do you think abortion 10 minutes before birth is fine?
| Half way out the birth canal? 1 second after birth?
|
| Is there ever a time between conception and birth where
| you'd call it baby murder?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Yes. Yes. Yes. No.
|
| anything else is none of your business.
| notch656a wrote:
| Personally I'm pro-abortion but I think it's trickier
| than you say. Evicting a living entity, even for people
| who are pretty progressive, is usually seen as a delicate
| subject. To me evicting an entity is a lot trickier
| subject than merely abandoning it, and the points against
| using force to evict that entity could have merit.
| Although we are both in agreement that you can safely
| abandon the life you created without any moral
| obligation.
|
| Personally I see no moral difference between abandoning
| life before or after birth. Neither wrong, but abandoning
| before birth requires a forceful eviction.
|
| >The only person it is tricky for is the mother, who is
| the only person in the universe whos opinion matters on
| abortion, and we must abide by the decisions of the
| individual.
|
| I mean to frame it as only involved life as the mother I
| think is disingenuous. Perhaps the fetus is not viable
| but it has to be at least considered in this equation,
| even if only to decide offspring has no rights to compel
| their parent to keep them alive.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Ok good :-) I think my issue is the your idea of
| eviction, its not eviction, in the same way we don't
| 'evict' cancer, we 'treat' it. I think its best to leave
| it at 'no moral difference between abandoning life before
| or after birth.'. Agreed. Lets not make this difficult
| situation harder for women who have to make very
| difficult decisions in life.
| notch656a wrote:
| IMO the courts did right though here revoking Roe v Wade.
| For such a tricky subject without enumeration of this
| right in the constitution, the constitutional basis for
| determining this would be allowing voters in the various
| states to decide. In some states they have decided to
| agree with you. In others they haven't. IMO supreme court
| did right here, and allows us to have our cake and eat it
| too. Democracy, if you will.
|
| That is, if you play by the rules of finding nations and
| constitutions to be legitimate :)
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| It would have been nicer to codify the rights before
| pulling the rug on it.
| Tozen wrote:
| > As for the reproductive rights, as long as contraception is
| legal (and who knows what will happen next) isn't the choice
| at conception?
|
| It's not so simple, when it comes to contraception, because
| various forms are controversial as well (even IUDs) and can
| also possibly become illegal.
|
| In a submission that was posted and flagged for unclear
| reasons, it refers to an article that discusses some of the
| complexities and gray areas involved, like abortion pills or
| women being accused of murder because they had a stillbirth
| under "suspicious circumstances"
| (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/we-are-not-
| goi...). It might be worth a read, to see how various women
| can be looking at this issue, from a practical standpoint.
|
| > ...women who are raped should be able to get an abortion
| imo
|
| That's another part of the problem, when extremism gets
| involved, it can dissolve the issue into a total ban.
|
| > ...do you believe that a man who gets a woman pregnant
| should have to support the child?
|
| That's a good point, as various "Men's rights" have arguably
| been buried in the U.S. In various countries, an abortion can
| only happen if the father agrees or can't be found. To
| include other countries, where if a woman has a child against
| the will of the father, they allow or are proposing to allow
| men to renounce or give up their paternity rights or parental
| responsibility. Which is also kind of like how women are
| allowed to abandon (safe surrender) or give up a child for
| adoption, even against the will of the father, in various
| states and countries.
| runjake wrote:
| > as long as contraception is legal (and who knows what will
| happen next)
|
| Here's a good indicator:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/politics/abortion-ruling-
| gay-...
|
| Spoiler: it looks like contraceptives are likely next for
| SCOTUS.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Is it?
|
| > He emphasized a line the majority opinion that said
| "[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast
| doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion." "We have
| also explained why that is so: rights regarding
| contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently
| different from the right to abortion because the latter (as
| we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe and Casey
| termed 'potential life,'" Alito said.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Alito is one Justice -- Thomas stated that "In future
| cases, we should reconsider all of this court's
| substantive due process precedents, including Griswold,
| Lawrence, and Obergefell."
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, but Alito plus the others means it'll never pass.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Many of the others called Roe v. Wade "settled law" in
| sworn statements. That didn't stop them from voting to
| overturn it today.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Sure, but no state to my knowledge has banned all
| contraceptives, even though they already could so even in
| the hypothetical states would make them legal.
| coward123 wrote:
| um... why do you think these conservative judges were
| named to the court? They know exactly what they are doing
| and have every intention of ending contraception, sending
| women's rights back to the dark ages, and screwing over
| anyone not straight, Christian, and white. That's the job
| they were nominated to do.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| You're laying out the definition of a slippery slope
| argument.
|
| 75% of Americans want restrictions on abortion (beyond
| just Roe v wade's shaky constitutional basis).
|
| The vast vast majority of Americans are ok with
| contraceptives, same sex marriage has firm constitutional
| basis, etc these aren't going away
| guelo wrote:
| What you're saying is that the conservative judges are
| activists doing what's popular in their movement, not
| applying any principles.
| skissane wrote:
| > The vast vast majority of Americans are ok with
| contraceptives, same sex marriage has firm constitutional
| basis, etc these aren't going away
|
| Across-the-board bans on contraception aren't happening,
| because almost nobody wants such a ban.
|
| But overturning _Obergefell_? I think it is likely.
| According to 2021 polling data [0], there is still
| majority opposition to marriage equality in Mississippi
| (55% oppose) and Arkansas (52% oppose). It looks like the
| state government trying to overturn it would be a vote-
| winner in those two states - especially considering that
| people who actually vote often skew older and more
| conservative than the population in general, so
| opposition to it in those states may be even stronger
| among voters. There are other states where support is
| still quite weak, such as Alabama (49% support, 47%
| opposition) and South Carolina (50% support), so the same
| might be true for them as well. It only takes one state
| to act to get a case before the Supreme Court.
|
| [0] https://ava.prri.org/#lgbt/2021/States/lgbt_ssm/2,3,9
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >Across-the-board bans on contraception aren't happening,
| because almost nobody wants such a ban.
|
| Except the Catholic Church, and 6 mostly conservative
| members of SCOTUS happen to be Catholic.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _You're laying out the definition of a slippery slope
| argument._
|
| When Clarence Thomas says "here's the slope I think we
| should slide down next", we're not in fallacy land
| anymore.
|
| > _these aren't going away_
|
| Don't worry! They won't go away. It'll just be up to the
| state governments currently passing laws forcing women to
| carry rapists' babies to term to decide if you can have
| sex outside of marriage or not. States rights!
| random-human wrote:
| >People talk about Roe v Wade as if women spontaneously get
| pregnant against their will and are forced to care for the
| baby.
|
| They have never been forced to care for the baby, but will
| now be forced to birth the baby - that still doesnt mean they
| will care for it, even if it is in the same home.
|
| To the other point, women get pregnant from male sperm, yet
| it is somehow the female who has been burdened with trying to
| police this - any male partner/husband can now force a
| pregnancy though subterfuge leaving the female with little no
| other option then to carry out his will. Women can have sex
| all day long, every day of the week with multiple people and
| they will never get pregnant so long as a male does not
| ejaculate his sperm inside of her. Yet males are not held
| accountable for irresponsible ejaculations - _maybe_ they
| will be monetarily accountable 10+ months later
|
| The burden of un/wanted pregnancy falls onto the female,
| males have a choice to provide comfort and support
| (emotional, monetary) if they _chose_ , males can still
| choose to be absent deadbeat parents too - they are not
| forced to pay, they can chose not to and depending on their
| lawyer situation can do so and keep their money, or not do so
| and have to take steps to hide their money.
|
| Also, contraceptives fail and males don't _have_ to care
| because the full physical health burden falls on the female.
| Like this whole topic, wanting a yes or no on something like
| this or if males should have to support a child just doesnt
| do it justice, there are too many ways in which that happens
| - but if a female has the choice to easily get an abortion
| without all of the burden, then if a male does not want a
| child and a female does, he should be free from it - but
| before that can happen - the female must be able to have the
| choice to carry it or terminate it without burden.
| autoexec wrote:
| > do you believe that a man who gets a woman pregnant should
| have to support the child? Why or why not?
|
| As for me, I say no. If a woman can terminate the pregnancy.
| a man should be able to waive his part in it. That still
| leaves the issue of a man losing a child he wants if she
| doesn't, but that issue, as well as the issue of abortion,
| will be solved once we find a way to transplant the fetus to
| an artificial womb. Until then there are no perfect
| solutions.
|
| > As for the reproductive rights, as long as contraception is
| legal (and who knows what will happen next) isn't the choice
| at conception?
|
| Contraceptives can and do fail. Even if you're doing
| everything right. Contraceptives help, and comprehensive sex
| ed promoting the correct use of contraceptives goes a long
| way to help prevent unwanted pregnancies (as evidenced by
| higher teen pregnancy rates where they only provide
| "abstinence only" ignorance) but it doesn't solve the
| problem.
|
| > People talk about Roe v Wade as if women spontaneously get
| pregnant against their will and are forced to care for the
| baby.
|
| "spontaneously" or not, women do in fact get pregnant against
| their will. They also can get medical complications that
| require them to terminate willful pregnancies in order to
| protect their health and their lives. The loss of Roe v Wade
| means that more women will die. needlessly. More women will
| cruelly suffer. More children will cruelly suffer as well.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > "spontaneously" or not, women do in fact get pregnant
| against their will. They also can get medical complications
| that require them to terminate willful pregnancies in order
| to protect their health and their lives. The loss of Roe v
| Wade means that more women will die.
|
| Indeed, don't misunderstand me, I'm not against abortion.
| The situations you've mentioned are good reasons to have
| it.
|
| My point is that the choice that people want already exists
| other than rape. Abortion should be legal, but not because
| _reasons_ , but for medical necessity and for situations in
| which the choice that a woman does have is made for her
| (rape).
| autoexec wrote:
| My feeling is that until a fetus is able to survive
| outside of the womb, it is dependent on the women's body.
| It feeds off of it. It takes her nutrients, her oxygen,
| her energy. It alters her body to accommodate itself.
| Pregnancy is a great and special sacrifice, and it must
| be one made willingly.
|
| At any point, prior to where the fetus could be viable
| without its mother, the mother should have every right to
| terminate that pregnancy for literally any reason at all.
| Anything less would deny women their right to have
| control of their own bodies and lives.
|
| Again, plenty of people end up pregnant against their
| will. Others will have fully intended to have a child,
| but their circumstances suddenly changed. It needn't
| always be due to some medical necessity. As long as the
| mother's body is needed to sustain the life of the child,
| that life is subject to her whims. Her house. Her rules.
| The moment it can be removed and sustained without her,
| she should no longer have the right to abort it, only to
| surrender it.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| That's fun, but many states are putting the cross hairs on
| contraception in general.
|
| https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-
| analysis/blogs/sta...
| endisneigh wrote:
| I agree, that's an issue. That being said that's not
| related directly to this ruling.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Indeed it is -- the ruling is about the fundamental right
| to privacy with regards to bodily autonomy. Without some
| major federal precedent like Roe V. Wade, states are free
| to impose to their medical will on their populace as they
| see fit.
| endisneigh wrote:
| The right to privacy is not related directly
| contraceptions. Alito said as much in the opinion.
| skissane wrote:
| They are targeting specific methods of contraception, which
| they _claim_ are abortifacient. They have displayed zero
| signs of wanting to ban contraception _in general_ , as
| opposed to just specific forms of it. By contrast, the law
| struck down in _Griswold v. Connecticut_ was an across-the-
| board ban on all forms of contraception.
|
| I think it is unlikely that _Griswold_ will ever be
| overturned - simply because it is unlikely any state will
| enact a total contraception ban. To overturn a precedent,
| it is not enough that a majority of Supreme Court justices
| think it was wrongly decided, you also need a case - which
| requires a state to enact and seek to actively enforce a
| law violating the precedent. But almost nobody wants such a
| law now. 1965 (when _Griswold_ was handed down), 1873 (when
| the law it overturned was enacted) was a very different
| world - when most Christians still believed that
| contraception was a sin. Nowadays, the vast majority of
| non-Catholic Christians (Protestants, Orthodox, etc) accept
| contraception as moral _at least in some cases_. And while
| the Catholic Church teaches artificial contraception is
| inherently sinful, it displays no signs of any interest in
| having the government make that sin illegal (unlike the
| situation with abortion). You might find some crazy
| Catholic integralist advocating it, but the Bishops and the
| Vatican aren 't going to.
|
| The bans on (allegedly) abortifacient contraceptive methods
| could be challenged, but I expect SCOTUS will uphold them -
| and the majority will probably just uphold them as state
| regulation of abortion, not overturning _Griswold_ itself.
| However, I think a lot of groups are going to refuse to
| support challenges, on the grounds that they don 't want to
| give this SCOTUS an opportunity to overturn any more
| precedents they support, rather save it for the day
| (whenever it may come) when there is a SCOTUS majority more
| amenable to their views.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _To overturn a precedent, it is not enough that a
| majority of Supreme Court justices think it was wrongly
| decided, you also need a case - which requires a state to
| enact and seek to actively enforce a law violating the
| precedent_
|
| You don't need a new law that seeks to ban all birth
| control to challenge and lead to a repeal of Griswold.
| Maybe a former court would have tried to limit scope, but
| Dobbs vs Jackson wasn't about a total abortion ban, it
| was a ban at 15 weeks, and yet here we are.
| skissane wrote:
| I think it is different though - _Roe v Wade_ wasn 't
| just a court decision, it was a political symbol, and an
| issue on which many justices have deeply personal
| feelings (one way or the other).
|
| _Griswold_ isn 't a political symbol to anywhere near
| the same extent. And even people who think contraception
| is a sin, don't get anywhere near as emotive about it as
| they do on the abortion issue.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"as long as contraception is legal"
|
| Contraception can and does fail.
|
| >"..as if women spontaneously get pregnant against their will
| and are forced to care for the baby"
|
| I would refrain from judgement at late stages of pregnancy
| but early on it is not your business what they do. Mind your
| own business and do not stick nose where it does not belong.
|
| Also if you are so pro life why not to go and right away
| imprison every official whose action (like sending people to
| war when not directly attacked) cause death.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why do you believe I'm pro life?
| FpUser wrote:
| From your original post it seems that only the rape
| constitutes grounds for abortion. Sounds pretty pro life
| to me unless I misunderstand the term.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Pro life does not support abortion under any
| circumstances
| tjs8rj wrote:
| If you're pro choice then you must support pure freedom
| including citizens owning nukes, children taking heroin,
| and legalizing stealing from others right? Of course not.
|
| Pro choice is doesn't literally mean "pro choice in all
| situations", it's shorthand for "abortion is a an
| individual choice and should be protected as such".
|
| Likewise pro life doesn't mean "save all lives in all
| situations at all costs". It's short hand for "abortion is
| murdering babies, that's wrong and should be outlawed like
| any other murder".
| FpUser wrote:
| >"abortion is a an individual choice and should be
| protected as such"
|
| This is exact my point of view, not sure what your
| overall post suppose to mean.
| pure_simplicity wrote:
| He was replying to the strawman about what you suggested
| he should do if he is pro life. He explained why you
| argument fails by showing how it would fail if you
| applied your logic to your own position.
| screye wrote:
| I'll be the begrudging devils advocate for a decision that is
| sure to have devastating consequences for poor women in red
| states.
|
| It is good for unelected bodies like the Supreme Court to allow
| such dividing issues be figured out democratically. The US house
| has bled power to the other 3 institutions and of them, the
| judiciary is the least democratic. Ofc, my support for this
| change assumes that this Supreme Court will show restraint
| towards political activism (in either direction) in general. Call
| it naive, but I'll wait and see.
|
| States rights has always been a double edged sword. You can't
| have your cake and eat it too. The same state rights that allow
| gun control and homosexuality to be locally legalized before
| national concensus; also now lead to abortion legislation being a
| state issue.
|
| The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the views
| of the voting majority. If the voting majority truly cares about
| access to abortion then we will hopefully see enough democratic
| traction to give them the mandate needed. Now, the rural
| republican votes counting for more in the senate is a huge issue
| and threat to democracy that the US needs to figure out if it
| ever wants to represent the views of the people. But, the Supreme
| Court should not be responsible for managing dysfunction in other
| branches of govt.
|
| My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both sides to
| be completely antagonistic towards each other. 'Own the libs,
| fuck the deplorables', no compromise. The jaded side of me says:
| vote in more moderates that are willing to strike compromises.
| Crazed jesus Republicans and hyperprogressive activists are
| terrible people to put into national office. They gain power by
| antagonizing and being unhelpful roadblocks for change, all while
| asking for the most stubbornly impossible outcomes.
|
| In the long run, history will have a dim view of this era of
| global polarization with all political sides to blame.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I see the courts as more of a low pass filter for a democracy.
| If you elect right or left wing governments for a sufficient
| number of terms, you will end up with a left or right leaning
| court.
| cortesoft wrote:
| So much of our constitution is designed to protect us from the
| abuse of the majority. The idea that the majority should be
| able to dictate everything is NOT what democracy means. Mob
| rule is scary, and the framers knew that a government that is
| solely dictated by the will of the majority is ripe for abuse
| of the minority. So we have all sorts of restrictions on what
| the majority is allowed to do.
|
| I feel like people have this view today that whatever the
| majority says is how things should be. That is not justice.
| kzrdude wrote:
| And it is also not democracy. (Adding to your last sentence)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > States rights has always been a double edged sword
|
| No, "states rights", in the US, has only ever been invoked for
| state-sanctioned repression. There is no other edge.
|
| (Both sides of the tighter/looser federalism argument can be
| viewed as double-edged, but "states rights" has a very
| particular history.)
| InTheArena wrote:
| The reason you didn't have slavery in the north (and thus a
| north to fight the south in the civil war) was because of
| states' rights. California changed the environmental law of
| the land - because of states' rights.
|
| It goes both ways. There is nothing intrinsically good nor
| bad with it. It's part of how the system is designed to
| operate.
| rat87 wrote:
| There may be nothing intrinsically bad but it tends to be
| associated with bad ideas and cause bad outcomes.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The reason you didn't have slavery in the north (and thus
| a north to fight the south in the civil war) was because of
| states' rights.
|
| No, it wasn't. "States rights" is a later pro-slavery
| slogan. It is not and never has been the same thing as
| loose federalism.
|
| And there were, in fact, slaves in the North until it was
| abolished nationally (in more states at the time of the
| Revolution than at the time of the Civil War, and even
| fewer at the _end_ of the Civil War, but the last three
| states where slavery existed until terminated by the 13th
| Amendment were Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey.)
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is not true. States versus Federalism has been an
| argument since the first presidency with Hamilton, Adams,
| and Washington stacked up against Madison and Jefferson.
|
| The reason that states existed at all in the north -
| despite states having laws forbidding it - was because of
| the supreme court.
| larkost wrote:
| This is not quite right. You are forgetting Kentucky: a
| slave state that explicitly decided not to leave the
| union and fought alongside the non-slave states against
| the Confederacy.
|
| Even Abraham Lincoln had declared himself as a non-
| abolitionist until the Gettysburg Address. He campaigned,
| and started his governing as a status-quo politician. The
| main thing that southern politicians railed against him
| was that he wanted to keep the compromise and have the
| "new territories" (areas that were not yet states) be
| kept non-slave territories.
|
| There is nuance here, but basically the Confederacy
| pissed him off so much that he changed his mind and
| decided that he would push for the abolition of slavery,
| starting by ending it by force in the Confederacy. He
| moderated after the war somewhat, and his death (at the
| hands of a Southern conspiracy to re-start the war and
| bring back slavery) almost got us to full equality, but
| wound up in a compromise that got us the Jim Crow laws.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It was an argument all through the founding, and is why
| we have a "2 senators per state" senate guaranteeing even
| the lowest population states still have some power and
| say in government.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| There was the Nullification crisis, wherein South Carolina
| attempted to secede as a consequence of Jackson's government
| applying heavy tariffs on Southern states.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| r0s wrote:
| Incredible to put the obstructionist GOP in the same category
| as the moderate, ready to compromise, procedure following
| Democrats. Absurd false equivalence.
| rvz wrote:
| It looks like either we will have a January 6th like raid on
| the SCOTUS or a total collapse of the United States at this
| point and end up with a civil war with a second republic.
|
| Hopefully that won't possibly happen. But we'll see in 2024.
| MrMan wrote:
| I will bet you a lot of money no such raid on the Supreme
| Court occurs, unless you mean a street protest with signs and
| public speakers to be a "raid"
| inlined wrote:
| I personally think it's time for a new form of government. I
| just hope it can be done without bloodshed.
| [deleted]
| andrewclunn wrote:
| And the top comment goes to... a progressive pretending he can
| represent "the other side" while constantly taking side shots
| at them and stating that and why he doesn't agree with them...
| all with empty rhetorical gestures towards "moderates" and
| "compromise." Yep that sounds like hacker news to me: as little
| information and as much inoffensive pandering as possible.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| I miss the crazed jesus Republicans. There is no Jesus anymore.
| ineedasername wrote:
| > _The same state rights that allow gun control and
| homosexuality to be locally legalized before national
| concensus; also now lead to abortion legislation being a state
| issue._
|
| There is some irony to this statement as the Supreme Court just
| the other day released a ruling that _denied_ a state this
| ability with regards to gun control laws.
| Salgat wrote:
| Gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the senate ensures
| that it isn't a majority whose views are represented, but
| rather the distribution of voters in states/districts
| (disproportionate voting power) that influences who becomes our
| representatives. This is compounded with how flawed First past
| the post voting is.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Yes. I couldn't imagine if a party had all 3 branches in
| control. So leaving more rights to states and not forcing them
| on the entire nation is going to be better.
|
| You can vote in your state for reps that support your cause.
| Don't like it? Move elsewhere.
|
| People are doing exactly the same. Florida being one of the top
| states with influx of people from other states, specifically
| California.
| troyvit wrote:
| I think the Democrats have had that trifecta now and again.
| It's pretty great because they just mill around, argue a
| bunch, then collapse. I honestly don't get why Libertarians
| don't vote straight Democrat: it's a sure way to keep
| government out of peoples' lives due merely to their utter
| lack of discipline and cohesion.
| surement wrote:
| The only presidency that ended with less regulation in
| recent times was Reagan's. In general republican
| administrations are the ones who get less done (and "undo"
| less of what the opposition party has done).
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I'm changing my views on regulations and supply-side
| economics.
|
| I think this nation needs to kick start innovation and
| tech progress that was displayed in 1950-1970.
|
| That means, low taxes, control inflation, get budget in
| order and have a surplus even, stop spending and question
| the efficiency of the Gov (Do 2x from existing funding).
| Huge tax breaks for startups and small biz. No state
| income tax.
|
| It's wishful thinking but I want Taiwan x Singapore x
| HongKong economic policies in the USA. Special economic
| zones like Shenzhen.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >That means, low taxes, control inflation, get budget in
| order and have a surplus even, stop spending and question
| the efficiency of the Gov (Do 2x from existing funding).
| Huge tax breaks for startups and small biz. No state
| income tax.
|
| IIRC, the top marginal Federal income tax rate in the
| 1950s-1960s was never below 70%[0].
|
| [0]
| https://bradfordtaxinstitute.com/Free_Resources/Federal-
| Inco...
|
| Edit: Fixed prose.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I should have compared to progress in the Roman empire
| just so that I can say that I do not condone aristocracy,
| only making a point about progress itself.
|
| I refuted the points here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31867958
| lanstin wrote:
| Didn't we have high taxes from 1950 to 1970 and massive
| government science military and education programs to do
| moon shots, stop the commie dominoes, and improve STEM
| education after Sputnik? And we had labor unions so your
| average job was enough to buy a home and send your kids
| to school if they wanted and maybe save enough for a boat
| when you started getting your pension?
|
| I mean there was segregation, anti black and LGTBQIA
| violence and lots of rape of women and children, but
| economically, it had taxes. And larger non-entitlement
| government spending.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I am not advocating 1950-1970 policies, only indicating
| the level of progress. Otherwise, we'd also need to
| advocate for a massive World War that lead to the
| political resolve/unity followed by Cold War where we are
| on the verge of nuking each other for 3 decades
| necessitating intense R&D and military spending.
| Furthermore, it also necessitates that we form new Gov
| agencies like they did in 1950's which were nimble,
| highly efficient and competent. The latter, I would be in
| favor of. Remove regulations and start new agencies,
| abolishing old ones. It is also interesting to study why
| USSR, Cambodia and North Korea failed spectacularly while
| others that adopted highly capitalistic policies
| propelled into pulling people out of poverty (China, SK,
| HK, Taiwan, Singapore, and more recently Indonesia, India
| post-1990's, Vietnam and Thailand).
| tyrrvk wrote:
| no/low taxes has been done since the 80's and all we have
| for it is massive wealth disparity in this country. It's
| a failed policy that punishes the majority so a few can
| be obscenely wealthy. The wealthy economic zones also
| require we be OK with little to no environmental
| regulation, Hong Kong was known for having medical waste
| simply be dumped into the ocean. It wasn't unheard of to
| find used syringes and such wash up on the beaches..
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I'd argue that wealth disparity is good if we can lift
| the entire stratum upwards. We have been doing exactly
| that since the industrial age. Life of the poorest has
| gotten better.
|
| Worth visiting this debate at Yale:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RITVJy7ogI
|
| Inequality is overplayed and oversold to people who
| conflate crony capitalism to capitalism. The kinds of
| Thomas Piketty has done a tremendous amount of disservice
| to the west which hailed capitalism for over 2 centuries,
| unfortunately, USA + EU are regressing into socialism.
| wernercd wrote:
| Hard to argue voting democrat is keeping government out of
| lives when some of the largest government overreaches have
| come from democrats. IE: ACA.
|
| I do agree that they fail to utilize their advantage more
| often than not but to say that Democrats in control is
| going to keep government out of peoples lives is... an
| interesting approach given history.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Seriously, ACA has been the largest government overreach
| in your life? The government plays a huge role in
| insurance (over 1/3 of those insured are insure through
| the government) with Medicare, Medicaid and VA benefits.
| A few wildly popular rule changes (preexisting
| conditions) and some state-level exchanges have not moved
| the needle from giant player to overreach.
| tyrrvk wrote:
| The creation of a whole new federal branch - "homeland
| security" was created under BushII. Cushy federal jobs
| with pensions all funded off that sweet sweet defense
| budget. So now airline travel is ruined all for security
| theater..and you think ACA is overreach?
| glogla wrote:
| > I'll be the begrudging devils advocate
|
| I'm reading this comment, and many others, and I am in awe,
| just how utterly heartless and soulless people are on Hacker
| News.
| MrMan wrote:
| HN definitely shows a vile, callous and selfish side of
| humanity
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| This corner of the internet combines very little empathy with
| enough technical acumen to believe their biases are grounded
| in logic. Social issues here are just abstract intellectual
| exercises that are extremely disconnected from the reality of
| how people's lives are affected.
|
| I'm not sure why I clicked this thread, these responses were
| predictably awful.
| focusedone wrote:
| I don't even know if you and I agree on political issues, but
| I'd vote for you.
| vkou wrote:
| This ruling will also let us democratically figure out whether
| sodomites should be jailed, whether interracial marriage should
| be banned, and whether contraception is legal. All of the prior
| court rulings on these topics stem from the principles that
| were overturned in this one.
|
| And then, two years later, after we democratically figure those
| questions out, we can flip-flop on them, because we voted in a
| new legislature.
| paulmd wrote:
| > And then, two years later, after we democratically figure
| those questions out, we can flip-flop on them, because we
| voted in a new legislature.
|
| Don't worry, SCOTUS won't let that happen. There's a pretty
| good chance they'll intervene in the next presidential
| election (unless a republican house takes it out of their
| hands), but either way they'll simply overturn any new laws
| they don't like. They're not burdened by any need for
| internal consistency - they'll rule in favor of Texas's
| abortion-bounty laws and rule against California's anti gun
| bounty laws, for example. Doesn't matter the logic is the
| same either way, they're not bound to any internal
| consistency or past logic, it's all about the will-to-power.
|
| This is actually a pretty noted characteristic of .... "alt-
| right" movements.
|
| > "Never believe [they] are completely unaware of the
| absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are
| frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing
| themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use
| words responsibly, since he believes in words. [They] have
| the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for,
| by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness
| of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith,
| since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to
| intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely,
| they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some
| phrase that the time for argument is past."
|
| You? You have to make logically consistent legal arguments
| and follow the process, because you believe in the system.
| They believe in power. And they have power.
|
| Dangerous times indeed, but here we are overturning Roe v
| Wade. And criminalizing contraception, overturning gay
| marriage, and criminalizing homosexuality is up next - Thomas
| specifically calls out _Griswold_ , _Obergefell_ , and
| _Lawrence_ as being on the chopping block.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Injustice Alito keeps saying "this doesn't imply anything
| elsewhere" with rulings that are basically waving a sign for
| more shitbag lawsuits to take advantage of the Konservative
| Kangaroo Kourt's open season on sanity.
| inlined wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment, but immature name calling
| weakens the effectiveness of your position
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Bad take, there is no need to play devil's advocate here.
|
| First, there is plenty of hard data to show the polarization is
| almost entirely a conservative phenomenon:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/yes-pol...
| has some overview, there is ample polling data out there
| besides what's covered there.
|
| The center is not what's in the middle of sane and crazy, and
| _" Crazed jesus Republicans and hyperprogressive activists"_ is
| part of a human tendency towards error that we should all
| counteract. We have an instinct to triangulate which is very
| exploitable, and has been exploited quite well for a few
| decades. If you tried really hard to really determine the
| source of polarization, you would find 1) it has a pronounced
| partisan element and 2) it is well-funded by a very small core
| group of very wealthy persons and family offices and well
| organized.
|
| edit: sorry if you don't like it, but it is verifiable. I'd
| challenge downvoters to find contradictory evidence if they
| feel bad reading this. Do you own research, it's the best
| revenge.
| kolanos wrote:
| > Today 92% of Republicans are to the right of the median
| Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median
| Republican
|
| > The rise of ideological uniformity has been much more
| pronounced among those who are the most politically active.
| Today, almost four-in-ten (38%) politically engaged Democrats
| are consistent liberals, up from just 8% in 1994. The change
| among Republicans since then appears less dramatic - 33%
| express consistently conservative views, up from 23% in the
| midst of the 1994 "Republican Revolution." But a decade ago,
| just 10% of politically engaged Republicans had across-the-
| board conservative attitudes.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-
| po...
| [deleted]
| theknocker wrote:
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I enjoyed GP is talking about hyperpolarization, and you come
| in saying that it's all a conservative issue, using an
| "Atlantic" article as your source.
| [deleted]
| btilly wrote:
| Your argument is an excellent argument against the Supreme
| Court having originally decided _Roe v. Wade_ the way that they
| did. It is not an argument for overturning it now.
|
| Our country is based on rule of law. And a lot of that body of
| law is established by a body of past precedent. These
| precedents extend back nearly 1000 years, and are part of a web
| of what is called Common Law. The Supreme Court's unique
| authority and main job is continuing to add to and clarify that
| precedent.
|
| What the Supreme Court is doing now is overturning long-
| established precedent. Originalism can be used to overturn
| virtually any past precedent you don't like. It is hard to
| overstate how much. Let me quote one of the current supreme
| court justices on the topic (see
| https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi for the
| full context):
|
| _Adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the
| dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of
| paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education.
| Originalists have been pressed to either acknowledge that their
| theory could generate major disruption or identify a principled
| exception to their insistence that judges are bound to enforce
| the Constitution's original public meaning._
|
| Her solution to this is:
|
| _No one is likely to ask the Supreme Court to rethink arguably
| nonoriginalist decisions like the constitutionality of the
| Social Security Administration, paper money, or segregated
| public schools--and if anyone did ask, the Court would deny
| certiorari._
|
| In other words, the limit on how much of the fabric of current
| law the current court can dismantle is to be found in the
| restraint of the justices in being willing to avoid hard
| questions, and not in the reasoning process that they apply to
| their decisions. But these things tend to be a slippery slope.
| The more of our rule of law that they undermine, the more that
| they will come to see it as reasonable to undermine more rule
| of law. And the more chaos that they create, the less willing
| everyone else will be to go along with what they said.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing
| dysfunction in other branches of govt.
|
| And it's not. The underlying problem is most of voting public
| doesn't understand how the system works, and why.
|
| Repeated the language has been "The SC is making abortion
| illegal." That simply is not true. But with that falsely dumbed
| down "fact" ppl judge, form opinions, make noise, etc.
| bushbaba wrote:
| It's been known for decades that roe v wade was a weak basis
| for abortion rights. The constitution does not have any law
| on abortion, and it's Congress's job to create federal laws.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Known? By the maasses? As based on the medias' narrative?
|
| That's not what's playing out.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Rights do not stem from the Constitution - as the language
| of the constitution itself shows: they are natural rights,
| some of which are explicitly laid down in paper. The right
| to do what you will with your own body is a natural right,
| and can't be alienated by anything, not even the will of
| the majority.
| biohacker85 wrote:
| Isn't this the crux of the conflict? Whether these
| "natural rights" are applicable to the "person" in the
| womb?
| geekbird wrote:
| Even if you swallow the argument that a fetus is a
| "person", you still have to temper the rights of the
| fetus who is a parasite on the mother, who is a living,
| breathing person with rights of her own, including "life,
| liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
|
| If a dead person can't be forced to give up organs
| without prior consent, a living woman should not be
| forced to provide life support (at a risk to her own life
| by the way) for a fetus. Just like I can't be forced to
| donate a kidney to another person, a woman should not be
| forced to donate blood, bone and full life support to a
| fetus.
|
| IOTW, it's literally a matter of competing rights to
| life. Carrying a pregnancy to term is a mortal risk.
| Certain pregnancies will kill the mother if not ended,
| and the fetus will never be viable. Other times the fetus
| is already dead, but since the law doesn't actually
| consider the fetus a person, it can't be removed due to
| abortion bans, and the woman is forced to carry a dead
| parasite and risk fatal sepsis.
|
| All of this should be left to the woman, her doctor, her
| circumstances and her conscience, not a bunch of old men
| in legislatures and courts.
| biohacker85 wrote:
| On the issue that the mother's life is at risk, or the
| baby is a product of incest or rape. This shouldn't even
| be debatable. Are the majority of conservatives really
| against abortion in these cases?
|
| > All of this should be left to the woman, her doctor,
| her circumstances and her conscience I agree completely,
| however if we are contending with the counter argument
| that a fetus does become a "person" at some point late in
| the pregnancy, having an abortion after this point for no
| other reason than "I don't feel like it/ I changed my
| mind" would by definition have to be murder. The
| "competing rights to life" argument would not apply here.
|
| Do you think the majority of democrats would support
| granting "personhood" to the fetus at some late stage in
| the pregnancy if conservatives would support legislating
| abortion into law (abortions before the fetus reaches
| personhood for any reason, after which only if the doctor
| believes the mother's life to be in danger.) Or this is
| too much of a compromise, women should be able to abort
| at any time for any reason?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, because a woman's right to her own body is not in
| conflict with a fetus' right to live, even if you believe
| the fetus does have that right.
|
| People who claim they care about the fetus' rights, and
| that they oppose abortion from this point of view, are
| either hypocritical or haven't given it enough thought.
| If they did, they would at best insist upon the woman
| carrying the fetus until it becomes viable, then having
| the right to a C-section where it is removed and placed
| on life support, and given up for adoption. But no one
| holds this position.
|
| In reality, people use the rhetoric of the fetus' rights
| to muddy the waters, and to avoid admitting that they
| don't believe women have a right to control their own
| bodies. They hold collectivist views that are typical of
| conservatives, who believe all people should be
| subservient to the social fabric (while espousing
| individualistic views when it comes time for the social
| fabric to help those same people in turn) - no free sex,
| no freedom to use drugs, etc
| ErrantX wrote:
| Ultimately, I don't feel this is really about reproductive
| rights.
|
| It's part of a long term disenfranchisement of groups of
| individuals in a way which secures GOP electoral college votes.
| As you say, the power of rural Republican votes is significant
| and depopulating those areas of democratic votes is a
| significant part of the GOP strategy.
| [deleted]
| xxEightyxx wrote:
| Their decision may be right through the lens of the initial
| ruling some 50 years ago, and perhaps through the
| acknowledgement of this being a divisive issue. However, it is
| at best hypocrisy of the court itself, and at worst, a
| devastating blow to one of the worlds worst healthcare systems.
|
| This ruling in particular has be viewed through a wider scope,
| and not just the narrow lens of "people are divisive".
|
| Their recent ruling interfering with New York states own policy
| on concealed carries best represents the courts hypocrisy - if
| a state makes a ruling and has a certain level of autonomy and
| power to do so, why is the SC overruling them here when its
| nearly just as divisive as abortion?
|
| Additionally - the ruling is made within a very narrow scope,
| against common scientific and healthcare advice. It's also
| _likely_ the ruling was made with strong bias and in bad favor
| as many of the justices themselves are not duly qualified to
| sit on the bench which they sit, and the ruling subsequently
| falls in line with a serious of previously strongly
| conservative rulings that defy prior precedent and the SC 's
| own interpretation of autonomy, law, and previous rulings.
|
| There is really no way to justify their ruling.
|
| Polarization is a bit of mysterious character because we see a
| very strong, radical right wing forcing changes down to the
| county level in terms of gerrymandering, up to the level of
| presidential cabinet where federal crimes were committed
| without any consequence.
|
| We don't hear of Democrats who, after losing a race complain of
| fraud and refuse to accept the results. That's a very
| Republican thing to do.
|
| So, polarization is mysterious because there is a fast growing
| anti-intellectual, religious radicalism spirit and a fairly
| unchanged "populist" left wing. I.e. the left is mostly
| unchanged from 20 years ago, whereas the right has gone through
| a sharp and dramatic change in the same period.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the
| views of the voting majority._
|
| Except in the US where it is the rule of the minority:
|
| * https://www.vox.com/2018/9/12/17850980/democracy-tyranny-
| min...
|
| * https://harpers.org/archive/2017/03/tyranny-of-the-minority/
|
| * https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-
| commentary/os-...
|
| * https://www.politico.com/story/2009/03/the-tyranny-of-the-
| mi...
| president wrote:
| > My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both
| sides to be completely antagonistic towards each other.
|
| Nobody in power is trying to put an end to it. In fact, media
| and institutions are trying to push the anger and divide
| further. I think most people realize this and this is why there
| are so many conspiracies out there as to why things have gotten
| this bad.
|
| In my opinion, it's too late. Corruption of society of this
| level CANNOT be fixed. In a perfect world, everyone would chill
| out and realize they are fighting over what is essentially
| first world problems. But people have become trained to the
| point of abandoning reasoning, common sense, and good faith to
| prop up their tribes. We now have an entire generation that
| thinks this is all normal. It won't end well and this is
| exactly what our enemies wanted.
| zht wrote:
| "both sides"...
|
| sigh...
|
| one side is calling the other side pedophile child groomers sex
| trafficking children in the basement of pizza parlours....
| deeviant wrote:
| You'll have to forgive me if I'm not feeling the "begrudging"
| nature of your statement.
|
| > Ofc, my support for this change assumes that this Supreme
| Court will show restraint towards political activism (in either
| direction) in general. Call it naive, but I'll wait and see.
|
| Your comment seems naive. It should be pretty obvious the us
| Supreme (Being) court is not going to show restraint towards
| political activism, they literally destroyed 50 years of
| American bodily freedom and struck up a massive victory for the
| gun lobby in a day.
|
| > The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the
| views of the voting majority. If the voting majority truly
| cares about access to abortion then we will hopefully see
| enough democratic traction to give them the mandate needed.
|
| American democracy doesn't represent the majority as
| gerrymandering has stolen the voice of our people, and guess
| what issue this court absolutely _won 't_ be addressing: voters
| rights. Because it should be absolutely clear right now that
| this court wants only one thing: to execute their political
| agenda without care or thought to the consequence of their
| actions. And the consequence will be dire indeed, American is
| already divided and this will be the final push to forever
| sever the left from the right, affecting creating two separate
| countries, not in law perhaps (yet) but certainly in spirit. In
| one stroke, the court has done more damage to our country than
| our enemies ever could.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Where you see delegating to the states, I see a minority (less
| than 30% of Americans agree with this) enforcing social views
| on the majority- and it will not stop here. Other things the
| Supreme Court has blocked state law using the same logic as roe
| v Wade (due process of the 14th amendment[0]) on are blocking
| contraception bans (grisewald), overturning anti-sodomy laws
| (lawrence), and giving equal protection to gay marriage
| (obergafel). Several states still have laws on the books
| banning those things and there could easily be a situation in 4
| years where gay couples, legally married in California, are
| arrested for sodomy after the border to Texas when traveling.
| There are already laws on the books seeking to do this for
| abortion providers or people seeking abortions.
|
| This is a small minority that just needs 51% of voter turnout
| in a particular state (or not even that in a heavily
| gerrymandered one), and they can control the lives of anyone
| living in or even traveling through an entire region of the US
| with apparently very little federal protection (and certainly
| no representation for the travelers)
|
| This ruling is disastrous and shows the capriciousness of the
| current court in interpreting precedent to mean whatever is
| popular with their party. The 14th can amendment be limited but
| the second cannot, the first can mean infinite money in
| politics but the 5th does not mean Miranda warnings are
| required anymore.
|
| Edit -[0] this link is not hypothetical, Thomas's solo
| concurring opinion calls these cases out by name to be
| reconsidered by the court in light of this recent decision, and
| shows members of the court are absolutely interested in
| returning these to the realm of the states.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Other things the Supreme Court has blocked state law using
| the same logic as roe v Wade (due process of the 14th
| amendment[0]) on are blocking contraception bans (grisewald),
| overturning anti-sodomy laws (lawrence), and giving equal
| protection to gay marriage (obergafel)._ "
|
| One odd thing about this is that there is another case with
| the same 14th amendment reasoning which no one seems to be
| discussing: Loving v. Virginia
| (https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395).
|
| I wonder if that's because Clarence and Ginni Thomas have
| been committing miscegenation for years?
| morelisp wrote:
| > I wonder if that's because Clarence and Ginni Thomas have
| been committing miscegenation for years?
|
| Please, I'm eating. Besides, there's no evidence of this.
| jyounker wrote:
| Do you mean no evidence of his motivation, or no evidence
| that they've been committing miscegenation?
| morelisp wrote:
| The latter, but if I'm wrong please don't link to it.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| You have problems eating thinking of "`races` mixing" ?
| What about this: the entire humanity is, that is all
| specimen, including yourself, is the outcome of in and
| outbreeding between countless ethnies, groups of
| different skin colors, cultures and even
| religion/folklore followers.
|
| If you have a digesting problem with this, we may just
| call it nature but your comment is what could put many
| not at ease. That being said, I would at least guess we
| agree on the ruling that it gets us closer to nature and
| some commonly accepted ethic with regards to human life
| and procreation.
| cplanas wrote:
| I think he meant particularly Ginny and Clarence Thomas,
| not people of different races in general.
| morelisp wrote:
| I'll compromise. Justices can miscegenate or plot to
| overthrow an election, but not both.
| checker wrote:
| I support your position, but I'm pretty sure he was
| cracking a tasteless joke at the thought of the specific
| people of Clarence and Ginni getting it on rather than
| all people of mixed races.
|
| It's a reddit-level comment that doesn't add anything to
| the discussion.
| morelisp wrote:
| > It's a reddit-level comment that doesn't add anything
| to the discussion.
|
| That still makes it a rhetorical step up from Thomas's
| concurrence.
| sillystuff wrote:
| The 14 amendment was also used as justification for
| granting "personhood" to corporations. Not likely that this
| court would consider reversing this.
| mattnewton wrote:
| The equal protection clause is different from the due
| process clause, and Thomas can easily split his decision
| over that. As an originalist too, he would likely ask if
| the 14th amendment was meant to protect the rights of black
| people to at the time, and it was clearly meant to protect
| the rights of recently freed slaves so it isn't much of a
| stretch, you can basically trip into this interpretation.
|
| So I think he would be wholly unbothered making that
| distinction, knowing that _his_ rights are protected under
| a different clause. I guess it does show some of the
| fragility of judicial precedent, you could imagine an even
| more conservative justice who was not Thomas restricting
| the interpretation of this clause to mean only the narrow
| rights the majority of people in 1868 would have liked and
| not include miscegenation through some horribly tortured
| logic. But Thomas can draw the line before that and after
| himself.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Keep in mind in 1992 when WV amended its state
| constitution to remove the miscegenation prohibition 25%
| wanted to keep it.
| rayiner wrote:
| No, it's because _Loving v. Virginia_ has a clear textual
| basis in the 14th amendment 's Equal Protection Clause,
| while _Roe_ and _Griswold_ are divined from "penumbras"
| and "emanations" using the hook of the 14th amendment's Due
| Process Clause. _Loving v. Virginia_ relied on both bases,
| but the Equal Protection rationale would have been adequate
| standing alone.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| If _Slaughterhouse_ is reopened, do you think the right
| will see the attempt to resurrect privileges or
| immunities (as per RBG) and raise (counter) with the
| holding against birthright citizenship in it?
| jaywalk wrote:
| Nobody is enforcing social views on anybody. The Roe decision
| invented a Constitutional right where one did not exist, and
| today's decision corrected that. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg was
| on record saying that the decision was flawed!
|
| The real tragedy here is that it took 50 years for this
| egregiously bad ruling to be thrown out. And despite your
| fear mongering, today's decision went out of it's way to say
| that it is not meant to apply to any of those other issues
| that you mentioned.
|
| The Supreme Court's job is to interpret the Constitution, not
| to invent rights.
| saghm wrote:
| > today's decision went out of it's way to say that it is
| not meant to apply to any of those other issues that you
| mentioned
|
| Thomas's opinion pretty specifically cited some of those
| other cases. It wasn't joined by all the others who voted
| with him, but then again, Kavanaugh claimed that Roe v.
| Wade was "settled law" during his confirmation hearing,
| which clearly doesn't seem to be what he's saying now. I'm
| not surprised that this is his real view, and I won't be in
| a few years if suddenly he also votes against some of those
| other rulings.
| Beltiras wrote:
| It turns out that the justices spoke very carefully and
| nothing they said precluded them from making a decision
| like this. Dishonest, yes. Perjury, no.
| saghm wrote:
| Yeah, I certainly wasn't trying to say that they
| committed a crime or anything; I'm just saying I'm
| skeptical of the claim that there's no intent to overturn
| those other cases mentioned just because most of the
| justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade didn't
| explicitly state it at this time.
| mattnewton wrote:
| It's not like perjury is enforceable at that level
| anymore anyways. I'm not a lawyer but I am not so sure he
| was even that careful in a legal sense. I think he was
| mostly saying things to not give a sound byte to
| opponents who would block his nomination like Bork. The
| conservatives who backed his nomination know the game and
| what he was put on the court to rule on, they don't need
| to be told again. Enough to wink at it.
|
| There isn't any actual legal teeth there anymore as far
| as I can tell. Countless examples of presidents,
| justices, etc walking past perjury charges.
| altcognito wrote:
| > The Roe decision invented a Constitutional right where
| one did not exist
|
| Bodily autonomy is not a constitutional right, but self
| defense is?
|
| > Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg was on record saying that the
| decision was flawed!
|
| A misrepresentation of what RBG was getting at. She was
| very much of the opinion that legislatively it should have
| been codified as a right. She's right, but it's pie in the
| sky, as much as her desire to be replaced by a woman
| President.
|
| > today's decision went out of it's way to say that it is
| not meant to apply to any of those other issues that you
| mentioned.
|
| Thomas specifically called out those decisions as being up
| for review. Alito mentioned it in his leaked opinion. (it
| may have been bargained out of the opinion, or maybe he
| chose not to be explicit as to not raise pressure in the
| political sphere, which seems likely given the nature of
| this court) Four of the justices who voted against Roe
| today within the past decade are on the record as saying
| that this was settled law. They are liars, and people are
| right to mistrust the court.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| 10x-dev wrote:
| Your rights end where my rights begin. It's only a knot
| if your brain doesn't care for other people.
| jaywalk wrote:
| This is such a nonsense talking point. No right that
| _you_ have compels any other private citizen to do
| _anything_. You do, however, have plenty of rights that
| _prevent_ people from doing things _to you_. And no, you
| don 't get twist it around and say that people have to do
| something to prevent them from doing something to you.
| Sorry.
| divided wrote:
| Oh sorta like how people in restaurants don't have to
| wash their hands. Or doctors don't have to wash their
| hands. And others don't have to pass their drivers
| license test to drive on the roads. And public school
| students don't have to get vaccines. And people who serve
| in the military don't have to get their vaccines. And
| factories don't have to provide safe working conditions.
| And landlords don't have to inspect and maintain their
| properties. And drivers don't have to replace their tail
| lights when they're busted. And you don't need to clear
| your sidewalk after snowstorms. And McDonald's doesn't
| need to keep their coffee below a certain temperature and
| display hot warnings on their cups.
|
| If you'd consider for a second, you can come up with some
| of your own to debunk your own previous hypothesis.
|
| There are _countless_ examples where when you want to
| exist within society, you must act in order to prevent
| harms to others.
|
| I accept your apology, though.
| 10x-dev wrote:
| Your choice of words tells me this will not be a
| productive conversation.
| alistairSH wrote:
| You might want to read the document you're talking about.
| It's quite explicit that the rights it mentions are not
| are comprehensive list, but rather a floor. Penumbra and
| all that.
| divided wrote:
| There is a lot of misinformation packed in two small
| paragraphs. Let's try to unpack.
|
| First, are you aware that the right for individuals to
| bear arms was not considered a right by judicial opinion
| for most of US history until 2008? For instance, in US v
| Miller 1939 it was decided one didn't have a right to own
| sawed off shotguns because it bore no "reasonable
| relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-
| regulated militia." You see, many read the amendment as
| the right for states to have a militia, not the right for
| individuals to bear arms for self defense. In fact, I
| believe most founding father documents support that
| interpretation. Interpretation matters as much as the
| document itself.
|
| Second, the US government hasn't tried to force
| injections of experimental immunotherapies. It was no
| longer experimental after it achieved approval. No US
| government mandated the vaccine besides in situations
| where vaccines are already mandated. They strongly
| encouraged through rewards, but they always provided
| alternatives to requiring vaccination. For example,
| masking and testing have been at times adequate
| alternatives. The government has required vaccines for
| public school and the military for decades (centuries?),
| and it has been widely regarded as saving millions of
| lives, so it's very weird that it's an issue now. Oh
| right, culture war.
| rat87 wrote:
| The constitution is quite explicit that the rights it
| protects are not limited to those explicitly listed
|
| I don't see what antivax has to do with anything
| [deleted]
| teg4n_ wrote:
| Do tell me where the government was imprisoning people
| for not taking these experimental immunotherapies.
| jaywalk wrote:
| So it's fine if they force your employer to fire you,
| just so long as they're not throwing you in prison.
| teg4n_ wrote:
| Yeah, being a dumbass is not a protected class.
| selectodude wrote:
| Uh, yeah. That's exactly right. A corporation is, believe
| it or not, not the government.
| jaywalk wrote:
| We are clearly talking about two very different things.
|
| I'm talking about the government _forcing_ a corporation
| to fire certain employees, not a corporation making that
| decision on it 's own.
| [deleted]
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| selectodude wrote:
| To be pedantic, the City of New York is a municipal
| corporation. They are allowed to have conditions of
| continued employment. They cannot force vaccines upon
| anybody under the threat of jail time but they can
| certainly not continue to employ anybody they don't want
| to. NY is a right to work state.
| altcognito wrote:
| So, the government never _forced_ you to take a vaccine.
| You were only mandated to do so for employment purposes
| and public health. Persons are /were at risk of spreading
| disease to unwilling participants. Your freedom ends at
| my nose. Now, that being said, I agree, it was pretty
| heavy handed. Constitutionally breaking? Probably not.
|
| This is using the power of the state to compel women to
| give birth to a child after having carried it for 9
| years. Your right to alcohol and other risky behaviors is
| also revoked as that is child endangerment. Now what
| about the child for the next 18 years? That is truly
| constitutionally problematic.
| xienze wrote:
| > This is using the power of the state to compel women to
| give birth to a child after having carried it for 9
| years.
|
| Those women can simply get their abortion done in another
| state, they're not "forced" to give birth to a child in
| much the same way a person threatened with losing their
| job wasn't "forced" to get a vaccine. Hey, you said it.
| Beltiras wrote:
| The legislation in Texas empowers citizens in collecting
| bounties from anyone aiding a woman (and the woman
| herself) in getting an abortion.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| You, with a straight face, are trying to say that a
| government restricting your rights is totally the same as
| the policy of an employer?
|
| And you're telling me that a vaccine which is obscenely
| safe, you are more likely to die from tripping down the
| stairs in your own home than you are to die from the
| vaccine, is totally the same as childbirth? Where nearly
| 1000 women die every year, many are left with serious
| conditions, where women are left in poverty where they
| can't care for those children.
|
| Come on. Your position is beyond absurd.
| xienze wrote:
| My position is that you cannot claim women are "forced"
| to give birth (they have options) if, like the parent,
| you claim that no one was "forced" to take a vaccine they
| didn't want (they have the option of losing their job).
|
| It's a matter of double standards here. People get all up
| in arms when you point out that you can still get an
| abortion if you just travel out of state. But if you
| point out that your only way to avoid taking a vaccine
| you don't want is to lose your job, well no one is
| "forcing" you to take it! Likewise, I say it's
| disingenuous to claim you're forced to have an unwanted
| child. You just have to travel to another state. That's a
| helluva lot easier to swallow than losing your job.
|
| Just drop the phrase "forced to" around abortion is all
| I'm saying.
| eropple wrote:
| Texas has specifically enabled random citizens _as third
| parties_ to cripple the futures of women who get
| abortions across state lines by suing them in Texas civil
| courts.
|
| This is a disingenous line of argument and you demean
| yourself with it to support an absolutely brainwormed
| kind of conspiracism.
| divided wrote:
| Yes, a poor 15 year old in Mississippi can SIMPLY cross
| three or four states to get her abortion done. Problem
| solved, folks.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > You can't have it both ways!
|
| You can when the two ways have different contexts.
|
| > force you to take injections of experimental
| immunotherapies
|
| Leaving aside the misleading "experimental" part, the
| bodily rights context here was "being part of a society"
| - this was a huge public health crisis - people not
| having the vaccine impacted on a greater part of society
| than just themselves.
|
| The bodily rights context for abortion is "a single
| person".
|
| Two clearly different situations, no?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Two clearly different situations, no?
|
| No. You either have bodily autonomy (My body, my choice!)
| or you don't. For the record I happen to support abortion
| (and in fact think society would be better off if many of
| the people in Washington DC had been aborted), but I
| oppose hypocrisy and logical fallacies.
| musicale wrote:
| >> Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg was on record saying that the
| decision was flawed!
|
| > She was very much of the opinion that legislatively it
| should have been codified as a right.
|
| These positions are not in conflict, and seem to be
| supported with quotes:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/06/ruth-
| bader...
| jaywalk wrote:
| Exactly correct, and today's ruling still doesn't prevent
| Congress from acting. They had _50 years_ to codify Roe
| into law, but they didn 't. And now they'll come out and
| try to deflect the blame onto the Supreme Court, which is
| beyond absurd but will work to convince a whole lot of
| people.
|
| I have my own personal feelings on abortion, but as far
| as laws on it go I honestly don't care one way or
| another. So if all of these Congresspeople want to come
| out and say that the majority of the country wants
| abortion to be legal nationwide, then they need to DO
| THEIR FUCKING JOBS and pass a law to make it so.
| altcognito wrote:
| A law isn't enough as it will be in conflict with the
| consitution. A constitutional amendment is required.
|
| To get enough Senate votes to pass a constitutional
| amendment, you're looking at 75% of the country voting
| for Democrats. Not going to happen. The Senate imbalance
| is ridiculous.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > you're looking at 75% of the country voting for
| Democrats
|
| A constitutional amendment ought to have support from
| more than one party, not just Democrats. You might be
| able to get that if you took a more oblique approach, for
| example with an amendment explicitly upholding the
| natural right to control over one's own body, as opposed
| to one narrowly focused on allowing abortion.
| jaywalk wrote:
| The ruling said that the Constitution does not _grant_
| the right to abortion. It did not say that it _denies_
| the right to abortion.
| altcognito wrote:
| I said it was a misrepresentation. "The decision was
| right, but the reasoning was wrong ."(according to
| Ginsberg)
| jaywalk wrote:
| How is what I said a misrepresentation? I used the word
| "flawed" and I think it perfectly represents her opinion.
| She acknowledged that the reasoning behind it opened up
| the door to it being overturned, which is something that
| many if not most legal scholars agreed with. And she was
| clearly correct, as evidenced by today's ruling.
|
| Of course she wouldn't have voted to overturn it, but I
| never said or meant to imply that she would have.
| [deleted]
| ajross wrote:
| > The Roe decision invented a Constitutional right where
| one did not exist,
|
| So did the ninth amendment, FWIW: _The enumeration in the
| Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to
| deny or disparage others retained by the people._
|
| Appelate courts decide on what a "right" is. That's
| arguably their most important function. Huge, huge chunks
| of modern constitutional law are based on subjects not
| enumerated in the constitution. The constitution doesn't
| speak about miscegenation laws, or miranda rights, etc...
| Yet those are still "rights" that you'd be awfully
| horrified to have destroyed, right?
|
| This argument doesn't really work, basically. The argument
| you're making is, if you really think about it, not what
| you actually want.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _miranda rights_
|
| I have some bad news for you. SCOTUS blew that one up
| yesterday. <sad trombone>
| ajross wrote:
| No, you still have the right to remain silent. You still
| have the right to an attorney. They removed (rather,
| neutered) the notification requirement; the police aren't
| required to tell you your rights. That's bad, but not
| remotely as bad as legalizing forced interrogation
| without representation.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Exactly, there is no miranda right (miranda being the
| notification of your right to remain silent and obtain an
| attorney).
|
| And there is, as of yesterday, no remedy for violations
| of your right to remain silent. So, you better hope your
| lawyer can have anything you say suppressed before trial.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > there is, as of yesterday, no remedy for violations of
| your right to remain silent.
|
| Explain this, please. You still have the right to remain
| silent, you still have the right to an attorney. The
| police still have to stop questioning you when you invoke
| these rights. Literally the only thing that changed was
| the notification requirement. That's it.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Here's a pretty good summary...
| https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/supreme-court-
| reje...
|
| Basically, the Court removed any remedy against state
| actors who fail to uphold your right to remain silent.
|
| Prior to Vega, if the state ignored your right to remain
| silent, you could seek redress with the courts.
|
| Post Vega, that right to seek redress no longer exists.
|
| On paper we still have the right. But, we have to no way
| to hold the state accountable when it fails to uphold
| that right. Is a right really a right if the state can
| ignore it with impunity?
| jaywalk wrote:
| The right you keep referring to is the right _to be
| notified_ of your rights. You are blatantly incorrect in
| continually stating that there is any change _at all_ in
| your right to remain silent, or remedies against state
| actors who violate it.
|
| You can still sue a cop who continues questioning you
| after you have invoked your right to remain silent.
| Literally nothing about that has changed. The one
| _specific_ thing that has changed is that you can 't sue
| a cop simply for failing to read you your rights.
|
| That does not impact your right to remain silent, or any
| remedies available in case of violation of it, in any
| way.
| alistairSH wrote:
| From the parent post: _The constitution doesn 't speak
| about ... miranda rights... Yet those are still "rights"
| that you'd be awfully horrified to have destroyed,
| right?_
|
| And my response: _I have some bad news for you. SCOTUS
| blew that one up yesterday._
|
| There is no longer a right to be Mirandized. That's what
| I said.
|
| Officer Vega locked Tekoh in a room and threaten him and
| his family in order to coerce a confession.
|
| That confession was used in the trial.
|
| Are you saying there is some other way to recover damages
| from Vega? At best, had Tekoh been found guilty, he was
| looking at years of appeals. He still wouldn't have been
| able to sue Vega under the current ruling.
|
| As I said above, yes, you still have the right to remain
| silence. But you no longer have a way to seek redress
| against a LEO who ignores that right.
| ameister14 wrote:
| the state can't use the evidence against you in court,
| can it?
| diordiderot wrote:
| Now it can
| jaywalk wrote:
| No, it can't. Literally the only thing that changed is
| that you can't sue a cop for not reading the Miranda
| warning to you. Your actual Miranda rights are unchanged,
| and cops still have to read the warning.
| alistairSH wrote:
| A coerced confession was used during the trial in
| question.
| alistairSH wrote:
| It's up to you/your lawyer to ensure it isn't used.
| Relying on the judge to do so isn't a great plan.
| sarlalian wrote:
| Thankfully the founders had some thoughts on "inventing
| rights".
|
| "Amendment IX
|
| The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
| shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
| by the people."
|
| Bodily autonomy is more complex than just womb to birth.
| So, at what age is a mother no longer required to use their
| body to provide life for a child? ie. If a 4 year old needs
| a blood transfusion, can the state force the mother to
| provide their blood for their child? What about a kidney
| transplant? When does the states interest in the potential
| life of a child end?
|
| Bodily autonomy aside, since Rowe v. Wade was primarily a
| decision about medical privacy, and was part of the
| foundations of many other precedents and laws, is HIPA
| still valid? What is the new line between medical privacy
| rights and free speech rights.
|
| .
| ameister14 wrote:
| >The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
| shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
| retained by the people.
|
| You realize that this goes _against_ the right of the
| federal government to regulate the states re abortion?
| sarlalian wrote:
| It's complicated. States can't just limit a persons
| rights because they aren't explicitly enumerated in the
| constitution. The federal government does have an
| expressed interest in making sure states don't legislate
| away peoples rights, whether they are explicitly
| enumerated or not.
| jaywalk wrote:
| > since Rowe v. Wade was primarily a decision about
| medical privacy
|
| And it got thrown out for precisely this reason. Although
| cocaine can be prescribed in very limited circumstances,
| my doctor cannot just write me a prescription for
| cocaine. That's a "medical privacy" issue too, right?
|
| > is HIPA still valid?
|
| Don't be absurd.
| sarlalian wrote:
| The privacy portions of HIPA were a balanced between a
| persons right to privacy vs a persons rights to free
| speech. Much of the foundations of a right to medical
| privacy is based on Rowe V. Wade. Without a right to
| medical privacy, HIPA could be an unconstitutional
| constraint on medical personnel's rights to free speech.
| I'm not being absurd, the second order consequences of
| this ruling are going to be vast.
| jaywalk wrote:
| First of all, it's HIPAA.
|
| Second, I think you have a very deep misunderstanding of
| how all of this works. HIPAA is not in any danger
| whatsoever, and really has nothing to do with Roe.
| nindalf wrote:
| > And despite your fear mongering, today's decision went
| out of it's way to say that it is not meant to apply to any
| of those other issues that you mentioned.
|
| Oh you read the whole judgement?
|
| Perhaps you missed this nugget on page 118
|
| > For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider
| all of this Court's substantive due process precedents,
| including _Griswold_ , _Lawrence_ and _Obergefell_.
|
| Are you going to amend your comment now?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| If that's not from the majority opinion, how much does it
| actually matter?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Thomas wasn't part of the majority? He wrote a concurring
| opinion - he agrees with the main decision and went out
| of his way to further explain his thoughts, including
| that he disagrees with any of the rights created under
| the auspices of due process. But, he conveniently left
| Loving v Virginia off the list, which was also decided
| (partially) on due process grounds - I guess he's not
| quite so sure about his principles that he'd blow up his
| own marriage.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| He also lives in DC, so even if he did rule that the
| states have the right to criminalize interracial
| marriages, HIS is unlikely to be affected.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Nope, he and Ginny live in VA.
| paulmd wrote:
| quite a bit, the votes are likely there to overturn those
| things as well.
|
| what thomas did is a little gauche, the court generally
| avoids opining on cases that aren't actually in front of
| them because the facts and specifics of the case matter,
| but, yeah, the votes are probably there, thomas just
| likes to say the quiet part out loud.
|
| who do you think is going to vote against it? thomas, who
| has outright stated he's a yes? kavanaugh, who said roe
| was "settled law"? Barrett, the actual handmaiden
| cultist? Alito?
| eropple wrote:
| I think, realistically, we're holding out for Gorsuch and
| Roberts to not be monsters, and I think we will be
| disappointed.
| MrMan wrote:
| rights not already enumerated are not invented - the burden
| is to argue why a right should be curtailed or not
| recognized
| mattnewton wrote:
| > Nobody is enforcing social views on anybody.
|
| Actual that's what all these cases were about. Roe v Wade-
| some states wanted to treat abortion as murder and control
| women's bodily autonomy. Lawrence was about keeping sodomy
| laws which could be used to legally discriminate against
| gay people. Griselwald is clearly about social views on
| contraception.
|
| > egregiously bad ruling to be thrown out. And despite your
| fear mongering, today's decision went out of it's way to
| say that it is not meant to apply to any of those other
| issues that you mentioned.
|
| The main opinion did not rule this out, or if I did I
| absolutely missed it. Thomas' solo concurring opinion calls
| these cases out by name as worthy of reconsideration by the
| court - "In future cases, we should reconsider all of this
| Court's substantive due process precedents, including
| Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell."
|
| It's hard to take this argument seriously at all. It feels
| like you are not paying attention, saying everything is
| fine while the 14th amendment is on fire.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > as worthy of reconsideration
|
| He went further than that, he explicitly called them out
| as "errors in need of correction".
| rat87 wrote:
| They are. The constitution explicitly stated that rights
| outside of those explicitly listed exist. The right to
| chose is one of those rights. There was nothing wrong with
| the ruling except that the supreme court majority
| personally disliked it
| esyir wrote:
| So why do I not have the right to X, where X is some
| random thing I want that doesn't violate the other
| rights?
|
| Simply going "Oh, there are more rights" isn't a good
| answer. I'm pro-choice myself, but Roe vs Wade was
| terrible legislation, and is a fantastic example of
| tactical victory, strategic defeat.
| evan_ wrote:
| In the case you laid out you _do_ have the right to X.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Explain this:
|
| "The right to abortion is not explicitly defined in the
| Constitution, and therefore does not exist."
|
| "The right to _purchase_ firearms is not explicitly defined
| in the Constitution, but somehow must also exist, because
| how could you bear arms without it?"
|
| The sad reality is that this shit is all just twisted to
| convenience.
|
| Why did Thomas exclude interracial marriage as a state
| decision, while calling out same-sex marriage as being a
| state decision?
|
| Why do several Supreme Court Justices state that they are
| originalists, and the Constitution is sacrosanct, when the
| people who wrote it said that it wasn't, and was to be
| "reviewed and updated to the needs of the times as a living
| document"?
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| They treat it like the Bible and interpret it to fit
| their opinions. See also
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion
| fallingknife wrote:
| Tbf when they said that they meant reviewed and updated
| as in actually amended.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Oh, absolutely. Not "creatively interpreted by SCOTUS in
| lieu thereof."
| jaywalk wrote:
| The entire point of the SCOTUS is to interpret the
| Constitution, as laid out in the Constitution.
|
| Roe was a "creative" interpretation. Upholding the 2nd
| Amendment is far from that.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I get that.
|
| But not "interpret in lieu of meaningful review". Look at
| 4A. It's gone to SCOTUS a huge number of times. But no
| review has ever taken place of it.
| padjo wrote:
| Thomas's concurrence specifically says those precedents
| should be revisited.
| [deleted]
| dlisboa wrote:
| The US Constitution is so thin and void of specifics that
| many modern ideas can be considered "unconstitutional". To
| interpret that is by definition inventing rights where it's
| not written down.
| alangibson wrote:
| You don't understand how law is made. Legislation is only
| one source of law. Others include judicial rulings, customs
| and expert testimony accepted by a court.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I understand how law is made quite well, which is why I
| specifically said that Roe invented a "Constitutional
| right" and not a "law." Of course, for the last 50 years
| Roe was part of our law. Now it's not, because it was
| determined that the Constitutional right it was based on
| doesn't actually exist.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| There's no way to interpret the Constitution without
| "inventing rights" since time moves forward. The founders
| knew we had progress so they built in ways of accounting
| for that such as the 9th amendment. The problem only comes
| when people ignore progress and ignore the parts of the
| Constitution they don't agree with to dismantle rights they
| don't like.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I think we just have different definitions of "inventing
| rights" because I pretty much agree with everything else
| you said.
| outside1234 wrote:
| But then they invented a right to concealed carry when the
| constitution only talks about militias and muskets? I'm not
| sure your point carries.
| jaywalk wrote:
| The Constitution doesn't "only talk" about militias, and
| doesn't mention muskets (or any other specific type of
| arms) at all. Indeed, muskets weren't even "state of the
| art" when the Constitution was written, so a belief that
| the Founders were only referring to them would definitely
| seem to be mistaken.
|
| To me (and six Supreme Court Justices) the Constitution
| says you have the right to keep (own) and bear (carry)
| arms (firearms) and because of this, laws that put an
| undue burden on this right are unconstitutional.
| 31835843 wrote:
| > The Roe decision invented a Constitutional right where
| one did not exist
|
| Nothing in the constitution says this is a problem.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > The Supreme Court's job is to interpret the Constitution,
| not to invent rights.
|
| This.
|
| All this controversy could end right now by simple having
| congress... pass a law.
|
| That's what they are supposed (and paid) to do. Maybe if
| they spent less time trading stocks...
| ajross wrote:
| Sigh, not this. The bill of rights _explicitly_ says that
| there are other rights not enumerated in the constitution
| that exist and (presumably) need to be enforced. The
| whole idea of Strict Construction flies right in the face
| of the obvious text of the ninth amendment.
|
| Really, why is the ninth amendment even there if it's
| supposed to be ignored?
| Beltiras wrote:
| And pray do tell how you think such legislation would
| fare against a challenge before the SCOTUS?
| jaywalk wrote:
| I'm going to assume that you believe they'd throw it out,
| so I will ask you what part of today's decision leads you
| to believe that?
| Beltiras wrote:
| They want this to be up to the states. Federal
| legislation encroaches on the "laboratories of
| democracy".
| jaywalk wrote:
| Well since there is no federal statute on it, and the
| Constitution doesn't assign it to the federal government,
| it goes back to the states. That's how everything works,
| by default.
|
| There's nothing in the ruling that I'm aware of that
| would _prevent_ Congress from passing a law on it. But I
| haven 't read the whole ruling, and I'm certainly not an
| expert. So I'm open to being shown otherwise.
| Beltiras wrote:
| Any legislation passed by congress will get challenged by
| the states that want to restrict abortion. This court
| will side with the state challenging the federal law.
| dbingham wrote:
| It's important to note that 4 of the 9 justices on the court,
| and 4 of the 6 who voted in favor of this decision were
| appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote.
|
| Literally appointed by minority governments.
| mattnewton wrote:
| To say nothing of the M. Garland nomination defeated by
| shameless parliamentary tricks, simply refusing to bring it
| to a vote while rushing ACB's nomination through in the
| last year of the Trump presidency.
| rayiner wrote:
| > I see a minority (less than 30% of Americans agree with
| this) enforcing social views on the majority- and it will not
| stop here
|
| It depends on how you define "this." Polls that ask "do you
| support _Roe v. Wade_ are useless because it 's a legal
| decision and the public doesn't necessarily understand its
| legal effect. More granular polls show that the public is on
| both sides of _Roe._ Most Americans support some sort of
| abortion right, but most Americans also think that right
| should be narrower than _Roe_ :
| https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-
| abort.... In particular, 2/3s of Americans think that second
| trimester abortions should be generally illegal, but under
| _Roe_ 's trimester framework, there is a nationwide right to
| elective abortions in the second trimester.
|
| > This ruling is disastrous and shows the capriciousness of
| the current court in interpreting precedent to mean whatever
| is popular with their party. The 14th can amendment be
| limited but the second cannot
|
| The difference is not the Court's "capriciousness" but
| instead the text of the Second Amendment, which specifically
| addresses the "right to bear arms," versus the text of the
| 14th amendment, which says absolutely nothing about "privacy"
| or "abortion" or anything of the sort.
|
| It's disingenuous beyond belief to try and make a false
| equivalency between an expressly enumerated right written
| into the Constitution 233 years ago, with one divined from
| "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitutional text in
| the mid-20th century.
| mattnewton wrote:
| > It depends on how you define "this." Polls that ask "do
| you support Roe v. Wade are useless because it's a legal
| decision and the public doesn't necessarily understand its
| legal effect. More granular polls show that the public is
| on both sides of Roe.
|
| None of this supports that the 14th amendment's right to
| privacy under the due process clause doesn't exist though?
|
| > It's disingenuous beyond belief to try and make a false
| equivalency between an expressly enumerated right written
| into the Constitution 233 years ago, with one divined from
| "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitutional text in
| the mid-20th century.
|
| Sure, we can ignore the well regulated militia clause as
| meaningless, everyone seems to. Then, to pick another
| example of capriciousness, my understanding is that this
| court ruled in Egbert v. Boule and that the explicit right
| against unreasonable search and seizure in the 4th
| amendment should actually be interpreted that there is no
| right to sue the government for redress of these
| violations, only the complaint processes that government
| agencies provide to decide the unreasonableness for
| themselves. There is another 233 year old amendment being
| so narrowly interpreted to slowly defang it while another
| "shall not be infringed"
| devmor wrote:
| I find it appalling that anyone would give your comment a
| shred of assumed intellectual integrity.
|
| You have quite literally reworded the argument for slavery
| that led to the Civil War.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Arguing against states rights is the argument for slavery
| that lead to the civil war? I am confused.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. It's not
| what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
|
| We want _curious_ conversation here. If you would please
| review the guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and make
| your substantive points thoughtfully, we'd be grateful.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| Are they having sex at the border of Texas? They should
| probably be arrested for that. Your assertion is obviously
| ridiculous, traveling gay men will not be arrested simply for
| being gay. It's the young gay men trapped in the state we
| should be concerned about. It's really not just as easy as
| moving to whatever you state has the laws you like as most of
| us are trapped by the locality where our support networks
| are.
| mattnewton wrote:
| That is definitely a bigger problem, but the original
| poster seemed already ready to write those people off when
| talking about the impact of poor red state women as a
| sacrifice for a democratic process. I am arguing that
| doesn't give the gay couple traveling through any
| democratic rights and absolutely does restrict their
| rights. The abortion bans in Texas has ample precedent for
| criminalizing behavior that occurred in other states.
| Sodomy laws also have a history of selective enforcement
| specifically to persecute gay people.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Your assertion is obviously ridiculous, traveling gay men
| will not be arrested simply for being gay.
|
| Your assertion is oblivious to the modern sensibilities of
| "Law and Order." Gay men will be arrested on "reasonable
| suspicion" of having had gay sex. And even when the
| suspicion is not found to be reasonable, there will be zero
| ramifications for the arresting officers.
| Arrath wrote:
| And their assets will be forfeit, seized by the arresting
| agency as aiding and abetting the sodomy. What a
| wonderful process.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Gay men will be arrested on "reasonable suspicion" of
| having had gay sex.
|
| "reasonable" in this case meaning "visiting the home of
| another gay man", let alone "living with one".
| gambiting wrote:
| Are you like....completely unaware of recent(last century)
| history? Like....at all??? Gay people were being arrested
| on charges of sodomy all the time, even if they were never
| caught in the act.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| There is a conspicuous lack of education around modern
| civil rights movements. WW1 and WW2 suck the air out of
| the history classroom leaving room for little else. I was
| 35 years old when I first learned about the MOVE
| bombing[1] and this year years-old when I learned about
| the Three Articles[2] rules. Anyone else unaware of these
| until recently? If not, where did you learn about them?
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
|
| 2. https://www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-lgbtq-
| drag-thre...
| heretogetout wrote:
| Yeah, I am 95% neither of these were taught where I grew
| up (a lefty area in a solid lefty state).
| lr4444lr wrote:
| So, aren't you reinforcing his point, that the court is not a
| reliable place to make law? Today's decision is exactly that:
| the court acknowledging that its prior decision was an
| overstep in its power.
| Bud wrote:
| No, it's not. The Court has "acknowledged" no such thing.
|
| This court will use its power however it wants. It
| recognizes absolutely no concept about "overstepping". It
| will do what it wants. That has been made abundantly clear.
| cm2187 wrote:
| How are small conservative states enforcing their social
| views on the majority?
|
| In states where there is a majority for abortion, abortition
| is legalised by law, not by court, i.e. the way it should be.
| It is in states where there is no majority for abortion that
| it is not. How is it not democratic?
|
| For things to be done at the federal level, it needs a broad
| consensus across the country, not a 51% majority where the
| 49% is dead against. The EU has similar safeguards where you
| need effectively 3 keys to enable a law (European parliament,
| European commission, and the Council), not a simple 51%
| majority. Nothing prevents you from legislatating at a state
| level, but if you want to impose your views on other states,
| it needs to be a broad consensus. What you seem to complain
| about is that voters in California cannot impose their social
| view on the inhabitants of Utah.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| I think you may need to take a closer look at these
| numbers, there is no poll indicating that anywhere near 49%
| of US citizens are "dead set" against abortion being legal.
|
| My understanding is that the number of US citizens who
| believe that abortion should be illegal in all
| circumstances is less than 15%.[0] Indeed, looking at this
| poll more than 75% of the people fell short of believing
| abortion should be illegal ("legal in only a few
| circumstances").
|
| With the percentage so low, I find it hard to believe that
| the people in _any_ US state would like abortion to be
| banned. Again, it would be interesting if you had any data
| to back up this statement.
|
| [0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/393104/pro-choice-
| identificatio...
| mypalmike wrote:
| He's talking about the US Senate, which legislates national
| issues. Because each state gets two votes, the more rural,
| conservative states end up acting as a bloc, giving them
| (often vastly) disproportional power over the majority.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| That's the whole point of the compromise.
|
| What needs to be fixed is the cap on the House. Remove
| that and the larger states get more power in the House.
| For example the Democrats could get a majority to push
| legislation to protect abortion at the national level.
|
| People need to fix the issues in the system rather than
| relying on the courts to legislate for Congress.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Don't misrepresent the "point of the compromise". The
| Senate exists because of slavery and for no other reason.
| The constitution would not have been ratified by the
| slave states without the disproportionate representation
| of the Senate, because even in the 18th century the
| overwhelming majority of voting people would have voted
| to abolish slavery. Jefferson and the other slavers knew
| this. The Senate is not some kind of beautiful compromise
| between the city and the country. It is a capitulation to
| Jefferson, who was really, really super into slavery.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| This is patently false. Small, slave free States existed
| during the authorship of the Constitution. They were
| afraid of being steamrolled by their larger northern
| neighbors just as much as the antebellum South. It was
| the carrot to bring such states into the new
| Constitutional union.
|
| Did the slave States like this compromise, yes. Is that
| the only reason for it? No.
|
| "To the framers themselves, Madison explained that the
| Senate would be a "necessary fence" against the
| "fickleness and passion" that tended to influence the
| attitudes of the general public and members of the House
| of Representatives." - https://www.senate.gov/artandhisto
| ry/history/minute/Senate_C...
| jeffbee wrote:
| The small states had obvious reasons to support the great
| compromise, but that's not the question. The question is
| why did Virginia agree to it, when they were more
| populous than half the other states combined, and
| therefore would have naturally wanted proportional
| representation, as indeed was the original Madison plan.
| And the reason is: slavery. It's completely central to
| the entire constitution, from the senate to the 3/5th
| "compromise" to the electoral college.
| [deleted]
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > What you seem to complain about is that voters in
| California cannot impose their social view on the
| inhabitants of Utah.
|
| What nonsense. This is not about state's rights.
|
| Just yesterday the Court decided that no, California
| doesn't have the right to restrict guns. That's the
| inhabitants of Utah imposing their social view on the
| acceptability of guns on the residents of California.
|
| It's about states rights when it comes to things you don't
| support, like abortion, and it's about the constitution and
| the rights it gives everyone, when it comes to things that
| you support, like the right for every nutjob to kill
| children with AR-15s.
|
| There is no logical reasoning behind these decisions aside
| from a vindictive, right-wing court, imposing its social
| will onto the entire country.
| bruceb wrote:
| These are two different decisions.
|
| As has been pointed out by others the NY law was
| arbitrary. The local law man decided if you were worthy
| of getting a concealed permit. This would be like if the
| local law man decided if area women were worthy to be
| allowed an abortion.
|
| The US would be better with fewer guns, but this was a
| badly written law.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Because there is an explicit provision on guns in the
| constitution. No mention of or allusion to abortion in
| the constitution. If the US wants to protect abortion
| through the constitution, they are free to do so. The US
| constitution has been amended many times. But that takes
| an even broader consensus.
| guelo wrote:
| "The right of the people to be secure in their persons"
| means something, doesn't it? "Self defense" is nowhere in
| the constitution either but that didn't stop this court's
| radical right wing from establishing it as some kind of
| new right.
| [deleted]
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > Because there is an explicit provision on guns in the
| constitution. No mention of or allusion to abortion in
| the constitution. If the US wants to protect abortion
| through the constitution, they are free to do so. The US
| constitution has been amended many times. But that takes
| an even broader consensus.
|
| The constitution is short and vague on many things.
| People read between the lines. That's just as true of
| abortion as it if of gun rights.
|
| If you read the constitutions as written, there is no
| right for individuals to have guns. It's very clear, this
| is for organized militias. If you read the constitution
| as written most of what the federal government does today
| isn't allowed, it's all mostly approved by an incredibly
| wide reading of the commerce clause.
|
| The Court is picking and choosing rights. They force
| Maine to give priority to their religion, they force
| California/NY/MA to give priority to their gun rights,
| they force everyone to abandon reproductive rights.
| That's a choice in how to interpret a very vague
| document.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| No, its very clear that the right to gun ownership is an
| individual right:
| https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment2.html
|
| >The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two
| parts: its prefatory clause (A well regulated Militia,
| being necessary to the security of a free State) and its
| operative clause (the right of the people to keep and
| bear Arms shall not be infringed).
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >They force Maine to give priority to their religion,
|
| They force Maine to not discriminate against religious
| schools. Maine can choose to not pay private schools at
| all or Maine can choose to pay all private schools.
|
| Maine is not allowed to say that the local Catholic
| school is bad but a non religious local school is good.
| That is, in effect government choosing that religion is
| bad.
|
| > they force California/NY/MA to give priority to their
| gun rights They force CA/NY/MA to follow the guidelines
| the court has set around the 2nd amendment. Notably in
| this case, you can not require someone to prove they have
| a need to exercise a right.
|
| The NY law stated that you had to prove you needed a gun
| in order to get a license. That is opposite of how a
| right works. Let's re-frame this as a 1st amendment
| issue.
|
| There is a large amount of misinformation in the world,
| this is causing civil unrest and issues(i.e. vaccine,
| elections). When the constitution was written, the
| founders could not conceive the internet, radio and TV or
| even large scale printing presses. Therefor, in order for
| you to publish a book or post a comment on a site that
| has to possibility of receiving over 200 views, you need
| to submit an application to your city hall in order to do
| so.
|
| We would call any such law absurd on it's face.
|
| >they force everyone to abandon reproductive rights. They
| are doing the opposite of forcing. They are saying that
| each state has the ability to decide what rights their
| citizens have.
|
| This is not in conflict with the earlier gun control
| decision as the 2nd amendment defines the gun rights at
| the federal level. The supreme court has not found any
| text that defines reproductive rights at the federal
| level.
| inlined wrote:
| The constitution doesn't enshrine the right to a gun. It
| enshrines the right to a gun for the sake of a well
| regulated militia. The NYC ruling was pure judicial
| activism
| lkjdsklf wrote:
| Firstly, the supreme court decides what the 2A means and
| they decided it does not mean that. The NYC law spit in
| the face of a previous supreme court decision. That can't
| be allowed.
|
| You can argue that the previous decision was wrong all
| you want (I personally think it was), but you can't allow
| the states to just ignore the supreme court and do
| whatever they want or all constitutional protections are
| meaningless.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The NYC law spit in the face of a previous supreme
| court decision. That can't be allowed.
|
| I mean it obviously can, as the law at issue in _Dobbs_
| did that, and it _was_ allowed.
| lkjdsklf wrote:
| An extension of my first point is that the supreme court
| decides what is constitutional and what isn't. My point
| was that only the supreme court can be allowed to
| overturn the supreme court. That's how it works. If the
| court decides that a previous court was wrong, then
| that's fine. That's how the system is designed.
|
| tl;dr we have a really dogshit system that essentially
| puts 9 people in charge of everything
| saynay wrote:
| More like 5 people who get to be in charge of whatever
| they feel like at the time.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| It puts them in charge of interpreting the constitution,
| I thought. What a stretch to make them seem like on a
| whim law makers or tyrannical. Governments tends to
| become tyrannical especially as they scale and gain more
| power. That's what the fabulous constitution was drafted
| after for the most part: to protect people against the
| government(s). Not put by Trump or other conservative to
| exerce more control over people. Here quite the opposite.
| I see in this overturn a move to re-establish distance
| and reduce the over reach of governance, federal
| legislation here, the supreme court attacking itself. The
| constitution still somehow works in the U.S, and supreme
| judges doing a great job at keeping it honored.
| lkjdsklf wrote:
| > What a stretch to make them seem like on a whim law
| makers or tyrannical.
|
| It's not a stretch. They are literally "on a whim law
| makers." They decide what issues they want to take up and
| change the way they interpret the constitution depending
| on how they want to rule on an issue. In theory, they
| could be held in check by congress, but in practice that
| is impossible. Especially since the justice's are
| political weapons of congress. There's a reason the
| supreme court nominations have been huge campaign points
| for the last few elections. They have basically unchecked
| power.
|
| > The constitution still somehow works in the U.S, and
| supreme judges doing a great job at keeping it honored.
|
| We'll just have to agree to disagree. They choose how
| they want to interpret it depending on how they want to
| rule. There's no consistency and it's frankly a disgrace.
| Has been for a while too, this isn't something new to
| this current court.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I have to concede, a long series of rulings are a
| disgrace. In the long run of this institution, not sure
| on the ratio of questionable vs rightful vs plain
| calamities judges have come up with historically. I stand
| on my previous comment and as you say would agree to
| disagree: the supreme court system _still_ works,
| somehow. Institutions at large are in chamble in the
| West, we could make a special case here but no obvious
| dissonance that I can see or hear from these judges. On
| this ruling. Politically biased? Of course. Corrupt? Not
| quite, but indirectly, very likely. Thanks for your
| thoughts. Agreed on them not being kept in check by
| Congress, not sure how the balance of power work in
| details, it would naturally more sense that congress gets
| at least some electing power and surely an avenue for
| dismissing them for misconduct, by 2/3 of votes or
| whatever. That would sound more balanced than the
| whichever passing president given the election or some
| judges who then sit on their thrones for life.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| It would be useful to provide at least a concrete
| example. Sounding very undoubtul doesn't imply being
| right or argumenting based on the truth. I will however
| do further reading and find out what may be so outrageous
| this court might have been up to.
| jameshart wrote:
| In fact the ruling relies, for purposes of establishing
| that restrictions on abortion are an established part of
| the American tradition, on pointing to the existence of a
| bunch of state abortion laws that existed in the 1860s,
| _which were all ruled unconstitutional in Roe_.
|
| It's effectively saying 'the existence of state laws that
| attempt to restrict a right, even ones which have been
| rule unconstitutional, is itself evidence that it's okay
| for states to impose restrictions on constitutional
| rights.'
|
| Which seems like a very odd argument to make the day
| after striking down a 100 year old NY State law
| restricting gun carry rights on the basis that there's no
| evidence of a long tradition of such restrictions being
| passed by states.
| deeviant wrote:
| > The NYC law spit in the face of a previous supreme
| court decision. That can't be allowed.
|
| Yet what we recently learned is what the supreme court
| decides is of little consequence. It's just the temporary
| whim of whatever political party happens to be in power.
| In 10, 20 or whatever years it takes to get a liberal
| court back, then roe v wade comes back and the court
| reinterprets a "well regulated militia" to mean, ah, a
| "well _regulated_ militia ".
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| > Firstly, the supreme court decides what the 2A means
| and they decided it does not mean that. The NYC law spit
| in the face of a previous supreme court decision. That
| can't be allowed.
|
| I'm always surprised by how few people realize that the
| SCOTUS doesn't make laws for states. I'm also surprised
| at how deeply convinced the notion of "the federal
| government and SCOTUS supersede state laws" is ingrained
| into our culture.
|
| The SCOTUS only provides opinions and jurisprudence on
| matters. They don't "make laws" and can't command
| anything with any sort of enforceable power. Abortion
| could have been abolished yesterday, last month or even
| last decade if any state wanted it to.
|
| Any state level Supreme Court can run contrary to the
| judgements of the SCOTUS without having to fear
| enforceable retribution. We've seen this recently with
| the case of interstate "travel bans" during COVID,
| "Sanctuary Cities" during Trump's first couple months of
| presidency and the spotty legalization of marijuana in
| certain states.
| [deleted]
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| No, it's correct:
| https://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment2.html
|
| >The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two
| parts: its prefatory clause (A well regulated Militia,
| being necessary to the security of a free State) and its
| operative clause (the right of the people to keep and
| bear Arms shall not be infringed).
| BeefWellington wrote:
| I've had this question for a while but why can I not own
| a functional tank or MLRS system and just drive them
| around wherever I want? Why are explosives regulated?
| Nothing in the constitution seems to suggest "Arms" must
| mean "guns and only guns", so where else is the line
| drawn?
| maxwell wrote:
| Driving motored vehicles on public roads is a privilege
| retained by the states under the Tenth Amendment. You can
| drive a tank on private property, if you can legally
| acquire one (Commerce Clause).
|
| Unclear on explosives.
|
| As far as "arms," the line is drawn at being able to be
| operated by a single person. So it would appear
| unconstitutional to prohibit keeping and bearing cannons
| and tactical nukes, though Congress can prohibit sale and
| interstate transfer.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| You absolutely can own a tank. With functioning cannon.
| Because of the NFA, you have to register the cannon as a
| destructive device, although at the 1776 ratification,
| cannons were explicitly legal. So there is your tank and
| cannon.
|
| A multi rocket system, is not a gun. It's ordnance. So
| this argument is weak and I don't need to extend into
| that except for.... ALSO LEGAL. Again, you are going to
| need to follow the rules of the NFA, and ATF's explosives
| requirements. The larger issue will be to get Lockhead
| Martin to sell you one! Which they will not. But you come
| up with the cash for 1000 of them, and I bet they do.
|
| Explosives are regulated because they have no defensive
| purpose. I mean, they do, but it's tough to use them
| defensively and accurately. If you cite Heller vs DC,
| they are dangerous AND unusual, key point to use "AND"
| there.
|
| Arms do actually mean arms. Arms meant cannons too. But
| bombs were never really arms.
|
| The line in this case is drawn rather inconsistently by
| the federal government agencies, and more fairly but even
| increasingly restrictive by congress.
|
| Any other questions?
| withinboredom wrote:
| > Any other questions?
|
| Since you seem to know a lot about "arms," is a sword an
| "arm?"
|
| > functionally different than:
|
| I believe you can take your tank off your property,
| assuming you went to the DMV and got license plates and a
| VIN number for it.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >Since you seem to know a lot about "arms," is a sword an
| "arm?"
|
| Knives and swords are arms, yes. This was most recently
| seen in states that tried to ban switchblades outright.
| Switchblades are pretty poor fighting knives, but have
| the same public reaction fueled by media as pitbulls.
|
| I talked with a lobbyist responsible for the switchblade
| deregulation in my state. After her research it came to
| "What makes a weapon will always be up to the judge, but
| the easy test is can you swing it?". Which is fair I
| think. That said... I also trained with my state's swat
| unit for a class and they talked about their
| justification for getting their gun out according to dept
| policy being "Any time a weapon is involved", which can
| mean gun, knife, sword, folding chair, sharp pencil or
| really big box of hot dogs depending on intent.
|
| You're right about the tank. So long as you have the
| right markers, mirrors, vision, licensing, etc. You're
| good to go. Although you won't enjoy it as a daily driver
| after the initial buzz wears off.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| I'm aware you can own a tank, the issue was with the
| restrictions on its use. It was probably a poor analogy,
| but the concept is:
|
| Legally, how is:
|
| > You can purchase a tank but not operate it anywhere off
| your own property.
|
| functionally different than:
|
| > You can purchase a handgun but may not carry it
| concealed on your person off your own property.
|
| Emphasis on Legally. In both cases these are allowed
| weapons for people to own, which, while not exact
| parallels (Tanks can cause infrastructure damage and
| such) at their core seem very similar from a legal
| perspective, _especially_ because of the NFA requirement
| for tanks. That latter is important to consider because
| the NFA largely deals with guns of varying sorts in its
| rules.
|
| Also context: I'm an ignorant Canuck who occasionally
| lives stateside.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >at their core seem very similar from a legal perspective
| especially because of the NFA requirement for tanks.
|
| There is no NFA requirement for the tank itself. Only for
| the cannon, and the ammunition if it has an explosive
| payload. The tank is just a vehicle. If you can make it
| street legal, you are free to drive it anywhere you like.
|
| The more interesting thing you bring up inadvertently is
| "on your own property". If that's the case, I should be
| able to own all the machine guns I like without NFA
| stamps on my own property right?
|
| The NFA is an unconstitutional law that sought to put a
| tax on rights. Then extra double unconstitutional when in
| 1986 they said "Oh, we longer accept the tax for certain
| still legal things". We specifically deny behavior that
| elsewhere, like voting. All handguns were supposed to be
| included, and all rifles with barrels shorter than 18".
| 18" stuck for shotguns, but rifles were moved to 16" for
| silly reason I can't recall exactly. Pistols got dropped
| because even in 1934 the public reaction wasn't going to
| fly.
|
| It doesn't matter though. The point of all of this is 2A
| is an individual right, enumerated, and verified with
| previous and recent court decisions. Abortion is not, so
| people using the BUT STATES RIGHTS comments about the
| NYRPA decision vs Roe overturn are being completely
| ignorant of the realities here.
|
| It's very silly to compare them.
| exhilaration wrote:
| In many states you totally can own a functional tank,
| missile system, or explosives -- you just need the right
| $200 stamp from the ATF and _maybe_ a background check.
| (Each tank shell or missile would require an additional
| ATF stamp, this is where things become different from
| owning a normal gun and ammunition.) Driving them around
| - outside of your property - would require them to be
| properly licensed and road-legal, that 's something your
| local motor vehicle agency would have to decide.
|
| Here's the first Google result for your entertainment:
|
| _You Can Purchase a Fully Functional Army Tank Online
| Because This Is America_
|
| https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/09/armslist-
| sells-f...
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > In many states you totally can own a functional tank,
| missile system, or explosives -- you just need the right
| $200 stamp from the ATF and maybe a background check.
|
| I'm aware and my point was _explicitly_ about being able
| to drive them around wherever I like, under the guise of
| it being the rough equivalent of concealed carry for an
| MLRS.
|
| You can't; there's restrictions. At the minimum, it's
| likely that people would argue they're heavy and would
| harm infrastructure (or outright destroy it in the case
| of some tanks).
|
| Separately, explosives are also tightly controlled, but
| are still a key part of armaments.
| bmelton wrote:
| I think if you looked deeper, you'd find that the
| restrictions for where you could and could not drive
| tanks are more restrictions on the _roads_ than the
| _tanks_
|
| The government owns the roads, ergo can sidestep a lot of
| the what might otherwise be mandated under strict
| scrutiny for their usage with rational basis tests. E.g.,
| "the roads are rated for <x> class of vehicles, and a
| tank is <y> class."
| inlined wrote:
| Modern judicial activism which clearly goes to the heart
| of the matter: the conservative bloc in the SCOTUS
| doesn't care about even the text of the constitution
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| Whose right is gun ownership? It's the people. The
| Constitution explicitly says that the Government will not
| have the right to infringe on that right. The inference
| is that they can infringe on all the other non-enumerated
| rights.
|
| Edit: to pull context from another comment here.
|
| "The 'militia' was the entire adult male citizenry, who
| were not simply allowed to keep their own arms, but
| affirmatively required to do so.... With slight
| variations, the different colonies imposed a duty to keep
| arms and to muster occasionally for drill upon virtually
| every able-bodied white man between the age of majority
| and a designated cut-off age. Moreover, the duty to keep
| arms applied to every household, not just to those
| containing persons subject to militia service. Thus the
| over-aged and seamen, who were exempt from militia
| service, were required to keep arms for law enforcement
| and for the defense of their homes."
|
| This issue is that the States became lazy once the Feds
| got their standing military. All States should require
| citizens to muster for arms and disaster training at
| least twice a year.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| https://www.madisonbrigade.com/library_bor.htm
|
| "The 'militia' was the entire adult male citizenry, who
| were not simply allowed to keep their own arms, but
| affirmatively required to do so.... With slight
| variations, the different colonies imposed a duty to keep
| arms and to muster occasionally for drill upon virtually
| every able-bodied white man between the age of majority
| and a designated cut-off age. Moreover, the duty to keep
| arms applied to every household, not just to those
| containing persons subject to militia service. Thus the
| over-aged and seamen, who were exempt from militia
| service, were required to keep arms for law enforcement
| and for the defense of their homes."
|
| This issue is that the States became lazy once the Feds
| got their standing military. All States should require
| citizens to muster for arms and disaster training at
| least twice a year.
| jameshart wrote:
| > All States should require citizens to muster for arms
| and disaster training at least twice a year
|
| Or how about, since we banded together in order to create
| a more perfect union, and so that I, as a citizen, can
| focus my time on pursuing happiness, rather than
| mustering every six months, we agree, through our
| democratically elected representatives, to just pay some
| money into a kitty and out of that fund a professional
| police force, fire department, and a state national
| guard. That way we get sufficient people trained in the
| use of arms to secure our liberty, and we don't have to
| act like we're a bunch of 18th century farmers any more.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > The constitution doesn't enshrine the right to a gun.
| It enshrines the right to a gun for the sake of a well
| regulated militia.
|
| IIRC, you need private gun ownership to have a militia
| (as the founders understood them). I believe the idea was
| regular citizens would organize when needed and bring
| their own guns.
| p_l wrote:
| One of possible interpretations, which AFAIK was even on
| the books in some state for a time, was that second
| amendment meant compulsory obligation for each voter to
| buy, out of their own money, a military rifle and stand
| for militia training periodically - essentially,
| mandatory militia service.
|
| Lots of ways to wring hands about a very badly written
| amendment.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I love these arguments that still want to pretend that
| Well Regulated means lots of regulations instead of the
| actual "Well trained and in good working order". And
| Milita which is really just any able bodied adult that
| can fight for defense of self or state...
|
| But ignores Heller 2008 and McDonald 2010 which both, for
| a long time, have ruled that this word argument is
| complete nonsense. That regardless of what you want to
| believe, 2A is an individual right.
|
| Heller v DC - _It 's an individual right to own a
| firearm. You can't ban handguns or anything else just
| because you say so._
|
| McDonald v Chicago - _You can 't just not issue permits
| to carry. 2A includes the right to carry outside the
| home._
|
| NYPRA v Bruen - _You can 't say you MIGHT issue a permit,
| you will if they meet the legal requirements established
| by your state._
|
| Please stop with the intellectually void argument that 2A
| is how you see it because you think the first few words
| invalidate _" the right of the people to keep and bear
| arms shall not be infringed"_.
|
| It's weak, and more importantly, it's over. It has been
| nail in the coffin settled for 12 years now.
| jameshart wrote:
| And abortion being a woman's right up to the moment of
| viability was "nail in the coffin settled" in 1973.
|
| The court's analysis that 'keep and bear arms' implies an
| individual right to carry a handgun (or a weapon 'in
| common use') for self defense purposes is _exactly_ the
| kind of drawing of 'legislative-style' boundaries that
| the court railed against in today's ruling overturning
| Roe and Casey.
| larkost wrote:
| The provision (Second Amendment) explicitly says "well
| regulated", and talks about gun rights in connection with
| being for militias. This is how that right was read until
| 2008. This is all about conservatives on the Supreme
| Court picking and choosing what they want the
| Constitution to say.
| bmelton wrote:
| tbf, that's only how it had been read from 1934 to 2008,
| and only by some -- it was not read that way prior to
| 1934, and 1934's decision in US v Miller likely wouldn't
| have arrived at that reading but for an extremely
| peculiar set of circumstances, including the fact that
| the defendant was dead, and the attorney didn't show up
| to correct false testimony from the government, which was
| extremely wrong in its assertion that the firearm used
| had no connection to military service
| ufmace wrote:
| If you read the original papers about this, it's clear
| that "well regulated" refers to "To adjust (a mechanism)
| for accurate and proper functioning." as defined in
| https://www.thefreedictionary.com/regulated, not "subject
| to arbitrary Government control".
|
| In a plain reading, it makes sense in context for this to
| mean "well trained". It would be rather odd for it to
| both say, in a supporting clause, that it's subject to
| arbitrary Government control, and also in the main clause
| that the right "shall not be infringed".
| VVayneTracker wrote:
| The difference is that one inures to state governments
| rather than the federal government. The concern at the
| time was that the federal government would take guns away
| from people in order to neuter the States' power to
| defend itself. The States themselves free to do what they
| wanted to regulate their citizens and militias.
| codeguro wrote:
| A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the start
| of a healthy day, the _right of the people_ to keep and
| eat food shall not be infringed.
|
| Who has the right to food? _A well balanced breakfast_ or
| _the people?_
| CptJupiterNorth wrote:
| There are already plenty of types of guns that you cannot
| buy (machine guns, grenade launchers, etc.), and that
| seems to be fine and legal. We're just talking about
| adding more to that list.
| Clubber wrote:
| Or we could subtract from the list as well.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > California
|
| New York* I believe.
| brewdad wrote:
| Well, really, any state that has a similar law on the
| books. But yesterday's ruling was specifically about a NY
| law. CA and many other states will also be impacted.
| inlined wrote:
| SB-8 helped create a framework for bypassing
| constitutional "rights" and I think it's time that
| California, with its direct democracy, bans guns
| altogether.
| lkjdsklf wrote:
| The supreme court just said abortion is not
| constitutionally protected so SB-8 isn't bypassing
| constitutional rights.
|
| You might disagree with the court, but that doesn't
| matter since any law similar to SB-8 related to guns
| would be handled by that court.
|
| That said, I think CA/NY and others should absolutely do
| it. They should be super aggressive and start using the
| tactic created in SB-8 on all kinds of issues if for no
| other reason than the ridiculousness of relying on
| civilian enforcement of laws.
| inlined wrote:
| If guns are banned or SB-8 style tactics are banned we
| win either way.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| What you would probably end up with is that the SB-8 bill
| banning guns is ruled unconstitutional but the
| mechanism(SB-8) is not.
| Clubber wrote:
| >If guns are banned
|
| You know they won't just magically disappear right? They
| will still exist en masse. Guns are mostly banned in
| Mexico, but the cartels use them to control the
| government. Careful what you wish for.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Well, really, any state that has a similar law on the
| books. But yesterday's ruling was specifically about a NY
| law. CA and many other states will also be impacted.
|
| I'd also note that the Sullivan Act[0] was put into law
| 111 years ago, and was perfectly fine until last week.
|
| What has changed to make it unconstitutional _now_?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_Act
| ameister14 wrote:
| There was a case about it now, and _Heller_ changed, in
| 2008.
| deeviant wrote:
| 78% of Texans believe abortions should be allowed to some
| degree (https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/04/texas-
| abortion-ut-po...)
|
| Texas, like most "conservative" states is gerrymandered to
| all hell. So it's very very simple how conservative
| minorities are enforcing their social views on the
| majority.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| California needs to separate into more States, or people
| should move to help turn Red States purple.
|
| Edit: Since HN is rate-limiting me. There have been
| proposals that try to either give a Red State advantage, in
| particular, the electoral college. However, California
| could reasonably be split into 7 states (2 Red, 5 Blue)
| that would still have greater populations than Utah,
| netting +3 sets of Senators.
| gkop wrote:
| All the plans I've seen to separate California, would
| create _more_ red states..
| mburns wrote:
| The 'Six Californias'[0] proposal would be a net-positive
| for Democrats.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias
| nradov wrote:
| I'm not necessarily opposed to splitting California into
| multiple states, but if we do that then we should also
| split Texas, Florida, and New York because they have
| comparable population sizes. In order to split a state,
| both the state's Legislature and Congress (both House and
| Senate) would have to vote in favor. So it's possible,
| but politically difficult to get all three of those
| bodies to agree.
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-4/
| #ar...
| biztos wrote:
| Is there any movement trying to achieve this other than
| the "State of Jefferson"[0] which would create the
| reddest of all Red States?
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pa
| cific_st...
| blululu wrote:
| Jefferson would mostly be blue. The emerald triangle is
| left/libertarian and a lot of boomers there have no
| access to Fox News and are still salty about the time
| Regan landed a helicopter on their ranch to shoot up
| their weed crop. Jefferson only sounds red because only
| crazy right wingers with hybrid Confederate/Jamaican
| flags on their trucks support the idea. The reality is
| they would still need to live and vote with their
| neighbors who drive Subarus.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't know how true that is. It's hard to say which
| counties "would be" in that state since it will never
| exist, and some of the counties which its supporters say
| would be included have already affirmatively rejected the
| idea, such as Lake County. But as for the supposed
| California counties, the Trumpy ones like Shasta went 2:1
| for Trump in 2020 while the large "blue" ones like Butte
| went 50/50. The ludicrously empty ones like Modoc were
| 3:1 Trump in 2020.
|
| Jefferson will never ever happen because there's no
| mechanism for it to happen, and because it would be by
| far the poorest state with the absolute worst economy in
| the nation, so I'm not even sure why we should discuss
| it.
|
| Oh and by the way the Jefferson plan specifically
| excludes the Emerald Triangle.
| adamc wrote:
| I think secession is more likely, but we aren't there
| yet.
| mburns wrote:
| Secession is unconstitutional. Splitting up an existing
| state is consitutional.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| This is always such a non-sense argument. The civil war
| showed that you can't secede and lose the battle. Do you
| think the Federal government would start a bombing
| campaign against the People's Republic of California? No.
| Would there be some really uncomfortable trade
| negotiations? Yes.
| mburns wrote:
| Texas v. White established that states cannot
| unilaterally leave.
|
| Would the federal government carpet bomb a state that
| tried? No. But there are other means to exert force and
| stop secession. Besides, the U.S. Government has no
| reason to ever willingly let California (or Texas, or
| really any state) leave the union, so why would they ever
| sit down at the negotiating table?
| wincy wrote:
| Texas can separate into 5 states according to its state
| constitution.
| blululu wrote:
| LBJ frequently brought that up in negotiations. It was
| his prerogative so to speak.
| iostream24 wrote:
| That view was NOT reflected by this same Supreme Court the
| other day when they threw out New York's concealed carry
| limiting law.
|
| States rights? Ha. Hypocrisy and blatant power grabs by the
| Federalist Society .
|
| Shameful and likely the downfall of America.
|
| Such extreme power grabs continue to be railroaded through
| by an extreme right wing unconcerned with the 300 million
| living Americans whose rights they are stomping upon.
|
| 1) we must eliminate the filibuster.
|
| 2) we must eliminate the electoral college
|
| 3) we must impeach the seditious conspiracy and cut the
| head off the snake that spawned it. The federalist society
| must be investigated for installing Supreme Court judges
| and we must impeach every last one of these criminals.
| Clarence Thomas and Kavanaugh are also both subject to
| serious sexual crimes accusations that were steamrolled
| right over by the Republican juggernaut.
|
| We cannot allow this theocracy-in-waiting gain absolute
| power, and to ignore their machinations to this end is no
| longer possible.
| mattnewton wrote:
| The Texas law forbids people from getting abortions in
| other states, where people have no representation in the
| Texas legislature by giving Texas citizens the right to sue
| them in Texas courts.
|
| More generally problematic, your view would let any state
| persecute a minority of voters in that state and bind the
| federal government from guaranteeing equal protection to
| all Americans. We've run this experiment and found a long
| history of enforcing slavery, segregation, and persecution
| of gay people. Minority rights need special protections
| from the local majorities in states, and the 14th amendment
| is in no small part representing the will of the majority
| recognizing the rights of minorities are vulnerable here.
| Restricting a women's ability to get a medical procedure a
| heavily gerrymandered state legislature finds distasteful
| is the latest in the long line of states rights
| consequences here.
| civilized wrote:
| > The Texas law forbids people from getting abortions in
| other states, where people have no representation in the
| Texas legislature by giving Texas citizens the right to
| sue them in Texas courts.
|
| There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth
| can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for
| something that's legal in state 2?
|
| > More generally problematic, your view would let any
| state persecute a minority of voters in that state and
| bind the federal government from guaranteeing equal
| protection to all Americans.
|
| Who decides when the will of a state's majority is
| "democracy at work" and when it's "persecution of the
| minority violating equal protection"?
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Particularly interstate matters are handled by federal
| institutions set up by Congress. Which is why Texas
| police cannot prosecute you for crime done in California,
| but they can report you to the FBI.
|
| As such, Texas is overstepping its jurisdiction. And
| sidestepping the law by making it civil cases... Which
| they can adjudicate.
|
| So, states can get into their mess by staying civil
| cases, when do we see an escalation?
| mcguire wrote:
| Federal institutions such as the Supreme Court?
| pseingatl wrote:
| Wrong. You can be prosecuted for a drug conspiracy
| hatched in California where the drugs are shipped to
| Texas. Federally, in Texas, California or all three
| "separate" sovereigns.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >There is no way this can be upheld, right?
|
| I think you and cm2187 above are making similar
| arguments, but to my thinking it doesn't really matter:
| with the time and money it takes to rectify the
| situation, unconstitutional laws do serious damage
| regardless. I'm not a lawyer, but oh what I would give
| for legal review on the constitutionality of laws as a
| precursor to implementation rather than post-mortem.
|
| As another person suggests below - these states don't
| care anyway, they are following the same game plan as
| 1859.
| mattnewton wrote:
| > There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth
| can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for
| something that's legal in state 2?
|
| Yes, it's insane. But I don't have faith in our courts to
| not split this hair and allow it for abortion
| specifically because they are so clearly partisan on
| social issues here.
|
| Even without the insanity of the Texas law though, it's
| still a huge issue for poor women in red states.
|
| > Who decides when the will of a state's majority is
| "democracy at work" and when it's "persecution of the
| minority violating equal protection"?
|
| The federal government passes laws, or a constitutional
| convention passes amendments, and federal courts
| interpret them. The 14th amendment was interpreted to
| apply this protection before but now it is not.
| sampo wrote:
| > How on earth can citizens of state 1 go after citizens
| of state 2 for something that's legal in state 2?
|
| Just like how the US federal government can go after non-
| US citizens for something that is legal in their non-US
| country? Perhaps?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| > There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth
| can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for
| something that's legal in state 2?
|
| I'd suggest reading about the run up to the civil war.
| "State's rights" in that context was the slave states
| demanding that the free states capture and return escaped
| slaves outside of the slave states. Put simply, they
| wanted to enforce their fugitive slave laws on states
| that were completely uninterested in enforcing those
| laws.
|
| The idea that "state's rights" in US political discourse
| reflects some principled division, rather than just being
| another lever people in power used to fight other people
| in power, is fiction. This has and remains fundamentally
| about a minority asserting their views over the majority,
| including outside the borders of their state.
| aksss wrote:
| > There is no way this can be upheld, right?
|
| Interstate travel is specifically protected federally and
| incorporated against the states. Kavanaugh's concurring
| opinion specifically says this is an easy question to
| answer and it would be presumably unconstitutional to
| prevent people from having abortions in other states.
| Suggesting otherwise at this point is fear-mongering in
| very bad faith.
|
| > who decides
|
| More like, what laws decide. If the majority is
| infringing on protections from federal or state
| constitutions or federal or state legislation, the
| majority doesn't win. Otherwise they do. Majorities can
| affect the laws given enough time and sustained effort.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >Interstate travel is specifically protected federally
| and incorporated against the states. Kavanaugh's
| concurring opinion specifically says this is an easy
| question to answer and it would be presumably
| unconstitutional to prevent people from having abortions
| in other states. Suggesting otherwise at this point is
| fear-mongering in very bad faith.
|
| Sure, but if they throw someone seeking an abortion in
| jail or tie them up in the court system, it may be
| irrelevant whether is is _legal_ because that person
| still can 't travel. That of course assumes they have the
| money and resources to travel, and that the health care
| systems in those neighboring states is accessible.
|
| I don't have the stats in front of me, but we already
| know there is going to be a flood of people from Idaho
| into WA seeking services and we have very few clinics
| east of the Cascades as it is.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| >There is no way this can be upheld, right? How on earth
| can citizens of state 1 go after citizens of state 2 for
| something that's legal in state 2?
|
| I'm pretty sure it will be seen as a violation of the
| constitution's interstate commerce clause, which gives
| that authority exclusively to the federal government.
| However, it is possible that a pro-life administration
| would institute an order that does make it illegal to
| cross state lines for an abortion, similar to how sex
| tourism is illegal.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Most of the examples you mention are actually protected
| at the federal level, through the constitution, i.e.
| people voted to protect those rights. No one voted on
| abortion at the federal level.
|
| And abortion is not just a medical procedure, there is a
| third party involved: the baby. Now I find the religious
| view that a baby exists as soon the sperm touches the egg
| ridiculous. But I find equally ridiculous the dismissal
| of a viable baby's life implied by calling it just a
| "medial procedure".
|
| The reality is that there is likely a broad consensus in
| the US for legalising abortion up to 12 weeks, the way it
| is in most of europe.
| IX-103 wrote:
| Tumorectomy is not just a medical procedure, there is a
| third party involved: the cancer. Now I find the
| religious view that a cancer exists as soon the cell
| starts replicating uncontrollably ridiculous. But I find
| equally ridiculous the dismissal of the cancer's life
| implied by calling it just a "medical procedure".
|
| I think it's fine. The cancer is not able to survive in
| it's own and has a significant negative impact on the
| person carrying it. To make medical removal illegal even
| in cases where continuing to carry the cancer threatens
| the life of the one carrying it displays reckless
| disregard for their safety.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Most of the examples you mention are actually protected
| at the federal level, through the constitution
|
| until just now, the courts have repeatedly confirmed for
| several decades that abortion was protected at a federal
| level through the constitution.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Most of the examples you mention are actually protected
| at the federal level
|
| In many cases, like abortion until today, under the
| Supreme Court's substantive due process jurisprudence,
| and in some cases building at least in part on _Roe_
| which was just overturned.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >The reality is that there is likely a broad consensus in
| the US for legalising abortion up to 12 weeks, the way it
| is in most of europe
|
| Yeah, that's true, but there's also been a broad
| consensus in the US for federally legalizing (or even
| just decriminalizing) cannabis for well over a decade,
| and we haven't even managed to get that done due to the
| minority party overwhelmingly blocking even the most
| popular legislation if it goes even remotely against
| their moneyed interests.
|
| Just because there's broad support doesn't mean that it
| will happen. At this point the Rs are going to have to be
| thoroughly crushed in congressional elections for a
| while, like what happened in the 30s through 60s, if any
| popular legislation is going to be passed.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Technically Schedule 1 drugs should be given the same
| treatment as R v. W just got.
|
| There is no federally enumerated power to ban substances.
| That should be a state issue according the the 10th
| ammendment.
|
| Both abortion and schedule I drug prohibition/anti-
| prohibition require Constitutional ammendments legally.
| monocasa wrote:
| The ruling isn't actually rooted in state versus federal
| powers, and in fact opens the door for a federal ban on
| abortion.
| hellojesus wrote:
| What is the ruling rooted in? This is what I see:
|
| """ hold thatRoe andCasey must be overruled. The Con-
| stitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such
| rightis implicitly protected by any constitutional
| provision, in-cluding the one on which the defenders
| ofRoe andCaseynow chiefly rely--the Due Process Clause of
| the Fourteenth Amendment. ... is time to heed the
| Constitution and return the issue ofabortion to the
| people's elected representatives. "The per-missibility of
| abortion, and the limitations, upon it, are tobe resolved
| like most important questions in our democ-racy: by
| citizens trying to persuade one another and thenvoting.
| """
| https://www.scribd.com/document/579588941/19-1392-6j37
| mattnewton wrote:
| We're going to need a new-deal level mandate
| unfortunately and my understanding is that will has only
| been built off catastrophic events as large as two world
| wars and the Great Depression.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| As long as D's continue to push unpopular initiatives
| like "racial equity" (reverse discrimination), banning
| gas cars, and increasing taxes to pay for social
| programs, they're never going to get a mandate. The
| reality is, whether you like it or not, even California
| rejected ultra left-wing "racial equity" initiatives at
| the ballot (Prop 16), people like their big gas cars that
| pollute the environment (or they can't afford a $50k
| EV/$30k hybrid and think D's are out of touch), and there
| is a widespread notion that the government is notoriously
| inefficient and incompetent. Agencies like the DMV and
| SSA don't exactly work to dispel that notion either.
|
| Where's the common sense stuff? Where's the stuff most
| people would vote for?
| beckingz wrote:
| I had a great time the last time I went to the DMV, but I
| agree that is usually not the case.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| And keep in mind that was before Fox News/other right
| wing propaganda networks highjacked a third of the
| nation's critical thinking abilities with scare tactics
| and conspiracy nonsense.
| soco wrote:
| Basically they built already exactly those extraordinary
| events in the minds of their followers...
| mattnewton wrote:
| Sure, and we need a federal law clarifying this to
| protect us against selective court interpretations of the
| 14th amendment, on that much we are in agreement. But
| that's not what this decision is about, it is no
| coincidence that there are trigger laws across the
| country in anticipation of this, that even attempt to ban
| abortions in other states (the Texas law). States rights
| has long been the motte of all kinds of minority social
| opinions in the Bailey. The broad consensus is being held
| hostage by a minority in some state legislatures, and in
| the senate and now Supreme Court. By any measure the
| functioning of the government is divorced from the will
| of the majority and this is a symptom of that. To
| celebrate it as returning powers to a democratic process
| is a crazy distraction to me in light of that.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I recently learned that being a kidney donor has lower
| fatality rates than birthing. With that in mind I
| absolutely can't see _any_ reason to override someone's
| bodily autonomy on any reason whatsoever. The not
| hyperbolic analog would be to force someone to be a
| kidney donor in order to save a live (one who actually
| lived on the Earth for decades) - on which I'm fairly
| sure noone sane would agree.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Would you be willing to have an unwanted fetus
| transplanted into your body to carry it to term, and have
| all associated parental ties transferred to you
| kaba0 wrote:
| Was that comment meant for me?
| nomel wrote:
| If you read around, you'll see that tribalism mode has
| fully engaged in many here. People aren't
| reading/thinking, all over in this comment section. Or,
| as the top level comment does, criticize those that are
| thinking about/being critical about certain aspects.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's erroneous to use slavery and segregation as a
| template for any social issue you can frame as involving
| a "minority." It's especially ridiculous in the context
| of women, who are a majority.
|
| Slavery and segregation were a _sui generis_ issue
| because Black people are not only a minority, they are a
| discrete and insular minority. That is not true of gender
| and sexual orientation. Women and gay people are born
| into all families at predictable percentages. That drives
| social change as to those groups in a way that does not
| apply to a racial minority group.
|
| The U.S. has a unique history with respect to slavery and
| segregation, but it does not with respect to women's
| rights or gay rights. Nearly every other developed
| country has left those issues to the democratic process.
| The European Court of Human Rights came to the exact
| opposite conclusion as _Obergefell_ a year after that
| case, finding that the EU Convention on Human Right 's
| marriage article did not apply to same-sex couples.
| Switzerland did not allow same-sex marriage nationwide
| until this year, and Italy still does not. Yet the EU
| continues to stand.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > Yet the EU continues to stand.
|
| Your thesis seems to be "countries and states can oppress
| people and society won't totally collapse", which seems
| like a very weak position to take. I'd hope you don't
| think "not collapsing" should be our goal. We want life,
| liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people,
| right? Not life, liberty, and happiness for some, and
| well, at least the government remains standing, for the
| rest.
|
| Like, in some sense, an oppressive government standing is
| worse than it failing, right?
| rayiner wrote:
| Taking away a society's right to decide the scope of
| social institutions like marriage, or questions of when
| life begins, and giving unelected judges power over those
| questions is a serious infringement on democratic self
| determination.
|
| In the long run, it jeopardizes the possibility of
| ordered progress because people perceive it as a serious
| intrusion into society and culture by elites--which
| judges are--and will resist and eventually revolt. That's
| exactly what you see happening in the US right now.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Seems like the root cause of this is that boundary lines
| of states are drawn wrong, and now encompass a diverse
| group of people who fundamentally can't agree on what
| their "society" is or what it should look like.
|
| Time to abolish the states, perhaps, and move to a loose
| confederation of city-states + regional rump-states that
| encompass former rural areas, bound together by a Common
| Economic Protocol. Let the blue areas in Austin, downtown
| Houston, Miami, Pittsburgh & Philadelphia, etc. be blue,
| and the red areas surrounding them be red. Conversely,
| let the red areas in Jefferson (northern California +
| southern Oregon), eastern Washington, upstate NY, etc. be
| red, and the dominant metro areas in those states be
| blue.
| rayiner wrote:
| Red/blue divides exist within states, but there's a lot
| more common ground. For example, half of Black people in
| Georgia oppose abortion. Folks in Atlanta might vote
| Democrat, but they don't see deeply religious people as
| aliens the way folks in San Francisco do. In another
| example, folks in San Francisco would have called Larry
| Hogan a fascist for sending in the Maryland national
| guard in response to the Freddie Gray riots. But his
| approval rating in majority Democrat Baltimore shot up to
| 70%. The bigger problem is having New York City/San
| Francisco in the same union with rural Georgia and
| Alabama. It's not workable.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > In the long run, it jeopardizes the possibility of
| ordered progress because people perceive it as a serious
| intrusion into society and culture by elites--which
| judges are--and will resist and eventually revolt.
|
| It's reasonable to say that the purpose of the judiciary
| is to protect rights, even when doing so is unpopular. If
| the judiciary was consistent in how it did that (for
| example: providing equal deference to the rights created
| by Roe and Heller) we might see less revolt. The issue is
| not "elite intrusion" but inconsistency.
|
| Society's "right to decide" does not impugn my right to
| life and liberty. And the court is deeply inconsistent
| about whose rights, lives, and liberties it protects.
|
| > Taking away a society's right to decide the scope of
| social institutions like marriage
|
| What gives El Paso residents the right to decide what the
| scope of marriage is in Austin? Indeed, what gives the
| government the right to regulate the "scope of marriage"
| at all?
| mattnewton wrote:
| > That's exactly what you see happening in the US right
| now.
|
| No, with the January 6 riots? we see a minority no longer
| interested in the democratic process now that they don't
| feel they are winning anymore.
|
| How can you look at this Supreme Court, where multiple
| appointments were the result of heavy lobbying by large
| wealthy conservative faith groups to a president who lost
| the popular vote, and parliamentary tricks to keep the
| seat open, and see it representing a return to majority
| rule from rule by elites.
| sampo wrote:
| > The European Court of Human Rights came to the exact
| opposite conclusion as Obergefell a year after that case,
| finding that the EU Convention on Human Right's marriage
| article did not apply to same-sex couples.
|
| The European Court of Human Rights, and the Council of
| Europe under which it operates, are actually not EU
| institutions.
| diob wrote:
| Abortion access is not a social view. It's a health
| necessity, as is contraception.
|
| I'd understand if "the left" was trying to take away some
| other person's right, but this is the opposite. They're
| trying to preserve rights.
|
| A tyranny of the majority in conservative states is now
| restricting rights, it's going to cause death / suffering.
| gwd wrote:
| > I'd understand if "the left" was trying to take away
| some other person's right, but this is the opposite.
| They're trying to preserve rights.
|
| The thing that makes these discussions so frustrating is
| that people often seem to be completely deer-in-the-
| headlights ignorant of the other side's arguments.
|
| The argument of pro-life people is that there are two
| human beings involved in the abortion: the mother, and
| the child. Making abortion legal gives the mother the
| right over her body by removing the right of the child to
| not have her life taken away. In the eyes of pro-life
| people, "taking away some other person's right" is
| _exactly_ what "the left" are doing.
|
| Now you might not agree that there is a child in this
| case; you might think that children begin existing and
| having rights once they pass through the birth canal and
| not before. Or you might think that even if there is a
| child that has rights, the mother's right to bodily
| autonomy trumps the child's right to life. But you can't
| say "I don't understand where they're coming from; 'the
| left' isn't trying to take away some other person's
| right" without being profoundly ignorant of the basic
| views of the people you're arguing against.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > Now you might not agree that there is a child in this
| case; you might think that children begin existing and
| having rights once they pass through the birth canal and
| not before. Or you might think that even if there is a
| child that has rights, the mother's right to bodily
| autonomy trumps the child's right to life. But you can't
| say "I don't understand where they're coming from; 'the
| left' isn't trying to take away some other person's
| right" without being profoundly ignorant of the basic
| views of the people you're arguing against.
|
| I think people want to make it about that, and that's
| fine. But should we force people to donate their livers,
| kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise?
| Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's
| and you have to take care of them until either one of you
| die.
|
| Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The
| woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will
| affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some
| ways), they may not even live through the event, and then
| take care of it for the rest of each others lives.
|
| Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in such
| a way she could not have a child without losing the
| ability to walk for the rest of her life. She couldn't
| get her 'tubes tied' because she was too young. Think
| about that for a minute and the position she was in and
| now think about a position she might be in if she were in
| her early twenties today. She wouldn't be able to have a
| normal life and even back then, she never wanted to be
| unable to run with her child. IIRC, she's "tied" her
| tubes and her and her husband have adopted a child. But
| damn, it isn't always so black and white.
| gwd wrote:
| > I think people want to make it about that, and that's
| fine.
|
| Well, from a moral perspective, it _is_ about that. I 'm
| not sure which of those two positions you take (not a
| person / mother's rights supersede children's rights),
| but if you're going to be honest you've got to figure out
| which it is and why.
|
| And for the vast majority of people who vote pro-life (at
| least, all the ones that I know), that's what it's about
| too. And I note that you haven't really challenged the
| core logic I've put forward there, but rather on some of
| the sticky implications.
|
| > Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's
| and you have to take care of them until either one of you
| die. ...The woman is forced to... take care of it for the
| rest of each others lives.
|
| And, here's again where there's a basic ignorance that a
| five-minute conversation with someone who's pro-life
| would clear up. Nobody who's pro-life would say that
| women should be forced to _raise_ the children; they can
| be put up for adoption.
|
| > But should we force people to donate their livers,
| kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise?
|
| There's a difference between causing someone to die by
| action, and allowing someone to die by inaction. Pushing
| someone into a raging river is different than failing to
| dive in to rescue them.
|
| > Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The
| woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will
| affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some
| ways), they may not even live through the event...
|
| This is your strongest point. I mean, yeah, birth is
| crazy. And it would totally suck to go through it if it
| wasn't something you'd chosen to do. But it's not like
| the child was able to choose this either. It's a terrible
| situation for both people.
|
| > Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in
| such a way she could not have a child without losing the
| ability to walk for the rest of her life.
|
| So first of all, this sort of situation is quite
| uncommon; and while there are zealots who would take a
| hard line, lots of people would be willing to compromise
| in this sort of a case. Secondly, there are lots of
| people worldwide who are OK with abortion in the first
| trimester, but not the second and third. I think there
| are reasonable justifications for this.
|
| But thinking about it from a moral perspective, let's try
| this scenario.
|
| You're taking a tour of some tall factory with a bunch of
| people you don't know. While you're on a catwalk 4
| stories up, something catastrophic happens, and at the
| end of it you're holding for dear life to a railing, and
| a stranger is dangling over the factory floor, holding
| for dear life to your legs.
|
| You're not afraid of falling yourself; your arms are
| wrapped firmly around the railing, which you're pretty
| sure isn't going anywhere. But you have some sort of a
| degenerative joint disorder in your hips. You can already
| feel the tendons stretching from the stranger dangling
| below you; you're pretty sure that by the time help
| arrives to pull him up that enough damage will be done
| that you'll never walk again. You're also pretty sure
| that if you kick him hard enough right now, he'll let go
| and fall to his death, leaving your legs intact.
|
| Is it moral for you to kill the stranger to save your
| legs? Should it be legal to kill the stranger to save
| your legs?
| bardworx wrote:
| That's a really good point but unfortunately its just a
| surface level argument. Same states that demonize
| abortions also cut health services for children and
| mothers. All states that had a trigger law to ban
| abortions also do not have paid family leave.
|
| So they only kinda sorta care about the child in the womb
| but not about the mother or the child when they are born.
|
| If folks are going to ban abortions they should at least
| expand child and mother care, in my opinion.
|
| On the other hand, pre-Roe, the maximum tax rate was 70%,
| with 25 different tax brackets. I'm guessing that folks
| that support today's decision are probably okay with the
| tax increases and big government that will follow.
|
| Put another way, the case several days ago that allows
| child school credit to be used for Catholic school ALSO
| allows the same credit to be used for the Church of Satan
| School of the Gifted. The unintended consequences of all
| the rulings during the past week are going to be an
| interesting things to observe.
| jl6 wrote:
| Another part of the pro-life/conservative mindset is that
| positive rights (freedom to) and negative rights (freedom
| from) tend to be treated very differently, leading to no
| inherent contradiction between believing in the unborn
| child's right to not be killed, and believing that same
| child has no right to free care.
| gwd wrote:
| > Same states that demonize abortions also cut health
| services for children and mothers. All states that had a
| trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family
| leave.
|
| Suppose for the sake of argument that you're a person who
| thinks health services for children and paid family leave
| are important; but you _also_ think that abortion is the
| moral equivalent of murder. You can vote for:
|
| * Team Blue, who will increase children's health services
| and advocate for paid family leave, but slaughter
| millions of innocent children [Remember, I'm not claiming
| this is true, I'm trying to put you in the mind of a
| hypothetical person who believes this way]
|
| * Team Red, who will decrease children's health services
| and family leave, but restrict the slaughter of innocent
| children.
|
| I mean, if that's what you actually believe, then it
| really has to be Team Red, doesn't it?
|
| I don't pretend to know what politicians think; it seems
| pretty likely that a lot of them are cynically using
| abortion as a ploy to get people to vote for policies
| that favor their rich donors. But I can tell you that an
| awful lot of people who actually vote are genuine in
| their opposition to it. If you want people to _vote_
| differently, you have to understand where the _voters_
| are coming from, not where their _politicians_ are coming
| from.
| eric_cc wrote:
| > All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also
| do not have paid family leave. So they only kinda sorta
| care about the child in the womb but not about the mother
| or the child when they are born.
|
| Or they're more capitalist in their thinking and expect
| people to take care of themselves as opposed to leaving
| it up to the government.
|
| Who is right and who is wrong comes down to opinion. But
| I don't believe it's as simple as "the other side doesn't
| care as much as we do"
| bardworx wrote:
| That's a fair counter-point. If we had to create a model
| to test my hypothesis, what do you believe is the best
| way to go about it?
|
| My proposal is as follows: Take the GDP, per capita, per
| state and compare expansion/contraction of before Roe and
| after Roe. We can measure % change in the 10 years pre
| Roe to 10 years post Roe. The hypothesis is that states
| never cared about children and as such, post Roe, GDP
| expansion in states that had abortion abolished
| experienced a much higher GDP, per capita growth than
| before.
|
| Information can be sourced from St. Luis FED.
|
| If you have another idea, please let me know. I'm
| personally curious about this and would like to explore
| so feel free to pick apart my post as it will just render
| a more thought out experiment.
|
| Thanks.
|
| edit: If someone is a data scientist that can comment on
| what is the correct methodology to take or what pitfalls
| to consider, I would highly appreciate it.
| forty wrote:
| Exactly, so much bullshit when the only goals are really
| to make sure poor people stay poor and that women don't
| work...
| bardworx wrote:
| I believe the "real" reason is to disenfranchise voters
| and seal their majority.
| diob wrote:
| Honestly, if the Supreme Court had ruled unborn children
| as having rights beyond this I could take you seriously,
| but they literally have nothing beyond the right to a
| womb.
|
| Do they count in the census? Can I say they're a
| dependent?
|
| Heck, why don't we make periods and ejaculation illegal.
| After all, those eggs and sperm are viable! Men shouldn't
| be allowed to pull out, wear condoms, or masturbate.
| Won't someone think of the children?! Oh, I almost forgot
| to ban sodomy too! Good heavens!
|
| And what about contraception? That's coming next. What is
| your argument then?
|
| The thing is, we have evidence based ways to reduce the
| need for unnecessary abortions, but the "right" isn't
| concerned about that. We know, for a fact, that access to
| contraception and sex education dramatically reduce
| abortion levels.
|
| We know for a fact that making it illegal does not, it
| merely causes dangerous abortions to increase.
|
| How do you square that? The "facts don't care about your
| feelings" crowd somehow can't grasp, or refuse to grasp,
| the consequences of their actions.
|
| I'm also interested in how you feel about the rights of
| rape victims. Perhaps you'd like to carry the baby for
| them?
| soco wrote:
| You mean that contraception which is in line for the next
| court decision?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It isn't an inference or extrapolation either. From
| today's decision, citations my own:
|
| > For that reason, in future fases, we should reconsider
| all of this Court's substantive due process precedents,
| including _Griswold_ [1], _Lawrence_ [2], and
| _Obergefell_ [3].
|
| The decision advocates for re-ruling on each of these
| cases. If these should be decided against their current
| status, expect states to outlaw contraception, gay
| relations, and same-sex marriage.
|
| 1. Ruled that contraception bans are unconstitutional htt
| ps://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/griswold_v_connecticut_%2819
| ...
|
| 2. Ruled that sodomy bans are unconstitutional
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/lawrence_v._texas
|
| 3. Ruled that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-556
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Isn't this from Thomas's concurrence?
|
| In other words, Thomas has always been crazy about this
| sort of thing but no one else on the court agrees.
|
| Hence why nobody else signed on to this concurrence.
| fragmede wrote:
| That's not as far fetched as you would hope. Of course by
| the time we see that come to pass it'll be too late.
| diob wrote:
| Exactly. They won't stop there either.
| moomin wrote:
| You're assuming the legislatures of the states reflects the
| views of the majority. Which gerrymandering and voting
| suppression has long since assured it does not.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| And don't forget, that door swings both left and right.
| diordiderot wrote:
| The Dems held a gerrymandering advantage for one year of
| the past 50 gaining one 'underserved seat' advantage over
| republicans. This is no longer the case...
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > The EU has similar safeguards where you need effectively
| 3 keys to enable a law (European parliament, European
| commission, and the Council), not a simple 51% majority.
|
| It's even more than that. In the council (where the
| governments of the member countries are present) you need
| majority based on number of citizens in the countries and
| also votes from a number of countries, so that few big
| countries can't overrule the small ones, but you always
| need support from small _and_ big countries.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Trump won white women in both presidential elections, and
| Trump got to stamp the court with three justices.
|
| 98% of black women voted for Clinton.
|
| In 2016, 55% of voters were women, which trump won 47-44. By
| three points, which is a solid win in a presidential general
| election.
|
| So Trump won the largest voting race+gender demographic.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/892859/women-support-
| ove...
|
| For republican-leaning women (which will be white women based
| on the female black vote numbers), it is basically 50-50 in
| support/opposition for Roe V Wade. For Dem-leaning it is
| 85-15 roughly.
|
| Roe V Wade is the most important women's right won in the
| courts in the last 50 years, and women voted to overturn it
| effectively.
|
| Finally, this is the culmination of the liberal justices
| refusing to step down or retire. Ruth Baider Ginsburg is held
| up as a pinnacle of feminism, and yet her stubbornness to
| continue serving despite health problems and battles with
| cancer resulted in Trump getting a crucial third justice.
|
| The most stalwart feminist justice handed the overturn of Roe
| V Wade to a president with a known record for sexual
| impropriety if not outright assault.
|
| Obama sat on Merrick Garland.
|
| The baby boomer generation ushered in sexual freedom when it
| was their time to be young and free, and then shut the door
| on it in their old age crapping over all the other
| generations.
|
| What a world.
| mikevm wrote:
| kaba0 wrote:
| Let me assume you are male..
|
| Also, what happens with rape victims? Or you know, women
| often know about their pregnancy weeks after the event?
|
| Also, you are literally less likely to die from donating
| your kidney then a women giving birth. Do you really have
| no empathy whatsoever? Giving birth is brutal, you have a
| no matter how disgusting it is to write but technically a
| parasite growing inside you sucking out every resource
| you have causing often life altering changes. And we are
| not even at birthing.
|
| I am also a guy by the way, but that is exactly why I
| believe that the only opinion we should have on the issue
| is to listen to women, and the only voice we should have
| is to shout over old men deciding on a topic not
| concerning them.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| My neighbor had an IUD in place when she conceived a 4th
| child in her early 40s. The pregnancy was ectopic (or
| misplaced in some way) and the doctor said it would
| "resolve" on its own. It did not and now she has a
| disabled 5 year old.
| gcbirzan wrote:
| It was definitely not ectopic, there is no way in which
| an ectopic pregnancy resulted in a birth.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > In 2016, 55% of voters were women, which trump won 47-44.
| By three points, which is a solid win in a presidential
| general election.
|
| You're quoting stats for white women only, Trump lost the
| female vote 54/39.
|
| Which makes this claim factually incorrect:
|
| > Roe V Wade is the most important women's right won in the
| courts in the last 50 years, and women voted to overturn it
| effectively.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-
| examinati...
|
| I'd imagine if you combined the age demographic
| information, the female vote that may actually be able to
| get pregnant and so be affected by this is going to swing
| even harder away from Trump.
|
| The combined male and female vote swings 30% to the red
| between the 18-29 and 65+ demographics.
| esyir wrote:
| For the record, Ginsburg thought that Roe vs Wade was a
| mistake, for this exact reason. Momentum was lost to get
| actually good legislation in, and the vulnerable Roe vs
| Wade was put in instead.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| She wanted a privileges or immunities clause (in 14th
| Amendment) based argument instead. The issue there is
| that reopening the Slaughterhouse cases (which shut that
| line of questioning down) will reopen the obiter dicta
| therein on birthright citizenship. Pick one, abortion or
| birthright citizenship?
| Beltiras wrote:
| This court will never say a federal law allowing abortion
| is constitutional. Thomas is 74 and Alito is 72. A lot of
| stars need to align so that anything can be done about
| this. The lone thing I see changing the calculus is if
| women in red states stage a mass protest by actually
| moving to blue states in massive numbers.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| In what way would it not be constitutional? Wouldn't a
| petitioner have to cite the preexisting implied rights or
| explicit laws violated in order for the case to even have
| standing?
| lkjdsklf wrote:
| > mass protest by actually moving to blue states in
| massive numbers
|
| That actually makes the problem worse. You can't undo
| this without changing the court. You can't change the
| court without the senate and you can't get the senate of
| team blue continues to isolate it self in a handful of
| states.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Or maybe the women in red states can vote for democrats?
| The 2022 elections outcome could turn out very
| unexpected.
| peyton wrote:
| Doesn't your argument apply also to state abortion
| legalization laws under equal protection? Are those
| getting struck down? I haven't been keeping up with this
| topic.
| aksss wrote:
| This ruling has zero effect in my state where abortion is
| protected under the state constitution, and there's near
| zero chance of a constitutional convention being formed
| in my lifetime, much less enough consensus being found at
| such a meeting.
| mcguire wrote:
| Republicans have been floating a national ban on
| abortions; if the Republicans take the legislature in
| November, it is likely to be the first item on the
| agenda.
|
| Roe v. Wade was the only thing preventing that.
| Beltiras wrote:
| This majority is regressive enough to go full Handmaid's
| Tale I fear.
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Other things the Supreme Court has blocked state law using
| the same logic as roe v Wade (due process of the 14th
| amendment[0]) on are blocking contraception bans (grisewald),
| overturning anti-sodomy laws (lawrence), and giving equal
| protection to gay marriage (obergafel).
|
| Also, non-discrimination in public schooling, with mandatory
| integration ( _Brown_ ) but even before integration was
| understood to be essential ( _Plessy_ , permitting "separate
| but equal" education.) Without substantive due process, state
| public education which is separate by race _and makes no
| pretense of equality_ would be fine. Also, _the incorporation
| of much of the Bill of Rights as applicable against the
| states_ , as a whole.
|
| Substantive due process is _enormous_ , and Thomas has
| _explicitly_ stated that the entire jurisprudence in that
| domain should be uprooted in his concurrence on _Dobbs_.
|
| (Ironically, this _includes_ the applicability of the 2nd
| Amendment to the State.)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's important to note that most Americans don't agree on
| letting the states enforce this because abortion is a
| particularly sore issue for everyone. Pro life people believe
| abortion is literally murder, and therefore, no state should
| allow it. Pro choice people believe that banning abortion is
| oppression, and therefore, no state should be allowed to ban
| it.
|
| That kind of suggests that the states are the right place to
| handle the issue.
| mattnewton wrote:
| As I wrote elsewhere, states rights has long been the motte
| of all kinds of minority social opinions in the Bailey. The
| broad consensus is being held hostage by a minority in some
| state legislatures, and in the senate, and has now trickled
| into a 6-3 Supreme Court with lifetime appointments of
| comparatively young justices.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| As I understand it, the "correct" position that is held
| by the majority of Americans is that we should have safe,
| widely-available abortions up to about 12-16 weeks.
| That's how it is in Europe. Right now, we have two
| parties full of nutjobs: one party wants state-subsidized
| free abortions available up to point of birth, and the
| other party wants to completely ban them. The reasonable
| group has left the building.
| [deleted]
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think it would be wise to look beyond today's issues.
|
| Earlier this month in _Egbert v Boule_ , the Supreme Court
| said you have no right to sue a federal employee or the
| agency for which they they work over violations of your 4th
| amendment rights, as long as the agency has a complaint
| procedure (operated by that same agency). Yesterday in _Vega
| v. Tekoh_ they decided that you don 't have a cause of action
| against a police officer who doesn't read you your rights
| (although such testimony remains inadmissible).
|
| In the months and years to co come, ultra-conservatives aim
| to eliminate birth control and install an overbearing
| theocratic government. They are not shy about saying so, nor
| are they a marginal fringe lacking influence. There was
| already one serious (albeit poorly executed) effort to
| interfere with the constitutional transfer of power.
| Conventional politics are very much over in the US.
| rayiner wrote:
| I assume the birth control ban is coming after the
| internment camps for brown people, which liberals assured
| me were forthcoming if Trump was elected.
|
| The over the top reaction to _Roe_ being overturned is
| amazing. It's literally the lowest hanging fruit--a legal
| decision so poorly reasoned that even Democrats only defend
| it by the mere fact of its existence as precedent. It's a
| decision so bad that it unites a GOP that actually has
| quite a lot of internal disagreement about abortion. (As
| does the Democratic Party, actually. Roughly 30% of each
| party disagrees with their party's stance abortion stance.)
| It's a decision that enshrines as a right elective second
| trimester abortions, something that's illegal in nearly
| every other developed nation, and something 2 /3s of
| Americans oppose.
| shaftway wrote:
| In Thomas' opinion he literally says that the supreme
| court should reconsider a number of cases including the
| one that prevents birth control bans. That makes me
| assume it'll come * _before*_ the internment camps for
| brown people. (I can use tongue-in-cheek rhetoric too)
| zinclozenge wrote:
| I doubt there'll be internment camps. But deportations,
| canceling visas and green cards is something I expect if
| republicans are in power again.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Deportations, yes. Visas and green cards, why? Liberals
| seem to have this idea that Republicans are just
| blatantly racist and want to kick everyone that's not
| white out of the country. Once you get past the
| propaganda, and actually talk to them, you find that they
| simply don't want people here that snuck past the border.
|
| If you legally obtained permission to reside here, nobody
| except for the KKK has qualms with you.
| rayiner wrote:
| I'm not being tongue-in-cheek. I'm brown--white people
| literally came up to me telling me that Trump would send
| me to internment camps. Liberals so deeply believe that
| social issues are their exclusive domain that they
| literally cannot distinguish between Republicans
| prevailing on an issue where the law and many aspects of
| public opinion are against them ( _e.g._ _Roe_ 's
| protection of second trimester abortions, which most
| Americans oppose), and being able to prevail on issues
| where 90% of Republicans themselves agree with liberals
| (contraception). Both are impingements on the left's
| monopoly over social issues and the analysis does not
| need to proceed further than that.
| tigershark wrote:
| Knowing that someone like you, that loves this criminal
| judgement, is brown made my day. At least you will see
| real soon the direct consequences of your vote and your
| rejoicing of other people misery and countless women
| deaths.
|
| First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak
| out-- Because I was not a socialist.
|
| Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not
| speak out-- Because I was not a trade unionist.
|
| Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
| Because I was not a Jew.
|
| Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak
| for me.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Given your history on the issue[1][2][3], I don't think
| its reasonable to trust your judgement on how the court
| will vote.
|
| I think it's worth keeping in mind that either you were
| disingenuous years ago, or you yourself have moved to the
| right over time as well, as not only do you badly
| mispredict the court (and even mispredict how extreme
| Thomas would be [5]!), assuming it would have a stronger
| respect for precedent than it did, but also you yourself
| seem to have changed from a supporter of roe[4] to, well,
| whatever you are now which seems to be someone who is
| willing to quote contradictory statistics in order to
| claim that Roe's 24 week line has less support than it
| does (per [6] and [7], both sources you've quoted to
| claim that most Americans want more restrictions than Roe
| show that >60% overall and 30% of conservatives support
| the line Roe defines).
|
| If the conservative majority on the court is willing to
| overturn a ruling supported by 60-65% of the population,
| what's to say they won't revert a much weaker precedent
| with only 70% popular support? You seem to be highly
| content to be a boiled frog.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24525637
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12994309
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311034
|
| [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801204
|
| [5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30980056
|
| [6]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2022/06/13/about-six-i...
|
| [7]: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-
| majority-want-...
| random314 wrote:
| That's some brilliant research and take down.
|
| It can be really difficult to pin down a consistent Gish
| galloper, but you did great!
| glogla wrote:
| He went from "it will never happen" to "of course it
| happened, that was obvious, but the next thing will never
| happen" as per normal fascist playbook. This is what
| people like him do. I wouldn't waste time trying to
| understand.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| How did you find these so fast? Do you glow in the dark?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| As an accomplished lawyer and long-time political
| commentator here, it's disappointing that you resorted to
| mockery by invoking hyperbolic comparisons.
|
| In his concurrence with today's _Dobbs_ ruling, Justice
| Thomas wrote: '[...] in future cases, we should
| reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process
| precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and
| Obergefell.'
|
| (For non legal nerds, those cases are concerned with
| birth control, sexual privacy, and gay marriage
| respectively.)
|
| You're surely also aware of legislative and electoral
| pitches to substantially restrict birth control. I don't
| think I'm being hyperbolic by simply mentioning the
| existence of ultra-conservatives and observing that they
| have some political influence. When one of the nine
| Supreme Court justices indicates a willingness to revisit
| multiple landmark cases only a foolish person would
| ignore the possibility.
| leereeves wrote:
| Even if your interpretation is correct, that's just one
| justice writing a separate and solo concurring opinion.
|
| And that justice comes from a different generation than
| the other 5 who voted to overturn, so there's even less
| reason to assume the others share his views.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I am sorry you had to deal with hysterical people, but
| I'm just taking Thomas at his word when he says a court
| overturning Grisewald, Lawrence and Obergafel and would
| be prudent. It's not the same thing at all.
|
| Also, as an aside, we have internment camp like settings
| for brown asylum seekers and have mistakenly deported
| American citizens to them on multiple occasions, but this
| is an ongoing issue that Trump did not fix, rather than
| one caused by Trump.
| miohtama wrote:
| Do internment camps come before or after segregating
| people of colour in buses and toilets?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let's hope you won't find out.
| jopsen wrote:
| If shops actually stop selling birth control moderate
| Americans might be galvanized into voting :)
|
| I think that would affect a lot of people.. they might be
| shy to speak out, but if suddenly it's not available they
| might vote.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| What is voting going to use in gerrymandered or
| "stronghold" areas, which most of the US effectively is?
|
| US democracy, at least from an European POV, is
| _completely and fundamentally broken_ , to the point that
| it will need a civil war to reset it to at least somewhat
| sane levels:
|
| - The GOP as a party is so far gone off the rails, so
| many actual Conservatives have left that there is barely
| any intra-party resistance left to the Tea Party, Trump
| and QAnon ideologues.
|
| - A large enough part of the GOP voter base is similarly
| radicalized after decades of brainwashing. Seriously, the
| kind of stuff that Fox "News" airs daily is _scary_. They
| will keep preventing reasonable politicians to challenge
| people like MTG.
|
| - The Democrat Party, which is center-right in its actual
| political doings from an European POV, has other issues:
| gerontocratic people like Feinstein or Biden who have
| _long ago_ lost touch with the 99%, corruption,
| incompetence, and most importantly the lack of backbone.
| There have been many chances to codify access to
| abortions, everyone knew how thin the ice was, and the
| Democrats let _many_ chances pass to permanently close
| that risk - only because they were scared of losing one
| of their major selling points.
|
| - Wealth disparity. The US is just plain shocking - you
| have people like Musk and Bezos worth hundreds of
| billions of dollars, money they can't ever truly spend
| even if they have a dozen children... and at the same
| time people die because they have to stretch out their
| expensive insulin or can't afford an epi-pen. Or they
| freeze to death because even while employed they cannot
| afford a home.
|
| - Climate change, assuming that the US will be able /
| willing to do anything past November, will need an awful
| lot of investments to handle. The Republicans won't grant
| any money (either because of "financial stability" or
| because "electric cars are for woke softies"), and the
| young people see the clock ticking. Some of them will
| radicalize, up to and including terrorism - why else were
| there snipers on the Supreme Court?
|
| Add on top of that the aftermath of covid - which still
| isn't over! - and the costs of the Ukraine war... and
| there's a perfect storm scenario of enormously
| destructive potential.
| Bhilai wrote:
| Not sure why you were downvoted, this is exactly how I
| and many friends I talk to feel.
| zarathustreal wrote:
| Probably because this point of view is (almost*) entirely
| disconnected from reality. Democrats are right wing? I
| shudder to think of the circles you and OP must run in.
| God help us all.
| iostream24 wrote:
| Center right, by global standards.
|
| Maybe your views have been distorted by right wing news
| calling Biden "far left" which is an objective falsehood.
|
| I've seen over half the nations on earth and I stand
| behind the OP assessment of the US Dem party as center
| right. Do investigate a bit before knee jerk responding
| from a position of falsehood
| pseudo0 wrote:
| Trying to map all the nations of the world on a
| reductionist 1d axis is rather silly, but do you really
| classify the Democrats as adjacent to countries that
| still stone women to death for adultery? Your "global
| standards" seem to be awfully Eurocentric.
| cosmical65 wrote:
| In the US you have two choices, so you see them relative
| to each other. You consider democrats left wing and
| conservatives right wing.
|
| In Europe there is a plethora of parties all throughout
| the political spectrum.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I explicitly wrote _from an European POV_. Stuff like not
| having mandatory and functional health insurance... even
| our far right doesn 't want to question that.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| HN in general tends to be on the pacifist, anti-
| militarist, technology-solves-everything side. Which is a
| pretty decent thing in general, don't get me wrong, but
| dogmatic followers of such attitudes got us Trump, the
| invasion of Ukraine and now this shit.
|
| _Si vis pacem para bellum_ , and there _will_ be war. I
| honestly am unable to think of a scenario that will
| prevent a collapse of _at least_ the US democracy, if not
| the rest of the world with it (because let 's face it,
| the US picked up the tab to ensure the freedom of
| democracies while us Europeans stood aside). The only
| thing capable of stopping the spiral towards death is if
| the Democrats win a solid majority in November... but
| that is _completely_ unrealistic.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| After the Democrats handling of COVID, I think the
| Democrats might lose worse than ever before in history.
| There's going to be a conservative dynasty for many years
| to come.
| zackees wrote:
| > What is voting going to use in gerrymandered or
| "stronghold" areas, which most of the US effectively is?
|
| Gerrymanding is part of the constitution, that's why it
| exists everywhere. You WANT the representatives deciding
| the boundaries because they are ultimately beholded to
| the people, unlike most executive or judiciary who are
| appointed.
|
| > The GOP as a party is so far gone off the rails, so
| many actual Conservatives have left that there is barely
| any intra-party resistance left to the Tea Party, Trump
| and QAnon ideologues.
|
| The leftist regime mandated the firing of people that
| wouldn't get an experimental mRNA vaccine that had never
| been used before at scale, which is causing more damage
| than Covid19 itself. There's nothing that you can point
| to the GOP as even approaching this level of civil rights
| violation.
|
| The left has installed DA's that don't enforce law and
| has turned every major city into an open air drug market.
|
| Biden has destroyed the economy, ushered in a recession
| and weaponized the DOJ against half of America. They
| claimed the 2016 election was rigged (https://twitter.com
| /theMRC/status/1538665431707287553?s=20&t...), then when
| they rigged it, made questioning the election
| "misinformation" and in extreme cases, evidence of
| insurrection.
|
| In COP25 prince charles stated openly that the world
| needed a global military operation on the scale of the
| marshal plan to combat climate change:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-new-
| york/m...
|
| The "science of global warming" is settle, because all
| the scientists that opposed it with hard facts got their
| careers destroyed, their papers pulled, while psuedo
| science IPCC funded papers publishing results of
| unreproducible computer simulations fly through peer
| review. Even questioning global warming goes against the
| terms of conditions of the social media cartels and can
| get your post deleted and your account banned.
|
| There's growing totalitarianism, and it's mostly on the
| left. The right doesn't own the hedge funds, the banks,
| the msm, the social media companies etc.. The left owns
| that. You can't own the levers of power and then claim
| that the marginalized group is the cause of the
| everyone's ill.
| iostream24 wrote:
| "Leftist regime "
|
| Pardon your wrongness what?
|
| There has never been a leftist party in power in the USA
| in its entire history.
|
| Fox "news" calling blue dog Joe Biden far-left doesn't
| make it true.
|
| It's an objective falsehood, an inaccurate label used as
| an epiphet as a relic from Cold War insinuating thst
| someoen is communist, which is an example of an actual
| left wing party, by the way... or at least one that
| claims to be left wing. Pelosi is a capitalist, by any
| way of analyzing her and her husbands actual lives.
|
| Do try to pull your head out of the nonsense a bit and
| engage with the other people here if you bother to write.
| No one buys your "Biden is left wing " nonsense , that
| much is clear.
| runarberg wrote:
| This statement can be measured against historical data.
| Democracies have regressed in the past. Prominent
| examples are in Russia and India, but also in Poland (as
| courts were made political) and Hungary.
|
| I do wonder if those trends actually deliver more turnout
| or less. I suspect less actually, as non-results are
| actually pretty demotivating in altering behavior.
|
| I'm not a historian but hopefully someone here is, and is
| able to make an educated guess of what the actual trends
| are.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I don't know if it would. There are a huge number of
| people whose political views are basically incoherent
| [1], and on top of that "moderates" are an actually
| mostly nonexistent byproduct of the many people who don't
| fit neatly into the current political order [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5891765/millennials-
| incoherent...
|
| [2]: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5878293/lets-stop-
| using-the-wor...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The irony of using Vox as a source of bias judgement
| which itself is extremely left-biased:
| https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > Where you see delegating to the states, I see a minority
| (less than 30% of Americans agree with this)
|
| Provide the source and the question that was asked on it. The
| majority of Americans think it should be up to the states,
| whether the state is for or against
| mattnewton wrote:
| CNN reported the number has never been above 36% for
| "should roe v wade be overturned"
| https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/24/politics/americans-
| roe-v-...
|
| Gallup puts the number of legal under all cases at 35% of
| Americans and legal under some conditions at 50%.
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
|
| Trigger laws in places like Oklahoma make it illegal in
| basically all cases after fertilization. Texas law is going
| to let Texans sue people for providing or getting abortions
| out of state. Framing this as a states rights issue didn't
| work for slavery, segregation, gay rights, etc and it won't
| work for women's reproductive rights either.
| ameister14 wrote:
| >Gallup puts the number of legal under all cases at 50%
| of Americans and legal under some conditions at 35%.
|
| You have those reversed.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Fixed, thank you
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > CNN reported the number has never been above 36% for
| "should roe v wade be overturned"
|
| the poll said "completely overturned", which is the more
| radical position. roe v wade being completely overturned
| is not the same as "delegating to the states" per your
| original comment, because the federal protection could be
| weakened to only support specific cases or require an
| earlier termination which would leave more room for state
| laws.
|
| You're framing the issue in a way that's misleading,
| because while the majority of americans oppose completely
| overturning roe, another majority could support weakening
| roe or limiting it to specific cases
| Bud wrote:
| Could you please at least do two minutes of research
| before coming in here with this take, using a brand-new
| burner junk account no less?
|
| This is the most polled issue in American politics and
| has been for half a century. We _know with certainty_
| that a large majority of the public supports abortion
| rights. We don 't need to talk about what "another
| majority could support". That theory has been shot down
| thousands of times over the last 50 years.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| sanedigital wrote:
| > "Where you see delegating to the states, I see a minority
| (less than 30% of Americans agree with this) enforcing social
| views on the majority".
|
| That's not true, only 26% of Americans support abortion in
| almost all cases. Most support some sort of restriction. This
| ruling forces the States to determine what those restrictions
| are.
|
| This is an extremely complicated and nuanced cultural issue.
| The debate that's happening now is one that was cut short by
| Roe--one that the rest of the West has had. Few other
| countries allow abortion with "no restrictions". States
| should be allowed to decide, individually, where they want to
| draw the line.
|
| I'll add that this is in no way an endorsement of an anti-
| choice position. But there's no way to view this as "a
| minority enforcing social views on the majority."
|
| The primary civic problem in this country is the neutering of
| our State and Federal legislatures. The Courts should not be
| legislating. The Executive should not be legislating. Force
| our Representatives to do their damn jobs.
| mattnewton wrote:
| > The primary civic problem in this country is the
| neutering of our State and Federal legislatures. The Courts
| should not be legislating. The Executive should not be
| legislating. Force our Representatives to do their damn
| jobs.
|
| This is just another symptom of the disease of the
| disproportional representation everywhere in our systems,
| most importantly the senate. The senate confirmed (or in
| the case of Garland, refused to confirm) these justices,
| and the senate refuses to pass laws the majority of
| Americans want.
|
| > But there's no way to view this as "a minority enforcing
| social views on the majority."
|
| How can you interpret the Texas law as anything but? This
| decision and those laws are all the product of concerted
| and focused lobbying and maneuvering by conservative
| Christian groups that make up a minority of Americans.
| leereeves wrote:
| Claims about disproportional representation are almost
| always based on presidential election results, ignoring
| the midterm elections, even though the midterms are
| equally important for the Senate.
|
| The 2014 election shouldn't be ignored, because it
| explains why Garland wasn't confirmed and Trump's
| appointments were. That year, Republicans won the popular
| vote by a margin of almost 6%, and won 9 seats in the
| Senate.
|
| That election gave them control of the Senate until 2020,
| and that outcome was representative of the popular vote.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_States_election
| s
| chmod600 wrote:
| "This is a small minority that just needs 51% of voter
| turnout"
|
| I'm unclear what definition of "minority" you are using here.
| That sounds like a majority to me.
|
| Comparing with poll numbers is not an apples-to-apples
| comparison. A lot of polls are highly motivated to support a
| particular outcome, but when you look into the details and
| ask questions a number of different ways, you get a more
| complex picture.
|
| For instance, if you ask "how long should elective abortions
| be legal?" you may get an answer that seems to contradict "do
| you support _Roe_? ". And then if you start to define
| "elective" (or even use different words) you might get a
| different answer still. I'm not saying which one is the
| "right" question to ask, but I am saying that it's not
| reasonable to reject actual vote totals in a free and fair
| election.
| mattnewton wrote:
| > I'm unclear what definition of "minority" you are using
| here. That sounds like a majority to me.
|
| It is a majority of a smaller area but the minority of the
| larger area. Majority of a gerrymandered district for state
| representation. Majority of a purple state senate race, or
| one that has winner take all electoral vote allocation, as
| most do.
|
| And of course, majority in Texas when the views held there
| are a minority for the overall country but they still pass
| laws letting people bring charges in Texas courts for
| abortions, even performed outside of Texas by people
| without representation in Texas state legislature, though I
| have some hope that this is a bridge too far even for the
| current partisan 6-3 court. No reason they wouldn't allow
| it here while saying it couldn't be used as precedent as
| many members for the current court argued in Bush v Gore.
| runarberg wrote:
| The elected representatives of the Democratic party is
| overwhelmingly moderate. There are a handful of conservative
| democrats and equally many progressive democrats. Progressive
| democrats have been loosing as many primaries as they win, but
| overwhelmingly they are not up for election, instead a moderate
| democrat is the default choice.
|
| The same can not be said about the Republican Party. This is
| not a both sides issue. Polarization is happening on the right
| wing in the American Party system, and the right wing alone.
| klyrs wrote:
| > The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the
| views of the voting majority.
|
| No, not this "democracy." The supermajority of supreme court
| justices were mostly seated by presidents who lost the popular
| vote. This ruling is _incredibly_ unpopular among citizens of
| the US, but the court is also pro-gerrymandering, so the
| unpopularity is unlikely to have any real impact on elections.
| The country is rapidly hurtling towards religious
| authoritarianism, and the checks and balances to prevent that
| have largely been dismantled.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > but the court is also pro-gerrymandering
|
| See the redistricting of North Carolina
|
| > so the unpopularity is unlikely to have any real impact on
| elections
|
| Or maybe it isn't as unpopular as you think?
|
| > The country is rapidly hurtling towards religious
| authoritarianism, and the checks and balances to prevent that
| have largely been dismantled.
|
| Yes of course, because religious authoritarianism == allowing
| democratically elected state officials to determine their own
| state laws
|
| If anything is authoritarian, it's the insistence on the
| court creating federal "laws" where there is no majority in
| congress. If you want abortion protection, pass it through
| congress
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The GOP now has in place in several red/swing states
| legislatures that are ready to overrule electoral college
| votes determined by the popular vote and handing it over to
| those determined by republican legislatures. Lots of states
| have promoted Big Lie proponents to the highest election
| positions in their states, they now have a 6-3 super
| majority SCOTUS who will back up these decisions in the
| next Presidential election. Once that happens authoritarian
| Trumpists will take power because they have control of the
| military via Presidential power. If you can't see that then
| you've been living under a rock. That's when the American
| experiment fails.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Nothing that happened today has anything to do with democracy.
|
| The Republicans have successfully infiltrated state
| legislatures, gerrymandered and some states now are effectively
| under one-party rule. Take Wisconsin [1] as an example:
|
| > Back in 2018, Republicans lost the popular vote in the state
| Senate races by 52.3 percent to 46.9 percent, yet gained two
| seats for a 19-14 majority. In the state Assembly, they lost
| the popular vote 53.0 to 44.8, yet lost only one seat to retain
| a 63-36 supermajority
|
| This gerymandering also affects Congressional maps. And the
| Senate [2]?
|
| > ... the Senate will be split 50-50, but the Democratic half
| will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.
|
| In the wake of 2020, red states have passed laws like Arizona
| [3] that will allow the legislature or appointed officgials to
| _overturn_ election results.
|
| And on top of all that one side conspired to "steal" the
| Supreme Court by sitting on Obama's nomination for almost a
| year and then later rushing their own replacement in the last
| month before an election.
|
| And every Supreme Court justice appointed in the last 10 years
| has said on the record that Roe v. Wade was a super-precedent.
| And today they voted to overturn. They lied. They all lied.
|
| This isn't a "both sides" issue. This is the rise of white
| Christian fascism vs the feckless controlled opposition party.
| "Bothsidesing" is both a logical fallacy and intellectually
| lazy (if not outright dishonest). It's like looking at
| Kristallnacht and saying "well both sides are at fault".
|
| There is no "both sides" here. The myth of the "far left" just
| shows how normalized right-wing propaganda has become. There
| are lilke maybe 4 progressive members of Congress while on the
| other side Nazi propaganda is openly pushed [4] and QAnon
| conspiracies are rampant in the Republican party, which may go
| as far as including Clarence Thomas and his wife who may well
| have conspired to overthrow the government.
|
| When people say "far left" or "hyperprogressive" they really
| means "trans rights". Not wanting to murder trans people
| doesn't make you a radical leftist.
|
| Please open your eyes and stop this nonsense about bothsidesing
| and polarization.
|
| [1]:
| https://theweek.com/republicans/1008820/wisconsins-1-party-r...
|
| [2]: https://www.vox.com/2020/11/6/21550979/senate-
| malapportionme...
|
| [3]: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/591597-arizona-
| bill...
|
| [4]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/us/tucker-carlson-gop-
| rep...
| saghm wrote:
| > States rights has always been a double edged sword. You can't
| have your cake and eat it too. The same state rights that allow
| gun control and homosexuality to be locally legalized before
| national concensus; also now lead to abortion legislation being
| a state issue.
|
| Except when the same court in the same week strikes down a
| state law that makes it marginally more effort to carry a
| concealed weapon in public.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Don't forget them making a decision to force Maine to pay for
| religious indoctrination "schools".
| wl wrote:
| That is a egregious misrepresentation of the law struck down
| in NYSRPA v. Bruen. In New York City, it was effectively
| impossible to get a permit to carry a concealed firearm in
| public unless one had connections and influence in the police
| department. Whether or not that is desirable from a policy
| perspective, it was far more than "marginally more effort" to
| obtain the permit.
| saghm wrote:
| > In New York City, it was effectively impossible to get a
| permit to carry a concealed firearm in public unless one
| had connections and influence in the police department.
|
| Did the law actually require connections, or was the law
| being applied unfairly? If the latter, the correct solution
| would be to force the law be applied fairly, not just throw
| out the entire law. Of course, the people who complain
| about "activist judges" are fine with judges legislating
| from the bench as long when it's in a way that furthers
| their agenda...
| chmod600 wrote:
| "If the latter, the correct solution would be to force
| the law be applied fairly..."
|
| That's essentially what _Bruen_ decided.
|
| NYC required arbitrary permission from a person rather
| than just meeting the requirements and following a
| written process. It also required a special need,
| distinguishable from the general public; where "special"
| was left to interpretation.
|
| In one county in California, it was even worse, where it
| was widely known that the way to get permits was to
| donate to the sheriff's campaign or furnish the sheriff's
| office with cool tech and perks.
|
| After _Bruen_ , there still can be a licensing process,
| but it must be written, and available to everyone who
| follows the process. Maybe it will be a two-hour safety
| seminar and some fingerprinting, or maybe it will be a 3
| week tactical training course and a blood sample.
|
| Frankly, the decision itself to strike the law was
| correct, regardless of your political affiliation. It's
| also fairly low impact... no mass shooter or gangster
| bothers with a permit anyway (certainly not the racist
| Buffalo shooter, who wasn't deterred by lack of a
| permit). Other problems like suicide are entirely
| unaffected.
|
| The impact comes from the _opinion_ , which sets
| precedent for how all other firearm laws will be
| evaluated. If you believe that government should really
| be in charge of guns, then you aren't going to like it.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| in general I think state rights lowers division, as a federal
| system is winner-take-all while a State system can be live or
| let live. of course the issue is when States violate
| Constitutional rights and hide behind State rights. however,
| diminishing States rights in favor of Federal rights ultimately
| has the same risks, i.e. let the lesson of Trump scare the hell
| out of us.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I do hope that this will motivate us to get some amendments
| passed to codify some of the rights that we've gained from
| court rulings. I hope this turns into blowback against the
| Republicans but I think there's a long road. I guess people
| just don't believe things will get "that bad" and now we'll
| see.
| MrMan wrote:
| people are very disorganized and afraid and bombarded by
| social media and news media that distorts reality. no one
| thinks they can do anything and the only people who act in an
| organized way tend to be antisocial types who just want to
| take things and control others for their benefit.
| inlined wrote:
| With the current Supreme Court the literal text of the
| constitution doesn't matter. For example, the text of the
| second amendment is pretty clear that the right to bear arms
| is in the pursuit of a well regulated militia. Our militia
| has since been regulated into the national guard. The second
| amendment is nothing more than a constitutional right to
| enlist in the national guard, but it's used to promote/codify
| extreme ideologies.
| monocasa wrote:
| I say this as a lefty: the US defines the militia as
| essientially including every able bodied man. Since it was
| written before the 14th amendment, it probably would be
| interpreted now as every adult.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246
|
| In fact the first weapon ban to hit SCOTUS, US v Miller,
| hinged on the fact that sawed off shotguns had no military
| application, which was legal basis allowing them to be
| banned. The court at the time considered bans of military
| weapons unconstitutional.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| You are wrong about the Second Amendment. It clearly states
| the rights for both militias AND individuals, it's not hard
| to suss out if you know anything about the period in which
| it was written.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > The second amendment is nothing more than a
| constitutional right to enlist in the national guard, but
| it's used to promote/codify extreme ideologies.
|
| A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to a healthy
| diet, the right of the people to grow and eat food, shall
| not be infringed.
|
| Who has the right to grow and eat food?
|
| A) The people (with no other condition)
|
| B) The people (after a waiting period and background check)
|
| C) A well balanced breakfast
|
| D) A healthy diet
|
| E) The police
| chmod600 wrote:
| Another form I've seen is:
|
| "A well-educated electorate, being necessary for the
| endurance of a free state, the right of the people to
| keep and read books shall not be infringed."
|
| Clearly you couldn't expect the right to keep and read
| books to only apply to the well-educated electorate.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah, this is more or less my understanding of it as
| well. I assume you're pointing at A. I can't speak to the
| intent because I'm not a history/law guy.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Our militia has since been regulated into the national
| guard.
|
| The national guard is controlled by the government, it's
| not a militia. The last 20+ years or so it's pretty much
| regular army.
|
| Along a similar line, do you think a free press would be
| free if the government was the one who decided who was
| press and who wasn't?
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Well, that may be clear to you. I don't think either of us
| are constitutional scholars but I think if we really want
| some meaningful gun control we should replace the 2nd
| amendment with something clearer.
| chmod600 wrote:
| This argument comes up a lot, but clearly there's _some_
| textual basis. To pretend there isn 't is to just put your
| head in the sand.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| There are non religious, anti abortion arguments. I've read
| some version of these before. They have shifted public opinion
| I believe more than religious arguments. I've read some version
| of these before, but there are probably others I'm skipping.
|
| To summarize:
|
| - We need those babies to offset huge demographic changes in
| the US population. Not enough babies are being born to offset
| the aging population.
|
| - Women having abortions earlier in life, and having babies
| later, is negatively affecting the health of the next
| generation. Autism, Downs and other diseases are all linked to
| the age of the mother.
|
| - Abortion advocates do themselves no favours by advocating for
| abortion almost up to the moment of brith. Its about public
| opinion, and the opinion on when a baby becomes viable has
| shift due to science. Babies can survive outside the womb much
| earlier.
|
| -Abortion takes out about 600,000+ babies per year in the US.
| About 40% of all US abortions are from African American
| communities. Whether you think this is good or bad, depends if
| you view abortion to be a good or bad thing. A lot of racists
| eugenists are hating this decision. So they're not happy with
| this either. So abortion can be viewed as racist policy because
| its end effect is killing so many black babies.
| lostdog wrote:
| Then why is no one doing anything to support babies if we
| want so many? Here's how to incentivise having children:
|
| - Remove fear of healthcare costs. All children can use
| Medicare. Cover pregnancy too.
|
| - Stop worries about schools. Bring all schools up to an
| acceptable level. Hire teachers at underperforming schools
| until the number of adults is high enough to handle extreme
| bad behavior and give every child a shot at a decent
| classroom experience.
|
| - Paid leave. Make it feasible to have a kid in your 20s
| without tanking your career. Have it come from social
| security, so you don't have to plan your pregnancy around
| which company you want to work for.
|
| - Fix housing costs. Make it easy to afford a nice house in
| your 20s, so having a kid doesn't feel like adding to an
| ongoing disaster.
|
| The list of things you could do to encourage having kids goes
| on and on. Of course you could just force pregnancies on the
| unwilling instead, if that's the kind of person you want to
| be.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Not that I disagree with you, all of those things would be
| nice. But its kind of like the "let them eat cake"
| proposal.
|
| - Who is going to pay for this, when the glut of your most
| productive workers (tax base) is about to retire. US
| demographics don't support a larger tax base, but a smaller
| into the near future.
|
| - People don't have babies because they live in cities. And
| cities are expensive to live, and space is at a premium. US
| already has near the highest standard of living in the
| world. Yet it can't overcome cities being expensive places
| to live. This is kind of universal.
|
| - We are facing a period where Globalization is coming
| under sever strain. This points to lower standards of
| living in the future not higher. Look at the price of
| energy in Europe for instance. All the things you propose
| would require more people to pay more taxes, at a time when
| inflation and cost of living is going up.
|
| I do believe that the birth rate will go up, but that might
| be if the supply chains break apart due to conflicts around
| the world. Then more people will be forced to move out to
| country just to survive. And having more space would lead
| to more babies being born, since kids are useful on farms.
| progman32 wrote:
| > - Who is going to pay for this
|
| If we're reducing this to money, who will pay for the
| ongoing costs of unwanted children and the results of the
| risk factors they'll be exposed to?
| lostdog wrote:
| Yeah, my list was just a list of things that kids need.
| "How are we going to pay for this???" really is just a
| subtle "fuck you it's your problem now" to the parents.
| [deleted]
| InTheArena wrote:
| The abortion maximalist position, as well as the pro-life
| maximalist positions, do no one any good here. Someone in
| Mississippi came up with the idea of grabbing what by all
| appearances is a pretty mainstream European law, and applying
| it - and waiting for the inevitable lawsuit and overreach.
|
| And abortion has absolutely had significant impacts on racism
| - but that racism pre-dates abortion.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| At the end of the day, I think it's becoming increasingly clear
| that US democracy is dysfunctional, so arguments in favour of
| what the ideal democratic approach would be sorta feel a bit
| naive.
|
| It's abundantly clear that the right-wing movement that has
| influenced the supreme court doesn't care about decorum or what
| should happen in a democracy, and playing fair against an
| opponent who is openly, brazenly cheating without consequences
| is a losing game.
|
| If it requires a less than democratically ideal approach to
| protect women's autonomy, then so be it.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Very well said. Democrats reminds me of Eddard Stark from
| Game of Thrones, always doing the honorable thing and getting
| outmaneuver by people who don't play fair.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| FIRST: If SCOTUS should stay out of big, divisive cultural
| decisions, then they should do it point-forward and not by
| hopping right back in the fray.
|
| SECOND: Abortion is seen as a fundamental right for womens'
| health, and there are many documented reasons for getting
| abortion that are not merely "convenience". There are things
| which should not be prohibited by the democratic process, since
| they are human rights.
|
| THIRD: There is no scientific basis for restricting abortion; I
| would place a large bet that more than 95% of people who are
| against abortion rights base their opinion on faith-based
| teachings.
|
| FOURTH: We need to abolish the two party system via *ballot
| reform* and move to Ranked-Choice or approval voting. This will
| weaken the two parties, allow citizens to vote /for/ someone
| rather than against, and will be a more accurate gauge of
| popular sentiment.
| mountainriver wrote:
| I guess the Supreme Court shouldn't have ruled on segregation
| then.
|
| Also most anti-abortion people I talk to have more developed
| views than just faith based. There is actually no scientific
| argument for abortion
| generj wrote:
| Except of course for all the medically necessary abortions
| which are extremely scientifically justified. This decision
| will almost certainly kill thousands of women annually.
| mountainriver wrote:
| It's a question of morals not science, that should be
| completely obvious. If you believe a fetus is a human
| life then its probably more justified morally to end the
| mothers life instead of the newborn. There are of course
| some exceptions where the fetus wouldn't be viable in any
| scenario, those rapidly change with technology.
|
| To be clear I'm pro abortion when its medically needed, I
| just think people give the other side too bad of a wrap
| and act like this is settled science.
|
| Also worth noting that overturning Roe v Wade would
| reduce the loss of life if you believe a fetus is a
| person. Most abortions are not medically needed, meaning
| we are killing millions of people
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Almost happened this week in Malta:
| https://www.euronews.com/2022/06/23/barbaric-maltas-
| abortion...
| inlined wrote:
| And we have representatives who are literally pro-death.
| Some have said no exception for ectopic pregnancies and
| some have clearly stated that there is no exception for
| the life of the mother.
| mountainriver wrote:
| if you believe a fetus is a human life then Roe v. Wade
| is certainly pro-death
| Jotra7 wrote:
| achenet wrote:
| > FOURTH: We need to abolish the two party system via _ballot
| reform_ and move to Ranked-Choice or approval voting. This
| will weaken the two parties, allow citizens to vote /for/
| someone rather than against, and will be a more accurate
| gauge of popular sentiment.
|
| Yes please. The current system is completely dysfunctional.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are
| willing to strike compromises_
|
| Suppose I come along and assault you, you defend yourself, and
| then someone comes along and tells you that you are as much to
| blame as the person who assaulted you. Are they accurate, or
| just squeamish?
|
| Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring
| principles beyond maintaining equanimity, and so contribute
| mightily to shifting of overton windows and ethical drift,
| where increasingly flawed outcomes are excused in the name of
| avoiding controversy. Consider the the atrocities perpetrated
| pursuant to the Iraq war, for which nobody but the very lowest
| ranks (and only a few of them) have ever been held accountable.
|
| I respect my ideological enemies more than this panglossian
| excuse-making. At least those people stand for something.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring
| principles beyond maintaining equanimity
|
| Idk about this. Maybe they just think things are currently
| pretty good, and that the other options would be worse. I
| think democrats are largely on the right track. Just enough
| regulation to ensure market failures are fixed, broad social
| policy to do what you like as long as it doesn't harm others,
| a safety net that helps those who are down while encouraging
| everyone to work hard for the better of society.
| lodi wrote:
| I like to differentiate between "moderate" and "centrist". A
| moderate is, by my definition, someone who _has_ firm
| convictions and anchoring principles and those just happen
| today to plant them in the center of the political spectrum.
| If the Overton window shifts, today 's moderate will become
| tomorrow's conservative or liberal.
|
| By contrast a centrist always takes the middling,
| compromising position at the middle of that Overton window.
| It's _centrists_ that contribute to ethical drift.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| In the United States, a political moderate typically acts
| according to principles that the extremes of the large
| political parties don't prioritize. They are only in the
| middle because we use a one-dimensional political spectrum in
| our discourse.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Nonsense. If moderates believed that they would form their
| own party and stake out territory. Instead they say 'the
| two party system forces this on us', and do nothing about
| it. There is no 'two party system.' It's just a bistable
| equilibrium state that arises out of the winner-take-all
| voting system. Moderates find it profitable to ride that
| oscillation without worrying too much about where it takes
| them, and prefer stable mediocrity to chaotic uncertainty.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| There are multiple such parties. Wikipedia maintains a
| list of third parties. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li
| st_of_political_parties_in...
|
| Moderates also tend to run as independent candidates.
| Ross Perot is probably best known in the US.
|
| It is difficult to successfully invest resources contra
| the two party system in the US, though. I think it's a
| legitimate pragmatic decision to try to influence from
| within one of the two parties.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There are multiple small parties, but the moderate bloc
| that likes to occupy the center of the US political
| system hasn't thrown in behind any of them because (it
| appears) swinging between the two large parties is more
| profitable. Like I said, if they really meant it they
| would _stake out territory_.
|
| _I think it's a legitimate pragmatic decision to try to
| influence from within one of the two parties._
|
| So, sit in the middle and say 'both parties are too
| extreme' while bargaining with both for concessions and
| refusing to organize outside that framework, even though
| moderates/swing voters consider themselves to be the
| largest political bloc. That seems like perpetuating the
| system you complain about for profit, which is exactly
| what I complained about in the first place - a lack of
| any identifiable principle. You mention 'principles that
| the extremes of the parties don't prioritize.' What are
| they? Where are your red lines?
|
| _Moderates also tend to run as independent candidates.
| Ross Perot is probably best known in the US._
|
| Ross Perot ran _30 years ago_ , since when we have been
| through two major wars, a huge financial crisis (and
| multiple smaller recessions), a pandemic, and a
| constitutional crisis. No outside candidate has mounted a
| serious challenge since then. Plus he was only able to do
| that because he was independently very wealthy.
|
| I have posted this article about polarization here many
| times since it was published and all I ever hear from
| moderates is how bad it is, so bad that nobody can do
| anything about it. Moderates' unwillingness to anchor
| themselves to anything is a major contributor to the
| problem of polarization.
| https://www.vox.com/2015/4/23/8485443/polarization-
| congress-...
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Thanks. Fair weather moderates swinging between whichever
| party is advantageous, or less scary to espouse
| principles from within, wasn't what I was talking about,
| but I see that you were. I'm glad you clarified that and
| hopefully we both understand we were talking past each
| other for part of this.
|
| I do see specific suggestions from moderates. A lot of
| them have to do with campaign finance reform. Others have
| to do with alternate voting systems, like ranked choice.
| Ranked choice can be advantageous to extreme parties, of
| course, but they also make 2-3 more self-aware middle
| parties possible because they can stay in power as the #2
| or #3 choice without having to engage in tug-of-war.
|
| I agree that personal wealth is an unfortunate limitation
| to anyone seeking to run as whatever is in vogue D or R.
| I only mentioned Ross Perot to remind you of a well-known
| independent candidate. The 90s were a long time ago, yes!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I really appreciate your thoughtful clarification.
|
| Both of the proposals you mention are valuable and would
| do a lot to improve politics, narrow as they are. It
| would be great if there were an identifiable group
| clearly advocating for those approaches, whether within
| or outside existing party lines.
| screye wrote:
| I have frequently participated in an extreme version of this
| discussion.
|
| Think about a situation where your race was being genocided
| in a neighboring country. The fastest way to stop it would be
| to engage in war. Now if you lose, genocide goes on, you have
| no recourse and your country is vulnerable to exploitation.
|
| Instead, you can use economic levers. Maybe wait for your
| armed forces to be strong enough to go to war. Wait for
| winter and destroy food reserves. Maybe strike a deal to have
| your race only be 'persecuted' instead of genocided. Maybe
| fund militia instead.
|
| All of these are suboptimal moderate outcomes. All of these
| lead to some loss of life or huge losses of freedom.for the
| people you want to save. But it avoids the worst case
| outcome. Majority of your race stil lives.
|
| Moderates aren't spineless. Rathe, they understand that their
| agency is limited and you pull levers that are within said
| agency. If you try to climb a mountain that's too tall, it
| will lead to your demise.
|
| Idealists want to be olympic gymnasts at 30. Moderates make
| peace with being a Yoga teacher. That's not spinelessness,
| that's wisdom.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What you're describing isn't moderation, but strategy. What
| I'm talking about is people who have agency but choose not
| to exercise it because it's _inconvenient_.
| mancerayder wrote:
| > Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring
| principles beyond maintaining equanimity
|
| That's one way to put it. Here's another to think about:
| moderates lack _rigid_ principles and avoid _ideological_
| convictions.
|
| People on the extremes of both sides have a tendency to
| "paint." They paint the opposing view as monsters, and they
| paint people with independent views as "lacking convictions."
|
| It is not accurate.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| By no means am I arguing that those at the extremes are
| always right. I'm saying that if you have no other
| principles than 'compromise' then you will simply let
| yourself be pulled around by the most powerful force in a
| go-along-to-get-along fashion.
|
| Moderates are simply conflict averse and don't consider
| that there is _anything_ worth fighting for, ever.
| Unscrupulous extremists rely on them as a strategic buffer,
| because they are easy to manipulate. Neville Chamberlain
| was a moderate.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > Moderates generally lack any firm convictions or anchoring
| principles beyond maintaining equanimity, and so contribute
| mightily to shifting of overton windows and ethical drift,
| where increasingly flawed outcomes are excused in the name of
| avoiding controversy.
|
| the point of being a moderate is picking and choosing which
| policies from which party you support and which ones you
| don't. The insistence that everyone decide between one of two
| party lines is what's driving this country towards civil war
| anigbrowl wrote:
| So form a third party with middle-of-the-road policies that
| large numbers of people could get behind, because your
| buffet politics approach is clearly not working.
| akhmatova wrote:
| _If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion
| then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give
| them the mandate needed._
|
| The problem with this reasoning is that the democratic process
| has been successfully gerrymandered in many states to a point
| where "the voting majority " is longer in a position to truly
| decide.
|
| I get the foundational point you're trying to make (about
| states' rights having value), at least as a concept. But if
| you're of the belief that "if the voting majority truly cares"
| then over time the situation will mostly right itself -- and
| millions of women of all income levels (not just the poor) will
| not have to suffer the direst of consequences, while you sit
| back and wait for your prediction to come true -- you are very
| tragically mistaken.
|
| _But, the Supreme Court should not be responsible for managing
| dysfunction in other branches of govt._
|
| Simply put, you are imputing a motive to the 1973 Court that
| wasn't there. The 1973 decision was made on foundational
| grounds (having to do with a certain constitutional amendment
| which, something tells me, you also believe very strongly in
| the value of), and in view of competing interests.
|
| You can question the wisdom of the decision all you like, but
| the idea that it was handed down to "manage the dysfunction of
| other branches of govt" is supported neither by the factual
| history of the case -- nor by the Court's own writings at the
| time the decision was made.
| 49531 wrote:
| > My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both
| sides to be completely antagonistic towards each other.
|
| This opinion is about as uninformed as it can be. Currently the
| US is run by "moderate" Democrats, and extremist Republicans;
| the Right cries wolf every time the moderates do anything, and
| the moderates capitulate. If we look at American politics
| through your lens it makes zero sense.
|
| We no longer live in a democracy and haven't really since 1978
| with Buckley v. Valeo; increased by the recent supreme court
| decision in favor of Senator Cruz. There's a strong disconnect
| between what voters want and what happens in the halls of
| power, and it is increasing. The reality is that if you can
| donate to a senator enough you get "democracy".
|
| Not to be too hyperbolic, but for the average person we really
| do live in a plutocracy.
| president wrote:
| Both sides believe they are the moderates and the other are
| the radicals. Until you zoom out and stop playing tribal
| politics, you will realize both sides are batshit insane and
| nothing really matters except being civil to one another and
| trying to connect with others in ways other than politics.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Connecting with others in civil ways is great. The two
| sides are not equivalent, though. "Batshit" left opinion:
| people should be able to require others to address them
| with novel pronouns. "Batshit" right opinion: liberals
| should be rounded up and shot (or the South was the noble
| side of the Civil War or segregation should be legal or Old
| Testament should be the law of the land, etc.). These are
| not in the same neighborhood of crazy, and this is setting
| aside the prevalence of the respective opinions and the
| political power of those who espouse them. Trump endorses
| the overthrow of democracy. Biden doesn't.
|
| Promoting the both-sides falsehood _could_ help bring the
| sides together, but it amounts to letting the looters keep
| their loot to stop the rioting.
| causi wrote:
| This fight is not going to be over until the legislature
| formally defines what is and is not a person. I doubt that's
| going to happen because nobody wants to have that discussion.
| rafale wrote:
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| And why would we need to define what a woman or a man is?!
|
| Why does what gender, or sex, or pronouns have with body
| autonomy, and treatment under the laws?
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Given _Citizens United_ no one should be able to terminate a
| corporation, as corporations are people.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Citizens United does not say that corporations are people,
| it just says people are not restricted on their rights if
| they create a corporation to exercise them together.
| legutierr wrote:
| I wouldn't say nobody. Certain schools of Islam explicitly
| teach that "ensoulment" of the fetus occurs after 120 days,
| as per my limited understanding. This timeframe largely
| coincides with the beliefs of a significant majority of
| Americans (per recent surveys) that abortion should be legal
| until the first few weeks of the second trimester.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensoulment#Islam
| causi wrote:
| I like the "until it can sustain itself" argument but the
| issue is that's a moving bar. Every time technology
| improves that time gets a little bit shorter. A hundred
| years ago a five month fetus had little chance of
| surviving. Now that survival rate is 85%. If we had the
| ability to instantly and painlessly teleport a week-old
| fetus into an artificial womb, would that be cause to ban
| all abortion?
|
| The only fully consistent argument I've heard is that a
| human mind is the definition of personhood and that parents
| should be able to terminate up until several months _after_
| birth, but that 's pretty out there.
| disambiguation wrote:
| If you wouldn't mind, could you please cite both of those
| claims.
| car_analogy wrote:
| There's a much better argument to legalizing abortion, that
| holds even if one considers fetuses as persons. In that just
| as one may not be forced to donate organs or even just blood
| to save someone else's life, by the same logic, one cannot be
| forced to bear a child.
|
| Of course this is an ethical, not legal argument, so I don't
| know how it would translate to US law.
| Wistar wrote:
| "...[L]et me ask you to imagine this. You wake up in the
| morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an
| unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He
| has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the
| Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available
| medical records and found that you alone have the right
| blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and
| last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged
| into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract
| poisons from his blood as well as your own. The director of
| the hospital now tells you, 'Look, we're sorry the Society
| of Music Lovers did this to you--we would never have
| permitted it if we had known. But still, they did it, and
| the violinist is now plugged into you. To unplug you would
| be to kill him. But never mind, it's only for nine months.
| By then he will have recovered from his ailment, and can
| safely be unplugged from you.' Is it morally incumbent on
| you to accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very
| nice of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have
| to accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine
| years? Or longer still? What if the director of the
| hospital says. 'Tough luck. I agree. but now you've got to
| stay in bed, with the violinist plugged into you, for the
| rest of your life. Because remember this. All persons have
| a right to life, and violinists are persons. Granted you
| have a right to decide what happens in and to your body,
| but a person's right to life outweighs your right to decide
| what happens in and to your body. So you cannot ever be
| unplugged from him.' I imagine you would regard this as
| outrageous..."
|
| Judith Jarvis Thomas: "A Defense of Abortion," 1971. https:
| //spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.h...
| ars wrote:
| What kind of a question is that? Obviously you have to
| agree to it! What right do you have to kill someone just
| because you are inconvenienced?
|
| You aren't required to save their life, but you also
| can't kill them.
|
| Is this seriously an abortion argument, or are you just
| trolling? Are you seriously telling me people are OK with
| killing someone just because it's not convenient?
|
| I always thought that the abortion argument was because
| they did not consider their unborn child a person. If you
| do consider that child a person then obviously you can't
| kill it.
| dsego wrote:
| > What right do you have to kill someone just because you
| are inconvenienced?
|
| Bodily autonomy and integrity is not merely an
| inconvenience. It's a major principle in human rights.
| Otherwise you could demand I give you my healthy kidney
| to save your life, and if I don't I'd be "killing you".
|
| > You aren't required to save their life, but you also
| can't kill them.
|
| You're not killing the violinist, you merely withdraw
| life support you're not obligated to give it in any way,
| they die on their own.
| ars wrote:
| To use your example, you can't demand I give you a
| kidney, but once you have it (and assuming you
| immediately die without it), I can't take it back.
|
| Body autonomy is great and all, but it doesn't excuse
| murder.
|
| Like I said: I'm not required to save you, but I also
| can't kill you.
| dsego wrote:
| > Body autonomy is great and all, but it doesn't excuse
| murder.
|
| But it's not murder if I wake up in the middle of the
| procedure, walk away, and you die on the operating table.
| ars wrote:
| Changing the scenario midway does not help anyone. Unless
| you are implying you agree with me, and wish to discuss a
| new scenario.
|
| To me the lines are clear: You don't have to take action
| to save his life, but you also can not kill him by your
| actions. i.e. if everyone froze at this moment and did
| nothing - would he live, or die?
| dsego wrote:
| I wasn't changing the scenario.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| The moral question in this case isn't "Should you be able
| to unplug the violinist?" but "Should the violinist
| unplug themselves?".
|
| As an adult who is profiting from a crime committed
| against you, they are morally obligated to return you to
| your original state that existed before the crime was
| committed (even though it would return them to their
| original state, which was illness and near-term death).
|
| For a child in the womb, though, they do not have a pre-
| existing state (under the philosophical premise that
| conception is the starting point of a unique human), and
| most conceptions are not the result of crimes (although I
| can understand someone drawing a bright moral line
| between different pregnancies based on that factor).
| causi wrote:
| It also only applies to a fetus created as the result of
| rape. A fetus created by consensual sex is like if you
| walked into the hospital, sat down in the room, and
| plugged the needle into your arm yourself.
| slavak wrote:
| That is patently absurd. Consent to sexual intercourse is
| not consent to pregnancy, especially if contraceptives
| were used and failed.
|
| At the risk of stretching the metaphor to its breaking
| point, this is you choosing to go out and get drunk while
| aware that members of an unethical music lovers'
| organization are skulking about looking for victims to
| graft sick violinists onto. Sure, they no longer need to
| actively drug you because you willingly did that
| yourself, but that doesn't imply your consent to what
| happens next.
| disambiguation wrote:
| Consent to eating is consent to taking a dump.
|
| Social constructs don't apply to biology.
| causi wrote:
| _Consent to sexual intercourse is not consent to
| pregnancy_
|
| It's as much consent to pregnancy as dropping a
| cinderblock on your foot is consent to a broken toe or
| eating ten cheeseburgers a day is consent to getting fat.
| slavak wrote:
| No, it's really, really not, and this line of reasoning
| is getting absurd.
|
| People around the world routinely engage in frequent
| sexual intercourse without becoming pregnant. If you show
| me even a fraction of that same number of people who have
| demonstrated an ability to consume ten cheeseburgers a
| day for a prolonged period without gaining weight, maybe
| you'd have a point. Otherwise, this is just a blatant
| false equivalence.
| [deleted]
| maccolgan wrote:
| We are talking about a mother, courts frequently force
| parents to act in the best interests of their children even
| if it's against the interests of the parents. A mother's
| child is not an alien unrelated in any way to the mother.
| causi wrote:
| _In that just as one may not be forced to donate organs or
| even just blood to save someone else 's life, by the same
| logic, one cannot be forced to bear a child._
|
| Speaking as a generally pro-abortion person, I don't think
| it's that black and white. When you agree to sustain
| someone's life, is taking away that sustainment murder? For
| example, if you reach out and stop someone from falling off
| a cliff but then choose to let go before they regain their
| balance, is that murder? I also don't see how to logically
| reconcile the idea that abortion isn't murder but letting a
| baby starve to death _is_. Either you have a responsibility
| towards human life you created or you don 't.
| [deleted]
| car_analogy wrote:
| You and maccolgan raise good points - the parent-child
| relationship is not the same as any other. But I'm not
| sure when parental responsibilities should start. E.g.
| you said "When you _agree_ to sustain someone 's life" -
| but when one chooses abortion, presumably one never
| "agreed".
| causi wrote:
| _but when one chooses abortion, presumably one never
| "agreed"._
|
| I suppose that depends on your definition of agrees. If
| you know that sex creates babies you are agreeing to the
| baby as much as you are agreeing to an explosion when you
| light a firecracker.
| car_analogy wrote:
| I suppose in this case, if the pregnancy is the result of
| rape, contraceptive failure, or simple lack of sex
| education, abortion would be legal, and otherwise it
| wouldn't be.
|
| Maybe odd at first glance, but the more I think about it
| the more sense it makes. It helps to turn the logic on
| its head - should it be legal to deliberately or
| negligently create human fetuses, only to kill them?
| causi wrote:
| Hence my grandparent comment. Our attitudes and laws
| about what a person is are wildly different depending on
| whether we're talking about abortion, or human
| experimentation, or human cloning. We're allowed to make
| and kill fetuses but only when it _doesn 't_ serve a
| useful purpose?
| fossuser wrote:
| While I personally have strong pro-choice views I think this
| was correctly decided for the reasons you state.
|
| Abortion is a case where there is genuine disagreement among
| the public and at its core exists a genuine moral question.
| Most partisans talk past each other, but the core of it is
| about the rights of the unborn and at which point that becomes
| relevant.
|
| It's different because of this from gay rights and
| contraception which don't have this other element in question
| (for contraception specifically those against abortion because
| of rights of the fetus should be in favor of easier access).
| It's also why European laws around this are more strict,
| Denmark allows abortion without cause up to 12 weeks and with
| cause after.[0]
|
| It's better for these questions to be decided by states and
| democratic process than SCOTUS - the latter which we've seen
| cause extreme polarization. If you hold the view that the fetus
| at some point is a life with rights than the political activism
| here is consistent. Where this occurs I think is a legitimate
| question (big difference between zygote and day before birth).
|
| There is a lot of bad faith, sloppy reasoning, and motivated
| reasoning arguing here from partisans across the board.
|
| There are also real tradeoffs and young women will be the most
| harmed in states with bans because they have the least
| autonomy, but I can at least understand the strongest arguments
| from the other side [1]. Something like the laws in Denmark
| being passed at the congressional level is probably the
| desirable compromise outcome. At the moment at least SCOTUS
| thinks states cannot ban the ability to travel to a different
| state for abortions, the ability to exit is important.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Denmark
|
| [1]:
| https://www.lesswrong.com/s/3ELrPerFTSo75WnrH/p/PeSzc9JTBxha...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It's simple, fetuses don't have rights. Roe was the right
| decision. The current SCOTUS went off the farm and are now
| just an extension of the RNC because of the 6-3 supermajority
| and recent ruling show they just do whatever the republican
| platform is wrapping it up in "originalist" interpretation of
| the Constitution.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Excellent post and well reasoned. I agree that the root of
| the issue here is one that will never have a definite answer.
|
| Germany has roughly the same laws as Denmark, and now after
| this decision many states will continue to have the same
| abortion laws they have had for the last 50 years, many will
| have on par with Europe, and some will outright ban.
|
| There is no making everyone happy, but 50 options that are
| easier to change seem like a compromise to a binary split
| that will always be under attack.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Except the goalposts have now been moved. We should
| anticipate that Republicans in the US Congress will attempt
| to codify a federal ban on abortion in all 50 states.
| Indeed, many are already advocating this. We should also
| anticipate that other freedoms once thought protected by
| the US Constitution and Supreme Court will come under
| threat. Justice Thomas writes in his concurring opinion in
| Dobbs that he would like to see Obergefell, Lawrence and
| Grisword overturned. These decisions protect same-sex
| marriage, same-sex relationships, and contraception.
|
| The overturning of Roe comes just days after another ruling
| by the same Supreme Court in which they took away states'
| rights to regulate the possession of guns. States rights
| has always been a rhetorical tactic used by conservatives
| as a convenient ruse to achieve their aims. When the
| argument from states rights is helpful to their political
| aims, they rely on it. When it's harmful, they ignore it.
| fossuser wrote:
| This interview talked about some of this better than I
| can, I thought it was interesting:
| https://overcast.fm/+vpWZx2bsc
|
| Hopefully the arguments in there are correct and this
| isn't likely to expand.
| FranchuFranchu wrote:
| If the Republicans tried passing laws with a federal ban
| on abortion, a federal ban on same-sex marriage, and a
| federal ban on contraception, they would lose a very,
| very, large portion of their voting base. I highly doubt
| they will do it.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >The overruling of Roe comes just days after another
| ruling by the same Supreme Court in which they took away
| states' rights to regulate the possession of guns. States
| rights has always been a rhetorical tactic used by
| conservatives as a convenient ruse to achieve their aims.
| When the argument from states rights is helpful to their
| political aims, they rely on it. When it's harmful, they
| ignore it.
|
| You do not at all seem to understand the NYRPA vs Bruen
| ruling or topic. It makes me question the rest of your
| reasoning.
|
| Overturning Roe comes one day after a Supreme Court
| ruling that ends the process of New York's MAY ISSUE (if
| you are wealthy, make a donation, are connected) a
| concealed carry permit practice. It turns out the state
| doesn't get to require you to prove a need before you
| have your rights.
|
| There is no right besides 2A that ever faces this level
| of scrutiny and abuse. It doesn't help that the NYPD has
| multiple times since that lawsuit initially started been
| found guilty of corruption by the state's own
| investigators, when they initially withhold completely
| appropriate requests but favored "others".
|
| You do not understand the topic you referenced.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| In European democracies - typically not dominated by bible
| thumping Republicans - these things have been decided
| democratically, like any other law.
|
| As a result abortion is a very minor political issue. Some
| people want more or less restrictions, and occasionally rules
| get adjusted.
|
| If the Supreme Court hadn't suddenly decided to commandeer
| this issue in 1973, I think the US could also have been like
| that, and hopefully after a few dramatic years we can get
| there.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Roe and Casey recognized and dealt with the competing
| interests involved in abortion. That's why it allowed some
| restrictions on abortion while declining to do so for similar
| issues like contraception, interracial marriage, and gay
| marriage. The status quo did not ignore the interests of the
| unborn child, while the new status quo completely ignores the
| interests of the woman.
|
| Reproductive rights are fundamental to women's liberty and
| equality. They should be protected by the courts like many
| other fundamental rights, not subject to the whims of
| political majorities.
| the_mar wrote:
| Don't you think it's better if morality issues are left to
| individuals?
|
| Don't want an abortion? Don't get one. Care about fetus
| rights? Start help centers for pregnant women, engage in
| education and activism, provide social nets for new mothers
| and children. It's not like we have mandatory abortions.
|
| To me, the abortions is similar to the right to chose to end
| your own life, ultimately, you can't outlaw killing yourself.
| [deleted]
| fossuser wrote:
| The critical difference is the individual rights of the
| fetus.
|
| If you hold that at some point the fetus has rights of its
| own then this becomes more difficult.
|
| I think that's the fundamental question and what makes this
| issue challenging.
|
| For a provocative example, we don't allow infanticide to be
| left up to the individuals moral decision, and then suggest
| those that care about it engage to help stop infanticide.
| We decide at that point the infant has rights and we care
| about suffering.
|
| I think for societal pragmatic reasons women should retain
| the right to terminate pregnancy _even though_ it does
| result in ending a life and in some cases suffering of the
| unborn (depending on stage). But I don't pretend that
| tradeoff isn't a real thing, I just think that's the best
| outcome on net.
|
| I also think contraception should be widely and easily
| available to reduce the likelihood of this happening
| generally.
|
| I can understand how a reasonable person could disagree and
| have stronger views about when the fetus' individual rights
| should kick in.
| camgunz wrote:
| > The critical difference is the individual rights of the
| fetus.
|
| Theoretically yeah, but the stats [0] pretty much moot
| it. Some quick clips:
|
| - 79.3% of abortions were performed at <=9 weeks'
| gestation
|
| - nearly all (92.7%) were performed at <=13 weeks'
| gestation
|
| The point here is that "nearly all" abortions occur very
| early in development. It's hard to imagine that something
| the size of a chocolate chip has "individual rights",
| especially when balanced against the rights of the
| pregnant person.
|
| This is important because as you move through the
| trimesters, cases become crushingly tragic [1]. We're
| talking things like "we probably thought your fetus was
| abnormal in the 2nd trimester but you couldn't bring
| yourself to do it until the 3rd", cancer, fetal death,
| etc.
|
| There's this myth that it's like Celebrity Deathmatch out
| there: women vs. babies, but the stats are clear: nearly
| all abortions happen in the 1st trimester, and then when
| they don't it's typically scheduling or something very
| tragic happened.
|
| All of which should force us to ask: what's the urgent
| need for regulation on this?
|
| [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm
|
| [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10426234/
| fossuser wrote:
| I think you and I are mostly in agreement.
|
| I think the position that the zygote is where the rights
| start is bad. I concede it _is_ where life starts, but
| life is just not a very good designation for that. If
| anything it should be about suffering or a nervous system
| - something beyond just replicating cells.
|
| Since vast majority of abortions happen in the early
| stages anyway, often the late stage ones are particularly
| tragic situations where the mother wanted to carry the
| baby to term, but can't for health reasons. It's why I'm
| in favor of broad rights and think that despite the fact
| it is ending a life, we're better off on net for women to
| retain that capability (the state shouldn't be getting
| involved).
|
| I can understand a reasonable person disagreeing and
| thinking at some point the fetus is developed enough and
| shouldn't be terminated without cause (basically the law
| in Denmark, France, etc.). I think that's why it's
| probably healthy to have this fought out democratically
| rather than legislated via the courts.
|
| There isn't a constitutional right, there's a good-faith
| disagreement, and the finding of a constitutional right
| in Roe was always a bit tortured [0] and the blow back
| from this has been unhealthy for our democracy (imo).
|
| This is a nuanced position that doesn't fit well into
| partisan politics, it's also a third rail topic - but
| it's where I've ultimately landed (for now).
|
| [0]: https://overcast.fm/+vpWZx2bsc
| camgunz wrote:
| I get where you're coming from; people who make careers
| out of abortion ethics zero in on conception as _the_
| question. But as you and I are playing out in this
| thread, it 's really unsatisfying to try and answer. We
| don't agree on what life is, and as a result we're forced
| to decide what the default is:
|
| - people are forced to give birth against their will
|
| - people are not
|
| Saying this is a State issue or that it should be decided
| legislatively ignores that this is a fundamental human
| rights issue for people who can become pregnant. No
| legislative regime should be able to force someone to
| give birth against their will.
|
| There's a "but what about the rights of the fetus"
| argument, but here again you're faced with two
| unsatisfying possibilities:
|
| - you allow exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the
| pregnant person, thus subsuming the right of life of the
| fetus to the rights of the pregnant person to self-
| determination based on circumstance, which is wildly
| inconsistent
|
| - you allow no exceptions, which is wildly extreme
|
| So again, granting individual rights to a fetus is a
| radical position that our society largely won't accept.
| It moots the conception of "when does life begin", or, I
| would actually argue that society has pretty much decided
| this already:
|
| - Society does not support killing children
|
| - Society supports abortion in the case of rape, incest,
| or to save the life of the pregnant person
|
| - Society agrees abortion does not kill a child
|
| (again see here that deciding that a fetus is a child if
| it was not the result of rape/incest, or its carrier will
| survive the pregnancy is wholly irrational)
| fossuser wrote:
| > "you allow exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the
| pregnant person, thus subsuming the right of life of the
| fetus to the rights of the pregnant person to self-
| determination based on circumstance, which is wildly
| inconsistent"
|
| I'd actually push back on this - I don't think it's that
| inconsistent. There's obviously a real different between
| a fetus at various stages of development and a child, but
| that doesn't mean it has to be binary yes or no. It's
| possible to try to have policy that understands the
| tradeoffs here and tries to get the best outcome we can
| despite them even though it's messy. It's why I think
| "life" isn't the right determinant.
|
| So it's not about deciding if the fetus is a child or
| not, it's about considering the utilitarian tradeoffs
| when you take into account its development, suffering,
| and the suffering and developments of the mother.
|
| That said, again my personal position is it's better on
| net for society to allow women full discretion here - but
| I don't think these kinds of casual constraints are
| irrational or inconsistent.
| camgunz wrote:
| > I'd actually push back on this - I don't think it's
| that inconsistent. There's obviously a real different
| between a fetus at various stages of development and a
| child, but that doesn't mean it has to be binary yes or
| no.
|
| Oh, I personally believe that and I think most people do.
| Sorry, maybe we've lost the plot on this a little:
|
| > The critical difference is the individual rights of the
| fetus.
|
| I argue that society has already decided this. Nearly all
| abortions occur in the 1st trimester, and nearly all
| abortions occurring afterward are in tragic
| circumstances. This is all squarely within what Americans
| support.
|
| > I think that's why it's probably healthy to have this
| fought out democratically rather than legislated via the
| courts.
|
| I argue that the constitutional rights of the
| embryo/fetus (such as they are) do not outweigh the
| constitutional rights of the pregnant person. If someone
| thinks an embryo/fetus has rights, they have to contend
| with a bunch of unpalatable things [0] (criminalizing
| many popular forms of birth control, IVF, the morning
| after pill, miscarriages, stillbirths, etc.). At the most
| extreme end--personhood--they have to either defend a
| brutal no exceptions regime, or an inconsistent
| exceptions regime where you're deciding whether or not an
| embryo/fetus is alive based on some irrelevant
| circumstances.
|
| > So it's not about deciding if the fetus is a child or
| not, it's about considering the utilitarian tradeoffs
| when you take into account its development, suffering,
| and the suffering and developments of the mother.
|
| But again, I also argue that society has already decided
| this. We actually agree with the current regime: nearly
| all abortions occur in the 1st trimester, and nearly all
| abortions occurring afterward are in tragic
| circumstances. Why do we need to punt this to the States?
| Why are States rushing to put stricter and stricter
| controls on abortion?
|
| The answer is that Republicans fomented a moral panic in
| the 70s in order to pull evangelical votes. They
| proceeded to push misinformation into the public about
| abortion, the kind of people who get abortions, and why
| they get abortions. This distorted the public view.
| Again, in reality the state of abortion is what the vast
| majority of Americans support. There's no need for this
| to be an issue anywhere. It's a wedge issue pushed by a
| craven political party in order to gain power. That's
| literally the beginning and end of it.
|
| [0]: https://harvardcrcl.org/the-many-problems-of-
| personhood/
| gdilla wrote:
| Nor does the law treat fetus as equal to post-birth
| babies in other areas - You can't claim a fetus as a
| dependent on taxes. Now does one have to pay child
| support for a fetus. So what gives, christians?
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > It's hard to imagine that something the size of a
| chocolate chip has "individual rights", especially when
| balanced against the rights of the pregnant person.
|
| Clearly it is not hard for a lot of people in the US to
| imagine this, since that is what they believe.
| camgunz wrote:
| > Clearly it is not hard for a lot of people in the US to
| imagine this, since that is what they believe.
|
| Well if they do, they're not acting like it. For example,
| miscarriages are pretty rampant. If there were a disease
| that affected people the same way miscarriages affect
| embryos and fetuses, it would be a bonkers plague that
| reduced our population to a a fraction of what it is. I
| imagine people would be acting differently than they are
| if we really equated humans with fetuses on this level.
|
| Or we can go full personhood. How do we discern the will
| of a 14 week old fetus? What constitutes child abuse?
| When do child support payments start? Can fetuses sue for
| damages? What do their free worship rights look like? Do
| fetuses have a right to medical care? Can a fetus earn
| income and pay taxes? Do fetuses count towards population
| for apportionment?
|
| I don't doubt the sincerity of people's held positions on
| abortion. What I do doubt is the rationality, and the
| more I dig into it, the more I find tons of ignorance
| about women, fetuses, and pregnancy.
| erulabs wrote:
| I don't like defending opinions of straw-men, and
| particularly opinions I don't agree with, but I'm not
| sure your argument holds up. There is a important
| difference between a tragedy like a miscarriage versus a
| chosen act like having an abortion. That would be a bit
| like equating seeing someone being hit by a car with
| murder. Particularly if you come from a theological
| background there is a _dramatic_ difference between a
| plague and a murder (not suggesting that 's what abortion
| is, but that's the rationality).
|
| I think fossuser got it exactly correct: there _is_ a
| good-faith disagreement here. The disagreement is "when
| does a citizen come into existence?". This is what
| lawmakers are supposed to decide - we elect them to draw
| a line in the sand. Denmark's line seems extremely
| reasonable.
| camgunz wrote:
| > There is a important difference between a tragedy like
| a miscarriage versus a chosen act like having an
| abortion.
|
| Fair! Well, a couple things.
|
| First, many abortions are not chosen. We can go a little
| further and say many conceptions are not chosen
| (assault), but it's a little irrelevant, so I'm just
| noting.
|
| Second I'm not comparing abortions to miscarriages. I'm
| comparing miscarriage (a thing that affects embryos and
| fetuses) to a disease that affects born people. In doing
| so, I note the different reactions people have to
| miscarriage (it's natural and unavoidable) to the
| reactions people have to a disease that statistically
| killed as many born people as miscarriage kills embryos
| and fetuses (the vast majority of us die, it's very very
| bad).
|
| To me, this is strong evidence that we value embryos and
| fetuses differently than born people.
| the_mar wrote:
| A lot of people also eat tide pods.
| the_mar wrote:
| I'm not saying it's a simple moral question. I'm not
| sayin abortion is something that has no trade-offs. While
| I agree with you, how a reasonable person can strongly
| object abortions, and they should not get abortions. But
| when their moral stance spills out to legislation, I am
| concerned. You can say we "engage to stop infanticide",
| but millions of people endure child abuse and thousands
| die from it every year. And having no access to abortions
| will surely increase that number.
|
| At which point a fetus is a person? We do kind of have an
| answer to this, when it's viable outside of the mother's
| body.
|
| If we keep going down the rabbit hole of fetus rights, it
| gets real ugly. Is contraception murder? Is plan b
| murder? Does having a miscarriage warrant an
| investigation? Should we prosecute a fetus that absorbed
| it's twin in-utero? What about IVF and thousands of
| embryos that are thrown out? What about stem cells?
| tomp wrote:
| > We do kind of have an answer to this, when it's viable
| outside of the mother's body.
|
| I never understood this argument. There is no baby that
| is "viable" (able to survive on their own) (well, to be
| honest, most adults aren't either), and parents are
| required to care for them (and criminally liable if they
| fail to do so).
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > There is no baby that is "viable" (able to survive on
| their own) (well, to be honest, most adults aren't
| either), and parents are required to care for them (and
| criminally liable if they fail to do so).
|
| Babies are viable when they can survive with help from
| any adult. Before some fetal age, they are completely
| dependent on the body of the mother - if they are removed
| from it, no matter how gently, they will die (perhaps
| there is some way to make a fetal transplant, but that
| wouldn't necessarily change the equation so much).
|
| Once past some age (and especially after birth), they
| just need someone to take care of them, it doesn't have
| to be their mother.
| tomp wrote:
| > they just need someone to take care of them, it doesn't
| have to be their mother.
|
| Wouldn't it then make more sense to require the mother to
| take care for the fetus/baby _before_ the age of
| viability (as she 's the only one who can), not _after_
| that (and /or after birth) when _anyone_ can? Right now,
| it 's the reverse.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There are safe heaven laws in all US states, which allow
| the parents to abandon their newly born child in
| designated places (typically hospitals) without facing
| any charges. Children can also be legally given up for
| adoption. So, in fact, the right to abandon a viable
| child is less controversial.
|
| Now, the viability standard is important because it is
| very hard to consider a non-viable entity "a person" in
| any serious sense. If it can't even perform the basic
| functions of its organism, how can it be considered to
| have rights, and has never been able to do so, how can it
| be considered a person?
| the_mar wrote:
| Key here is "outside of the mother's body". Plenty of
| babies are cared for by people other than their
| biological mother, I'm sure you've heard of that.
|
| What I am sayin here is that if there was a process by
| which we could take an unwanted fetus and implant it into
| someone else / allow that child to exist outside of the
| physical body of a person that doesn't want it, then
| sure, that is possibly a better alternative to abortion.
| Short of that, people should not be forcing other people
| to give births against their will.
| fossuser wrote:
| I think broad abortion rights is pragmatic policy for the
| reasons you suggest. I think it's better for societal
| reasons on net. I also think the compromise around this
| issue found in European law (Germany, Denmark, France) is
| pretty reasonable.
|
| That said, I don't think a constitutional right exists
| and the Roe decision that found one was somewhat tortured
| (even RBG said as much early in her career iirc).
|
| Given that this should be argued democratically and via
| policy. I'm in favor of federal protections that raise
| the minimum bar to what Europe has and prevents states
| from enacting all-out bans. I also can see reasonable
| disagreement about later stage abortion rights for the
| reasons I mentioned above.
|
| It's a messy issue, it's not the job of SCOTUS to
| legislate these kinds of issues and I think having done
| so here has ultimately led to a more polarized situation
| where we're worse off. Fighting this out democratically
| is probably healthier for our democracy.
| the_mar wrote:
| Denmark, France and Germany allow on-demand abortions.
| How was that different from the US until now?
| fossuser wrote:
| They only allow it up to a certain point (12 weeks for
| Denmark the others are similar) and then after that only
| with cause. See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Denmark
|
| For those that don't want to click:
|
| > "Abortion in Denmark was fully legalized on 1 October
| 1973,[1] allowing the procedure to be done on-demand if a
| woman's pregnancy has not exceeded its 12th week. Under
| Danish law, the patient must be over the age of 18 to
| decide on an abortion alone; parental consent is required
| for minors, except in special circumstances. An abortion
| can be performed after 12 weeks if the woman's life or
| health are in danger. A woman may also be granted an
| authorization to abort after 12 weeks if certain
| circumstances are proved to be present (such as poor
| socioeconomic condition of the woman, risk of birth
| defects in the baby, the pregnancy being the result of
| rape, or mental health risk to mother)."
|
| That's a lot more restrictive than the US was prior to
| this recent decision.
| the_mar wrote:
| But the US states could already impose term limits (e.g.
| Texas). So why did Roe v Wade need to be overturned?
| fossuser wrote:
| SCOTUS is tasked with determining if a right is
| constitutionally protected.
|
| There is no right to abortion in the constitution, Roe
| argued a path to one but it was fairly weak
| (https://overcast.fm/+vpWZx2bsc).
|
| It was overturned because it's not the court's job to
| legislate policy beyond that.
|
| Part of the reason for that is it creates policy which
| cannot be reverted by democratic means (except by the
| kind of extremes we've seen recently) - that's why it's
| better on net if it's narrow in scope and tied to
| constitutional rights (imo).
|
| IANAL so this is at the edge of my knowledge, but that's
| my understanding. There is a path to adding things to the
| constitution, but that power lies with congress.
| the_mar wrote:
| I'm confused what you're arguing for. You seem to agree,
| in general abortion should be an option - which is what
| roe v wade did.
|
| States could impose restrictions on how and when abortion
| is performed. I agree with you, that third trimester on-
| demand abortions are ludicrous btw.
|
| I however do not have that rosy of a perspective that
| this was overturned due to technicality and that in fact
| women's rights are about to be stripped the fuck away.
| fossuser wrote:
| Basically I'm drawing a distinction about what I
| personally think is good policy and what is actually a
| right granted by the constitution.
|
| I think broad access to abortion for women is important,
| but I think Roe finding that this protection exists as a
| constitutional right just isn't correct. If we want there
| to be a constitutional protection there needs to be an
| amendment. Short of that we need to pass legislation
| federally.
|
| Otherwise it's up to states and constituents within those
| states to fight it out democratically.
|
| I was happy with the outcome from Roe because it
| protected a lot of vulnerable women who will now unfairly
| suffer consequences, but I still intellectually think it
| was wrongly decided. Now we're suffering the consequences
| of that.
|
| Had Roe not been decided this way maybe there wouldn't
| have been as extreme a push to get Trump in office at all
| costs? It would reduce the political nature of SCOTUS and
| allow for relief valves - people can fight out the issues
| democratically. Obviously this can't happen in cases
| where constitutional rights are legitimately infringed,
| but again the finding of a constitutional right to
| abortion was tenuous at best.
|
| We need to get into law the things we care about - that's
| how the system is supposed to work.
| the_mar wrote:
| Ok, I will never not be amazed by how americans can
| reconcile two opposing views in their heads (I mean it as
| a compliment).
|
| But I do think that leaving abortion rights up to states
| will work out terribly. It's kind of like letting states
| decide if women should be allowed to vote
| weezin wrote:
| Then you have to create an amendment for abortion.
| Women's right to vote is explicitly given by the 19th
| amendment to the constitution. This is the basic function
| for the supreme court, states cannot impose laws that are
| unconstitutional.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| > in fact women's rights are about to be stripped the
| fuck away
|
| If this is your concern, shouldn't you be furious that
| Roe v Wade stood in the way of 50 years of progress in
| preventing that? The democratic process could have been
| improving women's rights for all that time. This is
| exactly what happened with LGBT rights in that time -
| much less than that time, in fact. Instead this judicial
| block was in place which was like clamping down the lid
| on the democratic pressure cooker, preventing any kind of
| progress by preventing dialogue.
| the_mar wrote:
| Dialogue?! As in the debate if women should have rights?
|
| Maybe I'm missing the point, but what "progress" do we
| need to be making? Women had access to reproductive care
| for the past 50 years, and now they won't. Doesn't sound
| like progress to me
| divided wrote:
| On face value sure it may look more restrictive, but it's
| not a simple comparison. The exceptions for their 12 week
| limit are some of the PRIMARY reasons to get an abortion.
| In that regard, the soft 12 week limit could be more
| permissive of 20+ week abortions than our statutes.
|
| Second, Denmark citizens have universal healthcare making
| it easier to access procedures, pregnancy testing, etc.
|
| Third, prior to the ruling some states only had 1
| abortion center state-wide. As well as rules requiring
| day long waiting periods, anti-abortion counseling, etc.
|
| Imagine how access looks different when you must save up
| for months, travel 3 hours to visit a clinic, rent a
| motel for the night for the waiting period, and all while
| trying to not miss any days at work.
|
| Hope that helps convey that rather dry comparisons of the
| weeks of various international statutes is a far cry from
| determining whether one system is "a lot more
| restrictive" than another.
| ausbah wrote:
| you can't say "figure it out democratically" with the Senate
| and electoral college
|
| saying "its the other branches problem" doesn't work either as
| SCOTUS is appointed by the undemocratic president and Senate
| mc32 wrote:
| How is the presidency and senate undemocratic? If they are,
| it would be through the lens of direct democracy and I'm not
| sure direct democracy would result in significantly different
| politics.
| ausbah wrote:
| because the president is elected through the electoral
| college and the senate gives equal representation to states
| regardless of population
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Senators hold power completely dissproportionate from the
| population they represent - the senators from Vermont hold
| the same amount of power as the senators from Texas, while
| representing orders of magnitude fewer people.
|
| The senate is, by design, an inherently anti-democratic
| institution (it represents the rights of the states instead
| of the rights of their populations).
|
| The presidency I think is at least elected quite
| democratically, so I'm not sure what GP meant there.
| mc32 wrote:
| True but that is why there is a bicameral Congress to try
| to balance populism vs more restraint. Large vs small.
| You don't want the largest state(s) trouncing the agendas
| for all other states and vice versa.
| ausbah wrote:
| but its still an undemocratic process
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Sure, but that's an inherently undemocratic argument. It
| doesn't mean it's wrong, it's just against the principle
| of the people holding the ultimate power.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The presidency is elected by the electoral college which
| is made up of one voter from each state for each rep and
| senator they have. If the senate is undemocratic the
| electoral college must be too.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is a difference: electoral votes are bound by law
| in most states to respect the people's wishes. It gets
| much messier, and there have been presidents which were
| elected undemocratically (i.e. without a majority of the
| US population voting for them), such as Trump. But most
| presidents have been elected democratically, even though
| the process doesn't guarantee that.
| inlined wrote:
| Direct democracy would have meant one republican
| presidential term in the last 25 years and the SCOTUS would
| be highly liberal
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| The senate still has to approve SCOTUS nominations.
| Unless you are getting rid of the senate, too.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Sure it would. The changed outcomes in 2 recent
| presidential elections alone would have resulted in a
| completely different supreme court, which would have
| changed all of this. If the senate had proportional
| representation everything Dipshit McConnell hamfisted
| through wouldn't have happened either, which would also
| create a very substantially different political landscape.
| mc32 wrote:
| That presumes candidates would campaign the same way and
| voters would vote the same way.
|
| Look at the way primaries are run. Candidates put
| extraordinary effort into small states because that's
| where the party has decided it wants to have its
| candidates slug it out. They could instead choose larger
| states but they don't. Or the candidates could campaign
| in larger states but it would sink their candidacy --they
| campaign in order to extract maximum value. It's similar
| with presidential campaigns.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| We have had two presidents in recent history that did not
| win the popular vote or are you forgetting that?
| jandrese wrote:
| The issue the GP is referring to is how the way our
| electoral process is set up people with more land have more
| voice in government. In effect, if you are rural your vote
| is worth more. This is an extreme in the Senate where a
| single person's vote has 1.5% of the power of a person in a
| different state (California vs. Wyoming).
|
| And why do we give more voice to the rural vote? Sure they
| would be a minority otherwise, but so are left handed
| people and we don't give them more vote. Are they better
| informed politically than people who live in more densely
| populated areas? It doesn't really make much sense and I've
| never heard a argument stronger than "but then the cities
| would have a lot of political power" without explaining why
| that is a bad thing.
| memling wrote:
| > And why do we give more voice to the rural vote? Sure
| they would be a minority otherwise, but so are left
| handed people and we don't give them more vote.
|
| There are other minorities that we think a bit harder
| about than left handers. Consider, for example, that
| African Americans are approximately 12% of the US
| population.[1] They are not, however, evenly distributed
| around the United States. For example, they make up 33%
| of the population of Georgia and 22% in North
| Carolina,[2] states that crack the top 10 in US
| population.[3]
|
| It took a bit of doing, but I weighted the electoral
| votes for all 50 states and DC (see [2]; you've got to
| issue your own queries to get them all) according to the
| percentage of African-American population (AAPC). For
| example, Alabama has nine electoral votes and an AAPC of
| 26.8%, which returns 2.412 adjusted votes.
|
| In sum, African Americans account for 70.658 total
| electoral votes, about 13% of the total compared to their
| population representation of 12%. That step change is an
| 8% advantage relative to their total population (538*0.12
| ~ 65 electoral votes; 1 - 65/71 ~ 8.45%).
|
| This is not, I want to point out, an argument about
| racial inequality or the fitness of the electoral college
| to deliver solutions to those kinds of problems. Neither
| is it an exhaustive treatment (obviously) of every kind
| of demographic. There are obvious flaws in this approach
| (you can't split EC votes, EC votes are typically winner-
| take-all, not all of the population are voting age, etc.,
| etc.). So it's also not intended to say, "Well,
| akshully..."
|
| I do think, though, that there is some nuance that is
| missing here. Rural people aren't the only minority
| affected by the electoral college, and questions of
| geography and demography play important roles in how
| people vote. It's worth considering what happens when you
| are in the minority, because it is the rights of the
| minority that are most likely to be overrun by the
| majority.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_
| the_Unit...
|
| [2]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/GA,NC/P
| ST045221
|
| [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_an
| d_territ...
| jandrese wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is here? You are trying to
| calculate black voting power without even considering the
| longstanding and effective black voter suppression
| efforts in states like Georgia, so it's all academic
| anyway.
|
| Replacing tyranny of the majority with tyranny of the
| minority isn't a win.
| memling wrote:
| > I'm not sure what your point is here?
|
| While the EC could "erode voting power" of the majority
| in favor of minorities we don't like, it may also favor
| those minorities we do like.
| jandrese wrote:
| It doesn't matter if I like the minority or not, singling
| them out for more political power makes no sense.
| memling wrote:
| > It doesn't matter if I like the minority or not,
| singling them out for more political power makes no
| sense.
|
| It seems like as a society we have a complicated
| relationship with this idea. Rights are in principle
| equal, but power is not equally distributed. Maintaining
| any balance is a really hard problem.
|
| The electoral college could be a relic of a bygone era
| whose time is over and done, but I'm not sure that
| eliminating it is going to reset the balance of power in
| a way that protects rights more effectively.
| mc32 wrote:
| The electoral college has very seldom deviated from the
| popular vote. It's happened a handful of times, but not
| frequently.
|
| My point is that people who clamor "popular vote" don't
| always take into consideration what would happen if we
| implemented popular democracy.
|
| Interestingly, Japan is another country that gives the
| countryside political advantage and tax advantage.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| It's happened 2/6 times this century. That doesn't strike
| me as very seldom.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Historically it is very seldom. We obviously will need
| more time to see if this 2/6 is a pattern or an
| aberration.
| DFHippie wrote:
| This was just limiting it to this century, though. The
| pattern is well established and well understood. It isn't
| even very complicated. Each state has 2 senators and at
| least one representative. The number of electoral votes
| of a state is the number of senators plus the number of
| representatives. So a state like mine, Vermont, has three
| electoral votes even though we have only about 500,000
| citizens. If population size were uncorrelated with
| political leanings, this would just contribute noise to
| the electoral process, but it doesn't. Less densely
| populated regions are conservative. The more such regions
| there are in a state, the lower the population of the
| state. So in effect conservative voices are given extra
| weight in elections. If you believe in the principles of
| the Declaration of Independence -- "all men are created
| equal" and whatnot --, this should offend you.
| jandrese wrote:
| "Very seldom" including every single Republican
| Presidential term for the past 30 years save one. Without
| the electoral college propping them up the modern
| Republican party would be in serious trouble.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Yes just two of the last six elections. This determined 7
| of the 9 sitting members of the court.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| The two times that a president has lost the popular vote
| and won the election in recent history were Bush Jr's
| first term in 2000 and Trump's term in 2016.
|
| Only 3 justices were appointed during those terms, all by
| Trump in 2017 - 2020.
|
| Bush Jr did appoint two justices but they were during his
| second term, when he won the popular vote.
|
| The remaining four justices were appointed by Bush Sr,
| Clinton, and Obama (2).
|
| So I have no idea where you are getting your figure of
| 7/9 from.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| So what you are saying is 7/9 justices came from the six
| elections in this century? Sounds an awful lot like what
| I said but I guess redundancy is sometimes useful.
| mcwhy wrote:
| and Japan's government is equally dysfunctional and
| influenced by minority fringe groups and religious
| zealots.
| splintercell wrote:
| Remember, founding fathers had a very dim view on
| Democracy, this is why they chose to have a Republic and
| then restrict the republic through a constitution. If
| Democrats were losing out to big numbers, they would pro-
| republic and Republicans would be pro-democracy.
|
| But, one of the best explanations for why founding
| fathers built the system the way they did is this[1], by
| late Justice Scalia.
|
| The fundamental idea is that the American system is
| created to represent the will of the republic across time
| and space:
|
| - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House,
| Senate and the President
|
| - House recycles very fast (every 2 years)
|
| - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4 years)
|
| - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and
| partially every 2 years)
|
| - House represents the population
|
| - Senate represents all states equally (or represents
| land)
|
| - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system
| (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to
| the population).
|
| - The fundamental idea is that any bill must be agreed
| upon by:
|
| a. The will of the people not just in short term (house),
| but in mid-term (presidency) and long term (senate) also.
| When UK wanted out of EU, the remainers believed that
| they should have a revote because they didn't believe
| that people voted with full information. Of course, years
| later a second proxy vote through general elections made
| the intent clear, but in the US we will not go for a bill
| to be passed unless its not just what we voted for in the
| past 2 years, but also what we voted for in past 4 and 6
| years.
|
| b. The will of fifty states, and territories and not just
| by a few populous states. In contrast, EU's policy making
| is all a decision of France and Germany. EU is more
| 'democratic' than US, but also far more fragile.
|
| American Democratic Republic system is a part of
| experiment of 'Union of Unions'. It's a balance between
| the different sides. If you make the union too weak, it
| will fail to hold itself up. Like Articles of
| Confederation was a failure because it was too weak, pre-
| Civil War US also turned out to be a union not strong
| enough. League of Nations wasn't strong enough.
|
| But if you make it too strong, then individual states
| will start walking out because they don't find their
| interests represented (like UK voting for Brexit from
| EU).
|
| 1. https://youtu.be/Ggz_gd--UO0
| paulmd wrote:
| > The fundamental idea is that the American system is
| created to represent the will of the republic across time
| and space:
|
| > - Every bill needs to be passed by all three House,
| Senate and the President
|
| > - House recycles very fast (every 2 years)
|
| > - President recycles at a moderate speed (every 4
| years)
|
| > - Senate recycles at a slow pace (every 6 years, and
| partially every 2 years)
|
| > - House represents the population
|
| > - Senate represents all states equally (or represents
| land)
|
| > - Presidency is elected through a hybrid system
| (electoral college, which is distributed in proportion to
| the population).
|
| I feel like a lot of people fail to consider whether this
| is a _good_ thing. Like social studies classes always
| present this as an unvarnished good - "checks and
| balances, the bedrock of our system". But a system really
| should be designed to _build consensus to action_ - there
| should always be _someone_ in the driver 's seat, even if
| it's not someone I agree with. Letting the rudder flap in
| the breeze until 100% of people can agree on something is
| not an inherently desirable outcome, because that almost
| never happens!
|
| And yes, some people would say that's a good thing too,
| that we should bias towards doing nothing instead of
| doing something, but... that's not really a viable model
| indefinitely. The world is now based around exponential
| growth in economic output, exponential growth in
| technology, and we are preferring political systems
| optimized for an O(1) constant-state world where there's
| 100 years between the cotton gin and the internal
| combustion engine.
|
| Especially in times of crisis that bias towards doing
| nothing is a really bad thing... consider the case of the
| Polish Sejm and how the goal of "excessive consensus"
| basically crippled the country and allowed their enemies
| to manipulate the system to create disruption and then
| exploit the deadlock for political gain.
|
| https://www.britannica.com/place/Poland/The-17th-century-
| cri...
|
| Everyone agrees 100% isn't the right number, but then,
| what is? is 75% the right number? 60%? Simple majority?
| How big a consensus has _ever_ existed in the modern
| political sphere, short of 9 /11-style world-changing
| events? A 60% popular vote is considered a landslide, but
| if the system requires a 75% popular vote to achieve a
| 60% senatorial/house majority, the number is effectively
| 75% and actually achieving consensus really isn't
| possible in that system.
|
| The American system's focus on checks-and-balances really
| is excessive - it's not a _good_ thing for a system to be
| unable to reach consensus. It worked for a while as long
| as the "gentleman's agreement" held but now we are
| seeing people exercising political maximalism, "hardball"
| so to speak, and with those participants the actual rules
| of the system no longer result in consensus
|
| We can then optimize around the "what if we flop back and
| forth between parties" problem separately but - requiring
| 100% consensus between all dimensionalities of society to
| do anything is not really the solution for that.
|
| This idea that "deadlock between branches is a positive
| design goal" is fundamentally not how the rest of the
| world approaches this. After all, in parliamentary
| systems the PM is the leader of the party/coalition that
| controls parliament. That's a _good_ system, it builds a
| government that has a consensus towards action and goals!
| Producing deadlock between branches of government isn 't
| a desirable outcome in itself. And that, if you phrase it
| as such, is an inherent rejection of the American ideal
| of "checks and balances" in the sense you outline it here
| ("to require massive consensus across all
| dimensionalities of society via multiple branches and
| political compartments each favoring a dimensionality").
| Yes, absolutely they still have a constitution and
| judicial branch to protect people, but they don't design
| the system around deadlocks between arms of the
| government being a design goal. And it still doesn't lead
| to "laws completely flip every time power changes" or the
| other supposedly negative outcomes from consensus-
| oriented systems.
| bluesnowmonkey wrote:
| The phrase "founding fathers" is gross and embarrassing
| as an American. They weren't deities and they didn't
| happen to invent the ultimate possible government for all
| time. We're using computers to talk about stuff they
| literally wrote on animal skins with bird feathers! They
| rode horses to go visit other states, we have global
| fiber optic networks. Even if they were good ideas then,
| it's not remotely the same world we're living in now.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > Even if they were good ideas then, it's not remotely
| the same world we're living in now.
|
| Which is why the government system they created allows us
| to update the constitution. Which we have done. Many
| times.
|
| At least give specific reasons for why you think we
| should abandon the political philosophy that has
| underpinned our government for almost 250 years rather
| than vague references to technological changes.
| bluesnowmonkey wrote:
| Sure. Why send a handful of representatives from each
| state to Washington? With horses somebody needed to
| physically go. Now we can all watch C-SPAN. If we can
| vote for American Idol we can vote on laws. Yeah, direct
| democracy, computers make it work. It never did before
| but now it does.
|
| Of course I don't want to have to study every law and
| decide how to vote, that would be a full time job. So
| I'll pick a representative and add my vote to the weight
| of theirs. But I can change my representative any time,
| even on a vote by vote basis, and obviously they don't
| have to be from my state.
|
| There are all kinds of better way of doing things that
| are possible now that nobody has gotten around to trying.
| splintercell wrote:
| > Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work.
|
| I feel like you made zero effort to understand the point
| I tried to make. Founding fathers may have been from a
| different time, but they absolutely weren't wrong about
| democracy not being a solution.
|
| They studied numerous constitutions written during the
| antiquities and correctly concluded that for a large
| geographical nation like the US, democracy cannot work.
| That part does not change just because we have super fast
| communication lines and computers today.
| mc32 wrote:
| I totally agree with this view and the "problem" is
| people want their way _NOW_. They don't have the patience
| nor want to understand that the other side has the
| political majority at this time. And when the majority
| becomes a minority opinion, they also cannot handle that
| change very well.
|
| Today's bare-knuckle politics sure does not help moderate
| the peaks.
| jandrese wrote:
| On the other hand you shouldn't be surprised when people
| are angry at you when you tell them "hold on, we are
| going to fix this problem in the future" when they have
| been waiting for literally their entire lifetime and
| nobody seems to want to do anything about it.
|
| "This problem will be inconvenient for me to solve, so
| please wait until I die of old age before you solve it,
| thank you for your patience."
| mc32 wrote:
| Sure, that's human nature. One cannot satisfy everyone
| simultaneously short of having them live in simulated
| environments.
| jandrese wrote:
| States already tried to walk out once, and it didn't go
| so well.
|
| A fundamental problem of catering to minority opinions is
| that if a minority shrinks it tends to become more and
| more strident to the point where it can no longer
| compromise, but they still maintain power due to the way
| the system is set up. This leads to highly polarized and
| dysfunctional political systems.
|
| Plus, if there is a danger that a minority might feel
| disenfranchised and want to leave, what happens when a
| majority feels the same way?
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Many of the judges on the bench were literally pushed through
| undemocratically through the deep state cabal known as the
| Federalist society. The idea that the US can fix things by
| just voting better is laughable.
|
| Also why is everyone playing "devils advocate" on this
| thread? It's clear what the majority sentiment is here, why
| bother pretending to take a middle of the road "nuanced"
| position?
| ttrmw wrote:
| Steelmanning is probably more helpful than ever on such a
| provocative topic
| ausbah wrote:
| you know some technically minded folk love being
| "technically correct" on a subject
| MrMan wrote:
| they also enjoy demonstrating via such rhetoric that they
| feel themselves to be untouched by the consequences of
| such political acts.
| rhino369 wrote:
| While somewhat true at the national level, the issue is
| actually pushed back to the states. Their legislatures are
| democratically elected.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| The Constitution is a negative rights document, meaning that it
| enumerates all the actions that the federal government cannot
| do to you. The Supreme Court should not be in the business of
| legislating, as you mention it should be the Congress that
| legislates. The Constitution is clear on what the judiciary is
| meant to do, review if an existing law or executive action is
| in violation of the Constitution. Anything else is a gross
| overreach of power.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The Constitution is a negative rights document, meaning
| that it enumerates all the actions that the federal
| government cannot do to you.
|
| No, the Constitution is an affirmative powers document first
| and foremost; it enumerates all the things the federal
| government _can_ do. The amendments (and a very few
| provisions of the base Constitution) include some negative
| rights as well, some directly applicable against the federal
| government, some against the State governments (and some of
| the former have been found to be implicitly included in some
| of the latter, though that is fairly explicitly under attack
| right now.)
| [deleted]
| jmull wrote:
| > It is good for...such dividing issues be figured out
| democratically.
|
| By that logic it would be good to get rid of the bill of
| rights, the other constitutional amendments, and most of the
| rest of the constitution.
|
| Still sound good to you?
| iandanforth wrote:
| Democracy is great but hundreds of thousands of the impacted
| can't vote.
| fisherjeff wrote:
| > You can't have your cake and eat it too
|
| Actually I'm not sure this is 100% true. One option is to, say,
| only appoint SCOTUS judges that have an extremely broad reading
| of the Constitution on things you like, and a very narrow,
| textual reading on things you don't.
|
| Hypothetically, of course.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion
| then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give
| them the mandate needed
|
| The problem is we have an electoral system that forces us into
| a two party system. One of those parties is beholden to
| religious ideologies. If any republican votes for abortion
| protection they will get primaried. So we end up in a situation
| where a healthy majority of the country wants some level of
| abortion rights, but because we need 60 senate votes it's
| impossible to implement.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > So we end up in a situation where a healthy majority of the
| country wants some level of abortion rights
|
| some level of abortion rights != Roe and the extent of Roe
|
| I'd imagine an easy majority supports it in cases of threats
| to the mother's life, but does an easy majority support
| letting Roe stand without any sort of weakening? I doubt it
| trs8080 wrote:
| I've seen your comments in this thread questioning what the
| American public actually wants. You don't need to wonder -
| there have been countless polls over the past fifty years
| that will tell you in detail:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/393275/steady-americans-not-
| roe...
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-
| six-i...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1099844097/abortion-
| polling-r...
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/393104/pro-choice-
| identificatio...
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/upholding-roe-v-wade-is-
| support...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That doesn't stand up to examination, currently Republicans
| are seeking to ban all abortions including of those
| involving rape or incest, some even go as far as forcing
| women to give birth even if it could be deadly to the
| mother. I suspect soon they will go for declaring it as 1st
| degree murder. They really have no shame and feel
| completely empowered by their cultish adoption of MAGA
| principals.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| When Obama was running in 2008 he claimed to want to codify
| Roe as law his first day as office, and was elected with a
| super majority. Never once tried. This was not the only
| opportunity in the last 50 years.
|
| It's not JUST about means, motive, opportunity. There has to
| be the desire to spend the political capital. I think it's
| interesting no one in 50 years with all the majority make ups
| have put the effort in.
|
| I don't speculate a reason other than it seems more expensive
| than the media might have me believe?
| api wrote:
| > When Obama was running in 2008 he claimed to want to
| codify Roe as law his first day as office, and was elected
| with a super majority. Never once tried. This was not the
| only opportunity in the last 50 years.
|
| The cynic in me thinks that neither party wants this issue
| to go away because it fills voting booths.
|
| Democrats have had multiple chances to codify it and didn't
| even try. They could also get some buy-in from on-the-fence
| people and maybe even a few very centrist Republicans in
| bluish states with a compromise that codifies protection
| for abortions in the first trimester but nope.
|
| If Republicans really were serious about adoption as an
| alternative they'd make reforming and funding adoption and
| foster care a huge priority. They'd also entertain medicare
| coverage for uninsured women giving birth even if it's to
| be given up for adoption so as to remove the financial
| incentive for abortion. But nope.
|
| Why solve a problem or find a viable compromise when the
| controversy gets you elected? Culture war controversies
| also distract from incompetence and corruption.
| camgunz wrote:
| > Democrats have had multiple chances to codify it and
| didn't even try. They could also get some buy-in from on-
| the-fence people and maybe even a few very centrist
| Republicans in bluish states with a compromise that
| codifies protection for abortions in the first trimester
| but nope.
|
| When were these chances? I don't think there have ever
| been 60 pro-abortion votes in the Senate.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > I don't think there have ever been 60 pro-abortion
| votes in the Senate.
|
| How do you know, since, again, no one even tried?
| camgunz wrote:
| Empirical knowledge is not the only knowledge there is.
|
| Joe Manchin's pro-life and been in since 2010
|
| Blanche Lincoln voted for the partial birth abortion ban
|
| Mark Pryor voted for the partial birth abortion ban
|
| Kent Conrad voted for the partial birth abortion ban
|
| Byron Dorgan voted for the partial birth abortion ban
|
| etc. etc. etc.
| manfre wrote:
| > Democrats have had multiple chances to codify it and
| didn't even try
|
| This is a big flaw in your thinking. The republicans
| typically vote as a cohesive group of lemmings. Their
| leadership signals how they should vote and they follow.
| The democrats act more an independent collective of votes
| that happen to align on many issues, but not all.
| api wrote:
| Have they ever even tried? Even with a compromise bill?
| tekknik wrote:
| If you crack open any historical votes you would clearly
| see this is a lie.
| xadhominemx wrote:
| No one put the effort it because it would be completely
| meaningless. The same Supreme Court that upheld the
| Mississippi law would obviously toss out any federal
| "codification"
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| No they wouldn't. They didn't say anything about this
| being only a states rights thing, otherwise they would
| say things like the civil rights laws that were passed in
| the 60s were unconstitutional, and they have said nothing
| of that nature (yet).
| rhino369 wrote:
| Codifying Roe is double sided sword. If Congress has the
| power to legalize abortion (under some commerce clause
| interpretation), it likely has the power to ban abortion
| nationwide.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| That's what I've been telling my friends about killing
| the filibuster. It may be the only thing stopping a
| blanket federal ban in 2024 when Republicans re-elect
| Trump (or Trump lite, Desantis)
| colinmhayes wrote:
| What do you mean he never tried? How do you know that?
| Obama never had the votes to overcome the filibuster for
| abortion rights, he was struggling to even get the ACA
| passed. Why publicly focus on legislation that's impossible
| to pass, especially when it's already the law of the land?
| [deleted]
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"especially when it's already the law of the land?"
|
| I believe Roe was the _precedent_ of the land and not
| something explicitly codified into federal law.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Supreme court rulings are law in this country because of
| Marbury v. Madison. You can try to claim precedent and
| law are somehow different, I think you'd have an
| incredibly hard time convincing most people.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Marbury v Madison established judicial review, meaning
| that the courts can strike down unconstitutional law. It
| does not give the courts legislative ability.
|
| Maybe you're using a fuzzier definition of "law", but
| there was never any federal legislation that guaranteed
| access to abortion. That is what we need.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| You are apparently unfamiliar with the legal systems in
| the US (the federal system and 49 states), which are
| Common Law[0] systems (Louisiana uses a French style
| "Civil Law" system):
|
| "In law, common law, also known as judicial precedent,
| judge-made law, or case law, is the body of law created
| by judges and similar quasi-judicial tribunals by virtue
| of being stated in written opinions.[2][3][4] The
| defining characteristic of "common law" is that it arises
| as precedent. In cases where the parties disagree on what
| the law is, a common law court looks to past precedential
| decisions of relevant courts, and synthesizes the
| principles of those past cases as applicable to the
| current facts."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > It does not give the courts legislative ability.
|
| But it does. Our common law system treats judicial
| rulings as law. There is nothing stopping the supreme
| court from ruling on literally anything they like. They
| could make cars illegal in the next session if they
| wanted.
| jrsj wrote:
| The filibuster is basically an imaginary rule that can be
| changed or modified by a simple majority at any time.
| It's irrelevant.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Not when legislators refuse to overturn it. That's
| obviously an issue too, but it's not really related to
| the problem here, which is that the two party system
| causes many people to have their opinions unrepresented.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It's a lot like fiat currency, it has respect of "all".
| Parties know if they kill the filibuster, the next time
| that the pendulum swings back everything they did will
| get thrown on the trash heap.
| somecontext wrote:
| During the 111th Congress, from the appointment of Al
| Franken until the death of Ted Kennedy, as well as during
| the term of his appointed successor Paul G. Kirk, the
| Democratic party held 58 seats in the Senate and caucused
| together with 2 more senators.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congres
| s "gave the Senate Democratic caucus sixty votes, enough
| to defeat a filibuster in a party-line vote."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/us/politics/01minnesot
| a.h... "providing Democrats with something they had long
| hoped for: 60 votes, and thus at least the symbolic
| ability to overcome filibusters."
| colinmhayes wrote:
| There were conservative democrats such as Manchin and
| leiberman who beleived their constituents weren't in
| favor of abortion rights. A straight party line vote on
| abortion rights wasn't going to happen. There were also
| republicans in more urban states that knew the majority
| of their constituents favored abortion, but because they
| were worried about being primaried they wouldn't vote for
| abortion rights.
| selectodude wrote:
| Do people not remember that Joe Lieberman single-handedly
| torpedoed the public option? He's a liberal in the same
| way that my dog is a cat.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Sure but the possibility of getting dem senators from red
| states to vote for abortion was extremely, extremely
| unlikely. Republicans tend to stick together but
| Democrats do not on these slim "majorities". Check out
| Manchin and Senema, they are essentially moderate
| republicans despite their party affiliation. They are
| heavily sponsored by right wing corps and PACS.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion
| then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give
| them the mandate needed._
|
| They do [0]. We haven't.
|
| _' Own the libs, fuck the deplorables', no compromise._
|
| I'm tired of this false equivalence.
|
| Let's not forget that each of the recently appointed justices
| that voted down Roe V Wade _lied_ to congress before they were
| approved for the supreme court, saying that they wouldn 't. How
| can one truly compromise with people who aren't honest in the
| first place? What is even the compromise here? Abortions for
| some, miniature American flags for others? The vast majority of
| Dems _are_ the moderates and have acted in good faith, as you
| 're suggesting, for decades and have nothing to show for it.
| The Overton window has been moving right for what seems like my
| entire lifetime.
|
| 0 - https://news.gallup.com/poll/393275/steady-americans-not-
| roe...
| newfonewhodis wrote:
| I won't make ad hominem attacks here but it's clear that you're
| privileged enough to not be impacted by this SC decision if
| you:
|
| 1. Resolve to both-sideism
|
| 2. Think we need more moderates (lol)
|
| 3. Think progress is the default if you just give it enough
| time
| altcognito wrote:
| > The sad part of democracy is that it aims to represent the
| views of the voting majority.
|
| As you said, the Judiciary is the least democratic, the
| nominations came from Presidents whom were elected by a
| minority of voters and confirmed by the Senate, using a
| minority of the voting populace of the country (because,
| slavery essentially)
|
| It's awful all around.
| kdtsh wrote:
| > I'll be the begrudging devils advocate
|
| There are plenty of devils out there, they can advocate for
| themselves. This ruling can be as technically correct as anyone
| likes, but it is disastrous in every conceivable way. All this
| ultimately demonstrates is how feeble rights - real, natural
| rights - are under the American conception of federal
| constitutional rights.
|
| Edit: there are a lot of people who are clearly very clever
| advocating for the devil. The devils have the best lawyers
| money can buy; all I can really suggest, as someone who is not
| American and not a woman, is that you advocate for human beings
| for a change.
| corrral wrote:
| > All this ultimately demonstrates is how feeble rights -
| real, natural rights - are under the American conception of
| federal constitutional rights.
|
| Natural rights are a terribly shaky concept to begin with--
| hardly "real".
| [deleted]
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| kdtsh wrote:
| > There will never be agreement.
|
| If you don't want an abortion, don't get one. Can it be
| simpler?
| rhino369 wrote:
| You must know that you aren't really addressing the
| fundamental disagreement, which is whether a fetus is a
| human life.
|
| The prolifers would respond sarcastically and say:
|
| "If you don't want to murder your 8 month old, don't do
| it? Can it be simpler?"
| zorpner wrote:
| > If you can't steelman any topic, you don't understand the
| topic.
|
| This fundamentally misunderstands the actual Republican
| position, and it does so in the way that they are intending
| to trick you into doing.
|
| If they cared about lives, they would protect
| schoolchildren. If they cared about lives, they would
| protect the poor. If they cared about lives, they'd care
| about death from car accidents, from Covid, from lack of
| medical care. They don't.
|
| So it's not about caring about lives, trivially.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I think it is you who fundamentally misunderstand their
| viewpoint. You are mistaking not agreeing with your
| proposed solutions with not caring about the problem.
| They largely believe that government welfare programs of
| the 1960s and 70s destroyed communities and caused a
| larger amount of suffering and death. They earnestly
| believe that a better economy will be more successful at
| reducing homelessness than (in their view) crack-filled
| government housing.
|
| The right smears the left with similar accusations. Every
| time an illegal immigrants rapes/murders/etc. you'll see
| them accusing liberals of the same thing--not caring
| about children's lives, etc.
| zorpner wrote:
| How, specifically, does this explain their opposition to
| masking and vaccination?
| rhino369 wrote:
| They don't trust government policy makers are telling the
| truth about the effectiveness of masks and vaccinations--
| the same reason many democratic block voters like African
| Americans have low mask and vaccination usage rates.
|
| Part of that is caused by stupid conspiracy theories and
| scientific illiteracy, but partially because its pretty
| obvious the government does lie to use when they think
| its for our own good.
|
| Though part of it is valuing individual liberty over a
| slight reduction in risk of death. They are more willing
| to value sending kids back to school even if it means
| some 80 years olds die a few years earlier.
| drstewart wrote:
| >all I can really suggest, as someone who is not American and
| not a woman
|
| Why do you think your nationality and gender are relevant to
| your opinion?
| paganel wrote:
| Not the OP but as a fellow non-American who likes to dabble
| in American politics I try to always mention that detail
| when I'm commenting on a hot/intense socio-political
| subject (like this one), so that the other people involved
| in the same conversation (presumably most of them
| Americans, both here and on Reddit) can judge for
| themselves how valid my opinion can be seeing that (most
| likely) I'm not directly involved or affected by the
| subject being discussed.
| drstewart wrote:
| In my experience, people mentioning that they're not
| American (and in particular they they are European) seem
| to think that confers some infallible wisdom to their
| arguments
| ianai wrote:
| better than foreign propaganda flying under a false flag.
| mikkergp wrote:
| > the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also
| convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn
| child. This isn't an open and shut case.
|
| Does the decision at all call out the rights of the unborn
| child? If so why would it be left up to the states and not
| outright banned? Why are contraception and gay marriage
| called out as comprable rights?
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > All this ultimately demonstrates is how feeble rights -
| real, natural rights - are under the American conception of
| federal constitutional rights.
|
| Another devil's advocate here...the people advocating for
| outlawing abortion are also convinced it's a rights issue:
| the rights of the unborn child. This isn't an open and shut
| case.
|
| Granted, I think Roe v Wade struck a fairly nuanced balance
| and I also think this is a disastrous decision. It's
| unfortunate RBG didn't quit when she had the chance and also
| unfortunate the dems ran Abuela in 2016. This could have been
| avoided, along with 4 years of complete buffoonery and
| international embarassment. It sucks our one-party-with-two-
| factions system has one faction that's consistently spineless
| and lacking foresight.
| zorpner wrote:
| The relevant quote on the subject, from David Barnhart ( ht
| tps://www.facebook.com/dave.barnhart/posts/pfbid0qt4dXV6kK.
| .. ):
|
| ----------------------------------------
|
| "The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate
| for. They never make demands of you; they are morally
| uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the
| chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or
| complain that you are not politically correct; unlike
| widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike
| orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare;
| unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural,
| and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to
| feel good about yourself without any work at creating or
| maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can
| forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's
| almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can
| love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially
| challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without
| re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making
| reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect
| people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but
| actually dislike people who breathe.
|
| Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans?
| All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the
| Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
|
| ----------------------------------------
| gwd wrote:
| And believe it or not, there are Christians -- and not a
| small number -- who want to advocate for prisoners,
| immigrants, the sick, the poor, widows, orphans, _and_
| the unborn. I 've long felt that if progressives and
| Christians concerned for social justice could call a
| truce on the handful of issues that they disagree on, we
| could actually get a lot done.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Thanks, I like this. I also find it insanely hypocritical
| that "these people" want children born no matter the
| cost, but once they are born they are left to fend for
| themselves. The same people advocating for illegal
| abortion are often advocating for stripping services that
| would help single mothers. Most are not actually
| interested in the welfare of children, but in moral
| grandstanding and exercising control over the bodies of
| "sluts."
| achenet wrote:
| I wrote this a while back - you might enjoy it:
|
| It has come to my attention recently that the abortion of
| unwanted fetuses is likely to become illegal in large
| parts of the United States.
|
| Fortunately, there is another alternative, which I am
| sure members of the Republican Party will hearty approve
| of.
|
| Have the unwanted baby. Shortly after birth, drive to the
| middle of nowhere. Place the baby on the ground, naked,
| look at it sternly, and say
|
| "Listen here, you whining little brat! You think I'm just
| going to support you for 18 years because I'm some sort
| of bleeding heart liberal? You got another thing coming
| you stupid welfare queen! This ain't socialist Europe!
| There ain't no leftist safety net here! You're just going
| to have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps!"
|
| Then just leave it there, crying itself to death.:)
| klipt wrote:
| Pretty much every state already has Safe Haven laws that
| allow women to legally abandon their babies at hospitals,
| fire stations etc. Where they will be looked after and
| likely adopted out.
| stormbrew wrote:
| > the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also
| convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn
| child.
|
| This is a nice fiction but it doesn't hold up to any level
| of scrutiny most of the time. Largely the "pro-life" people
| also believe in things like self-defense laws and the
| castle doctrine, which require that you not believe anyone
| has a real right to life.
|
| Unless you think they'd all be ok with a squatter coming
| into their house and demanding food and that they wouldn't
| use their guns on them. But they think a mother should be
| required to literally risk her life in order to support a
| being she may not have chosen to create.
|
| You don't need to give the benefit of the doubt here. You
| don't need to believe disingenuous arguments just because
| people say they're what they mean. Dig a little deeper and
| understand what they really believe: women with unwanted
| pregnancies deserve to have it carried out against their
| will because they think they've sinned.
| prionassembly wrote:
| I don't think the unborn are to blame for the flaws of
| the people who set out to defend them.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also
| convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn
| child.
|
| > This is a nice fiction but it doesn't hold up to any
| level of scrutiny most of the time. Largely the "pro-
| life" people also believe in things like self-defense
| laws and the castle doctrine, which require that you not
| believe anyone has a real right to life.
|
| Huh? I know people are really tempted to construct straw-
| men to make their opponents look like hypocrites, but
| this one is especially weak.
|
| > You don't need to give the benefit of the doubt here.
|
| Eh, no. You do, otherwise you end up with nonsense like
| what you wrote next.
|
| > Dig a little deeper and understand what they really
| believe: women with unwanted pregnancies deserve to have
| it carried out against their will because they think
| they've sinned.
|
| You may be able to find _an_ example of that, but I
| really doubt that 's the motivating idea for the vast
| majority of the pro-life movement. I would bet money what
| most of them "really believe" is that a fetus is a baby
| and that baby should be protected from harm.
| kaba0 wrote:
| And we have a women in the picture who is much more of a
| human being and she should also be protected from harm
| caused by a _technically_ parasite entity that leeches on
| her resources potentially causing life-altering changes
| and could even prove fatal.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > parasite entity that leeches on her resources
| potentially causing life-altering changes and could even
| prove fatal
|
| Yet when my friend lost a child to a miscarriage, they
| grieved.
|
| It's interesting to note when people latch on to starkly
| dehumanizing rhetoric such as you've displayed. It's not
| just in the abortion debate.
|
| A lot of people really want this question to be black and
| white, and struggle to make it so, but it really isn't
| and never will be.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Your friend had a personal choice over her body to get a
| child. And it is a beautiful thing to do so, and I'm very
| sorry it happened - hopefully she will recover both
| mentally and physically and will have a sought-after
| child she wants.
|
| Why do you want other women who _did not choose_ this way
| to go over the potentially even more terrible thing of
| birthing a child at significant health risks she half-
| loves (as hormones are powerful things), half-hates? That
| just kills 2 people mentally.
| fallingknife wrote:
| If you are trying to draw an equivalence from a mother
| having a duty of care to her unborn child to someone
| robbing her house, yours is the argument that doesn't
| hold up to scrutiny.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| All of what you said is fine and makes sense and,
| regardless of the vast generalizations, I agree with most
| of it given what I know about anti-abortion people. It's
| shrouded in hypocracy.
|
| _That said_ what I said holds: this is not a clear-cut
| case of rights, because the rights of two entities are in
| question and they are in conflict. Is a handful of cells
| with human DNA a _person_? Of course not, it 's less
| biologically developed than an _ant_. Is a fetus that 's
| developed for 8 months a person? Yeah, at that point it
| could exit the mother and be a (somewhat) functioning
| being. Where do we draw the line? At what point is a
| fetus a _person_? And from there, we can determine where
| its rights _to not die at the hand of another person_
| begin. And yes, we have to factor in the health of the
| mother, the health of the fetus, etc into these
| decisions.
|
| This is, and always has been, a nuanced issue.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I'm sorry but it really is not a nuanced issue.
|
| My mom marched with Operation Rescue during the summer
| that culminated in the bombing of an abortion clinic, and
| later the execution of the Dr that ran the clinic, in his
| own church, during service, while he was collecting
| offerings as an usher.
|
| I know in painful depth every detail of how these people
| think.
|
| It is not nuanced on their side. They outright reject
| empirical facts. They believe the earth is only 6000
| years old, that the dinosaurs died in Noah's flood, and
| that evolution is a myth, not the central mechanism of
| all biology.
|
| They do not care about the facts other than pattern
| matching them as rhetorical thought ending cliches.
|
| They believe because they had an imaginary conversation
| in their head once, they are now born again, and have a
| private telepathic phone line to absolute truth. When
| they feel certain about something, it's the will of god
| revealed to them through the holy spirit. When other
| people express opposing certainty, it's because they have
| been tricked by the devil.
|
| There is no good faith debate on the basis of facts or
| nuance with these people. You could spend years refuting
| every single thing they believe on a factual basis beyond
| any nuance or doubt, and they will blink, look at you,
| and then say something like "I know what's true in my
| heart of hearts."
|
| Every single detail of how they talk about this and the
| actions they take make clear their actual grievance is
| regulating women's sexual behavior outside of their
| theocratic conception of marriage.
|
| There is no need to defend these people as some sort of
| morally principled people confused by the underlying
| nuances. They are no where near that intellectually
| honest on the subject.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > I'm sorry but it really is not a nuanced issue.
|
| So you would support an abortion procedure on a fetus
| after 8 months and two weeks of pregnancy? If you believe
| this to not be a nuanced issue, then are you in
| opposition to the original Roe vs Wade ruling that
| determined personhood for a fetus once it reaches a
| viable age for survival, and you instead support the
| ability to abort a fetus all the way up to the moments
| before birth?
|
| > There is no need to defend these people as some sort of
| morally principled people confused by the underlying
| nuances.
|
| I'm confused which one of my comments leads you to
| believe I'm defending the anti-abortion crowd. I was
| responding to a comment saying that this is an issue of
| bodily autonomy rights _only_. It 's not. There are the
| rights of the unborn child at play as well, hence the
| nuance.
| prionassembly wrote:
| I don't think the reasonable pro-lifers were in a protest
| that culminated in a bombing. Go to crazy places, meet
| crazy people.
|
| Most pro-lifers in the upper echelons of intellectual and
| professional life are probably silent, fearing reprisal.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Opreation Rescue was by far the highest profile activist
| group in that moment. They were not radicals shunned by
| more moderate pro life people. They had enormous support.
|
| Go read and learn:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rescue_(Kansas)
|
| Wichita is stuck in Kansas, a conservative state yes, but
| the average person you'll meet there is very similar to
| who you'd meet in any of the major metro areas. They are
| captive to a conservative rural minority in a microcosm
| of the same effect at national scale. "Go to crazy
| places" is a completely inadequate deflection. You know
| it.
|
| My family's church went into schism in response to the
| Tiller murder. The strongest condemnation on the anti
| murder side was basically "they shouldn't have done that
| in a church." I cannot recall a single person out of
| hundreds that condemned the murder (or bombing) itself
| directly. The closest is my father, who maintains a
| "abortion should be outlawed except if rape" perspective.
| Additional useful information here is he failed to know
| my older brother was sexually abusing me in his own
| house.
|
| I know "what if" style contrarian takes are an addiction
| on this forum, but please, do not engage in hypotheticals
| on this issue if you are not actually familiar and
| plugged in. You are doing evil purely in the service of
| some forum warrior "what if I actually have the smart
| take here" nonsense. These people know they're hypocrites
| drowning in dissonance. It's central to their mindset.
| Not only do they not care, they will double down on it
| every time.
| larkost wrote:
| And you have arrived at about the compromise that the
| Supreme Court had before this latest ruling: a fetus can
| start to get protections (on a state by state basis) when
| it hits viability (might be able to live outside the
| womb).
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Right, which is why I was (and still am) supportive of
| the nuance of the original Roe vs Wade ruling. I think it
| was the best possible outcome of all outcomes. I get the
| technical arguments against enforcing it in the supreme
| court, but I don't find them particularly comforting in
| the face of a bunch of religious nutjobs viewing women
| like faceless baby factories.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Where do we draw the line? At what point is a fetus a
| person? And from there, we can determine where its rights
| to not die at the hand of another person begin. And yes,
| we have to factor in the health of the mother, the health
| of the fetus, etc into these decisions.
|
| That is irrelevant. At most, where you draw the line
| could affect what type of abortive procedure doctors
| would be allowed to employ - if you believe that the
| fetus is a person, you could mandate that the doctors
| must remove it from the mother's body without harming it.
|
| But just as you have no obligation to allow someone into
| your home (and are in fact perfectly within your rights
| to murder them if they refuse to leave), you have no
| obligation to grow another person inside your own body.
|
| There is no nuance here. There are only fallacies
| employed by people who desperately want to uphold some
| perceived status quo from time immemorial.
|
| It's also important to note that there isn't even any
| reason to believe ancient Christians considered abortion
| forbidden or immoral. This is a much more modern
| invention, one given steam by the desire to oppose sexual
| liberation.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > But just as you have no obligation to allow someone
| into your home (and are in fact perfectly within your
| rights to murder them if they refuse to leave), you have
| no obligation to grow another person inside your own
| body.
|
| I find this an interesting argument, but I have to note
| the difference: the person in your home is _willingly_
| violating your space. The fetus is not willingly in your
| body, and is given no chance whatsoever to leave without
| being harmed.
|
| So I don't find personhood irrelevant here, and I think
| the nuance still applies.
|
| > There are only fallacies employed by people who
| desperately want to uphold some perceived status quo from
| time immemorial.
|
| So for you, rights begin at birth? I'm not judging, I'm
| trying to assess your solid position.
|
| > It's also important to note that there isn't even any
| reason to believe ancient Christians considered abortion
| forbidden or immoral. This is a much more modern
| invention, one given steam by the desire to oppose sexual
| liberation.
|
| I believe this to be irrelevant to the discussion. I
| think we've already determined that modern anti-abortion
| Christians are, as a group, often hypocritical. But the
| discussion has diverged from them and is now about when
| rights are assigned.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > the person in your home is willingly violating your
| space. The fetus is not willingly in your body
|
| This is an interesting point, but I believe the castle
| doctrine doesn't make this distinction: if you find
| someone on your property who you didn't give prior
| permission to enter, you may murder them, regardless of
| whether they were there willingly (or even knowingly).
| For example, if you wake up in the middle of the night to
| a loud bang and find someone jutting out from your broken
| front door and shoot before asking questions, you will
| not be accused of murder or even manslaughter if that
| person was actually thrown into your house by someone
| outside.
|
| > So for you, rights begin at birth? I'm not judging, I'm
| trying to assess your solid position.
|
| I think a compromise where rights begin at viability
| makes enough sense. I would also be OK with allowing
| women to request a fetus be removed from their body even
| after it becomes viable, but not through procedures that
| are intended to kill it - for example, I could see an
| argument where a woman should be allowed to have an
| elective C-section to remove an 8 month fetus/baby from
| her body, who she could then abandon in the care of the
| hospital. But, I don't think it would be OK to request a
| procedure where an 8 month fetus is killed in utero and
| removed.
|
| For non-elective procedures (where the life of the mother
| is at stake) the discussion is more open-ended, I
| believe.
|
| Essentially, the right of the mother to her own body is
| quite obviously separate from the fetus' right to life.
| People who seek to conflate them are typically doing so
| with ulterior motives.
|
| As someone else was pointing out, taking the extreme view
| of fetal personhood, while still correctly recognizing a
| woman's right to her own body, one should seek to (a)
| prevent any procedure that outright kills the foetus, (b)
| demand the mother carry the pregnancy _until_ it is
| viable, (c) allow _only_ late term "abortions" where the
| fetus is removed from the mother's body and kept alive on
| life support.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > if you find someone on your property who you didn't
| give prior permission to enter, you may murder them
|
| I think the difference here is that there's no "a wild
| fetus appeared" but rather something intentional happened
| (intercourse of some kind). There's some level of
| acceptance/invitation here. If you invite someone into
| your house and they accept, that doesn't give you license
| to immediately kill them.
|
| Granted, there are things like rape which need to be part
| of the equation.
|
| I've said it a number of times in the comments but I will
| say it again: I think the original Roe vs Wade ruling had
| a great stance on the issue: once a fetus is old enough
| to survive, it receives personhood. I still think this is
| the most acceptable of all outcomes.
|
| > I think a compromise where rights begin at viability
| makes enough sense. I would also be OK with allowing
| women to request a fetus be removed from their body even
| after it becomes viable, but not through procedures that
| are intended to kill it - for example, I could see an
| argument where a woman should be allowed to have an
| elective C-section to remove an 8 month fetus/baby from
| her body, who she could then abandon in the care of the
| hospital. But, I don't think it would be OK to request a
| procedure where an 8 month fetus is killed in utero and
| removed.
|
| I think we see eye to eye here.
|
| > For non-elective procedures (where the life of the
| mother is at stake) the discussion is more open-ended, I
| believe.
|
| Right: which life is more important? Difficult questions,
| and survivability factors have to come into play here.
|
| > Essentially, the right of the mother to her own body is
| quite obviously separate from the fetus' right to life.
| People who seek to conflate them are typically doing so
| with ulterior motives.
|
| Separate rights with intersection at a point of conflict
| (assuming the fetus _wants_ to live, which of course
| cannot be reasonably determined). I don 't know if you're
| considering acknowledging of this conflict a "conflation"
| but if so, then I have to disagree.
|
| > As someone else was pointing out, taking the extreme
| view of fetal personhood, while still correctly
| recognizing a woman's right to her own body, one should
| seek to (a) prevent any procedure that outright kills the
| foetus, (b) demand the mother carry the pregnancy until
| it is viable, (c) allow only late term "abortions" where
| the fetus is removed from the mother's body and kept
| alive on life support.
|
| This seems to tip the scales in favor of fetal personhood
| over female bodily autonomy. I'm not a woman, but I think
| I would find it horribly painful to carry the child of
| someone who raped me and I'd likely want to get it out of
| me as soon as possible.
|
| Are you saying this is a hypothetical position that anti-
| abortion people _should_ support, assuming they were
| being logically consistent? If so, then yeah, that would
| seem to make sense.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Are you saying this is a hypothetical position that
| anti-abortion people should support, assuming they were
| being logically consistent? If so, then yeah, that would
| seem to make sense.
|
| Yes, that would be at least logically consistent of them.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > Is a fetus that's developed for 8 months a person?
| Yeah, at that point it could exit the mother and be a
| (somewhat) functioning being.
|
| I could argue that ability of an organism to survive on
| its own is not a requirement nor a sufficient criteria
| for neither personhood (a legal construct) or anything in
| lines of sentience, self-awareness and sapience
| (philosophical constructs commonly associated with a
| person, although it's not a clear cut - e.g. a person may
| become incapacitated and is still considered a person).
| tshaddox wrote:
| > the people advocating for outlawing abortion are also
| convinced it's a rights issue: the rights of the unborn
| child.
|
| Then authority shouldn't be given to the states, right?
| Presumably those people will be proposing a federal ban
| soon, right?
| ravitation wrote:
| This is one of those cases, where, people like the
| original commenter, if we assume they are arguing in good
| faith, will then be "surprised" when it turns out those
| they are electing actually aren't committed to it being a
| "states' rights" issue. Devolution of authority to the
| states is just the current tool the right have to further
| restrict access to abortion, if federal legislative power
| to ban abortion becomes available to them, they will drop
| the "states' rights" approach immediately.
|
| It's really a tale as old as time (or at least as old as
| the United States). "States' rights," outside of
| theoretical discussions, has always simply been a tool,
| not a true guiding ideology.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yup. Funny how Thomas, in his opinion, believes "access
| to contraceptives, "same sex relationships", "same sex
| marriage" are all "errors that need to be corrected in
| the context of "states' rights", but somehow "interracial
| marriage" isn't.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Good faith is a necessary condition, not a sufficient
| one. If you're proposing something bad I'm going to
| oppose you regardless of whether you're proposing it in
| good faith.
| ravitation wrote:
| My point about good faith was assuming people that claim
| to simply be in favor of devolution of authority to
| legislatures or states are being truthful; and not just
| also saying that because its a useful and expedient
| defense.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| orthecreedence wrote:
| > Presumably those people will be proposing a federal ban
| soon, right?
|
| Sure, that'd be a logical next step. The people who argue
| for states' rights are often doing so as a ruse to
| eventually exercise federal control.
|
| That said, I think it will end up like marijuana: illegal
| federally with a bunch of states who just don't give a
| fuck. In the end, it may only weaken the power the
| federal government holds, which at this point is a good
| thing because power has been concentrating more and more
| the past 100 years.
|
| I feel I have to reiterate though: this is still a
| disastrous outcome for a lot of people. I'm not happy
| about it. The conservative morons who "want the
| government out of their lives" but also continuously try
| to legislate people's bodies and sexuality have scored a
| real win, and I'm scared and upset for all the women in
| red states who have to live under their reign of
| hypocritical terror.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "The people who argue for states' rights are often doing
| so as a ruse to eventually exercise federal control."
|
| It's funny how symmetrical hypocrisy is.
|
| Liberals are hypocrites because they favor states rights
| when it comes to firearm regulations but not for
| abortions; and conservatives are hypocrites for exactly
| the opposite positions.
|
| (I'll point out that in this instance, on a purely
| logical basis, the conservatives have the upper hand
| because they can clearly point to the second amendment,
| whereas the liberals need to try to identify abortion as
| some kind of implicit natural right that's not written
| down anywhere. I say this as a pro-choice person.)
|
| In either case, you are right, it is largely a ruse. If
| abortions and firearms were both illegal nationally, then
| liberals would fight for states' rights on abortion but
| not for firearms; and conservatives would again have the
| opposite positions. Political creatures fight on the
| battlefield where they can win (or, more often, keep the
| status quo and stay in office but look like they are
| fighting to keep the campaign cash rolling in).
| tshaddox wrote:
| > That said, I think it will end up like marijuana:
| illegal federally with a bunch of states who just don't
| give a fuck.
|
| And don't forget the immense amount of suffering
| inflicted disproportionately on minority and
| disadvantaged groups.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| You mean how our drug laws and penal system are the
| constitutionally-protected successors to slavery? I
| haven't forgotten.
| TheAxe wrote:
| It's dangerous to generalize but I think a least some
| subset of them already have: https://www.washingtonpost.c
| om/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ba...
| [deleted]
| achenet wrote:
| I think the real problem is your two party system. You
| don't have a real democracy, you have two gangs of career
| politicians competing to ruin your country.
| sillystuff wrote:
| We barely have two parties.
|
| Both Democrats and Republicans are more similar than
| different on all but a few social issues (these issues
| can change over time-- for instance, many Republican
| politicians used to be pro family planning and
| contraceptives). Both parties use those few social issues
| to sow all the division they can.
|
| E.g., Clinton finished what Reagan had started with NAFTA
| (Democrat and Republican parties both support neoliberal
| policies)[1]. Clinton, continuing Reagan's initiative,
| dismantled the federal welfare system[2]. Clinton signed
| into law an expansion of policing, lengthened sentences,
| and a three strikes-- life imprisonment provision[3].
| Clinton also supported deregulation and signed Gramm-
| Leach-Bliley which effectively repealed Glass-Steagal[4].
| Clinton could have been a Republican except for a few
| social issues such as, his justice picks supported Roe v.
| Wade[5].
|
| Clinton wasn't an outlier. Obama proposed changes to the
| CPI calculation to reduce, already low, Social Security
| (public pension) benefits[6]. He continued with financial
| deregulation signing the Security Modernization Act into
| law[7]. He supported privatization of schools[8]. His
| landmark health insurance legislation, which maintained
| private insurers and health care providers, was
| originally proposed by a far right think tank, the
| Heritage Foundation[9].
|
| [1] https://time.com/5468175/nafta-history/ [2]
| https://www.history.com/news/clinton-1990s-welfare-
| reform-fa... [3]
| https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/billfs.txt [4]
| https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/glass-
| steaga... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_
| Supreme_Court_can... [6] https://money.usnews.com/money/r
| etirement/articles/2013/04/2... [7]
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/financial-services-
| act-... [8] https://blackagendareport.com/obama_legacy_II
| I_privatization... [9]
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2010/apr/01/barack-
| oba...
| subpixel wrote:
| Add too that that voters now understand voting as an
| activity to be leveraged against an opponent as much as
| or more than in support of an ally.
|
| Hence Americans regularly vote against there own self-
| interest because they have been turned into fans.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Agree! I consistently vote for people who advocate for
| voter reform (ranked choice elections/STV and all that).
| It's the only way to break out of this ridiculous mess.
| Unfortunately I seem to be one of the only people who
| cares about such things.
|
| Granted, there are deeper problems to our democracy than
| selecting representatives. At this point, our federal
| government is a puppet to the financial and corporate
| worlds: a marriage of industry and state. Hmm, where else
| did that happen?
| tomp wrote:
| This is a common fallacy.
|
| The US is the oldest and most stable democracy.
|
| It also works more-or-less as intended. On issues where
| there is broad consensus (e.g. COVID relief) it can move
| incredibly quickly. On issues where there is broad
| disagreement (e.g. abortion) it moves very slowly or not
| at all (requiring compromise).
|
| I wish more countries were like the US (or,
| alternatively, like Switzerland, which represents the
| other extreme with their direct democracy).
| thelamest wrote:
| I'm strongly in favor of abandoning FPTP everywhere,
| etc., but I'd caution against tying hopes to a single
| cause. IRV/STV/RCV/PV are used around the world, and
| their effects are not that revolutionary. (My softly
| preferred approval voting sees least real world use,
| either way I'm not letting my fantasy run wild.)
| Politicians, parties and voters adapt to the new ruleset,
| and in the end some form of median voter theorem still
| rules (Two coalitions dominate, fighting around the
| center.) The US system legal and geographical
| pecularities mean, in broad strokes, that it's a median
| voter in a median district in a median state. On the
| party side, the system shifts much of the coalition-
| building to significantly before the elections, in
| comparison to other countries, where it's done close to
| or after votes are cast. But then, I too believe we can
| and should do better.
| refurb wrote:
| Oh fun, more extreme rhetoric that does nothing but split
| people even more.
|
| Your opinion means you are "the devil".
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Yes it does.
|
| If your opinion is evil, you are evil. This is not some
| civil disagreement over where you're going to eat dinner,
| or the nuances of what kind of fiscal policy will best
| serve the people. This is a direct attack on an entire
| gender, and an undermining of an entire population's human
| rights.
| refurb wrote:
| If it's an attack on a specific gender why are 50% of
| that gender in favor (women who are pro-life).
|
| Your extremist rhetoric will cause more harm than good in
| the end. Cry wolf enough and people stop listening to
| you.
| codeguro wrote:
| You're the extremist hypocrite, framing the protection of
| unborn children with an attack on 50% of women.
| refurb wrote:
| Not sure how "extreme" a position is when 50% of the
| population hold it including women.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| That edit is a nice but ultimately impotent statement.
|
| What matters is the mechanics of how we're in this situation.
| They're complicated and thankfully this decision doesn't mean
| an outright ban for all Americans. Providing access for the
| rest is what should be discussed, over shaking fists and
| platitudes.
| codeguro wrote:
| welshwelsh wrote:
| Ridiculous. A fetus is not a person. A pig or a cow is more
| sentient. If we're going to call a fetus a person, first we
| gotta do intelligent livestock and outlaw killing animals
| for food.
|
| The difference is that most Americans would be outraged if
| the government forbade them from eating meat, because that
| takes away their freedom and forces them to spend slightly
| more money on food that doesn't taste quite as good. It
| astounds me that these same people think the government
| should have the power to force someone to give birth to a
| child they don't want and can't afford. The amount of
| suffering that will cause is unimaginable.
|
| Of course, most people who are against abortion won't
| hesitate to get one if they or their daughter needs it.
| It's always different when it's your life and dreams that
| are about to be destroyed.
| throw1122334 wrote:
| codeguro wrote:
| You're arguing that the value of human life is equal to
| that of cattle raised for food. Can you be more
| disingenuous?
|
| Moreover, your analogy is horrible. You're implicitly
| arguing that the value of human life hinges on sentience.
| Are you going to argue that a baby born 2 months
| premature has sentience? Are you going to argue that it's
| OK to kill that baby after it has been delivered? Or
| suppose I have someone in a coma. I'd argue that person
| is not sentient. Would you say it's okay to pull the plug
| on her life support? What if I told you that, with
| absolute certainty that this person on life support would
| wake up on a few months? Seriously, let's hear your
| answer to these hardball questions. Because unless you
| do, I don't think anyone in this thread can take your
| argument seriously.
|
| You keep trying to make this a bodily autonomy argument
| when the real issue is human life. And yes, I do think
| that human life trumps over bodily autonomy. A mother
| doesn't get to kill her 3-month old child and it's
| perfectly morally and rationally consistent to say that
| it's not OK to kill her premature child for the exact
| same reasons. Human lives have value. Deal with it.
| trs8080 wrote:
| > And yes, I do think that human life trumps over bodily
| autonomy.
|
| So you'd be ok with government agents showing up at your
| door in the middle of the night and taking you
| involuntarily to the hospital to donate some of your
| organs to someone in the ER?
| codeguro wrote:
| trs8080 wrote:
| > The relationship and obligations that a mother has to
| her child are fundamentally different to the relationship
| and obligations I have to a random stranger in the ER
|
| You define "child" based on a religious definition.
| That's /your/ religion, not mine. Feel free to follow it
| all you want, you don't need to involve the rest of us.
| We're not talking about children, we're talking about
| fetuses.
|
| > Do you really want to be play that game? Because I'll
| have a field day with you.
|
| Ah, an internet tough guy. Feel free to "have a field
| day." Your entire argument is premised on the idea that a
| fetus is a human life, which only has basis in religion.
| codeguro wrote:
| > You define "child" based on a religious definition.
| That's /your/ religion, not mine. Feel free to follow it
| all you want, you don't need to involve the rest of us.
| We're not talking about children, we're talking about
| fetuses.
|
| Fetuses are unborn children. I realize this definition is
| rather inconvenient to your fragile narrative, but it is
| _THE_ definition, not just _my_ definition. Please refer
| to the dictionary, #4:
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/child
|
| > a human fetus
|
| Or the Merriam webster dictionary: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/child
|
| > 3a : an unborn or recently born person
|
| or the oxford dictionary: https://www.oxfordlearnersdicti
| onaries.com/us/definition/eng...
|
| > a young human who is not yet an adult
|
| Please, keep talking. I am enjoying this. Next you'll
| argue categorical definitions and facts are a religion.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Idk man. How come human lives have more value than other
| primate lives? Sounds like a perspective that comes from
| privilege (as in lucky enough to to be born human.
| codeguro wrote:
| Name one civilization raises primates to be eaten like
| cattle.
| jyounker wrote:
| People eat primates, but they're too smart and violent.
| Ranching them for meat doesn't make economic sense when
| you can breed pigs.
| codeguro wrote:
| Name one civilization raises primates to be eaten like
| cattle.
| the_mar wrote:
| There is no "pro-abortion", there is "pro-choice", as in
| people are free to not abort for moral or any other
| reasons.
|
| I don't disagree with you, it's a complicated moral issue,
| I do not advocate for using abortion as birth control, but
| forcing women to birth and raise children when they can't
| afford them or even do not want them creates a lot of
| problems for those children down the line.
|
| Mindlessly breeding people into poverty is no more humane
| than aborting a clump of cells.
| codeguro wrote:
| the_mar wrote:
| Is IVF murder of children? Is a twin that consumed a twin
| in-utero a killer? Should we launch a criminal
| investigation every time a woman has a miscarriage?
|
| Is plan B murder of children? If yes, is contraception,
| including pulling out murder of children? Let's be real
| here, there is no 100% effective contraception method and
| out of 100s of millions of people having sex, probably a
| few million will get accidentally pregnant.
|
| "People should not have sex" - is not a viable argument,
| because it's not a thing people will stop doing.
|
| You sound like someone who thinks that women who have sex
| should be punished for being whores. So how about no
| uterus, no opinion? And kindly, hope you do not reproduce
| codeguro wrote:
| > Is IVF murder of children? Is a twin that consumed a
| twin in-utero a killer? Should we launch a criminal
| investigation every time a woman has a miscarriage?
|
| (1) That's a silly question. In-virtro fertilization is a
| series of procedures to help conceive a child. (2) Intent
| is often the focal point of Criminal Law and is generally
| shown by circumstantial evidence such as the acts or
| knowledge of the defendant. And so is ability; an unborn
| child has no intent or knowledge or ability to resist, so
| I'd argue no that it's not murder for a twin to consume
| her sibling in utero. Got any more "hardballs" for me, or
| are those the best you got?
|
| > Is plan B murder of children? If yes, is contraception,
| including pulling out murder of children?
|
| If a child was conceived, yes. Take a child that is in
| utero and the mother is 1 day away from delivery and
| takes a pill that poisons the child. Yes, it absolutely
| is murder. You think these are hard questions but they
| are not. The morality on the pro-life side is pretty cut
| and dry; any attempt to kill an innocent, healthy, viable
| human child is wrong. Period. Full-stop. Even in cases
| where the mother is in danger and needs to end the
| pregnancy; the child could simply be delivered. There is
| no need to kill the child, that's an extra and
| unnecessary and evil step you'd have to go out of the way
| to do.
|
| > Let's be real here, there is no 100% effective
| contraception method and out of 100s of millions of
| people having sex, probably a few million will get
| accidentally pregnant.
|
| Yes, and? Are you trying to say that the killings
| unwanted children should be OK? Are you saying that the
| value the life of those children should be hinged on how
| much they are loved by their parents? What are you trying
| to argue, exactly? Serious question.
|
| > You sound like someone who thinks that women who have
| sex should be punished for being whores.
|
| Nice strawman, but I'm right here. I think that women who
| have sex and conceive children should be held responsible
| for raising those children. You must think that women in
| general are pretty infantile and cannot bear any
| responsibility whatsoever. Are you some kind of
| misogynist?
|
| > So how about no uterus, no opinion? And kindly, hope
| you do not reproduce
|
| Why are you assuming my gender? I have 2 children by the
| way. Let me ask you, do YOU have a uterus? If not, then
| kindly shut the hell up while the big girls talk.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > Is IVF murder of children? Is a twin that consumed a
| twin in-utero a killer? Should we launch a criminal
| investigation every time a woman has a miscarriage?
|
| > (1) That's a silly question.
|
| No, its not, and analysis of the trigger laws passed in
| anticipation of Roe falling has found that IVF is at risk
| under many of them (because they define a "pregnancy" as
| beginning at fertilization, not implantation) [0], and
| states with fetal homicide laws in place _even before
| Roe_ have conducted investigations and even made charges
| in cases of miscarriages not due to procured abortion on
| various theories.
|
| It is only a silly question to people not paying any
| attention.
|
| [0] see, e.g., https://www.law.georgetown.edu/gender-
| journal/abortion-trigg...
| codeguro wrote:
| > One of the legislative initiatives that has been
| undertaken by several states is a statute creating a
| trigger ban on abortion, wherein the Supreme Court
| striking down Roe would immediately result in an
| automatic complete abortion ban statewide.
|
| Good. I think that laws that serve to protect defenseless
| children should be upheld. I do think that IVF should be
| reconsidered, but it appears that the intent of the law
| is to prevent children from dying, not to prevent couples
| who have trouble conceiving, from conceiving because of
| complications that may arise. I think those two are
| separate issues with different outcomes. I think a child
| that is failed to be conceived or dies during the process
| of being conceived is a fundamentally different issue to
| a procedure who's express and deliberate purpose is to
| end the life of the child.
| jyounker wrote:
| And yet fetuses created one way are entitled to
| protection and fetuses created the other way are not. Why
| do you feel this way?
| codeguro wrote:
| I think both types of children should be protected. Can't
| you read?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| How can you go from
|
| "Asking whether IVF is under threat is a silly question"
|
| to
|
| "Of course IVF is bad"
|
| in the span of one comment?
| codeguro wrote:
| You have some serious reading comprehension problems. He
| asked if it was murder, not "if it was under legal
| threat". And I never said it was bad. It attempts to
| conceive children not kill children, that's why it's
| silly. Can you strawman any harder?
| xh-dude wrote:
| > I think that women who have sex and conceive children
| should be held responsible for raising those children.
|
| The misery in situations where consensual decision-making
| isn't the fact of the matter is IMHO tragically under-
| explored in this framing and in Alito's opinion. Without
| respect to the legal and political status of Roe, I still
| think it was morally right where it limited government
| intrusion and authority.
|
| Will you feel responsible for this kind of outcome when
| it occurs in America, as it has in the past and does in
| the world?
| goosedragons wrote:
| Plan B blocks fertilization. It won't work if you're
| already pregnant.
|
| Do you think women that have been raped and conceive
| children as a result should be responsible for raising
| those children?
| codeguro wrote:
| >Plan B blocks fertilization.
|
| It can also block implantation. From the FDA:
| https://www.fda.gov/drugs/postmarket-drug-safety-
| information... I don't personally hold strong opinions on
| Plan B. I think it should be frowned on because it could
| kill a conceived child, but I don't think it's as
| egregious as abortion.
|
| > Do you think women that have been raped and conceive
| children as a result should be responsible for raising
| those children?
|
| I think it's a nuanced issue; it's less than 1% of all
| abortion cases, and any policies crafted on this should
| be the exception and not the rule. People often want to
| take this particular marginal case to craft a rule to
| apply to the non-rape and incest cases.
|
| But to answer your question directly, yes. I think the
| value of human life is contingent on someone's humanity,
| not on the circumstances surrounding their birth. Let me
| explain further. I know someone who was born of a rape
| _and_ incest. She is an adult now and works as a nurse.
| To say that her life is somehow less valuable than her
| co-worker 's is, I think, completely antithetical to the
| idea that all men and women are created equal. I think
| that being raped is traumatic. I don't think that the
| solution to that trauma is more trauma by means of
| abortion. I asked her, and her mother is happy she had
| her in the end. Having her was the only thing to help her
| cope. I realize not every woman is like her mother, so I
| also think that it's understandable if a mother chooses
| to bring her baby conceived of rape or incest up for
| adoption.
| the_mar wrote:
| Oh god. the 1 day before birth argument. Cuz that
| happens.
|
| > the child could simply be delivered What do you think a
| 2nd or 3rd trimester abortion is?
|
| > Are you saying that the value the life of those
| children should be hinged on how much they are loved by
| their parents
|
| Matter of fact it is. Millions of children are abused by
| their parents, 1900 of them died in 2019 due to direct
| abuse. Do you think forcing childbirth upon women unfit
| or unwilling to be mothers will bring this number down?
|
| > I think that women who have sex and conceive children
| should be held responsible for raising those children.
|
| What about men? Because men get to leave.
|
| And thank you for asking, I do have a uterus. Sorry about
| your kids though
| codeguro wrote:
| [deleted]
| jjav wrote:
| > The morality on the pro-life side is pretty cut and
| dry; any attempt to kill an innocent, healthy, viable
| human child is wrong.
|
| For anyone who honestly feels this way, it would seem
| that the most obvious next step is to enact very strong
| laws that prevent that now-born perfectly viable human
| child from being murdered at school. I can respect such a
| consistent position.
|
| I've yet to meet anyone who takes this "pro-life"
| position a single moment beyond birth though. Why is
| that?
| codeguro wrote:
| > For anyone who honestly feels this way, it would seem
| that the most obvious next step is to enact very strong
| laws that prevent that now-born perfectly viable human
| child from being murdered at school. I can respect such a
| consistent position.
|
| I'm pretty sure there are already pretty strong laws
| against violence in schools, let alone murder. I _think_
| what you 're insinuating on are gun laws? Well, sure. I
| think that every teacher should be armed and trained in
| the event of a school shooter because they have the
| _responsibility to protect those children_.
|
| >"No, not like that!"
|
| Haha. We tried it your way. Turns out criminals don't
| respect laws. Most gun deaths occur in gun-free zones.
| But those cities that are most armed also tend to be most
| polite and least violent. Think carefully about why that
| is.
|
| > I've yet to meet anyone who takes this "pro-life"
| position a single moment beyond birth though. Why is
| that?
|
| Again, pretty strong laws on the books against murder. I
| think what you're insinuating here is _why aren 't there
| government programs to raise children?_ Well, it's quite
| simple. The murdering of children is a completely
| separate issue. One dwells on preventing murder, and the
| other hinges on who's responsibility it is to raise it. I
| think it should be illegal to kill the homeless. To have
| you then turn around on me and tell me I'm obligated to
| take care of that homeless man is disingenuous. These are
| two, completely separate issues. I think that in general
| children are obligated to be taken care of by their
| parents, and I'm pretty sure we have laws on the books
| for that too. So, what's your issue with conservatives,
| really?
| jjav wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure there are already pretty strong laws
| against violence in schools, let alone murder.
|
| That's why I said laws that prevent, not just words on a
| book.
|
| > they have the responsibility to protect those children
|
| They most certainly don't. Teachers have responsibility
| to teach and mentor children and they're fairly
| overworked on those roles already. Pretending they'll
| moonlight in SWAT school is hardly realistic on any
| level.
|
| The question was how come nobody who believes in the
| sanctity of a child's life before birth actually believes
| in any protection to that child's life post-birth?
| mikkergp wrote:
| >. The morality on the pro-life side is pretty cut and
| dry; any attempt to kill an innocent, healthy, viable
| human child is wrong.
|
| While innocent is too subjective to argue, the argument
| is not cut and dry. 1 week old fetuses are not viable and
| many laws don't make exceptions on health. In fact isn't
| viability one if the leading pro-choice indicators of
| morality in abortion?
| codeguro wrote:
| > In fact isn't viability one if the leading pro-choice
| indicators of morality in abortion?
|
| No. That's a tactical argument. The leading, fundamental
| argument from morality is the value of human life. That's
| probably why many laws don't make exceptions on health.
| And as a pro-choicer, I kind of agree. I think there's an
| argument to be made that viability shouldn't even be a
| factor.
| jyounker wrote:
| >> it's a complicated moral issue > I disagree. Murder of
| children is wrong; that's as cut and dry as it gets.
|
| Consider a pregnant woman in prison. In a "pro-life"
| state it is easy for her to get an abortion. It a "pro-
| choice" state is harder for her to get an abortion.
|
| Consider deeply why this is the case.
| jyounker wrote:
| > Moreover, women who cannot afford or want them should
| not be risking pregnancies to begin with. Sex makes
| babies. To make a baby and then try to absolve yourself >
| To argue that human life is "just a clump of cells" based
| on your convenience is literally what hitler to the jews.
|
| Are you suggesting that tumors are people too, and that
| they have full rights?
| codeguro wrote:
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| History will NOT have a dim view of the left.
|
| Thomas Paine, an example of a radical leftists in his own time
| by the standards of his day, is extremely well regarded today
| despite dying in relative obscurity and relative poverty.
|
| It's the radical right wing that history will take a dim view
| on. The left can be secure in their control of posterity.
| [deleted]
| screye wrote:
| For the most part history does have a dim view of the
| mainstream leftist movements (socialists and communists) from
| the 20th century.
|
| I don't know much about Paine, but trends are pretty clear.
|
| (Right-wing populists have a similarly spotty record, but
| that just proves my point of a dim view of both sides in this
| era)
| throwaway23234 wrote:
| Set up a website that lets you buy these people a round-trip
| plane ticket to CA. That gets around both issues. If the doctor
| says there's no baby, then no money.
| swayvil wrote:
| In a world where marketing/propaganda is a thing, created by
| whoever owns the medium, etc. Does democracy really exist?
| stefan_ wrote:
| In every other democracy, voting laws and systems that mean
| individual votes are unequal (and even more absurd, the
| _popular vote_ keeps losing) are of course unconstitutional and
| dealt with by the Supreme Court. How else could it be;
| guaranteeing one person one vote is the basis of democracy.
|
| That's before we get to other design flaws like "winner takes
| all", which of course neither possible winner out of a
| guaranteed 2 is ever going to change.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are
| willing to strike compromises
|
| How do you compromise on issues like same sex marriage? It's
| pretty binary: gay people have the same rights as straight
| people, or they don't. With Justice Thomas's suggestion to
| relitigate Obergefell, this is exactly where we stand.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Thomas is champing at the bit to overturn gay marriage, civil
| rights, and other civil liberty guarantees. He has indicated
| as much in his writings.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'll be the begrudging devils advocate
|
| Did the Devil somehow run out of enthusiastic advocates?
|
| Because it doesn't seem that way, on this issue or more
| generally.
| mlazos wrote:
| At face value, all sides are not to blame. A president who lost
| the popular vote got to appoint THREE justices to this court
| and literally got a list of candidates from the religious
| right. This is the minority imposing their will on the
| majority, plain and simple.
| kernal wrote:
| No, all sides are not to blame. The USA is a Constitutional
| Republic so your comment regarding the popular vote is
| irrelevant. The popular vote is not used to elect a president
| in the USA and never will be. Additionally, the seditious
| person you're advocating for is the source of the Russia
| collusion rumors that the left steam media ran with for 3
| years.
| themitigating wrote:
| Why shouldn't slavery be up to the states?
| tikiman163 wrote:
| The Supreme Court Justice who wrote the court's opinion on this
| issue just publicly stated he believes the Supreme Court should
| reconsider all of its prior procedural decisions, including Gay
| Mairage, legalized gay relationships, contraception and privacy
| in sexual or relationship matters.
|
| You don't get to claim you're potentially naive, you're
| outright ignoring what they've publicly declared they intend to
| do. This isn't a group of well reasoned individuals removing
| power from the court, they're just doing whatever they hell
| they want to make the laws reflect their own religious beliefs.
|
| Fuck this country, the only thing we're the best at is
| pretending we're the best.
| greyhair wrote:
| Amen. I posted similar in a shorter form. The ineffectual
| legislative branch has ceded power to both the Executive and
| the Judicial over the last fifty to sixty years. Until the
| legislative branch stands up, this won't be resolved.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _my support for this change assumes that this Supreme Court
| will show restraint towards political activism (in either
| direction) in general. Call it naive, but I 'll wait and see._
|
| That _is_ naive, given that we 've already seen over the past
| several years that this has already been shown to be true. When
| the GOP is in power, new justices are appointed solely based on
| political appointment. Their qualifications as judges seem to
| be irrelevant, as long as they support the party platform. When
| the GOP controls the Senate, they invent "rules" around which
| president gets to earn confirmation, and then break their own
| "rules" when it suits them.
|
| > _The same state rights that allow gun control [...] to be
| locally legalized before national concensus_
|
| Look again: SCOTUS is getting more brazen in overturning state
| gun control laws. This is just a consequence of what I've said
| above: the politically-appointed justices loudly cry "states'
| rights!" when it suits their platform, and quietly ignore state
| sovereignty when it suits them. Consider also that the GOP has
| been even more loudly talking about legislation for a
| nationwide abortion ban. Same playbook: claim the removal of a
| federal law is a victory for states' rights, but then turn
| around and try to enact the opposite law at the federal level
| in order to block the states from making their own choice.
|
| > _Now, the rural republican votes counting for more in the
| senate is a huge issue and threat to democracy that the US
| needs to figure out if it ever wants to represent the views of
| the people._
|
| This is the key issue. The US government will never reflect the
| will of the people as long as the Senate is composed as it is.
| Procedural garbage like the filibuster make the body even more
| ineffective and useless. My prediction here is that as soon as
| the GOP regains control of the Senate, once they get another
| taste of obstruction, they'll hypocritically kill the
| filibuster, despite all their current rhetoric around how it's
| essential to the Senate.
|
| > _The jaded side of me says: vote in more moderates that are
| willing to strike compromises._
|
| The issue here is that what you are calling "hyperprogressive
| activists" are not really all that "hyper" anything when you
| consider the rest of the democratic world. A US "moderate"
| would be considered fairly conservative in many other Western
| democracies. When I talk to friends who are members of various
| minority groups about this, they dismiss more "center-left"
| candidates immediately: none of these candidates have the
| courage (or desire) to work on civil rights and equality.
|
| I absolutely agree with you that political polarization is at
| an all-time high, and most far-left/right politicians seem to
| be more interested in stoking outrage and provoking their
| opponents than in actually creating positive outcomes.
|
| I don't really know what the solution is. It's hard to just
| tell everyone, en masse, to just calm the fuck down and stop
| assuming anyone on the other side of the aisle is an evil demon
| who wants to destroy the others' way of life. I'm guilty of
| this sometimes myself, but I'm really trying to understand
| where some of these people are coming from. It's hard. It's
| really hard.
|
| > _In the long run, history will have a dim view of this era of
| global polarization with all political sides to blame._
|
| I understand the sentiment here, and what drives it, but I
| think it's bad to ignore that there _are_ differences between
| how the two sides act. They 're both terrible, and have many
| terrible policy platforms, but I think it's worth considering
| that one party seems more interested in taking people's rights
| and equal treatment away (or denying "new" rights that should
| have been rights all along) than the other.
| lumost wrote:
| The game theory of this situation is bleak. If one side chooses
| hardliners, then the hardliners can pull the center closer to
| the hardline. In the past this worked out as most hardliners
| were hardlined on _different_ topics. Now, the right has
| unified into a solid voting block that increasingly picks up
| all or nothing stances on _most_ issues.
|
| If democrats elect moderates into such an environment, the
| center is hopelessly pulled to the right. If Republicans vote
| in _a_ moderate, they still get pulled into voting with the
| majority. If you are a democrat, increasingly your only option
| is to vote in your own set of hardliners who will take all or
| nothing stances - as getting nothing done is better than the
| alternative.
|
| The anger in this decision is partially a sign of what's to
| come. The Supreme court is now vastly out of sync with the
| national population center - or their own precedent for the
| last ~70 years. Barring court reform, I'd expect that we're on
| the way to a constitutional crises where a state decides to
| _overrule_ the supreme court 's decision.
| gpvos wrote:
| How would a state overrule the supreme court's decision? What
| do you mean with that? If In understand correctly, abortion
| has been legalized by law in several states and forbidden in
| several others, neither of which conflicts with this
| decision.
|
| It is a shame that the USA hasn't been able to enact federal
| legislation on abortion in the past 50 years.
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| > If the voting majority truly cares about access to abortion
| then we will hopefully see enough democratic traction to give
| them the mandate needed.
|
| I'm sorry but this feels entirely divorced from reality. The
| nature of the senate, the continued erosion of voting rights...
| we're not going to see democratic traction in a system that
| actively opposes it.
| nfw2 wrote:
| Perhaps what they meant is that it could gain democratic
| traction within the states where abortions are restricted.
| chimprich wrote:
| > It is good for unelected bodies like the Supreme Court to
| allow such dividing issues be figured out democratically.
|
| Speaking as an outsider on American politics, it seems to me
| that it won't be figured out democratically. If it was done
| democratically, on a nationwide vote, abortion would easily
| stay legal.
|
| What will actually happen is that the decision will be referred
| to states, where government is elected on small turnouts, in
| gerrymandered divisions, heavily influenced by untrue TV
| propaganda funded by billionaires, and in many cases elected
| based on supposed economic reasons, not any moral ones.
|
| The effective result is that vulnerable young women will be
| forced to carry unwanted babies to term at the cost of great
| suffering to themselves and the resultant children.
|
| > with all political sides to blame.
|
| I can only see one side to blame here.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| As far as I am aware, every state in the US has a democratic
| government.
|
| > If it was done democratically, on a nationwide vote,
| abortion would easily stay legal.
|
| Direct democracy is not the only form of democracy. It has
| many problems.
| noasaservice wrote:
| What is a democracy called when:
|
| 1. legislative lines for the state and federal areas look
| like a kindergardner drawing squigglies
|
| 2. When many states do everything they can to find reasons
| to disqualify valid voters
|
| 3. When felons are not legally able to vote, even after
| their time is served
|
| 4. When massive amounts of money come in from republican
| businesses to significantly sway elections
|
| 5. When massive lies and half-truths are put out in the
| media thanks to the massive money
|
| That just doesn't look like a democracy. What it is? I
| don't know.
| abarwick wrote:
| Exactly. It sounds faux-romantic to wane about democracy
| and the power of voting, but when the systems that
| support this system have been perverted over the course
| of decades, it becomes a horror story. Democracy as it
| has been thought of is dead (in the U.S.).
| ncr100 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| This weakening of civil rights at the Federal level allows
| those Americans who are sexist to enact sexist laws where
| they have concentrated power within State boundaries.
|
| Welcome to "The Divided States"
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| People (at least currently, I don't have much hope after
| 2024) have the right to vote still, they could overturn
| this all in November if they wanted to instead of wailing
| and gnashing teeth, just simply go vote. The majority could
| easily toss out republic senators and representatives if
| they truly want to do something about this. I think people
| are too lazy though. It's a fkn shame.
| underyx wrote:
| > Ofc, my support for this change assumes that this Supreme
| Court will show restraint towards political activism (in either
| direction) in general. Call it naive, but I'll wait and see.
|
| > States rights has always been a double edged sword. You can't
| have your cake and eat it too. The same state rights that allow
| gun control and homosexuality to be locally legalized before
| national concensus; also now lead to abortion legislation being
| a state issue.
|
| You're a day too late to hold this position, the supreme court
| struck down New York's attempt to regulate open carry
| yesterday.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/supreme-court-ny-open-...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Your understanding of what happened yesterday is extremely
| poor.
|
| The Supreme Court did not strike down New York's ability to
| regulate open carry at all.
|
| They struck down the states ability to withhold concealed
| carry permits to anyone who does not provide a sufficient
| reason for application.
|
| Turns out you don't actually need to provide a reason for
| civil rights.
|
| The NYPD since being sued over this has been found guilty in
| corruption cases of withholding permits to people who weren't
| donors, connected, celebrities, elite.
|
| No one reasonable should think you need to prove to the NYPD
| why you need your rights.
|
| "May Issue" is now dead. "Shall Issue" is still fine, and
| open carry laws have not changed at all.
|
| It should be noted, that New York had at least three
| opportunities in court to not appeal decisions they lost, and
| prevent it from going to the Supreme Court. Back when this
| case started the state of New York had assumed that Hillary
| would win and going all the way up to supreme court would be
| fine. When they lost the second circuit, they had offered the
| NYRPA concessions, they were reject, and had to appeal the
| decision making it go to supreme court. This was ALL the
| state of New York's arrogance. And now NJ, MD, HI and others
| are surely pissed.
|
| As to "needs" and "rights". Hawaii since 2016 has issued
| approximately four concealed carry permits to citizens. They
| must be renewed every year. and you cannot leave your home
| county with the gun. This has been an obvious violation of
| rights and is soon to change.
| Jotra7 wrote:
| jaywalk wrote:
| Thank you for spelling out the facts. I don't think a lot
| of people realized what was really going on with all this
| May Issue nonsense. It was pure corruption, and completely
| antithetical to the Constitution.
|
| I personally believe that Constitutional/permitless carry
| is the only way it should be, but getting rid of May Issue
| is a great step in the right direction.
| lovich wrote:
| How does this not invalidate the states rights argument?
|
| Like I agree with the NY ruling but it's explicitly
| limiting the power of the state.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Since the supreme court recognizes a right of personal
| gun ownership in the 2nd amendment and the 14th amendment
| applies the rules of the constitution to the state
| governments as well, the states _cannot_ violate a person
| 's right to personal gun ownership.
|
| The supreme court does not recognize a right to an
| abortion in the constitution so the issue is kicked back
| to the states per the 10th amendment.
|
| States rights only apply when things are not recognized
| as constitutional rights.
| lovich wrote:
| 9th amendment is in there too, but no the States have to
| have this one particular right because its not
| enumerated. They are using inconsistent logic
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| >>Now, the rural republican votes counting for more in the
| senate is a huge issue and threat to democracy that the US
| needs to figure out if it ever wants to represent the views of
| the people
|
| The United States is a Republic not a democracy.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > The United States is a Republic not a democracy.
|
| These are not mutually exclusive. The US is a republic and a
| democracy.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The US is a republic and a democracy.
|
| The United States is substantively an oligarchic republic
| that has the superficial form of a rather distorted
| democratic republic (and representative democracy) and
| which likes to rhetorically appeal to democratic ideology,
| particularly _as the entire justification for the
| government having any legitimate authority at all_.
|
| So, it _isn't_ a democracy, but it is entirely fair to
| criticize its failure to be one and insist that it ought to
| fix that proble, since its entire claim to legitimacy rests
| on it being a democracy _as well as_ a republic.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| > The United States is substantively an oligarchic
| republic that has the superficial form of a rather
| distorted democratic republic
|
| Yes, it is a _representative_ democracy, as are most
| democracies around the world. We could be talking about
| the means to achieve such representation, and the
| legitimacy of such means, but by definition, it is still
| a republic _and_ a democracy, flawed or not.
| vkou wrote:
| So was the USSR. So is the Russian federation. The words 'A
| republic, not a democracy' mean almost nothing.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Republics are democracies.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| Historically no, unless you think only allowing landowners
| a vote is democracy
| workshirt wrote:
| > My personal opinion is that polarization has pushed both
| sides to be completely antagonistic towards each other. 'Own
| the libs, fuck the deplorables', no compromise. The jaded side
| of me says: vote in more moderates that are willing to strike
| compromises. Crazed jesus Republicans and hyperprogressive
| activists are terrible people to put into national office. They
| gain power by antagonizing and being unhelpful roadblocks for
| change, all while asking for the most stubbornly impossible
| outcomes.
|
| This take is completely divorced from reality. "Moderates" are
| the roadblocks. "Moderates" already have the system they want
| and love re-litigating culture war issues like this, because it
| makes it easier to continue roadblocking. Give me one example
| of a "hyperprogressive activists" blocking something that
| needed to get done, and I will give you a laundry list of
| "moderates" actors blocking ensuring no progress gets made in
| this country. Progressives don't even say "deplorables" that
| came from "moderate" HRC. "Crazed jesus Republicans" I would
| say this classification bisects several groups with in the
| republicans, however they seems to be affective at driving
| change given the post we are commenting on.
| standardUser wrote:
| The court's view on the 2nd amendment is so wildly,
| outrageously out of line with the Founder's intentions, and the
| actual text of the law, that any hope of "restraint towards
| political activism" is beyond futile.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| At the time of the founders private ownership of cannons was
| legal, which was the most powerful weapon at the time.
|
| Framers likely would have claimed that private citizens
| should be able to own working tanks (gun and all). They
| believed in a monopoly of violence solely predicated on the
| ability to muster an army, not on bans of certain types of
| weapons.
|
| But maybe we shouldn't give a fk about framers intent. That's
| where the real debate should be on...
| jyounker wrote:
| You seem to be overlooking that "well organized militia"
| clause.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Isn't that supposed to just be flavor text? In other
| words, we should take the constitution literally, except
| for that part of the second amendment, just ignore that.
| alangibson wrote:
| The consequences of this are sickening, but it's also true that
| the question of abortion rights was never settled due in large
| part to Roe.
|
| It's incredibly unfortunate that we'll now have this fight in an
| era where the Right is ascendant.
|
| We've got 20 years of diminishing women's rights to look forward
| to.
| laundromat69 wrote:
| xdennis wrote:
| Stop spamming this.
| maximilianburke wrote:
| I wonder how many of the people calling this the right legal
| decision are men.
| SCAQTony wrote:
| There are 13 Circuit Courts in the United States. With that in
| mind they should have one judge from each serve on the Supreme
| Court. The current Supreme Court is full of partisans with
| questionable qualifications and backgrounds.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_courts_of_appeal...
| jarbus wrote:
| I'm consistently surprised at how many people, both in these
| threads and irl, assert there is no "grey area", and argue that a
| fetus goes from being 0% baby to 100% baby the instant it is born
| and no sooner. To me, there is a very clear "gradient" where it
| goes from being 0% baby to 100% baby over the course of 8-9
| months, the percentage ticking up every day or so. Many people
| can't imagine a 5-month old fetus being viewed as "alive".
| coffeeblack wrote:
| krallja wrote:
| explain the concealed carry decision, then?
| coffeeblack wrote:
| US Constitution.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31862849.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Let's repeal the second amendment then. Let the states decide.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| 2nd amendment is a right codified in the constitution.
| Abortion is not in the constitution, which is what this
| ruling states. If congress wants to legalize abortion, then
| that's their job...to make laws. The supreme court does not
| make laws.
| oldcigarette wrote:
| Yeah this seems like a quite simple affirmation of states
| rights in matters which have not been explicitly deferred
| to the federal government. I was kind of hoping to find
| good discussion at least on hacker news but it's the same
| nonsense as every other back water shithole on the
| internet. At this point 4chan is having a more nuanced
| discussion :( I'm increasingly convinced we will see the US
| split - and to be honest after today I would be quite happy
| for that to happen since a large contingent of people don't
| seem to understand or even want to operate in the legal
| frameworks we have.
| boston_clone wrote:
| States rights? See the US split? Crazy, I feel like we've
| been down this road before...
|
| Enjoy that nuanced 4chan discussion, though!
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Lots of things aren't in the constitution, which is the
| purpose of the 9th amendment. Surely bodily autonomy is
| something that falls within the spirit of what the founding
| fathers were aiming for. Benjamin Franklin certainly took
| no issues with abortion.
| boston_clone wrote:
| Firstly, the 2nd amendment.... was an AMENDMENT to the
| constitution. Second, the right of abortion was determined
| from incorporation of other guaranteed rights (here, the
| right to privacy). Please either brush up on your undergrad
| political science course materials or review summaries of
| decisions via the Library of Congress.
|
| Coming poorly equipped to these arguments shows much more
| about the individual than their interpretation of
| constitutionality.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| > Second, the right of abortion was determined from
| incorporation of other guaranteed rights (here, the right
| to privacy)
|
| Correct, and it was a very unstable way to enable
| abortions. It has always been under threat of being over
| turned because it was a weak argument. Even RBG said that
| it was weak.
| boston_clone wrote:
| Yeah, I've see a few other people parroting the "RGB even
| said..." thing, but what's your point?
|
| The rights to privacy and bodily autonomy are not nascent
| concepts in the course of this country's establishment of
| civil liberties, and today's ruling was a disgusting
| application of the Supreme Court's power.
| [deleted]
| bilvar wrote:
| Exactly. If you want it as a law then work with the
| appropriate people who operate through the appropriate
| channels to make it a law. Don't try to circumvent the
| process by using a different body that is not meant to
| legislate.
| boston_clone wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean - make what a law?
| bilvar wrote:
| The right to abortion.
| peteradio wrote:
| Nothing preventing you from trying but its a pretty tall
| order.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| Do you willfully misunderstand my point? I'm demonstrating
| the lie.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| No, you are not.
| peteradio wrote:
| Nothing willful about my stupidity. The lie is what?
| States rights above all? Nobody made that claim.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| With you on your first point.
| greyhair wrote:
| If your representatives in Congress would get off their butts and
| actually legislate, the court's "view" on the topic would be
| moot.
|
| The fact is, lazy hand wringing house and senate members have
| been dodging these issues (more than just abortion) and passing
| them off to the court system for fifty years, or more.
|
| They get good pay, they get good benefits, they should do their
| stinking jobs!
|
| This all ultimately falls to the ineffectual legislative branch.
| usrn wrote:
| This doesn't ban abortion, it leaves it up to the states. IMO
| that's the best since people simply aren't going to agree on it.
|
| EDIT: Abortion is not in the Constitution in any way, it's not a
| right.
| erellsworth wrote:
| No, best would be to leave it up to the individual.
| usrn wrote:
| We don't do that with other state laws like murder and theft.
| And different states have different ideas on what those laws
| should look like too.
|
| EDIT: I'm not sure what you mean by that. Are you upset about
| SCOTUS citing common law tradition? Most of our law works
| that way, you have to build on something. Even "reason" needs
| axioms and you have to find a way to pick those.
|
| EDIT2: There are a surprising number of people who want to
| decriminalize theft and even murder in some situations (look
| up "mutual combat" in Chicago.)
| erellsworth wrote:
| That framing begs the question. Virtually everyone agrees
| murder and theft should be crimes. There is vast
| philosophical disagreement on whether abortion should be a
| crime. You can believe it is murder, but the majority of
| Americans disagree. Ultimately, it should be up to the
| pregnant person to weigh the morality of that decision, not
| the government.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Virtually everyone agrees [...] theft should be crimes
|
| Wasn't there just a thread here a few days ago that had a
| bunch of people arguing that the decriminalization of
| shoplifting in San Francisco is a good thing?
| jablala wrote:
| It seems utterly ridiculous that you would rather go on
| precedent than case by case rational decision making.
| babelfish wrote:
| Abortion is not murder or theft. An appropriate comparison
| would be an appendectomy. If states started banning
| appendectomies, I would hope the fed would codify it as
| law.
| sparrish wrote:
| And that is where nearly 1/2 of America disagrees.
| Abortion is murder.
| showerst wrote:
| 27% of america agrees --
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-
| abo...
| jasonlfunk wrote:
| This is the very core of the disagreement. Pro-life
| people do not agree that it's comparable to an
| appendectomy.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Abortion not being murder is clearly an opinion a great
| deal of people disagree on. Kind of the crux of the
| issue.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Pro Life groups said they're going after residents who go out
| of state next, then a national ban.
| monocasa wrote:
| It leaves it up to the states now because there is no
| meaningful federal code on the matter. The underpinnings of the
| decision allow for a federal ban since it's just saying that
| there's no inherent constitutional protection.
| showerst wrote:
| It effectively bans safe abortion for poor people in red
| states.
| hossbeast wrote:
| The votes of the people living in those states do that
| tobylane wrote:
| And perhaps states will outlaw them from travelling to blue
| states, and outlaws anyone assisting them.
|
| Missouri tried.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/03/us-
| abortions-t...
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| OP is saying SCOTUS doesn't make abortion impossible (ruling
| that it is always tantamount to murder and thus never
| permissible). A ban would prohibit states from allowing
| abortion, and this isn't the case.
|
| SCOTUS has said that states may decide how to regulate it.
| Individual states will either ban, or not, as their
| constituents wish.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Because the state went through a democratic process and
| decided to do that. Democracy doesn't mean that everyone has
| to vote for the policies you like.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| How many dictators came to power through a democratic
| process? i think there was this really famous one in
| 1930's, what was his name...
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Ahh, so any democratic process that results in a policy
| you don't like is 1930's Germany. While any democratic
| process that results in a policy you do like is... ?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| aah, so as long as something happened though a democratic
| process it's fine and dandy and no examination is needed
| as to the possible consequences of that decision?
| usrn wrote:
| 1930s Germany had no democratic tradition so it's
| unsurprising that a reactionary conservative movement
| resulted in a dictator. That is absolutely not the case
| here, our republic is an enormous part of our tradition
| so it's extremely unlikely that such a movement here
| would have the same result.
|
| Also if you keep calling conservatives Nazis eventually
| they might start wondering why, they might start
| remembering and noticing things you'd rather they forget.
| showerst wrote:
| "We have decided that rich people who can travel to a
| different state have different rights than poor people" is
| a very bad process.
|
| That's the difference between rights and privileges -- As
| of this week I can't vote away your your right to carry
| concealed weapon in my city, but you can vote to take away
| my access to abortion, or even contraception in yours?
| _ph_ wrote:
| Do get states to decide on slavery again too? I think such
| fundamental, health and freedom-related questions should be
| decided on a national level.
| InTheArena wrote:
| The Supreme court enforced slavery - and virtually ensured
| that the civil war would occur when it expanded slavery with
| Dredd Scott. (On the basis of something not in the
| constitution). The legislative made it illegal and changed
| the constitution. This opens the same path to legislatures.
| Hopefully without the civil war that occurred because the
| Supreme court played a role in preserving slavery.
|
| Does nobody read history anymore?
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Then elect federal politicians who are advocating legislation
| to decide it on a national level.
|
| The current administration had a majority in both houses,
| knew this decision was coming, yet did nothing.
| _ph_ wrote:
| No it practically has not, the republicans would
| immediately filibuster any attempt. And they will keep
| doing so by locking in enough states which means that the
| majority of the American people can vote what they want, it
| wouldn't change a thing.
| jl6 wrote:
| Yes. As I understand it, Roe vs Wade argued that a right to
| abortion was implied by the constitution, and thus such a right
| was created implicitly, rather than by the explicit passing of
| legislation.
|
| The next step is clearly to advocate for explicit legislation.
| avs733 wrote:
| Exactly how our constitution is supposed to work - your rights
| are left up to the states to accept or reject/s
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Unless one is talking about CCW, then it's apparently a
| federal thing.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| If the states all got together and passed an abortion
| rights amendment, similar to the 2nd amendment, then it
| would be a federal thing.
| avs733 wrote:
| I mean... let's not act like the 2nd amendment is
| interpreted in any serious way.
|
| The Supreme Court invented a personal right to bear arms
| from a 250 year old amendment during my lifetime and is
| now not only ignoring words that are in there but adding
| words that aren't
|
| Anyone trying to apply logic to this is just facilitating
| nonsense because these decision are based in ideology not
| logic. Don't launder it for them.
| voxl wrote:
| Except for all those constitutional rights... Freedom of
| religion being one, and their are at least two recognized
| religions where abortion is a religious right.
|
| So there you go, freedom for Christian's not for anyone else,
| a good Christian nation! /s
| avs733 wrote:
| Your free to be Christian or be ruled by their beliefs
| typeofhuman wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted. What you're saying is
| exactly correct. That's what this ruling affirms: it is a state
| issue. Abortion is not in the US Constitution and many - even
| left-leaning - legal scholars have said Roe v Wade was ruled
| incorrectly.
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| Because this is not the end. The GOP will issue a federal
| abortion ban next time they control congress and the
| presidency.
| duped wrote:
| I downvoted it because it's hopelessly naive and incorrect.
| This does not return the power to the states, it gives the
| power to the State to prevent people from having access to
| reproductive healthcare. Every American just had rights
| stripped away.
|
| The second that Republicans have a majority in Congress and
| the Presidency, they will pass a federal ban on abortion in
| all the states.
| nostrebored wrote:
| Any such law would be unconstitutional?
|
| They may want to. I'm skeptical. But it's unconstitutional.
| duped wrote:
| SCOTUS just ruled that no, laws that ban abortion aren't
| unconstitutional. There is already precedent and practice
| of the Federal government to regulate healthcare, the
| power to make specific crimes against children federal,
| or any number of various ways they could argue the
| Federal government has the power to ban abortion.
|
| The members of the Court that claim to be pick and choose
| which material they're originalist or textualist
| regarding, particularly in this case. Others are just
| idealogues nominated and confirmed to be political tools
| of the Republican party. You should not have faith in
| them, their credibility is shot.
| sundaeofshock wrote:
| You really think this court will care? Their current
| judicial philosophy can best be summed up as "because we
| can"
| fatherzine wrote:
| Not entirely sure how this phenomenon is called, but we
| live in times where we no longer speak the same language.
| On purpose. Which facet of reality are we going to
| emphasize? Which facet of reality are we going to deny,
| excising it from language itself?
|
| "reproductive healthcare", correct.
|
| "mothers killing their own babies in the womb", also
| correct.
|
| Echoes of Babel.
| ryanbytes wrote:
| State rights baby!!!!!!!
| justinzollars wrote:
| Lots of anti-Catholic comments and anti-Christian comments here.
|
| To blame this on Christians/Catholics is singling out a religion,
| a protected group similar to blaming Blacks or Jews. In fact its
| exactly the same - its literally a protected class.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| Why shouldn't they be blamed? Christianity in the USA is
| nothing like being black or Jewish in the USA.
| justinzollars wrote:
| If you are condoning this, what is your name? It's literally
| a violation of Law.
|
| https://www.senate.ca.gov/content/protected-classes
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| I hate that even following supposed liberation we still feel we
| have the right to police vaginas and reproductive systems.
|
| I also hate that the pro-bodily freedom Americans have spent 50
| years ignoring the shaky constitutional ground upon which this
| fundamental right lies.
|
| The right wing ghouls are ultimately responsible, but I also heap
| scorn on the Democrats who failed to solidify the right to
| abortion in law.
| sbarbarian wrote:
| aaron695 wrote:
| pseingatl wrote:
| If there can be federal anti-drug laws, there can now be federal
| anti-abortion laws.
|
| It won't be merely a "States will decide issue." McConnell is
| already writing the legislation.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| So this raises some interesting questions.
|
| What if an American person wishing to have an abortion just
| travels to another country where it's legal to get it done? Can
| they be arrested upon return?
|
| If so, does that mean that all Europeans that had an abortion
| could be liable to prosecution in the US if they choose to visit?
|
| Not that I expect a huge impact to tourism etc. I've seen gay
| football fans willing to go to Qatar to watch their matches.
| Visiting a country that thinks they should die didn't seem to
| bother them :/
| urmish wrote:
| Why would those women go to a different country instead of a
| different state?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Because Roe Vs Wade was overturned federally wasn't it? So it
| applies in all states?
| urmish wrote:
| I'm not sure what 'overturned federally' means, but the
| decision shifts the matter of legality back to the states.
| There are tons of blue states where this is still legal.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Aha thanks, I was not aware of this. I'm not in the US
| (nor have I ever visited).
|
| But I saw some politicians in the news saying they
| wouldn't want to enforce it. So I assumed it was a law
| that all states had to obey. Sorry I was wrong.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Only something like 20 states will have abortion illegal
| after this decision.
| Kye wrote:
| That "only" is doing a lot of work.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2022/06/24/1107126...
|
| That's a lot of people and a lot of territory where you
| could be arrested traveling through if someone snitches.
| immmmmm wrote:
| A world leaded by creationism, neo-imperialism and capitalism now
| facing climate & pollution induced mass extinction. What a
| beautiful time to be alive.
| alkjlkjawlr wrote:
| jandrese wrote:
| What I find interesting is how for many many years people thought
| Roe would be safe because it was mostly useful as a political
| tool. A wedge to drive into voting blocks to make sure they stay
| Republican despite everything else they are doing. It was in
| nobody's interest to actually repeal it. What nobody expected was
| for decades of indoctrination to produce true believers that
| would actually be elected to the Supreme Court.
|
| So now we are in a situation where the dog has caught the car and
| it's not sure what happens now.
| superdisk wrote:
| What? Clarence Thomas is an old man.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Arguably Roe distorted national politics. This ruling might now
| distort local politics. It's going to be interesting. We might
| well see a multi-decade swing to the Democrats!
| jandrese wrote:
| I wouldn't count on a major Democratic victory out of this.
| The propaganda machine that has been feeding this issue for
| the past few decades is still alive and well, they will pivot
| to some other issue (CRT, Wokeism, Black Lives Burning Down
| Entire Cities, etc...) if they have to. Abortion was just
| something that polled really well with the base and so they
| went with it, but it's not the only game in town.
| throwaway11789 wrote:
| Can whoever flagged my comments email me at:
| rcxidhudvwrcvrmeev@kvhrw.com I didn't post anything inflammatory
| and I've seen people use throwaway account multiple times here
| with no issues.
| thomk wrote:
| Less abortions + more guns = more deadly crime (soon).
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_eff...
| whatever1 wrote:
| We need the law to push human rights forward, even if 100% of the
| electorate does not agree with that.
|
| You cannot just put slavery on your municipality ballot and let
| the local residents vote on it.
| laundromat69 wrote:
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| What an insensitive fucking ridiculous comment
| mythrwy wrote:
| Kye wrote:
| Quality joke
|
| On the more serious side: Proper sizing + a bit of lube in
| the tip will fix that right up.
| askin4it wrote:
| erections have consequences
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| This is a great first step towards protecting human dignity and
| sanctity of innocent lives in the US.
|
| Roe vs. Wade is a classical example of judicial activism. The
| right to privacy clearly doesn't have anything to do with
| abortion.
| mirceal wrote:
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| > It's not anyone's business what you do with your body.
|
| Sure, but abortion is also about the fetus's body. (And other
| things as well: dignity of humans, paternal rights [1], etc.)
|
| > You want to protect innocent lives? [...]
|
| You don't get to dictate what others should care about, but I
| agree with some of those, though often with a different
| framing.
|
| For example, I think in a well-functioning society, you
| should be able to raise a family on a single stream of
| income. This is a framing currently advocated by people like
| Bake Masters (the AZ US Senate candidate). Elizabeth Warren
| (who, unlike Masters, is a left-wing politician) has also
| used this framing in her 2004 book titled "The Two-Income
| Trap" [2].
|
| > christofascists
|
| That's a personal attack, which I don't appreciate. Also,
| despite the Bible quote in my bio, I'm not a Christian.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_rights_and_abortion
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap
| anonu wrote:
| Interestingly: The NYT link was written 4 hours ago (~6AM EST) -
| but the decision seems to have been released around ~10AM EST. I
| suppose everyone expected this post the leak.
|
| Without taking any side on this issue: this is a tough day in
| America, when a 50-year precedent is overturned.
| threeseed wrote:
| They could have pre-written this but also the NYT is the
| world's most well connected news organisation.
|
| Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if they had found out
| earlier just like previous decisions have been leaked.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Id imagine for important news it would be easy enough to just
| write two articles and release the correct one, especially if
| your main concern is being first to publish
| jfk13 wrote:
| A slightly different situation, but it reminds me of the
| classic election-day crossword, which was cleverly
| constructed to support either outcome:
| http://www.alaricstephen.com/main-featured/2017/7/3/the-
| clin...
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| I believe that pre-writing articles for both sides of major
| binary decisions and only releasing the one that turns out to
| be correct is standard practice at large news organisations,
| where the value of being first to publish is far higher than
| the cost of writing two articles.
| kadoban wrote:
| Especially when you have a leaked opinion and already know
| what it's going to say.
| rg111 wrote:
| Unrelated: A journalist friend told me that their (very big)
| media firm started writing obituaries of the public figures
| as soon as they landed in hospital and were old.
|
| There were many (tens) obituaries written for the people who
| went to live on for more years or are are still living.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Sometimes, they publish it by mistake -
| https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/europe/french-
| radio...
| josephcsible wrote:
| anonu wrote:
| I don't know enough about Dred Scott. What is the parallel
| between that case and abortion?
| josephcsible wrote:
| The parallel is that they were both Supreme Court cases
| that had their rulings overturned years later, and in both,
| a lot of people liked the original decision and were upset
| that it no longer stood.
| jquery wrote:
| "Both Hitler and Obama were disliked by millions of
| people"
|
| Same energy. This ruling today has more in common with
| Dred Scott (reduces citizens back down to property
| because of founder intent or something) than the
| overturning of it.
| avs733 wrote:
| It's a bad faith argument to undermine precedent.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's not the undermining of precedent (for its own sake)
| that matters here. It's the contents of the precedent
| that are presumably bothersome to the upthread poster.
| Comparisons to precedents overturned in the name of
| progress are entirely reasonable to examine whether its
| the matter of precedents in general or specific contents
| that are issue.
| avs733 wrote:
| That's the bad faith part. This has nothing to do with
| precedence and the current Supreme Court will do what it
| wants and invent new and incoherent forms of logic as
| needed to do so.
| dmm wrote:
| Dred Scott v. Sandford was a landmark supreme court case
| that, among other things, denied people of African descent
| US citizenship. The Chief Justice Taney believed it would
| finally end the debate around slavery in the US, instead it
| inflamed controversy that eventually led to civil war.
|
| Perhaps the grandparent was suggesting that was a likely
| outcome here as well?
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Dred Scott was overturned by constitutional amendment.
| blinkingled wrote:
| Biggest thing to me is the message this sends - that there is no
| settled law really - I think the notion that nothing is legally
| set in stone and change is only a relatively easy matter of
| installing supreme court justices siding with your beliefs -
| that's gotta have some chilling consequences down the line for
| the country as a whole.
|
| Greater progress requires building upon smaller progress, a
| settled foundation. If the foundation is constantly under churn
| you can reasonably expect constant regression.
| bambax wrote:
| Yes, I think that's true. The Justices should stop imvoking the
| constitution in long legal ramblings and just say: "Our
| predecessors thought one way. We're different people and we
| think another way. Also, if you don't like it you can fuck
| off."
|
| It would be so much more honest.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Plessy v. Ferguson was settled law. Until it wasn't. And it was
| rightly overturned after decades of injustice. I bet there were
| many in the 50s who cried about settled law. Basically, the
| stare decisis argument is very limited, and the best anyone can
| hope for is that stare decisis is time-limited. Plessy lasted
| 64 years, while Roe lasted 50. So stare decisis seems to mean
| "for a few decades", which I think is fair.
|
| Stare decisis is neutral as to the content of court decisions.
| It can be used to sustain rightly and badly decided rulings for
| decades. And the court can ultimately overturn its past
| decisions rightly and wrongly. They can fail in the past, they
| can fail in the present, and they can fail in the future.
| nappy wrote:
| Which was overturned in Brown by a _unanimous_ decision.
| Typically the standard for overturning a case is high: either
| it is recent and clearly wrong, or there is a high level of
| consensus on the case. This is neither.
| blinkingled wrote:
| Fair point of course - but the devil really is in the details
| - of how far we stretch, how often, which way we change -
| towards correcting or regressing, and on what is open to
| debate vs what is not. This combined with the other things
| opened up for debate - same sex marriage, inter-racial
| marriage, contraception etc. makes one feel like everything
| including slavery being illegal/immoral can be soon up for
| discussion.
| cryptonector wrote:
| You think think that Clarence Thomas would declare the 13th
| and 14th Amendments null and void? What?
| blinkingled wrote:
| Well they can "return it to the states" to decide after a
| creative re-interpretation. Nothing is settled after all.
| And what I was really saying was that even if 13th and
| 14th aren't voided in our lifetime, there are other
| easier targets - same sex marriage and contraception
| namely that would further cement the idea that everything
| is hackable to your beliefs (without even needing
| unanimous SCOTUS decision to undo long established
| precedents) using this recipe - when what one would treat
| settled and what one wouldn't is never clear everything
| is unsettled and open to hacking away.
|
| Sounds ridiculous but look at gun rights - Scalia said
| Second Amendment applies to individuals, but the decision
| would not affect other gun safety regulations. Now we
| have the SCOTUS expanding gun rights at the expense of
| states' rights and their safety regulations.
|
| Could Congress maybe make a law stating precedents will
| not be overturned unless there is unanimous assent? That
| might make some things somewhat better for the
| foreseeable future.
| charwalker wrote:
| Constant regression is the point, for some 35% of the
| population.
| yesdocs wrote:
| Welcome to the 50's
| the_only_law wrote:
| Without the economy
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| GDP per capita was <$3000 in the 50s
|
| Edit: downvoted for stating a fact
| krnlpnc wrote:
| Do cost of housing next
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Right now median house price is 350k and gdp per capita
| is 70k (so 5x)
|
| In 1954 median house price was 19k and gdp per capita was
| $2,400 (so 8x)
|
| So yeah I'll take the current economy please.
| waffleiron wrote:
| GDP per capita doesn't mean much here, median wage would
| be a lot better.
|
| Also there are a ton of different stats for median house
| price and 19k I can only find on a single source, the
| rest is a lot lower
| MarkovChain242 wrote:
| Tip for savvy EU-based employers: you can save yourselves a lot
| of work when hiring US nationals that don't quite meet the
| European Work Visa requirements, by requesting a humanitarian
| visa for candidates that live in Florida and such instead.
| Abortion restrictions and associated death penalty pretty much
| make that a no-brainer.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Damn, I knew the forced vaccinations would came back to haunt us.
| Republicans keep throwing "my body, my choice" as meaningless
| because of it. I guarantee the hypocrisy around that radicalized
| millions of them.
| ausbah wrote:
| the US never had forced vaccinations
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| I've tended to respect the USSC most of my life. No longer. This
| sickening retrograde decision bodes much ill for Freedom. Coming
| at a time when we're already reeling from the after-effects of
| multiple blows, shows how little empathy the court can feel and
| how little it cares for majority opinion. What grievous suffering
| will it inflict next? What is the aim, if not the tragic end of a
| once-great story?
| lesstyzing wrote:
| Looking at this ruling and the one a few days ago on arms - could
| someone explain to me why they're wrong legally? FYI I'm not
| American and personally am in favour of legalised abortion +
| severe gun restrictions.
|
| My understanding is these rulings are both based on the
| constitution. The one on guns seems really straightforward:
|
| "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a
| free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall
| not be infringed."
|
| I know this can be interpreted differently but to me it reads
| that nobody should be restricted from arming themselves.
|
| Regarding abortion, what aspect of the constitution would cover
| it?
|
| I'm asking in good faith here btw.
|
| Edit: separately, it is insane to me that these big decisions can
| be completely split along political lines. A 'supreme court'
| should be apolitical. There are so many issues with the way the
| US Supreme Court works. It needs total reform. You should be able
| to trust a court to make a decision based on the law, not their
| personal preferences.
| seanicus wrote:
| Re: guns, if the militia is well regulated then the militia
| needs to explain guns getting into the hands of people that
| kill kids as well as insanely high per capita murder rates
| (primarily in red states, it should be mentioned). Maybe time
| to disband a militia that can't regulate itself?
|
| This is aside from the founders not being presented with a
| firearm that can put 6" holes into a kindergartner's body at
| the rate of 45 rounds per minute.
|
| We're never going to fix the gun issue in this country but the
| reading of 2a has always been absolutely absurd.
|
| RE: SCOTUS the powerful will always protect the powerful.
| Sotomayor just went on the record the other day to call
| Clarence Thomas 'a man who cares deeply about the court as an
| institution.' Clarence Thomas, whose wife was supporting and
| funding the January 6th insurrection and effort to overturn a
| legal election.
|
| Every now and then I ctrl-f the constitution to find the words
| "supreme court" and somehow come up blank every time.
| AustinDev wrote:
| >This is aside from the founders not being presented with a
| firearm that can put 6" holes into a kindergartner's body at
| the rate of 45 rounds per minute.
|
| Citation required... the only way you're going to get a 6"
| hole in a human body is with something like a .50 BMG (which
| is an anti-material rifle) or maybe a .45-70.
| curiousllama wrote:
| So it's bad law for 3 reasons:
|
| (1) Stare Decisis and Reliance: two legal standards that had
| restrained even right-wing courts for years. It's legal, but
| "bad", for the Court to overturn a long-standing law that
| people organize their lives around (as they did post sexual-
| revolution). So the standard isn't "is it wrong," it's "is it
| egregiously wrong." And the court has found multiple times that
| Roe is fine.
|
| (2) The decision doesn't take aim at _just_ abortion. It takes
| aim at the right to privacy. This right is pretty strong,
| overall: the 9th Amendment says "just bc a right is not
| explicit, that doesn't mean it isn't real"; the 3rd, 4th and
| others say "the gov't can't just meddle in your affairs without
| real justification;" the 14th says "this right is universal."
| Implying this right is weak is iffy at best, and DEFINITELY
| doesn't meet the "egregiously wrong" standard.
|
| (3) The new tests are, uh, speculative.
|
| (3a)They rely on historical analysis that is contextually-
| driven at best. Are we talking abortion, reproductive
| healthcare, or women's rights? That's a matter of framing, not
| law, and will lead to dif conclusions, which makes it a bad
| test. [Note: more on this when Obergefell is inevitably
| challenged...]
|
| (3b) The tests lead to dif conclusions than Alito reached.
| Abortion has been legal in the US for longer than it's been
| illegal; it wasn't banned nationwide until the 20th century,
| because it was explicitly legal under british common law. Even
| 19th century regulations were effectively just regulations of
| methods (poison control), not abortion itself. I'd argue "a
| cultural practice referenced in Shakespeare, explicitly
| addressed in 400 years of british common law, and that we kept
| for 100+ years in the US, including when the Constitution was
| written" is pretty deep. Besides, it's applied differently in
| different cases (how far back is "deeply rooted," anyway?).
| TLDR: arbitrary = bad test.
|
| All this to say: I'm pissed bc it's bad policy, but I'm ALSO
| annoyed at the bad legal analysis. Like - there are better
| arguments! It feels like an F U.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| (1) Stare decisis should not be followed blindly. "Wrong" and
| "egregiously wrong" are subjective gradations. Recall that
| Dred Scott or Plessy weren't considered wrong or even
| "egregiously" wrong for decades after their decision until
| they were. Also, Casey vs Planned Parenthood did partially
| overturn Roe vs Wade. So to say that courts found Roe "fine"
| is misleading.
|
| (2) Roe vs Wade is not premised on the 9th amendment (as much
| as I would have liked that) or cases involving substantive
| due process (Lochner vs New York), but on Griswold vs
| Connecticut, which relied an unsubstantiated argument of
| "penumbras" and "emanations", as though rights can be "found"
| in the same way that one summons Captain Planet. Roe vs Wade
| does not make a protestation to the defense of bodily
| autonomy as a fundamental right. In fact, Roe explicitly
| rejects such arguments.
| [deleted]
| ghostoftiber wrote:
| > I know this can be interpreted differently but to me it reads
| that nobody should be restricted from arming themselves.
|
| If you followed the absolute letter of the law in the current
| US legal code, females should be disqualified from owning guns:
| https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title10/sub...
|
| George Mason, coauthor of the second amendment, was asked "Who
| is the militia?" He's been asked this several times and at one
| point said it was everyone except our politicians. He typically
| responds: "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole
| people, except for few public officials." (George Mason, 3
| Elliot, Debates at 425-426) -
| https://www.madisonbrigade.com/g_mason.htm
|
| The scope of the second amendment is the same scope as all
| other amendments which is to say it's an unlimited, and natural
| right. Anything else is just playing stupid games with lawyers.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I heavily recommend that you read the gun ruling for yourself.
| It's a very fun run through history. How often do you get to
| read about the 1328 Statute of Northampton, launcegays, and the
| Black Death in modern legal analysis?
|
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| It isn't wrong legally and if anything, had the constitution
| been followed correctly, this decision is how it should have
| played out in the first place. It is only controversial because
| some people think their personal opinions on controversial
| issues should override democratic mechanisms.
| indymike wrote:
| > Regarding abortion, what aspect of the constitution would
| cover it?
|
| The US Constitution does not contain the word abortion, and so
| decisions by the Court on abortion either way are only
| indirectly guided by applying other parts of the Constitution.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| The Constitution also doesn't say I am allowed to bear an
| Ak47, but apparently it's a constitutionally protected right.
| You have a right to bear arms, but if you are going by the
| strictest interpretation, those arms should be a firearm
| built using 1776 technology. Fuck originality interpretation.
| We all know exactly what SCOTUS is going to overturn next and
| it is going to backslide America into a further shithole
| Empact wrote:
| Actually, it does: "arms" is a general term that describes
| weapons including the Ak47.
|
| The problem with saying technological change invalidates
| the 2nd amendment, is that you have to also explain or
| accept that the 1st amendment only applies to letters
| written with a feather and a pool of ink.
| mywittyname wrote:
| "Arms" includes nuclear weapons too, strictly speaking.
| After-all, the term for the period in which the USA was
| building ever more powerful nuclear weapons was called
| the "nuclear arms race."
| InTheArena wrote:
| Except this is not the way the consitution is actually
| written:
|
| "The powers not delegated to the United States by the
| Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
| reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
|
| To the people == legislative branch. to the states means the
| states legislative branch.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > To the people == legislative branch.
|
| This is the first time I've seen that assertion.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The Constitution also says,
|
| > [The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with
| foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the
| Indian Tribes;
|
| Which is the go-to argument for federal control over
| things. If you pay for it, and buy it from another state,
| then the feds can regulate it.
|
| It seems perfectly legal to make a federal law that states
| don't have the power to block access to medications
| produced in elsewhere. Nor do they have the power to
| prosecute people for buying such medications, regardless of
| the effects, from businesses which have locations in
| multiple states.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I think you would have better luck arguing the equal
| protection clause. The commerce clause can be used to
| strike down a state trying to prevent it's citizens
| getting abortions in other states, but cannot be used to
| restrict the laws of a single state.
| mywittyname wrote:
| In an ideal world, SCOTUS would point to the Ninth
| Amendment, say, "this seems like an un-enumerated
| constitutional right" and allow it.
|
| But since we don't yet live in that world, we need every
| argument we can find, no matter how flimsy or contrived.
| Because, despite having a solid foundation sitting right
| there, we are forced to build on top of a patchwork of
| whatever else we see laying around.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Or we can just pass a law, instead of allowing judges to
| do so.
|
| Remember that the supreme court has a somewhat checkered
| history. IT is the least of the democratic branches, but
| has unarguably limitless rights.
|
| What is the supreme court decided that I had a in-
| numerated constitutional right to have slaves? Or a un-
| enumerated right to not have Japanese or Chinese in my
| state. These are not hypothetical.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Which is meaningless now that the USSC has determined
| that it's fine if people sue over abortions they suspect
| may have happened.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Nothing in this opinion bars the Congress from crafting a
| compromise. One might hope it prompts just such deliberation,
| though within the confines of present politics I find that
| unlikely.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The US has a common law system, which means supreme court
| precedent is binding. Once a case is decided courts aren't
| supposed to decide the same case in the other direction. The
| supreme court has decided many cases showing that Americans
| have the right to abortion until viability. Undoing that
| precedent is a largely unprecedented move.
|
| The New York carry case seems like it was probably decided
| correctly, what's interesting to me is that the courts gun law
| doctrine relies on deciding whether the law is "consistent with
| the nations historical tradition of firearm control." The court
| decided this law was not, even though it is over a century old
| and 7 states have had similar laws for decades. At what point
| does it become part of our historical tradition?
| cryptonector wrote:
| Brown vs. Board of Education undid a ~60 year precedent. This
| case undoes a 50 year precedent.
|
| The court has to be allowed to undo precedents once in a
| while. Otherwise we'd have to fight a civil war over every
| Dred Scott case.
|
| I'm NOT saying this case, or yesterday's, was rightly
| decided. I'm only pointing out that the court has changed its
| mind a number of times in the past, and will again in the
| future.
| synergy20 wrote:
| Yes I agree the legal system should be apolitical, they should
| be elected instead of appointed, and there should be an age
| limit, plus it's just odd those judges never retires, congress
| is 4-years, senate is 6, what about a 8-year-term for supreme
| court just like everybody else(longer term for 'stability',
| life long term is ridiculous to me).
| goosedragons wrote:
| Them being elected would only guarantee they are political.
| If judge appointment was not decided by politicians and
| instead an independent body there would be a better chance of
| them actually being apolitical.
| Ekaros wrote:
| From outside perspective so many parts of judicial system
| being elected individuals seem sort of part of the problem.
| Them being elected means that there is very perverse
| incentive to work with. Ofc, there need to be way to recall
| those misusing the power or not following the laws. But
| maybe campaigning isn't the best way to do.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| People hate to admit it but the court is just another political
| entity and always has been. The basis for Roe was weak (bodily
| autonomy, privacy). So is the basis for literally all gun
| control:
|
| >> "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security
| of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
| shall not be infringed."
|
| So anyone, including children, the insane, felons etc has a
| right to bear "arms". And there is no clear limit to say that a
| gun is "arms" but a kilo of C4 or a ground-air missile launcher
| or a fully armed attack helicopter is not. In fact, in 2022 any
| militia that could be even slightly useful will need at least
| some air support. Yet SCOTUS has routinely banned these items
| from personal procession.
|
| I say this not because I am some crazy gun nut or I think that
| those an actual right to bear arms would be a good idea.
|
| I say it to point out that the courts job was always to rule
| what people wanted and what was practical was also legal. Just
| like a politicians job is.
|
| Actually arguing actual constitutionality is a red herring. A
| lawyer's job is to find a loophole and all judges start as
| lawyers...
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| As a point of fact, Americans can legally buy a "fully armed
| attack helicopter". They typically don't as a matter of
| practicality and cost, not theoretical ability. The paperwork
| is pretty nominal.
|
| Most Americans don't realize that, at least until recently,
| you could buy a kilo of C4 with cash, no questions asked. It
| is outside the experience of most Americans to buy high
| explosives retail, but that's actually a thing depending on
| where you live.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Ah, an excellent comment.
|
| Yes, the courts generally lag public opinion, but eventually
| side with it. Whether regarding interracial marriage, birth
| control, gun control, and many other things. If anything, Roe
| was an outlier because in 1972 the public was probably mostly
| unconcerned about abortion and, if pressed, probably not
| broadly for it to be legal.
|
| If, indeed, more than half the States were to legalize
| civilian possession of heavy weapons, then the courts might
| rule that to be covered by the second amendment. And since
| none do, the court will feel safe ending the second
| amendment's shade at small-caliber firearms.
|
| One might wish for the courts to act very differently than
| this, but then we'd probably see large majorities in favor of
| reforming them to be as they are.
|
| It's a problem, though, that we have such disparities in
| public opinion between various States.
|
| By the way, this decision may well cause the end of
| Republican rule in many Republican States if their
| legislatures get too excited about banning more abortion
| options than the people of those States want them to. It
| might well usher a multi-decadal Democrat majority in the
| State legislatures and in the Federal government. It could
| very well be a Pyrrhic victory for pro-life activists.
| jcranberry wrote:
| That line is simply fallacious in the modern context. A well
| regulated militia is "not necessary to the security of a free
| state".
| [deleted]
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > You should be able to trust a court to make a decision based
| on the law, not their personal preferences.
|
| The role of a court is to interpret law. While not preference,
| but "opinion" is entirely the point of a court.
| tomschlick wrote:
| > Regarding abortion, what aspect of the constitution would
| cover it?
|
| The Roe case hinged on abortion being a right under privacy
| right. It was a very weak argument and even Ruth Bader Ginsberg
| (a very left leaning justice who died recently) didnt like that
| reasoning and thought it was weak:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/06/ruth-bader...
| notch656a wrote:
| They decided abortion was a right and worked backward until
| they found a round hole in which to fit the square peg.
| Frankly I think it fits much better into the 13th amendment,
| but then that would also lead to the uncomfortable conclusion
| that parents may be compelled to involuntarily serve both
| unborn and born offspring, and I'm guessing they didn't like
| the implications that would have on child neglect laws.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Article the twelfth (AKA the 10th amendment) of the Bill of
| Rights from the US Constitution: "The powers not delegated to
| the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to
| the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
| people."
|
| So the current argument might be that since the constitution
| does not give the federal government the power to regular
| abortions (or to prevent states from regulating them), then
| that power to regulate them or not is reserved for the states
| to do as they please.
|
| The prior argument (from Roe vs Wade) is that the US
| Constitution provides a right to privacy and that prohibiting
| or otherwise restricting abortions violates that right to
| privacy.
|
| While there's no explicit right to privacy in the constitution,
| it could be implied by the 14th amendment: "... nor shall any
| State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
| due process of law ..."
|
| From the original Roe vs Wade opinion: "A person may choose to
| have an abortion until a fetus becomes viable, based on the
| right to privacy contained in the Due Process Clause of the
| Fourteenth Amendment. Viability means the ability to live
| outside the womb, which usually happens between 24 and 28 weeks
| after conception."
| https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/
| belorn wrote:
| The current record of a baby surviving is around 20-21 weeks.
|
| The viability condition is one of the legal arguments people
| tend to attack. Justice Blackmun even wrote in a memo when
| drafting the verdict for Roe vs Wade: _" You will observe
| that I have concluded that the end of the first trimester is
| critical. This is arbitrary, but perhaps any other selected
| point, such as quickening or viability, is equally
| arbitrary."_
|
| They did end upon a viability criteria. The exact week has
| also changed since medical science has advanced in the last
| 50 years.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| And these justifications from previous decisions (Obergefell,
| Loving etc... ) can be overturned with the current SCOTUS's
| interpretation. In-fact, in the leaked draft, these were also
| on the docket to be targeted by the court. In todays assent,
| only Obergefell is being targeted. I wonder why that is?
| (Cough, Clarence Thomas)
| Empact wrote:
| Aren't Obergfell and Loving based on equal protection,
| rather than privacy? That seems a more valid basis, to this
| Roe-skeptic.
| vbtemp wrote:
| > ""A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security
| of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
| shall not be infringed."
|
| I think was this was meant to mean was: Any citizen has the
| right to join their local/state militia, and keep their service
| rifle and uniform with them at home.
| troon-lover wrote:
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| The constitution the "the right of the people to keep and
| bear Arms". So who owns the right? Is it the Feds? No. Is it
| the States? No. It's the peoples'.
|
| While the first part of the sentence says why should care,
| the explicit right is owned by the people.
|
| What people don't often consider is that one can infer that
| rights might be infringed. The second amendment just says,
| "We can't fringe this right".
| cryptonector wrote:
| > I think was this was meant to mean was: Any citizen has the
| right to join their local/state militia, and keep their
| service rifle and uniform with them at home.
|
| Seems sensible. But the court is saying that if you look at
| what laws were passed / in force at the time, and what courts
| said about them around that time, you'll see that to
| contemporaries of ratification the second amendment meant a
| right to carry arms, not just to be in a militia, or
| whatever. That too seems sensible. Now what?
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The militia is defined in both statutory and common law as
| essentially every able-bodied male, and always has been in
| the US. The statutory law explicitly recognizes that the
| militia is not something you "join" but is something you are.
|
| Obviously this should probably be expanded to include women
| generally, but their 2nd Amendment rights are not predicated
| on their membership in the militia.
| nmz wrote:
| Able-bodied seems like it should exclude those with
| disabilities. militia is certainly not an individualistic
| term either.
|
| if able-bodied or militia is defined by the law does that
| mean they can include and exclude whoever they wish by
| redefining it?
| Ekaros wrote:
| So if a group of people form a militia, do they then as
| militia have right to produce let's say nuclear weapons? As
| those are "arms" and thus shall not be infringed. Can federal
| government or state control what type of weapons these
| militias manufacture, import and hold?
| _dain_ wrote:
| That isn't what was found by DC v Heller.
| StuffMaster wrote:
| It's pretty much what the words say. And it's likely what
| the authors meant.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The Constitution is a little ambiguous as to whether or not
| a citizen must join a militia in order to keep a gun at
| home.
|
| ...however in the absence of militias in the US today, it
| makes sense that even if that requirement was initially
| envisioned (which is very debatable), it's no longer
| reasonable.
|
| It's historically interesting to note that different
| versions of the amendment were ratified, both including and
| not including that last comma.
| cweagans wrote:
| DC v. Heller was wrong. Go read the context around all of
| the places where a militia is mentioned in the
| constitution. It's a pretty clear difference from the world
| that DC v. Heller created.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Yea, there's a lot of history around types of militias,
| too (especially formal v. informal militias). The
| historical arguments were what got me on this: the
| 'prefatory' clause is pretty clearly there to point out
| that formal militias are allowed, and make no mention of
| informal militias.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The supreme court just decided that precedent is
| meaningless though.
| wffurr wrote:
| DC vs Heller was a bad decision full of ideological
| motivated reasoning by a politicized court.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Regarding abortion, what aspect of the constitution would
| cover it?
|
| The 9th amendment of the United States reads:
|
| > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall
| not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
| people.
|
| This was added as an Amendment, because many founders were
| deeply concerned that the introduction of a bill of rights
| would create the impression that if they enumerated _some_
| rights, people would consider that list to be _complete_.
|
| That is, they recognized that there were many rights _not_
| explicitly enumerated by the constitution that were still
| important rights. Nearly everyone agreed that the enumeration
| of rights was not intended to capture _every_ right.
|
| So, relying on "what rights are explicitly mentioned in the
| constitution" is antithetical to the entire concept of the bill
| of rights. It's an incorrect place to start reading the
| constitution.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It would be nice if 9th and 10th Amendment jurisprudence were
| stronger.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of
| a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
| shall not be infringed."
|
| > I know this can be interpreted differently but to me it reads
| that nobody should be restricted from arming themselves.
|
| Sure was interpreted differently when black people started
| carrying in public! [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act
| laverya wrote:
| Which was wrong, and will ideally be overturned. "Racists
| supported gun control in the past, therefore we should keep
| gun control now" is _perhaps_ not the strongest argument one
| can make.
| nabla9 wrote:
| There is a legal principle that once the court bedsides
| something and it becomes established law, you don't overturn
| the previous decision lightly.
|
| Roe & Wade is based on the Due Process Clause of the 14th
| Amendment to the United States Constitution. Roe vs Wade did
| not happen in vacuum, it's part of a larger understanding of
| the Constitution that recognizes a right to privacy and
| recognizes that there are unwritten rights.
|
| This decision overturns this whole 50-year old framework.
| Decisions based on 14th Amendment's Due Process clause are now
| open for banning contraception, banning interracial
| relationships, family relationships, right to intimacy (sodomy
| laws), the right to personal control of medical treatment. It
| will even have data collection limit consequences.
|
| How Dismantling Roe Puts Interracial Marriage at Risk
| https://www.aclu.org/podcast/how-dismantling-roe-puts-interr...
| xdennis wrote:
| This is just scaremongering for funding. Nobody is trying to
| ban interracial marriage.
|
| Roe v Wade was controversial since it was decided. It was
| never settled precedent. People have tried to overturn it
| from the start.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >Regarding abortion, what aspect of the constitution would
| cover it?
|
| None. Roe was based on pure vapor, constitutionally speaking.
|
| >You should be able to trust a court to make a decision based
| on the law, not their personal preferences.
|
| That is in fact what the Supreme Court has just done, by
| overturning Roe.
| motive wrote:
| Regarding guns, the dissent argues that "well-regulated" and
| "militia" are key components of the text. The applicants for
| concealed carry were not part of a militia, and the current
| court doesn't seem to acknowledge the "well-regulated" piece
| exists at all.
|
| With regard to abortion, the constitution guarantees us a right
| to privacy, which is closely linked to bodily autonomy. The
| argument being that there is constitutionally no legal way for
| the government to involve itself in your personal health
| decisions. There is an interesting ideological reversal here
| with regard to the recent vaccine debate with liberals arguing
| the government should be able to compel vaccination, and the
| conservatives against.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Except there isn't a explicit right to privacy either in the
| constitution or the bill of rights. Which is why RBG always
| argued that Roe v. Wade was poorly decided.
| motive wrote:
| Should there be? I think this is an evolving question that
| would settle a number of ambiguities in the law.
|
| If one were to die tomorrow without being an organ donor,
| the state still cannot compel one to give up their organs,
| even if it would save lives. Why should a woman's body have
| less autonomy than a corpse?
|
| On the other hand, I don't think many people would support
| 39-week abortions either, absent some explicit medical
| necessity. At some point, which is inherently a gradient,
| our legal system has to afford protection to what is a
| viable person.
|
| Americans have a tendency to go for the most extreme
| positions on everything and I think the court reversing Roe
| is an incredibly shortsighted decision that will cost it
| decades of legitimacy. The institution is more damaged now
| than possibly ever. Even the Chief Justice had wanted to
| uphold Mississippi's law but preserve Roe, which would've
| been a much better solution than where we are today.
|
| Extremism is a cancer destroying this country.
| InTheArena wrote:
| I agree that extremism is a cancer. I just view Roe v.
| Wade as the genesis of much of that cancer.
|
| We have a system that allows for changing laws - it's
| called a republic. We have a system that even allows for
| changing the constitution.
|
| Upholding Mississippi's law but preserving Roe is
| intrinsically a political decision. Politics belong with
| legislatures, not judges.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I've seen it claimed that "well-regulated" in 1789 meant
| "well-equipped". Think of what a "regular" and "irregular"
| meant then (and kinda still means now). A "regular" was a
| soldier in an army. An "irregular" was a civilian joining the
| fight. I don't know if it is true that "well-regulated" meant
| "well-equipped", but it makes sense that it might have.
| dwater wrote:
| > There is an interesting ideological reversal here with
| regard to the recent vaccine debate with liberals arguing the
| government should be able to compel vaccination, and the
| conservatives against.
|
| My interpretation of that ideology is that liberals want the
| government to protect public health by restricting personal
| freedom of participation in certain aspects of the public
| sphere by those who choose not to be vaccinated, and
| conservatives want to put their own personal choices above
| the public health by allowing them to do without restriction
| all the things they did before the pandemic regardless of
| their vaccination status. There was never serious debate
| about blanket compelling of vaccination.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is exactly the point for me. Roe V Wade embraced a court
| that decided that judges could/should legislate (that is, make
| new laws) rather then enforce the text of existing laws. This
| is not new from the court - separate but equal, Bush v. Gore,
| Citizens United, Dredd Scott - all basically where examples of
| the court taking matters into their own hands.
|
| This simply says "Abortion is a legislative matter - the
| constitution does not say that abortion must be legal until the
| moment of delivery".
| kennywinker wrote:
| Weird because the courts striking down laws as
| unconstitutional is literally their job description.
|
| Equal protection under the law would be my first pick for
| constitutional protection of abortion. There are very few
| life threatening things that the law compels men to do. Yet
| the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term against
| her will?
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > Yet the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term
| against her will?
|
| The law also compels men to carry fetus's to term against
| their will, should they happen to become pregnant somehow.
|
| Just because men can't get pregnant doesn't mean that the
| law doesn't apply to them.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Well, lately, men _can_ get pregnant. I haven 't really
| thought this through, but I _think_ that if you take the
| liberal position and regard trans men as men, then you
| can 't claim equal protection as an argument against
| abortion restrictions.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| >Just because men can't get pregnant doesn't mean that
| the law doesn't apply to them.
|
| Yes it does.
| [deleted]
| lesstyzing wrote:
| >> Equal protection under the law would be my first pick
| for constitutional protection of abortion[..] Yet the law
| can compel a women to carry a fetus to term against her
| will?
|
| But wouldn't that introduce the issue of whether or not the
| foetus should be entitled to equal protection (which most
| anti-abortion voters would suggest is a child and should be
| protected/have rights)? Seems odd to make it a man/woman
| equality issue.
| charwalker wrote:
| So an unborn not yet human will have more rights than an
| 'illegal alien'?
| jsmith45 wrote:
| My view has always been that it does not even matter if
| the fetus has full rights.
|
| People do not have the right to physically attach
| themselves to another person, and leach blood, oxygen,
| nurturant etc off the other person. Period. Fetuses would
| not be an exception.
|
| I feel that a person who wakes up with another person
| surgically attached to them by some sort of mad-scientist
| doctor could have surgery to have the second person
| removed, even if this means certain death for the second
| person. I don't view abortion as any different.
|
| I could support a ban on abortion methods that directly
| kill the fetus, but as long as the method is primarily
| about severing the connection to the mother and removing
| it from the body, I see nothing wrong with that, even if
| removal means certain death for the fetus.
|
| If people feel fetuses have human rights, I could also
| support laws or medical ethics requiring doctors to
| attempt to save the fetus after it is expelled (if the
| condition was such that saving them might be possible)
| just like they would try to save any other person.
| kennywinker wrote:
| When two people's right conflict, who wins?
|
| For example, i have two lungs. You are in a car accident
| and both your lungs have failed. I could donate a lung
| and save your life.
|
| Your right to live comes up against my right to control
| my own body. My right overrules your right. Even if I was
| the one who caused the accident that damaged your lungs.
| I can be found to have broken laws causing the accident,
| but I can't be forced to donate an organ.
| thesiniot wrote:
| Actually, the power to strike down laws as unconstitutional
| was arbitrarily claimed by the court in 1803. It is not
| written down anywhere, except maybe the original federalist
| papers.
|
| https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-
| constitution/ma...
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| The law can compel a man, but not a woman, to fight in a
| war against his will.
| kennywinker wrote:
| The constitutionality of the draft is debatable. Congress
| can raise armies, per the constitution - that doesn't
| mean they can compel any individual to fight.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Debatable by whom? The Supreme Court found it to be
| constitutional in 1918 and hasn't accepted a challenge to
| that ruling since.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Equal protection under the law would be my first pick for
| constitutional protection of abortion. There are very few
| life threatening things that the law compels men to do. Yet
| the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term against
| her will?
|
| I don't think it's the court's job to equal the playing
| field on biology.
|
| But since you put it like that, wouldn't that mean the
| father also has the right to decide for or against the
| abortion of his child?
| kdmccormick wrote:
| > Weird because the courts striking down laws as
| unconstitutional is literally their job description.
|
| Funnily enough, it's literally not in their original job
| description. Judicial review, like so many things about the
| Supreme Court, is just based on precedent [1].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > Weird because the courts striking down laws as
| unconstitutional is literally their job description.
|
| "Unconstitutional" is never as straightforwardly defined as
| one would like. For example, protesting against the draft
| was ruled by the Holmes court as unprotected speech. Today,
| you can burn a flag with impunity.
|
| > Equal protection under the law would be my first pick for
| constitutional protection of abortion.
|
| While I'm supportive of the, for lack of a better term,
| "spirit" of Roe vs Wade, it was never premised on equal
| protection under the law. After all, men don't have an
| acknowledged right to avoid parenthood. The opinion itself
| only justifies abortion on a limited right to privacy and
| explicitly rejects the "my body, my choice" justification
| that it is mythologized to have:
|
| "The Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also
| acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected
| by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may
| properly assert important interests in safeguarding health,
| in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting
| potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these
| respective interests become sufficiently compelling to
| sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion
| decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be
| said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that
| the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited
| right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close
| relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated
| in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to
| recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past.
| Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 25 S.Ct. 358, 49
| L.Ed. 643 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200,
| 47 S.Ct. 584, 71 L.Ed. 1000 (1927) (sterilization)."
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113
|
| > There are very few life threatening things that the law
| compels men to do.
|
| Selective service and compelled paternity.
|
| > Yet the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term
| against her will?
|
| The law can compel a man to support a child even if he man
| is not the biological father. It can compel one be
| vaccinated against his/her will. It can also compel
| sterilization if it determines that one is mentally
| defective.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Compelled paternity isn't a matter of bodily autonomy
|
| Child support isn't a matter of bodily autonomy.
|
| Both of those apply to both men and women.
|
| The law can theoretically compel everyone to be
| vaccinated, not just men. That's equal protection under
| the law. It's also only available in public health crises
| - not routine.
|
| Again sterilization has been applied to men and women.
|
| Selective service is maybe the only analog to forced
| birth, and even that has carve outs for religious and
| moral beliefs.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >Compelled paternity isn't a matter of bodily autonomy
|
| >Child support isn't a matter of bodily autonomy
|
| A man can be ordered by a court to obtain a job to pay
| for the child or risk being thrown in prison for refusing
| to comply. Even terminating parental rights does not
| remove him from the obligation of paying child support.
| There has never been a case of compelled maternity
| (compulsion to mother a child) as every state, even the
| ones that will now be able to criminalize abortions,
| allow a mother to surrender her child within a period of
| at least 72 hours.
|
| > The law can theoretically compel everyone to be
| vaccinated, not just men. That's equal protection under
| the law. It's also only available in public health crises
| - not routine.
|
| Equal violation is not equal protection. Otherwise
| slavery would be OK as long as you could find a
| persuasive or compelling enough interest for it and found
| that it could be equally applied to men and women. That's
| not how rights work. They're inalienable. You either have
| them or you don't.
|
| > Again sterilization has been applied to men and women.
|
| Same as above.
|
| > Selective service is maybe the only analog to forced
| birth, and even that has carve outs for religious and
| moral beliefs.
|
| Carveouts and concessions only make the violation of a
| right palatable, not reasonable or justifiable. Several
| states that oppose abortions have carveouts for incest,
| rape, and/or threats to the health of the mother. In
| spite of these carveouts, I reject that states or even
| the federal government should have a say on what one does
| with one's body in the first place with "special" cases
| being negotiated after the fact.
| kennywinker wrote:
| Well then we mostly agree. I've just been trying to draw
| consistent lines through an inconsistent system. I
| believe the system should be consistent, and I believe
| that there is no consistent system that men could live
| with that would also include banned abortion.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Then you share my own interest. I would certainly enjoy a
| constitution that was consistently interpreted to
| acknowledge and protect negative rights from first
| principles. But anyone who's read case law will find the
| actual practice of law to be more disappointing.
|
| > Well then we mostly agree.
|
| What is it that you don't agree with?
| plushpuffin wrote:
| It literally is not. The ability of the court to strike
| down laws is something the court came up with for itself.
| It's not _literally_ in the Constitution, it 's an inferred
| authority.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_review_in_the_United
| _...
| MarkMarine wrote:
| Judicial Review is something the court granted itself, it's
| not in the constitution. This idea that that court can
| basically invent or remove the laws of the land by
| interpretation of a 200 year old document, then decide oh,
| that's wrong and now it's this way... is basically insane.
| It does not work like this basically anywhere else in the
| world.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> This is exactly the point for me. Roe V Wade embraced a
| court that decided that judges could/should legislate (that
| is, make new laws) rather then enforce the text of existing
| laws.
|
| > Weird because the courts striking down laws as
| unconstitutional is literally their job description.
|
| Not really, because the question is actually "what makes
| something unconstitutional." Should the standard be "we
| nine unelecteds don't like it, and can read whatever we
| want into text that is actually silent on the issue"?
|
| > Equal protection under the law would be my first pick for
| constitutional protection of abortion. There are very few
| life threatening things that the law compels men to do. Yet
| the law can compel a women to carry a fetus to term against
| her will?
|
| That frankly doesn't make any sense. The law doesn't say
| that men are permitted to get abortions but women aren't,
| and the law clearly must be able to regulate things that
| one sex is incapable of doing (e.g. penetrative rape, and
| please don't waste time trying to argue the illustration
| instead of the point). Also, I believe most, if not all,
| anti-abortion laws apply to people other than the woman
| getting the abortion.
| kennywinker wrote:
| > Should the standard be "we nine unelecteds don't like
| it, and can read whatever we want into text that is
| actually silent on the issue"?
|
| I mean that's what every ruling is. The court exists
| because the text isn't clear. No text is clear enough to
| handle reality. There are always exceptions, shifting
| definitions, changing technology. No document can be the
| full representative of its meaning - a system of rules
| based on documents will always have a layer of
| interpretation built on top of it
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Should the standard be "we nine unelecteds don't like
| it, and can read whatever we want into text that is
| actually silent on the issue"?
|
| > I mean that's what every ruling is.
|
| No, it clearly isn't. If it was, you might as well
| abolish the other branches of government, because the
| government is really an oligarchy of judges.
|
| > The court exists because the text isn't clear. No text
| is clear enough to handle reality. There are always
| exceptions, shifting definitions, changing technology. No
| document can be the full representative of its meaning -
| a system of rules based on documents will always have a
| layer of interpretation built on top of it
|
| That's true, _but only to a point_. Take it too far, and
| you are just using an oligarchy of judges to bypass the
| legislative process.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Men are still lawfully required to register for the draft
| for military service (even though active conscription is
| currently on hold since 1973). It could be argued that
| being sent into war is life threatening.
|
| This was upheld very recently in 2019. [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Coalition_for_Me
| n_v._...
| charwalker wrote:
| I can go to jail for refusing to be drafted sure but my
| life would not be at risk the same way someone with a
| rough pregnancy might. Anecdotal but my sister in law
| would not be alive today if she had not had the option to
| end unsafe pregnancies prior to having 2 healthy
| children.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| By this argument, a woman's life is not under threat by
| the pregnancy since she can simply choose to abort and
| risk going to jail for it.
| Comevius wrote:
| Unlike saying no to being drafted, abortion is a medical
| procedure. Women can't simply choose to abort, they must
| have medical assistance. Even with that it's never a
| simple choice.
|
| Not to mention that when a war threatens the country you
| being drafted is taking the lion's share of the risk,
| because someone not doing it is also risky and to
| everyone.
|
| Here women have to risk their lives and jail because a
| bunch of religious extremists and fascists have nothing
| better to do. There is no logical, philosophical, moral
| or even religious reason for it. It's tyranny for
| tyranny's sake. It's a demonstration of the power these
| people have over society.
| helloooooooo wrote:
| And in their justification, the assenting justices are now
| coming for gay marriage. It's funny that justice Thomas is
| not also gunning for interracial marriage, given that they
| were both legalized using the same interpretation of the law.
| SCOTUS is a joke, and it's decisions should hold no bearing
| going forward.
| cupofpython wrote:
| Some argue the Supreme court has too much power. Whether
| you agree with the result or not, the Left absolutely
| abused the power of the Supreme Court in order to make fast
| progress. There was no reason to involve the Supreme Court
| in many of these cases in the first place other than
| because the laws themselves disagreed with what people
| wanted. But the people have the power to change the laws.
| We just havent.
|
| which is also why 2nd amendment is relevant. if the people
| responsible for the creation of laws is sufficiently
| corrupted, then the public have the right to form a militia
| and replace them. Which you cannot do if those same
| corrupted people are the ones deciding who is allowed to
| have guns or not.
| mirceal wrote:
| > I know this can be interpreted differently
|
| You answered your own question. It's the interpretation that
| matters. The Supreme Court is a joke.
|
| Political debates have not been done in good faith in the US
| for decades. It's no longer about the people - it's about
| fooling the people into getting amped up about things and
| voting one way or the other. It's like a wrestling match. Does
| it really matter who wins if it's all fake? Actually I take
| this back: being a wrestler actually needs some sort of prep
| and physical conditioning. Wrestling is better than politics.
| mc32 wrote:
| It should be up to the Congress (or state legislatures) to make
| abortion legal and write the laws that protect the right such
| as they did for example in France.
|
| The Constitution is or was a band-aid and it's reached its EOL.
|
| The Congress has abrogated their duty here and we're seeing the
| consequence of this.
| cmollis wrote:
| When I was a child in the Catholic Church (70s and 80s) there was
| NEVER any political discussion that entered into the service
| ("..render unto caesar what is caesar's.." or 'separation of
| church and state'. Or, more probable, perhaps it was felt that it
| simply was not the forum for present-day politics. I don't know).
| Since lapsed, A few years ago I was encouraged by a priest, as he
| enjoyed his fourth old fashioned, to attend a Mass. He noted that
| I might find it more 'enlightening' than I had in the past so I
| agreed (albeit reluctantly). What I witnessed was no less than a
| 45 minute diatribe on the dangers of abortion, casting various
| aspersions (ad hominem) on any political leader not on board with
| new political agenda of the Catholic Church. Frankly very little
| else. I hypocritically thought to myself 'would Jesus be proud of
| this? Perhaps. But I certainly wasn't. The addtional twisted
| irony was that the person I was with actually had an abortion.
| She sat quietly listening to this without seemingly the slightest
| bit of concern. She said that's how all services are now.
|
| It occurred to me that all of this must have been carefully
| planned at the highest levels of both the church and
| political/financial benefactors that support it. A long and
| patient process put in motion years ago. I realize This is
| somewhat anecdotal but speaks to perhaps the planning that
| culminated in todays decision. This is about power and control
| operating under the auspices of religion. SCOTUS are just run-of-
| the-mill sycophants playing along.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Me when Catholicism incorporates local pagan rituals: Haha fuck
| yeah!!! Yes!!!
|
| Me when Catholicism incorporates local facist evangelicalism:
| Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Like most things, follow the money. How do you get people to
| care about the same sermon on the same verse year after year?
| Want to get people involved with their time and money? You just
| have to convince them of whatever evils they already believe.
| Be their echo chamber, talk about all the people who are trying
| to do such terrible things. Be a fear-monger. The same thing
| that works for Fox News and CNN also works in a church. Get
| them addicted to the rhetoric and watch the money flow in. Look
| at people like Joel Osteen who only care about money.
|
| I grew up going to church multiple times per week. Today's
| church is a cult and it is a cult about hate. I learned in
| Sunday School that God is love and that we should help each
| other. Today the message is righteous indignation. They don't
| believe in the Bible or follow Jesus' teachings but they are
| _very very_ adamant that the "sinners" must be converted to
| their way of thinking. It is nothing but hypocrisy and if
| pointed out, Christians have decided that they and they alone
| have the right to decide what parts of the Bible matter and
| what doesn't.
| raincom wrote:
| "There shouldn't be intermediaries between God and human
| beings"--is a Protestant doctrine. This doctrine has gone
| secular: separation of church and state. In other words,
| protestant Christian ideas have become the foundation of many
| modern political theories.
|
| For a Catholic, the Catholic Church is the intermediary between
| him/her and God.
| bobthechef wrote:
| throw1122334 wrote:
| [deleted]
| lesstyzing wrote:
| Why is it a surprise that the Catholic Church is against
| abortion? This list of religions that are ok with abolition is
| short. It would be quite a big thing for a catholic to turn a
| blind eye to and not consider when voting.
| giaour wrote:
| > This list of religions that are ok with abolition is short.
|
| You are incorrect, but this is also a specious argument. The
| list of religious that were anti-slavery was short at the
| outset of the 19th century and a mile long by the outset of
| the 20th. Church doctrine is not immune to influence by
| popular sentiment.
| mola wrote:
| This is not what OP said. He was surprise to hear a highly
| political sermon where earlier that was not the standard.
| brokenkebab2 wrote:
| It's common to say "political" when a topic in question is
| challenged. But everything can be. Zeitgeist, and context
| changes, so the very same sermon becomes "political". For
| what I know Catholic position on abortion didn't change
| from OP's childhood. His perception probably did.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Because their stupid book has instructions on how to perform
| one.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Why is it a surprise that the Catholic Church is against
| abortion?
|
| What's surprising is the _American_ Catholic priesthood tends
| to go after pro-choice politicians, but not pro-death-penalty
| ones, despite the church seeing both as similarly
| objectionable. The political bent is fairly new.
|
| The Pope has messaged that he'd rather they butt out.
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/world/europe/pope-
| francis...
| runarberg wrote:
| Catholic dogma is also very pro immigration. The birth of
| Jesus during migration, and that he was cared for by
| accommodating strangers (and even other migrating nomads)
| is a big deal in Christianity. The current pope's rhetoric
| underscores this.
|
| Why they focus so much on abortion is suspect indeed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What's surprising is the American Catholic priesthood
| tends to go after pro-choice politicians, but not pro-
| death-penalty ones, despite the church seeing both as
| similarly objectionable.
|
| [EDIT: This first paragraph is incorrect as is pointed out
| in a response; it is left unchanged for context of the
| discussion.]
|
| They are not viewed as "similarly objectionable". The death
| penalty is viewed as being within the legitimate power of
| government doctrinally, but the present leadership of the
| Church views prudentially that the conditions which allow
| it do not occur in the modern world. Direct abortion is
| viewed as doctrinally prohibited. This is an important
| theological distinction because the Church heirarchy is
| viewed (borrowing some language from law) as having binding
| authority on doctrine, but only (very strongly) persuasive
| authority on prudential application of doctrine to
| particular material contexts.
|
| That being said, you are correct that the political actions
| of the American Catholic heirarchy (more the bishops than
| the priesthood, and not all of them) are rather unbalanced
| (and not just on this pair of issues) in a way which is not
| easily explained by any coherent appeal to the actual
| social teaching of the Catholic Church.
| [deleted]
| giaour wrote:
| > They are not viewed as "similarly objectionable". The
| death penalty is viewed as being within the legitimate
| power of government doctrinally
|
| Respectfully, no. The catechism reads, "the death penalty
| is inadmissible because it is an attack on the
| inviolability and dignity of the person"[0]. This is a
| recent revision, and what you say reflects what was
| officially taught until 2017.
|
| [0]: https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM
| yepguy wrote:
| "[..] it has been infallibly taught by the ordinary
| magisterium of the Church that the death penalty is not
| intrinsically wrong. Not even a pope can reverse this
| teaching." [0]
|
| [0]:
| https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/01/20/capital-
| punis...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| A claim by a lay philosopher that something has been
| infallibly taught is not the same as an actual infallible
| teaching, and if you even casually follow Catholic
| debates, you will find a lot of conflicting claims about
| what has an has not been infallibly taught.
|
| Arguably, the most these writings about what has been
| implicitly infallibly taught and therefore cannot be
| changed by a Pope despite the absence of an explicit
| dogma tell you is what the author is very concerned that
| there is an insufficient commitment to among the
| heirarchy and probably a risk of imminent change by a
| Pope, which the author is lobbying against.
|
| (Or, as in this case, what has recently been actually
| changed by a Pope that the author wishes everyone to
| pretend has not.)
| giaour wrote:
| People can argue whatever they want in an editorial, but
| I will take the word of the pope and the catechism when
| it comes to the question of, "what is the official
| doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church on X?"
| yepguy wrote:
| Well I certainly can't blame you for that. However, it's
| far from clear whether the change to the catechism can
| even be reconciled with prior teachings at all. I only
| linked to one article among many, but there is
| considerable confusion about this change throughout the
| church and Pope Francis has not really offered any
| clarification.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Well I certainly can't blame you for that. However,
| it's far from clear whether the change to the catechism
| can even be reconciled with prior teachings at all.
|
| If one views the argument that the prior teachings were
| infallibly proclaimed as incorrect, than there is no need
| to reconcile them; the prior teachings were simply in
| error.
|
| Unsurprisingly, Francis has not only identified the
| previous approach as in error, he has both explained
| where the error is and provided an (unnecessary)
| explanation of what led people to make the error.
|
| > there is considerable confusion about this change
| throughout the church and Pope Francis has not really
| offered any clarification
|
| No one is confused or has any need of clarification. "It
| is per se contrary to the Gospel" isn't the kind of
| statement that leaves a whole lot of room for different
| readings.
|
| What there is is _disagreement_.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I stand corrected. I was aware Francis had solidified the
| move to "never" from "almost never" that had been
| palpably occurring for some time, but somehow missed that
| he had articulated it as a categorical violation of
| morals rather as a progression of prudential judgement in
| changing circumstances as other recent Popes had.
| fulvioterzapi wrote:
| > What I witnessed was no less than a 45 minute diatribe on the
| dangers of abortion, casting various aspersions (ad hominem) on
| any political leader not on board with new political agenda of
| the Catholic Church.
|
| A typical Catholic Mass lasts less than one hour. Most of the
| Mass follows a fixed, prescribed set of prayers and readings,
| that have nothing to do with politics. In the middle there's a
| sermon, that usually lasts about 15 minutes, that might include
| references to news or to politics.
|
| Either you ended up at a very atypical mass, and by very
| atypical I'd say borderline heretic, or you don't remember
| well.
|
| > with new political agenda of the Catholic Church.
|
| New? Like it or not, the position of the Catholic Church on
| abortion has been extraordinarily consistent through the
| centuries.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not Catholic, but I go to services in all three
| major branches (Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic) and I am a
| Christian. Granted, I've only been to one service in the USA
| in recent years, but even still, Canada is not so different
| and I've not even heard abortion mentioned once nor long
| diatribes on any specific political issue other than vague
| warnings against government manipulated media.
|
| But this isn't what gets mentioned in Hacker News comments.
| And it certainly isn't what is upvoted. The internet boosts
| grievances and fourth sigma event reporting.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > New? Like it or not, the position of the Catholic Church on
| abortion has been extraordinarily consistent through the
| centuries.
|
| That's not even remotely true!
|
| For the vast majority of the history of the Catholic Church
| early term abortion was acceptable. It was only the 1588 that
| it was outlawed, and that didn't last long, only a few years.
| Another ban was instituted in 1869.
|
| At the timescale of the Catholic Church, the current
| extremist position on abortions is extremely recent. Far less
| established as precedent than say Roe was.
| fulvioterzapi wrote:
| > Another ban was instituted in 1869.
|
| That's more than 150 years ago. Matches pretty much my
| definition of consistency.
|
| Even before, there might have been some doctrinal
| adjustments, but abortion was condemned by many Fathers of
| the Church, in the very early centuries.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| 150 years out of 2000 is not consistent. If you value
| consistency, then ignore the current ruling as its
| relatively fresh and just carry on with abortion.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| > That's more than 150 years ago. Matches pretty much my
| definition of consistency.
|
| So out of a 2000 year history, "consistency" means
| something that was invented 150 years ago? That seems
| like an absurd definition of consistency.
| Clubber wrote:
| >It was only the 1588 that it was outlawed, and that didn't
| last long, only a few years.
|
| I mean that was 500 years ago. It's hard to argue
| inconsistency when it's been the same for 500 years.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| Reread what you quoted.
| Clubber wrote:
| Hah. oops. I guess I was enamored by the fact that the
| math made it precisely 500 years ago this year.
| [deleted]
| chasd00 wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted, my wife is catholic and you're
| right on every point. I would even go further and say
| deviating from the standard ritual of catholic mass is
| probably a big no-no in the church and could land a priest in
| hot water.
| sterlind wrote:
| this was masterminded in large part by Leonard Leo of the
| Federalist Society. he's Catholic, and the upper echelons of
| the organization are virtually all Catholic, and has enjoyed
| tremendous influence - even providing Bush and Trump with
| shortlists of Justices to pick from.
|
| unsurprisingly, the majority of Justices are now Catholic -
| Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor (liberal, not a FedSoc pick),
| Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.
| twright wrote:
| One major change that spurred specifically the Catholic church
| into politics was the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) which
| permitted priests and bishops to participate in politics.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| I never experienced long political diatribes when I attended
| Catholic mass a few years ago. There wasn't much time for
| speaking as the mass itself is quite involved.
|
| > It occurred to me that all of this must have been carefully
| planned at the highest levels of both the church and
| political/financial benefactors that support it.
|
| I'm curious if we'll see leaks confirming this. Otherwise this
| might be an anecdote stretched a little too far. It's far more
| likely you've experienced some bad pastors.
| bko wrote:
| The framing of this debate is often religious, but it doesn't
| have to be. The fact is that at some point between inception
| and time of delivery, the fetus becomes a person and has some
| rights. Most people agree that it's probably not inception and
| it's probably not the moment before birth. So the question is
| when does this happen?
|
| In that way, the pro-life crowd has at least a closer framing
| of the issue. The pro-choice crowd is talking about religion,
| privacy, social safety nets, etc. But that's all beside the
| point. If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters. We
| should all try and at least agree upon the framing of the issue
| and argue from there or we'll never get anywhere.
| starkd wrote:
| There was a time when the democrat party stood for abortions
| being "legal safe and rare". None other than Bill Clinton
| said this. Perhaps this decision will now allow state
| legislatures to pick a reasonable time limit. This does not
| have to be a wedge issue.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Hahahahaha no. I live in Louisiana, which had a law passed
| a while ago that said the moment RvW was struck down, all
| abortions are illegal. No exceptions for rape or incest or
| risk to the mother; someone put a baby in that womb, and
| you, as womb-bearer, _will_ carry it to term no matter
| what.
|
| It was a wedge issue when the GOP picked it up and made an
| unholy alliance with the raving fire-and-brimstone
| preachers of the South that got Reagan in office. It has
| continued to be a wedge issue that the GOP has relied on to
| get their asses in office for pretty much my entire life.
| starkd wrote:
| It's also not 1970 anymore. There's a prophalactic pill,
| there's morning after pill, and there's freedom of
| movement between states. Women are capable of exerting
| self-responsibility over their reproduction, and they are
| not helpless victims.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > there's freedom of movement between states
|
| If you have money, or a network of help, and a safe home
| situation...
|
| It's easy to say "everyone in a regressive state should
| move". It's easy to say "everyone in a regressive country
| should move". Not everyone has that option as readily
| available as you might imagine.
| starkd wrote:
| There are inconviences behind everything you go to do.
| Simply saying "not everybody can afford something" is not
| an argument. It's a convenient escape hatch. If people
| spent half the effort to actually help any women in such
| a situation than they do at protesting, most such extreme
| situations could be solved.
| wonnage wrote:
| tmountain wrote:
| Birth control is next on the chopping block. Justice
| Thomas already stated that Griswold v. Connecticut should
| be reconsidered.
| starkd wrote:
| Wrong. Read the decision. They specificaly rule it out.
| fifticon wrote:
| Rich people aren't, but a lot of people getting in
| trouble with this aren't rich people. Rich people will
| still get their abortions,law or not.
| buttersbrian wrote:
| So now I must travel hours to receive a procedure that
| may save MY life? If I have an ectopic pregnancy you are
| going to make me cross multiple states potentially to
| have a life saving procedure that can currently be
| performed at any small hospital in the country if not for
| legal restrictions? That's certainly part asinine.
| starkd wrote:
| Most of the legislation either includes or is eventually
| amended to provide for those exceptions. 12 to 15 weeks
| is generally should be more than enough time.
| inlined wrote:
| Except access to contraception is based on the same
| reading of the constitution that Roe v Wade depended on
| and has now been gutted. There are now legitimate pushes
| to outlaw contraception for unmarried people.
| starkd wrote:
| Read the decision. Kavanaugh and Roberts were very
| specific that the reasoning doesn't affect other issues.
| misterbishop wrote:
| It cuts both ways. What you're saying about the GOP is
| 100% true. It also became the Democrats' fundraising
| angle for 30+ years, despite their total inaction on
| passing an actual law recognizing the right to abortion.
| Democrats like Joe Biden supported bans on federal
| funding for abortion via medicare, which led to the
| present condition when people have to rely on
| clinics/non-profits for abortion care.
|
| The only winner in the partisan fight are the elites in
| both parties. We need a working class party to resist
| both of the parties of American capitalism.
| alangibson wrote:
| > democrat party
|
| I wonder if this one has a partisan axe to grind
| [deleted]
| adammichaelc wrote:
| I agree; I also think it's important to allow the people to
| decide these kinds of hot, controversial issues.
|
| 7 people shouldn't have the power to command millions of
| people.
|
| It's better to persuade, discuss, debate, change hearts and
| minds, than to dictate top-down.
|
| I personally believe only women should be allowed to vote on
| this issue. It's their bodies, and they bear the overwhelming
| brunt of childcare and labor associated with raising
| children. They take the risks. They ought to be in the driver
| seat.
| randcraw wrote:
| I appreciate the primacy of the mother's opinion over the
| father's or the courts' (since pregnancy affects only her
| body among those three parties), but I hate to dismiss the
| father as if he were just a bystander.
|
| But surely there's another participant that deserves a
| voice. If it's a person (or even partly a person), then its
| most precious possession, it's life, is to be taken. Surely
| its voice cannot be dismissed outright. That's why I
| believe this issue is not as simple as letting only the
| mother (or the courts) decide. Historically, abortion has
| done a lot of harm, irrespective of Roe v Wade.
|
| Personally, I think we need to try harder to minimize the
| injuries inherent in abortion. Let's not make a complex
| issue binary, as merely right or wrong. Technology and
| creativity are our friends. I believe it's possible to find
| 'cures' that do far less harm than is done now and to work
| toward even better ways until the rights of everyone
| involved are served.
| zuminator wrote:
| I disagree that there is a "point" at which a fetus becomes a
| person, no more than there is a point where a slowly
| accumulating pile of sand becomes a hill. Both hill-ness and
| personhood are artificial concepts that we give meaning to,
| and we can define them as precisely or as nebulously as we
| wish. Another example is adulthood. We have chosen to define
| it at 18 in the US, even though we all know 25 year olds who
| are less mature than some 16 year olds. In some cases
| (heinous crimes, emancipated minors) we will legally confer
| some aspects of adulthood to people under 18. In other cases
| (smoking, drinking), we will delay the privileges of
| adulthood. We do this because we know that a single "point"
| can't account for the full complexity of the transition to
| adulthood. And there's nothing stopping us from treating the
| onset of personhood as a similarly complex issue. Which is
| what the Roe v Wade regime did, for the most part.
|
| "If the fetus is a life," you say, but of course it's alive,
| it's made of living cells. That's not even the issue really.
| Something being alive doesn't necessarily say anything about
| how we should treat it. We don't treat bacteria with respect,
| or mushrooms, or even most animals. So given that a fetus is
| alive, does that entitle it to any rights? And if so should
| those rights have primacy over the rights of the person who
| is carrying the fetus?
| bko wrote:
| > So given that a fetus is alive, does that entitle it to
| any rights?
|
| I didn't mean to say whether the fetus is alive is the
| relevant question, so apologies for the confusion. It's
| whether the fetus is a person, in which case, yes being a
| person does entitle it to rights, none greater than your
| right to life. That takes primacy over other rights of the
| mother to terminate the person (assuming it is a person).
|
| It's true that there's no clear answer, but I suggest that
| this is the question to answer, regardless of where you
| fall on the debate. Some people think its "heart beat"
| however you define that, other think its viability outside
| of the womb, and I'm sure other people have different
| criteria. But we should look to answer this question and
| get to a sensible policy.
| zuminator wrote:
| Even if we accept that a fetus is a person at stage X in
| its development (whether that is conception or later),
| that doesn't necessarily mean we will give it all the
| panoply of rights that we give to those residing outside
| the womb. In the US, citizens have certain rights (and
| sometimes, responsibilities) that non-citizens do not
| have. Are fetuses citizens? That's an easy one to answer:
| No, at least not by the standards of the 14th amendment,
| where it decrees: "All persons born or naturalized in the
| United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
| are citizens of the United States and of the State
| wherein they reside."
| disambiguation wrote:
| > no more than there is a point where a slowly accumulating
| pile of sand becomes a hill.
|
| This is basically the argumentation why many treat
| conception as the start of life. If you can't know the
| exact point, then disallow people from guessing and
| potentially getting it wrong.
| [deleted]
| dbingham wrote:
| Except that's not the universal framing.
|
| There is one side that is fighting very hard to not only make
| it at conception, but potentially even before conception
| (there are reasons to believe that the supreme court might
| come for birth control next - and there are large portions of
| the same religious community that put them in power that want
| that).
|
| For many people on the other side the fetus doesn't get
| rights until it is born. And up until that point, it is a
| bundle of cells wholly dependent on the mother, and therefor
| part of her body (and thus, her bodily autonomy). Indeed,
| there's a reading of the bible that supports this
| interpretation - it mentions multiple times a baby becoming
| alive "at its first breath".
|
| For many people, the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but
| it's not clear at all that those people represent a majority.
|
| The issue touches on strongly held moral beliefs on both
| sides - rights to life, right to bodily autonomy, and
| questions about when life starts.
|
| There is no simple universal framing that we can all agree
| upon.
|
| ----
|
| And even aside from framing, even if we could agree on a
| framing, the issue gets really complex, really fast. Lets say
| we do agree that the question is about when a life becomes a
| life.
|
| Pregnancy is dangerous, as I well know. My wife and I lost
| three pregnancies. One of them was at 20 weeks. My son was
| already dead by the time we got to the hospital, but they had
| to remove his body from my wife's body or it risked a deadly
| infection. The medication they used to do that, in this case
| to trigger labor, was an abortion medication. The procedure
| they would have performed had that failed, was a DNC - an
| abortion. Both are already being banned by trigger laws in
| many states. In a room down the hall, a dear friend of ours
| who'd been struggling with infertility and loss was having a
| DNC the same day we lost our son, due to yet another failed
| pregnancy. Again, without that procedure, she would have
| died.
|
| So you very quickly get into other complexities even when you
| do boil it down into a question of when life starts. And even
| then, the argument for banning it the way many states are
| (completely, with no exceptions) becomes hard to make about
| anything but control.
|
| You can say it's about saving the life of the child - but we
| don't force dead people to donate their organs even when it
| would save a life. These laws will force women to die, even
| when there is no living child left to save.
| Bud wrote:
| It's not nearly as vague as "there are reasons to believe"
| that the Court "might come for birth control next". Justice
| Thomas said it very very clearly in his opinion today:
|
| "For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all
| of this Court's substantive due process precedents,
| including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sodomy], and
| Obergefell [same sex marriage]. Because any substantive due
| process decision is "demonstrably erroneous," we have a
| duty to "correct the error" established in those
| precedents."
|
| They ARE COMING for it next. They just said so.
| native_samples wrote:
| Here's the thing. It's easy to believe that one side truly
| believes in the right to life, at least for innocents.
| Being against killing, at least for non criminals/enemies,
| is pretty common.
|
| The right to bodily autonomy is not believable because
| there weren't a whole lot of people campaigning against
| vaccine mandates because they were pro-bodily-autonomy.
|
| As for your examples, surely even pro-life people don't
| care about "abortions" of babies that are already dead? If
| laws are interpretable in that way it seems like an easy
| wording fix. Not many people would care about that even if
| religious.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Being against killing, at least for non
| criminals/enemies, is pretty common.
|
| Ok then, the fetus is my _enemy_.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Ok, but that means that you are the _fetus 's_ enemy, and
| society has an obligation to choose a side in that fight
| to the death you are proposing, to make sure that the
| correct side ultimately wins.
| dbingham wrote:
| The people who passed the laws know damned well what they
| are banning. They are intentionally and explicitly
| banning the procedures by name. Medical professionals and
| the people these would affect pointed out to them the
| impact of banning the procedures. They don't care, they
| passed the laws anyway.
| inlined wrote:
| There have been explicit cases of republicans holding
| public office saying that abortion bans should explicitly
| not make exceptions for ectopic pregnancies or even cases
| where the mother's life depends on it in general
| dbingham wrote:
| As for bodily-autonomy, most people I know who are pro-
| choice are also in favor of the vaccine because - same as
| abortion - they view it as a life saving medical
| procedure. Those who weren't did protest about bodily
| autonomy in relation to the vaccine mandate.
| native_samples wrote:
| Doesn't matter if it's life saving, right? If you argue
| based on bodily autonomy, and then support vaccine
| mandates, you're not consistent regardless of what you
| think the vaccine does.
| dbingham wrote:
| One doesn't have to take extreme positions to be
| consistent. In order to believe that someone should have
| bodily autonomy over continuing a pregnancy (something
| potentially life threatening, and definitely life
| altering) I don't have to believe that bodily autonomy is
| absolute.
|
| Vaccines are something that touch on community health.
| When one person chooses not to get vaccinated they are
| putting everyone around them at risk. At the most extreme
| extent, abortion affects the potential parents, the
| potential life, and their families. It's a different risk
| calculation. A woman pursuing an abortion is making life
| and death decisions for (at most - because not everyone
| believes the fetus is a life with rights) two people.
| Someone not getting a vaccine in a deadly pandemic is
| making decisions that impact life and death for their
| whole community.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| >there are reasons to believe that the supreme court might
| come for birth control next
|
| Reasons like Justice Thomas explicitly and clearly saying
| they should reconsider the ruling that prevents states from
| banning them.
|
| From the NYT:
|
| >Then, [Justice Thomas] took aim at three other landmark
| cases that relied on that same legal reasoning: Griswold v.
| Connecticut, a 1965 decision that declared married couples
| had a right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003
| case invalidating sodomy laws and making same-sex sexual
| activity legal across the country; and Obergefell v.
| Hodges, the 2015 case establishing the right of gay couples
| to marry.
|
| >Justice Thomas wrote that the court "should reconsider"
| all three decisions, saying it had a duty to "correct the
| error" established in those precedents. Then, he said,
| after "overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions,
| the question would remain whether other constitutional
| provisions" protected the rights they established.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/us/clarence-thomas-roe-
| gr...
| Siira wrote:
| I don't agree with your framing. In my opinion, at some point
| between a baby being born and going to preschool, the child
| will become intelligent enough to warrant being called a real
| person. It's quite probable that treating a just-born baby as
| a full human has its advantages, but that is certainly not
| biologically true. A baby is less aware than cows, and people
| eat cows all around.
| slg wrote:
| >If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters.
|
| This is irrelevant to my personal views on abortion because I
| believe that individuals have rights over their own body
| which supersede anyone else's rights to their body. We hold
| this as true in all other facets of bodily autonomy. I have
| no legal responsibility to risk my life to protect my fellow
| citizens. I have no obligation to regularly donate blood or
| bone marrow. I can't be compelled to donate a kidney. I can
| even arrange for all my healthy organs to be thrown in a fire
| or buried underground after my death rather than allow them
| to be used to save the lives of multiple people. This is all
| because my body is mine and I can control what happens to it.
| If I refuse to allow it to be used to support another life,
| that is my choice.
| wyager wrote:
| There is definitely an autistically propertarian argument
| in favor of abortion, which I personally consider fairly
| compelling, but 99.9% of people are not nearly as
| propertarian as I am, and I'm not willing to give people a
| pass to use this kind of reasoning selectively. If you
| support abortion rights on these grounds and you're not
| also 100% on board with laws that let you e.g. shoot
| burglars, you're not being consistent. A lot of people
| using this argument were also pro-vaccine-mandate, which is
| similarly inconsistent. (Not calling out you personally,
| just using "you" to refer to the hypothetical flip-flop.)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| If the vaccine has side effects similar to that of an
| average pregnancy it would not only not be mandatory, but
| would have failed FDA trials and would be illegal to
| administer.
|
| There's a line somewhere between total bodily autonomy
| and being compelled by the state to experience: nausea,
| swelling, muscle and back pain, weight gain,
| incontinence, depression, and laceration to you genitals.
| wyager wrote:
| You're failing the "consistent propertarian" test hard
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Thanks, I think? I'm not sure why it's necessary to
| consider one's body "property" to advocate for having
| some semblance of control over what happens to it. And
| it's pretty obvious this right is not absolute since
| parents are still allowed to circumcise their children
| and sign off on medical procedures done to them.
| wyager wrote:
| My original comment is not addressed at people like you;
| sorry if that was not clear. You don't appear to be
| claiming to have a property ethic, and are instead using
| various ad-hoc lines of reasoning (e.g. what strikes you
| as qualitatively more or less onerous).
|
| > parents are still allowed to circumcise their children
|
| Indeed, propertarianism where parents do not own their
| children would also proscribe surgically mutilating them,
| for example. However, parents would not necessarily be
| obligated to take care of their children; this is also
| the basis by which abortion would be permitted.
| Propertarianism where parents do own their children
| (which strikes me as unreasonable) would a fortiori also
| allow abortion, as well as other more universally reviled
| practices such as post-birth infanticide.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Ah, interesting, thank you. How does propertarianism deal
| with my example of parents making medical decisions on
| behalf of children? It seems like an interesting quandary
| because a 1 year old can't be expected to make an
| informed decision on vaccination (for example) and so
| _some_ control over the child 's body must rest with the
| parents.
| wyager wrote:
| I can imagine several strategies compatible with western
| and near-eastern jurisprudence, such as considering
| parents to be (temporary) trustees with certain fiduciary
| duties to their children. I'm by no means an expert in
| propertarian theory; I just think it's a nice framework
| for bodily autonomy in particular, since it's
| computationally efficient, fairly unambiguous, and
| generally provides agreeable results.
| [deleted]
| kokanator wrote:
| Actually this is not true.
|
| The US government can compel you to sacrifice your entire
| body ( organs and all ) for the greater good of other
| citizens should they wish. [0]
|
| https://www.sss.gov/
| bogwog wrote:
| I think you picked the worst counter argument here, since
| women specifically are not required to register for the
| selective service.
|
| ...I'm not saying I agree or disagree with anything in
| this thread, I just think this particular chain of
| comments is funny.
| [deleted]
| googlryas wrote:
| Do you think you should have the right to have an abortion
| 1 day before the due date of a baby?
|
| The reasonable thing would just be to deliver the baby and
| put it up for adoption, but don't you have the right to,
| say, disconnect the placenta (it's your placenta), and also
| not have your abdomen cut open to help out some other
| individual who just happens to be stuck in there?
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Typically, Western culture recognizes individual rights
| to do what they want with their own body, such as
| drinking too much, going hiking when it's too hot, or
| getting ugly tattoos. These days, even the right to use
| drugs is returning. So although having an abortion one
| day before delivery is unwise, I hold that it should
| absolutely be legal.
|
| It's hilarious to me that the same crowd that fights for
| gun rights under the banner of "individual liberty" is
| very quick to invite the government into the womb.
| the_mar wrote:
| IDK what you are arguing for or against, but I would like
| to point out that overturning Roe v Wade invited
| government into the womb
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I think you and the person you're replying to are on the
| same page. They seem to be arguing that abortion should
| be legal in all cases due to the individual rights of the
| pregnant person, regardless of the scenario, because
| individual rights apply even (perhaps especially) when
| society as a whole disagrees with an individual's
| decision.
| newjersey wrote:
| Thank you for this. The right to bear arms crowd always
| says you cannot ban guns, you can only ban legally owned
| gun.
|
| Well you cannot ban abortion. You can only ban safe
| abortions.
|
| This is what they want. They don't want an end to
| abortions. They want an end to safe abortions. If more
| women die in labor, they are ok with it.
| bliteben wrote:
| Lets bring up a hypothetical that has never and would
| never happen. You could never find a doctor willing to do
| this unless there was something medically wrong with the
| baby that likely would endanger the mother.
|
| I do support this kind of abortion because the only
| situation I could imagine it happening is in a life
| saving one.
| googlryas wrote:
| It's not for a life saving treatment, you just don't want
| to deal with a baby and you know if you wait a day you'll
| go to jail when you kill it.
|
| And you can perform the abortion yourself. After all,
| what right does a doctor have over what operations you
| can do on your own body?
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| The irony of this ludicrous argument (who would abort a
| fetus one day before their due date, increasing the risk
| to their own life? Let alone choose to abort a fetus
| themselves and risk bleeding out rather than have a
| doctor do it safely) is that banning abortions
| _increases_ the odds of this very scenario playing out
| because of the lack of accessibility to safe abortions.
|
| The scenario you've described is approximately the same
| as a suicide. Consider that people still do that even
| though it's illegal. Heinous shit will happen, but if
| you're genuinely interested in minimizing human death and
| suffering, safe and legal abortion is a necessary
| component to that.
| googlryas wrote:
| Yes, it is a ludicrous scenario, but OP's entire
| worldview is equally as ludicrous, because it allows for
| such scenarios("If I refuse to allow it to be used to
| support another life, that is my choice."). In any case,
| no special rules or consideration are generally needed
| for normal scenarios, so you are often looking at less
| common or ludicrous seeming scenarios when probing the
| limits of someone's viewpoint.
|
| I'm not positive that allowing no questions asked
| abortions 1 day before the due date will minimize human
| death and suffering. Instead, I think it would provide an
| avenue to take for people who have, basically, cold feet
| about being a parent.
|
| In fact, I have to wonder if OP thinks they have the
| right to abandon their already-birthed baby in the
| wilderness. After all, what right does that individual
| have to force another person to take care of it? I'm an
| individual after all. If I refuse to allow my body to be
| used to support another life, that is my choice.
| knome wrote:
| This is a conflict between bodily autonomy and the right
| to life. Two rights, both important.
|
| Wheresoever these rights meet, we have, as a society,
| chosen the right of bodily autonomy. No one may compel
| you to donate your blood or organs, even if they might
| die without them. Even if they are your children. Even if
| you will be dead when they are taken. We have made a
| strong cultural choice that the body is yielded only with
| specifically granted consent.
|
| Abortion is a place where these two fundamental rights
| connect. The mother's right to control herself and the
| child's to exist. Under our culture's normal choice of
| bodily autonomy, it is an unfortunate consequence that
| the child will not live.
|
| It might be entirely reasonable to frame laws encouraging
| that children deemed viable should rather be birthed so
| long as there is not risk to the mother. But this is not,
| of course, what they have done.
|
| Instead we have re-opened a chapter once closed. Of
| horror stories with women being denied abortive
| procedures for ectopic pregnancies, or known failed
| pregnancies, forcing them instead to carry their dead
| child until it is naturally expelled. Horrors that would
| be easily taken care of by the woman simply having that
| natural choice over her own flesh.
|
| Desperate women without resources to flee oppressive laws
| will resort to the same sorts of dangerous remedies they
| did in pre-Roe days. These frequently went wrong, and
| many that spoke in favor of Roe when it was passed cited
| such stories.
|
| Women will die and families will suffer under the laws
| that have become active today, and those laws that will
| be soon certified into action or freshly written to take
| advantage of Roe's absence. The people insisting on these
| laws will take no measure of responsibility for the
| terrors they inflict, insisting instead it is the fault
| of the victims of these laws. Many seem to take some
| perverse glee in it.
|
| That one of the justices has insisted in their
| concurrence that we review and vacate laws enshrining
| similarly protected rights for millions of Americans, it
| seems sure the current path will lead only to more
| misery, bigotry, violence and horror if those pushing
| this poisonous legislation have their way.
| Siira wrote:
| Yes, I think people should have that right.
| googlryas wrote:
| I don't say this lightly, but you're literally advocating
| for killing babies. Not in the sense that a first or even
| second trimester abortion is, but to kill a baby
| literally a day before it would be born, because you have
| the right to and not to literally save your own life, is
| just absolutely craven.
| Siira wrote:
| It's not literally that at all. Read about Schelling
| fences. It's arbitrary, but it's not pointless.
| googlryas wrote:
| You can come up with any justification you want, give it
| any name you want, but what you advocate for is still, in
| the end, killing a baby which would do perfectly fine on
| its own in the outside world.
|
| Which is why I would be charged with murder if I go punch
| a heavily pregnant woman in the gut and kill her child.
| slg wrote:
| >Do you think you should have the right to have an
| abortion 1 day before the due date of a baby?
|
| I think it is fair to force a point of no return in a
| pregnancy after which we prohibit abortion (edit: beyond
| situations that threaten the mother's life). The most
| important aspect to me is that the person has the time
| and freedom to make that decision that is right for them.
| If we are trying to be scientific about it, viability
| occurs around 24 weeks so that seems like a reasonable
| deadline for a decision.
| twoheadedboy wrote:
| Yes, absolutely
| namecheapTA wrote:
| Levitz wrote:
| Even if that's the case, do you understand that the vast
| majority of society would consider such thing absolutely
| psychopathic?
|
| What I'm trying to get to is that "My body my choice" is
| a nice thing to chant at a protest, it's also a pretty
| damn bad argument, I can't believe we are still doing
| this AFTER covid. I'm 100% for abortion but I find it
| hard to argue outside a "the fetus is not a sentient
| being at that point" frame.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > What I'm trying to get to is that "My body my choice"
| is a nice thing to chant at a protest, it's also a pretty
| damn bad argument, I can't believe we are still doing
| this AFTER covid.
|
| It's really _not_ a bad argument if you consider acute vs
| routine circumstances. Otherwise how could we argue
| against blackout restrictions[1] in cities now that WWII
| has happened?
|
| [1] http://pbchistoryonline.org/page/local-response-
| blackout-res...
| imchillyb wrote:
| The rights of the body /ended/ when a penis was inserted
| into a vagina.
|
| The ONLY KNOWN METHOD OF HAVING CHILDREN IS: ::drumroll::
| Sexual Intercourse.
|
| There is no other natural method of having children;
| intercourse is it.
|
| The choice lies in choosing NOT TO HAVE SEXUAL INTERCOURSE.
|
| That is the proper framing. If the choice /not/ to have sex
| was followed there would be no pregnancy, and no cause to
| terminate a life.
|
| The choice was prior to conception, not after.
| swearwolf wrote:
| Are you honestly of the opinion that all intercourse
| involves the affirmative choice of both parties? Because
| if you are, you are gravely mistaken.
| camhart wrote:
| > If I refuse to allow it to be used to support another
| life, that is my choice.
|
| You're missing the point that your choice to have sex
| created the fetus/life in the first place. That changes the
| debate and invalidates all of your examples.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Depends on the law as some laws forbid abortion even in
| rape and incest, which I'd argue are strong examples of
| someone specifically not choosing to have sex.
| tzs wrote:
| I don't understand why it is almost always "rape and
| incest", both on the part of people considering
| exceptions when they ban abortion or people trying to get
| exceptions into someone else's abortion ban.
|
| Incest can be nonconsensual, in which it was also rape
| and so would be covered under a rape exception.
|
| Incest can also be consensual, in which case what is the
| logic to treating conception by incest any different than
| any other circumstances of conception?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Fair point, I meant more for the nonconsensual aspect,
| although I'm unsure if incest is illegal even if
| consensual, I guess it might depend on the jurisdiction,
| at which point eve if it were two people consenting, it
| may not legally be considered consensual, similar to how
| people under a certain age have no legal ability to
| consent.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think there are a few problems. First, as with
| statutory rape, I think incest is often treated as de-
| facto coercive - e.g. could you say "no" to your dad if
| you depend on him for food/shelter/clothing? Second, rape
| often requires the victim to accuse the rapist of such -
| which is probably less likely when family is involved.
| Finally, incest carries increased risks of abnormalities
| in the child, which makes the case for aborting to
| prevent suffering of the child stronger.
| camhart wrote:
| Very true, but that accounts for less than 0.5% of
| abortions. For a vast majority of abortions, they made
| the choice.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| This is really the crux of the matter. Thank you for
| bringing it up. The issue for the pro-life is crowd is
| not about life, and it never has been. The real goal is
| socially repressive puritanism and a desire to punish
| women for choosing to have sex.
|
| By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a crash,
| the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries, because
| after all, it was their choice to drive.
| corrral wrote:
| > By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a
| crash, the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries,
| because after all, it was their choice to drive.
|
| I'm pro-choice but this _does not_ follow from that
| logic, which is that choosing to take action that might
| result in another living thing temporarily being
| dependent on you to survive, _does_ come with at least
| some level of obligation not to rip that support away
| such that they die. Your analogy doesn 't address that at
| all.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| First of all, as others have pointed out, laws that
| prohibit abortion even in cases of rape and incest
| overlook the "choosing to take action" part. In that
| case, a person is pregnant without ever having made a
| choice to engage in any action at all.
|
| Moreover, "living thing" is the key word here. A fetus IS
| a living thing. So is a cow, a cockroach, an intestinal
| parasite. We kill those, and we support industries that
| kill them, without thinking. And while there are
| extremists who support protecting a broader segment of
| "life," that is not what the pro-life movement is about.
| If I breed cows for a living, I have a legal and ethical
| right to kill those cows. And if I have a baby attached
| to my uterus, I should have the legal right to do what I
| want.
| camhart wrote:
| If you were raped, and it wasn't your choice, then yes I
| agree there's an argument that you should have the legal
| right to decide for yourself what the moral/ethical thing
| to do is.
|
| But if you instead put the baby in your uterus, of your
| own free will and choice, you are responsible for it.
|
| Rape accounts for less than 0.5% of abortions. While it's
| important to consider, it doesn't remove the
| responsibility in the other 99.5%.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| I acknowledge that a person is responsible for what
| happens in their own body. The key point is that getting
| an abortion IS taking responsibility, not its abdication.
| If you are pregnant and do not want to give birth,
| getting an abortion is the only responsible choice. It
| would be far more negligent to give birth, risking
| additional medical complications, and bringing an
| unwanted person into the world.
|
| I am under no more ethical obligation to preserve the
| life of a fetus in me than I am to preserve the life of
| an intestinal parasite that I've ingested.
| corrral wrote:
| > First of all, as others have pointed out, laws that
| prohibit abortion even in cases of rape and incest
| overlook the "choosing to take action" part. In that
| case, a person is pregnant without ever having made a
| choice to engage in any action at all.
|
| Yeah, obviously, but it barely matters for the overall
| argument. It's misdirection, not a substantive
| refutation. Is _anyone_ on the pro-choice side happy with
| only allowing abortions in cases of rape and incest? I 'm
| not. I'm pretty sure that falls under the pro-life
| umbrella, in fact. All this shows is that one part of the
| pro-life camp may have a better-reasoned position than
| another.
|
| > Moreover, "living thing" is the key word here. A fetus
| IS a living thing. So is a cow, a cockroach, an
| intestinal parasite. We kill those, and we support
| industries that kill them, without thinking. And while
| there are extremists who support protecting a broader
| segment of "life," that is not what the pro-life movement
| is about. If I breed cows for a living, I have a legal
| and ethical right to kill those cows. And if I have a
| baby attached to my uterus, I should have the legal right
| to do what I want.
|
| This still doesn't address the argument. In fact your
| keying in on "living thing" and trying to build on that
| as an argument is pure semantic mumbo-jumbo. Replace that
| phrase with "baby" (which I avoided so we wouldn't
| immediately have that _other_ ridiculous, pointless
| discussion) and all that junk about cows is irrelevant,
| which it was anyway.
|
| Again: I'm pro-choice, to be clear. I just find most
| arguments from "my side" totally fail to address the
| "other side"'s actual positions, which is frustrating if,
| like me, you hope for your position to gain support. Bad
| arguments just make us look like we're wrong.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| 1. There are certainly more and less extreme flavors of
| the pro-life movement. I reject your assertion that the
| more extreme side is negligible, as there are laws on the
| books, and now enforceable, that prohibit abortion in all
| cases, such as in Louisiana.
|
| 2. Fetuses are not babies. Babies are people, from a
| legal and ethical perspective; fetuses are not. If it
| were otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this
| conversation, as abortion would already be considered
| murder. So yes, fetuses are living, but that does not
| afford them any rights, any more than cows have rights by
| virtue of being alive, and it certainly doesn't afford
| them rights that supersede those of an actual person.
|
| In other words: in our society, we give rights to people,
| not to mere "living things."
| corrral wrote:
| > 1. There are certainly more and less extreme flavors of
| the pro-life movement. I reject your assertion that the
| more extreme side is negligible, as there are laws on the
| books, and now enforceable, that prohibit abortion in all
| cases, such as in Louisiana.
|
| It's not that that faction's negligible, it's that the
| argument isn't helpful for refuting "the mother does have
| some obligation to a life that was created and became
| dependent on her through her own actions" because someone
| who holds that position probably doesn't disagree with
| you that rape and incest are exceptions. It's a
| distraction not from the broader debate, but
| _specifically_ from substantively addressing this
| particular position.
|
| > 2. Fetuses are not babies. Babies are people, from a
| legal and ethical perspective; fetuses are not. If it
| were otherwise, we wouldn't even be having this
| conversation, as abortion would already be considered
| murder. So yes, fetuses are living, but that does not
| afford them any rights, any more than cows have rights by
| virtue of being alive, and it certainly doesn't afford
| them rights that supersede those of an actual person.
|
| This is _precisely_ the point of contention, and it is
| _far_ from clear-cut even on the pro-choice side. That 's
| why 3rd trimester abortion rights are far less popular
| than the rest--even to many pro-choicers, the
| is-/isn't-a-baby question is settled at some point
| _before_ birth, but after the 1st trimester.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| I think it's extremely relevant to discuss the extreme
| pro-life position opposing all forms of abortion, because
| it's the only form that's logically consistent. If one
| truly believes that abortion is murder, then it doesn't
| matter how the baby was conceived. On the other hand,
| what is pro-life's ethical justification for allowing
| abortion in cases of rape or incest? Are you saying that
| murder is okay in some cases? In my opinion, it's just
| another example of the right's crippling hypocrisy.
|
| The argument that abortion is tolerable in cases where
| the women does not choose to have sex shows your hand:
| the pro-life movement was never about protecting life, it
| has always been about punishing women. You are okay
| killing fetuses as long as the woman didn't actually have
| the temerity to enjoy sex.
| camhart wrote:
| You have #2 backwards. The reason we're even debating
| this is because we can't agree on when the fetus becomes
| a person with rights. Pro-lifer's are very much arguing
| that it is murder. 43ish? states currently prohibit
| abortion after a certain point in pregnancy prior to
| birth [0][1]
|
| [0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-
| rankings/what-states...
|
| [1] https://www.axios.com/2022/05/14/abortion-state-laws-
| bans-ro...
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Pro-lifers may SAY that they think that abortion is
| murder, but there is no law, even a proposed law, that
| literally treats it as such.
| philsnow wrote:
| I just want to jump in and say that _even though we don
| 't agree on the issue at hand_, I nonetheless appreciate
| you trying to clear up bad arguments and present only the
| strongest arguments.
|
| It's often exhausting trying to get people to think with
| their brains rather than with the tips of their tongues,
| and all the bad arguments muddy waters.
| camhart wrote:
| > The real goal is socially repressive puritanism and a
| desire to punish women for choosing to have sex.
|
| Just because you believe this doesn't make it true. I
| struggle to believe that a single pro-lifer would say
| this is the reason behind their beliefs. As a pro-lifer,
| I can attest that it has nothing to do with my beliefs.
| Believing it may "demonize" prolifers, and help you feel
| good about fighting for your stance on abortion. But the
| reality is, blind beliefs like this are the cause of
| division and hate that seems to be ever increasing.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > I struggle to believe that a single pro-lifer would say
| this is the reason behind their beliefs.
|
| Of course they wouldn't say it out loud: that would be
| giving the game away. Instead, judge them by their
| actions. The same crowd that wants to prevent abortions
| also wants to prohibit contraception, allow unrestricted
| gun ownership, and cut back on any social programs that
| support families.
|
| These actions are consistent with a puritanical, anti-sex
| society; they are not consistent with a "commitment to
| life."
| philsnow wrote:
| > The same crowd that wants to prevent abortions also
| wants to prohibit contraception, allow unrestricted gun
| ownership, and cut back on any social programs that
| support families.
|
| I see this kind of thought process all the time: when
| some people don't get traction with their arguments on a
| particular issue, they ascribe other beliefs to their
| opponent and call those into question. This is both ad
| hominem and whataboutism, and it doesn't win over
| _anybody 's_ heart or mind, it just "others" the
| opponent, further entrenching tribalism.
|
| The "crowd" is diverse and contains multitudes. If you
| want to change minds, engage with the arguments, not with
| the arguers.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| The argument that the right wants to prohibit
| contraception is not some specious straw-man that I made
| up: it is stated plainly in Justice Thomas's opinion. And
| it's a position that I believe is supported by a large
| portion of the population in states where abortion is now
| illegal. We see more and more antagonism against gays and
| trans people. Moreover, because the Dobbs decision
| dismantled the right to privacy, it has cleared the way
| to destroy the legal foundation on which other important
| decisions are based, such a gay marriage.
|
| If you don't want to be judged as a tribe, you need to
| take a stand. If you support contraception and gay
| marriage, then support them. Right now, though, the right
| is supporting more and more extreme ideologues.
| camhart wrote:
| So... you get to decide what I believe and why I believe
| it? Then you convince yourself that you're beliefs about
| what I believe are more accurate than what I attest them
| to be?
|
| Stop listening to what prochoicers say prolifers believe,
| and start actually listening to what the prolifers are
| saying. I (and most prolifers I know) don't have some
| secret agenda.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Yes, I get to judge your integrity based on your actions.
| Obviously. When your actions are evil, I don't care what
| you say.
|
| When the cop beats you bloody while declaring that it's
| "For your own protection," you are justified in
| questioning his motives. When the right claims to care
| about "life," but their actions totally contradict the
| stated goal, I get to declare them at best hypocrites but
| more likely just fascists.
| defen wrote:
| > The real goal is socially repressive puritanism and a
| desire to punish women for choosing to have sex.
|
| Is the intent behind child support laws "a desire to
| punish men for choosing to have sex"? If a man has a one-
| night-stand with a woman and a child is born, he could be
| on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars over the
| course of 18 years.
|
| > By your logic, if a person drives a car and has a
| crash, the doctor should refuse to treat their injuries,
| because after all, it was their choice to drive.
|
| If a person refuses to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and does
| _not_ have COVID, should doctors / hospitals be allowed
| to give that person lower quality-of-service and/or
| refuse elective treatments? After all, the person made a
| choice not to get a COVID vaccine which is proven safe
| and effective.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > Is the intent behind child support laws "a desire to
| punish men for choosing to have sex"?
|
| Irrelevant comparison. There is no procedure to legally
| "undo" a child who has been born, in which case one
| should pursue the wellbeing of the child (which may or
| may not be well-served by child support laws). However,
| if a child has not yet been born, and the child is not
| wanted, abortion prevents health risks to the mother,
| while also preventing an unwanted child from a life of
| hardship. If there's a procedure that helps everyone
| involved, why not do it?
|
| > If a person refuses to take a COVID-19 vaccine, and
| does not have COVID, should doctors
|
| Bro this makes no sense at all. If the patient doesn't
| have COVID, then the decision to not take the vaccine has
| no bearing on their elective treatments. If a woman has
| sex, she has not surrendered the right to her body.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| > That changes the debate and invalidates all of your
| examples
|
| Why? In what way?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Your comment actually made me think of something I had
| never considered: perhaps the mother's right against the
| child is self-defense.
|
| The child is literally feeding off the mother until birth,
| taking energy, nutrients, maybe even killing the mother. I
| don't necessarily want to frame it this way, because I want
| to view the relationship as mutualistic or commensalistic,
| rather than parasitic, but I could see how it might be
| biologically a parasitic relationship.
|
| However, a quick search shows that people against abortions
| say that biologically it must be "an organism that attaches
| to a member of a different species and feeds off that
| organism in a manner that is physically injurious to the
| other organism."
|
| While it may not fit the dictionary definition of a
| biologically parasitic relationship, I believe it still can
| "feed off that organism in a manner that is physically
| injurious to the other organism."
|
| So I think there could be an argument for self-defense.
| shanusmagnus wrote:
| It's a weird self-defense argument when the reason the
| child exists at all is because the mother and some dude
| brought it into existence in the first place. That seems
| a key piece the metaphor should include.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Fair point. I don't like the self-defense argument in
| general, as we will often put ourselves into a dangerous
| situation and then claim we were acting in self-defense
| when someone attacks us, e.g. the Kyle Rittenhouse
| situation, being unaware of how our actions escalated the
| conflict.
|
| But just strictly going from the legal sense, I imagine
| there's a lot of leeway in defining self-defense with
| regards to whether one chooses to enter into a situation
| where one is likely to be attacked.
| bko wrote:
| Arguments like this don't win the hearts and minds of
| people (maybe not your intent). Calling fetuses/babies
| parasites may sound to you like a clever analogy but to
| most other people it just sounds crass.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Oh I don't like the argument at all. I felt disgusted
| even writing it. I also don't like the argument of using
| self-defense as a reason to shoot people or the death
| penalty or frankly the assumption that other people have
| evil intent. I think the vast majority of us are trying
| our best and accidentally hurt people (EDIT: and that
| people feel hurt after our actions, not necessarily
| caused by them but more likely correlated).
|
| But I do believe that some people who are pregnant and
| would like abortions may perceive the child as being
| parasitic (not a parasite, as I also don't like to attach
| strict labels of badness to one's identity but to focus
| on behaviors).
|
| So I agree it sounds crass and yet think if others want
| to use self-defense for other arguments defending their
| harm to others, I don't see why that same argument
| couldn't apply here.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| You're right, but I hold hope for an enlightened
| electorate that makes careful decisions when prohibiting
| other peoples' rights. This analogy is useful in
| exploring that space.
| dionidium wrote:
| When you find yourself explaining an ordinary biological
| process, especially one that millions of people regard as
| wondrous and miraculous, in this manner, does it not
| inspire you to take any sort of pause and wonder if
| you're engaging in a kind of special pleading?
| Intellectually and emotionally, is this really how you
| want to characterize pregnancy? I think one should be
| careful not to arrive at monstrous conclusions in service
| of political ends.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I agree with you. I felt disgusted writing it. For me,
| pregnancy inspires feelings of wonder and magic and awe.
| Yet for others, pregnancy may cause them to feel fear,
| pain, and hopelessness.
|
| I don't want to characterize pregnancy this way, I also
| don't want to characterize almost any human interaction
| this way. I prefer to believe that we all have good
| intentions and sometimes accidentally hurt people and
| that most of us are trying our absolute best to minimize
| pain and maximize joy, especially to those around us. So
| what can hurt me is how so many mothers may feel pain
| whether they keep the baby or abort, and we often
| demonize them for making one of the hardest and most gut-
| wrenching decisions in their lives. That's not to say I
| don't feel pain for the unborn child, I also feel the
| pain of the lost life. But I also feel the pain for the
| child who is born and kills the mother, or who is born
| and is resented by the mother or abandoned.
|
| I feel pain all around the situation and it hurts me that
| we can be so quick to demonize the unborn child or the
| mother.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| I have a child, and will likely be having another. I love
| them dearly. But to pretend that the birth process was
| "wondrous and miraculous" is papering over reality. It
| was bloody and gruesome. My wife was given an epidural to
| help control the very significant amounts of pain. During
| the birth, there was blood everywhere. While the newborn
| was being attended to by nurses, my wife had her vagina
| stitched back together. And to this day she deals with
| prolapse, which is where her organs drop out of her
| vagina. Among my friend groups, this was one of the
| easier/more routine pregnancies.
| [deleted]
| tzs wrote:
| > Your comment actually made me think of something I had
| never considered: perhaps the mother's right against the
| child is self-defense.
|
| I doubt that argument would get far in the case of most
| abortions, but it might work in cases where the mother's
| life is at much more risk than is normal for pregnancy,
| especially where the pregnancy has gone so wrong that
| there is almost no chance the baby is going to make it.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Yeah, I think it'd be more obvious in cases of extreme
| physical harm, but harder to argue in cases of lesser
| physical harm or even in terms of emotional harm,
| regardless of how extreme.
| mandevil wrote:
| Our (now healthy, five year old) son was definitely
| killing his mother from the womb; her liver was about to
| shut down due to HELLP syndrome when we did an induction.
| 50 years earlier and she and my child would be dead. This
| does actually kill people today:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/die-in-childbirth-
| materna... is an account of a neonatal ICU nurse who died
| from HELLP five years before my wife's doctor caught it.
| Childbirth can be really scary and dangerous.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I feel grateful you shared that story to talk of the
| dangers of pregnancy and also really really grateful that
| the medical field is improving with dealing with that
| condition and that both your son and his mother survived.
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| 100%. The court took this decision away from human
| beings. You no longer get to choose when you procreate.
| At some point, the court says no longer your choice.
| caeril wrote:
| > The court took this decision away from human beings.
|
| No, the court remanded the lawmaking decision to the
| states, as it should be.
|
| There's this section of the CA-NV border known as "state
| line", which has a litany of casinos just right on the NV
| side of that border. The notion that different states
| have different laws is a fact we've accepted since the
| founding of our country.
|
| When AZ bans abortion, Arizona women will be mildly
| inconvenienced by a three hour drive to the CA border, as
| other matters of state law divergence have always been.
| Nobody has lost their rights.
|
| Cynically, I'd suggest that abortion rights aren't even
| the issue at hand - lots of people seem very angry/afraid
| that after a century of DC slowly arrogating all
| available power and authority to itself, that this power
| might flow back the other way.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Not everyone owns a car. Plus, that's just AZ women. A
| woman in Miami will likely have a 14+ hour drive to get
| an abortion.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > No, the court remanded the lawmaking decision to the
| states, as it should be.
|
| I'm ok with this argument, as I believe that
| legislatures, national and state, should write laws to
| address these issues, not rely on court precedent.
|
| > Cynically, I'd suggest that abortion rights aren't even
| the issue at hand - lots of people seem very angry/afraid
| that after a century of DC slowly arrogating all
| available power and authority to itself, that this power
| might flow back the other way.
|
| I disagree that this is the main reason, because SCOTUS
| just basically said the NY state law against guns in
| public was unconstitutional, and Congress is passing a
| national gun law as we speak.
|
| So I find it hard to believe that it's just about state's
| rights, because it's giving states some rights in one
| week while also taking away other rights.
| camhart wrote:
| The mother's choice to have sex creates the organism in
| the first place. That adds complexity to the topic not
| addressed in your argument.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| So states that ban abortion are also pushing for easy
| access to contraceptives, right? That would be logically
| and morally consistent, no? Unless, perhaps, the motive
| for such laws is unrelated to the welfare of the humans
| (child and mother, both) involved.
| wonnage wrote:
| Many of the abortion bans going into effect soon/now have
| no exception for rape
| camhart wrote:
| Woman's choice is removed in circumstances of rape and I
| agree that that very much changes things. Rape accounts
| for less than 0.5% of abortions though, so while very
| important to consider, it'd be incorrect to assume that
| all abortions are due to rape.
|
| https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics
| /
| scarmig wrote:
| Banning abortion except in the cases of rape would,
| however, result in many fewer abortion providers and make
| it inaccessible for many victims of rape. There's also
| implementation difficulties: do you need some kind of
| certificate from the legal system saying you were raped
| (way too restrictive), or is it just a matter of self
| attestation (for pro-lifers, likely a big enough hole to
| make it meaningless)?
| klipt wrote:
| "What's best for the child" is often the argument used
| there - since the child did not commit the rape, the
| argument goes, it shouldn't be punished for it.
|
| Notably the same argument has been used to set the
| precedent that male rape victims are also compelled to
| pay child support to their rapists:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermesmann_v._Seyer
| lostmsu wrote:
| The case you linked does not support your argument.
|
| There the alimony decision was based on the rape victim
| giving consent from the standpoint of the civil laws
| which also govern parental relationships. That did not
| matter for criminal law because the victim was underage.
|
| Not that I agree with the court here, but it is
| completely different from what you described.
| klipt wrote:
| That's part of the logic (basically overriding the
| definition of statutory rape to be "not rape" if the
| underage child enjoyed it)
|
| But there are a bunch of similar decisions here: https://
| scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
|
| And the common theme is just because the parent is raped,
| doesn't override the rights of the child.
|
| It's easy to see how that logic would be extended from
| child support to abortion.
| [deleted]
| scarmig wrote:
| How far does this extend? To riff off the classic example,
| what happens if there were a hypothetical medical condition
| where a violinist needed to be attached to your bloodstream
| for nine months and would die if removed beforehand, and
| you sign a contract agreeing to it before deciding at month
| seven that you've had enough and cut her off, killing her?
| Have you committed a moral crime there? And if so, should
| you face legal punishment for it (a separate question)?
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Going along with your scenario - you'd have a discussion
| with your medical professional (who you've been seeing
| since the start of this process) and explore the possible
| outcomes with their guidance. In this specific scenario,
| you'd line up another volunteer host and transfer the
| contracted host-duties over to them.
| dariusj18 wrote:
| This is a contrived example, but a pretty obvious answer
| given PC's stance. You can enter into the contact and
| would need be prepared for civil liability upon breach,
| or criminal if you entered into the contract under false
| pretenses. Intent would be a major part of deciding the
| criminal action. If you could be shown to have the intent
| of someone's death, then that would be murder, otherwise
| no.
| Levitz wrote:
| It is a contrived example, but it has a reason for it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
| dariusj18 wrote:
| Seems pretty heavily modified from the source, but even
| the source isn't super relevant because it is trying to
| use though experiments to determine the morality of the
| act, however Roe and this subsequent decision (tenuously)
| are based on legal justification.
| scarmig wrote:
| Thought experiments are useful as intuition pumps, and
| very widely used in philosophy. And the particular
| argument I was responding to was about a moral argument
| for complete bodily autonomy.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| > I believe that individuals have rights over their own
| body which supersede anyone else's rights to their body
|
| You do understand how this can be twisted for __very__ bad
| things, right?
| viksit wrote:
| actually no, can you elaborate?
| Levitz wrote:
| If your bodily rights supersede anyone else's rights to
| their body, then someone with lung cancer can go ahead
| and murder someone to obtain a new pair of lungs.
| bettysdiagnose wrote:
| I think you misunderstood who the word "their" is
| referring to here.
| tzs wrote:
| There was a pretty nifty short story called "Dibs" by
| Brian Plante in the April 2004 issues of Analog that was
| sort of along those lines.
|
| Whenever someone would die soon if they did not get an
| organ transplant the government would check the records
| to identify all people who would be good donors. Those
| donors would all receive a notification that someone has
| dibs on that organ. If one of those donors died while the
| person with dibs was still alive their organ would be
| used to save the life of the person with dibs.
|
| When that happened, or when the person with dibs dies
| before getting a transplant, all the people who had been
| potential donors were notified that no one had dibs on
| their organ any more.
|
| Most of the time for most people they would occasionally
| get notified someone had dibs on some organ of theirs and
| then in a week or two they'd get a notice that it was
| resolved and their organ was no longer under dibs.
|
| Rarely, someone who had an organ under dibs would get a
| notification that a second organ was under dibs.
|
| Most of the time that would end like the single dibs
| case. Two or three weeks later they would be back to
| normal with no organs under dibs.
|
| Very rarely someone with two organs under dibs would get
| a notification that a third organ was under dibs. In that
| case they were required to give up their three organs to
| save the lives of the three people under dibs.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I know someone that just had a baby two weeks earlier.
| Other than a c-section, the baby required no incubation or
| anything special, or anything different than what a full
| term baby would require. It was fully formed and is totally
| able to survive outside the womb. Maybe a little a lower
| weight.
|
| Just seems wrong that you think that the mother could kill
| it up to the last moment of birth, for even the most absurd
| reasons.
| corrral wrote:
| There's a reason access to 3rd trimester abortions enjoys
| far less support from the public than abortion rights in
| the abstract--and, in fact, IIRC, Roe and subsequent
| decisions _do not_ guarantee any kind of right to 3rd-
| trimester abortions, which is why states have been able
| to restrict abortion access for late-term pregnancies,
| despite Roe.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| I think the pro life crowd sees a significant difference
| between a fetus/baby/whatever and a random person.
|
| Probably something like, you are responsible for the
| creating of the fetus/baby/whatever so you have more of an
| obligation to it than you do to other people.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| If that were really the argument, it would look entirely
| different, as things like actual sex education, easily
| obtainable birth control, etc, would all be
| uncontentious. However, those are also very much subject
| to debate by the "pro life" crowd.
| dionidium wrote:
| The fact that "pro life" is the term for, "against
| abortion," but can also literally be interpreted to mean,
| "supports social programs for people who are alive" is
| childish word games. This isn't a real argument. It
| doesn't advance any point. It doesn't even logically make
| sense. It's just playing on the inherent ambiguity of
| natural language in service of a cheap non sequitur.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| I am not sure how the logic I laid out would lead people
| to support sex education or easily obtainable birth
| control.
|
| It is mostly a personal responsibility thing, as I
| understand it. You are responsible for creating the baby
| so you must give up some of your rights like bodily
| autonomy.
|
| Birth control and sex education are not really related to
| that at all as far as I can tell.
| [deleted]
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It is mostly a personal responsibility thing, as I
| understand it. You are responsible for creating the baby
| so you must give up some of your rights like bodily
| autonomy.
|
| If that's what _you_ believe, then don 't terminate
| _your_ pregnancy. As far as _anyone_ else is concerned,
| it 's none of your concern.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > If that's what you believe, then don't terminate your
| pregnancy. As far as anyone else is concerned, it's none
| of your concern.
|
| I mean, I personally agree with you.
|
| However, there are very few true libertarians in our
| society and almost everyone has views that they wish to
| impose on other people. The pro lifers are not different
| than anyone else in this regard.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| "Pro-life" is really just a code word for "anti-sex." Or
| at least, anti-"women who have sex." In the pro-life
| world, women are simply inanimate vessels capable of
| bearing children and nothing else.
| philsnow wrote:
| This may be the case for some but the Catholic worldview
| is both pro-life and extremely sex-positive, in the
| appropriate context.
|
| If you're talking about not just "women who have sex" but
| "~women~ people who have sex without regard for the
| children whom they may conceive", then yeah I'm against
| that kind of sex.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > If you're talking about not just "women who have sex"
| but "~women~ people who have sex without regard for the
| children whom they may conceive", then yeah I'm against
| that kind of sex.
|
| The best way to ensure that children are treated with
| appropriate regard is to ensure that fewer unwanted
| children are born.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| I agree with you that the Catholic church is very sex-
| positive, as long as one of the participants is an
| underage boy, and the other is a priest.
|
| Maybe one day they'll learn to embrace sex that is
| consensual, as well.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms[1]. Even
| in areas of the world where AIDS is rampant. They are not
| sex-positive, they are procreation-positive.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_H
| IV/AIDS
|
| Edit: I suppose the Catholic Church _is_ sex-positive
| when it comes to their clergy and underage parishioners.
| Disclaimer: I went to Catholic school for 11 years.
| philsnow wrote:
| > The Catholic Church opposes the use of condoms[1]. Even
| in areas of the world where AIDS is rampant.
|
| Correct.
|
| > They are not sex-positive, they are procreation-
| positive.
|
| They are both. "Sex-positive" doesn't mean "anything
| goes".
|
| > I suppose the Catholic Church is sex-positive when it
| comes to their clergy and underage parishioners.
|
| No, the Church is harshly critical of this kind of thing.
| The fact that individual offenders have been shuffled
| around for decades is to our shame and to the shame of
| their bishops, but nonetheless the Church is not "for"
| this kind of thing in any way.
|
| > I went to Catholic school for 11 years.
|
| At least in America, I'd say the majority of Catholic
| schools are only nominally Catholic.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > No, the Church is harshly critical of this kind of
| thing. The fact that individual offenders have been
| shuffled around for decades is to our shame and to the
| shame of their bishops, but nonetheless the Church is not
| "for" this kind of thing in any way.
|
| I prefer to judge the church on its actions, not on its
| words. The bishops/cardinals in question got lofty
| appointments as their "punishment"[1].
|
| [1] https://theconversation.com/the-catholic-churchs-
| grim-histor...
|
| > Cardinal Law was neither indicted nor arrested.
| Instead, Pope John Paul II transferred Law to run one of
| the Vatican's most cherished properties, the Basilica of
| Saint Mary, essentially rewarding Law for his deft cover-
| up of the abuses in Boston.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| The Church is not a democracy. The opposition to condoms
| at the top is has serious consequences the world over,
| regardless of what Americans feel. If their stated policy
| is causing needless deaths, what is the value of the
| policy, and what is the value of the institution
| promoting such a policy?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Catholics oppose the use of condoms
|
| Not really. Catholic doctrine might, American Catholics,
| especially, do not:
|
| https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2016/09/28/poll-
| finds-...
|
| > Even in areas of the world where AIDS is rampant.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/18/health/zika-pope-francis-
| cont...
|
| (Benedict XVI made somewhat similar comments in 2010
| regarding AIDS in Africa.)
| philsnow wrote:
| > Catholic doctrine might, American Catholics,
| especially, do not
|
| This is unfortunately true (but unsurprisingly so,
| especially these days). That doesn't mean that they're
| somehow right; they don't speak for the Church.
| slg wrote:
| Which is why there is often an extra focus on situations
| of rape and incest when little to no active choice has
| been made to create life.
| Fatnino wrote:
| Consentual sex happens, leading to accidental pregnancy.
| Now the girl's family is incentivised to claim rape so
| she can get an abortion.
| slg wrote:
| To be clear, I agree with you. These exceptions are not
| good enough and can create perverse incentives like you
| suggest. I was simply citing the lack of these exceptions
| being universal as evidence that a large percentage of
| the anti-abortion crowd do not see personal
| responsibility as important to whether someone should
| have access to an abortion.
| fallingknife wrote:
| We don't have the legal right to bodily autonomy. If we
| did, prostitution and recreational drugs would be legal. I
| think we should but we just don't. But this still doesn't
| get to the heart of the matter on abortion. A fetus isn't
| quite _your_ body.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| But _your_ body is feeding it and keeping it alive, often
| at the expense of itself. That 's the bodily autonomy
| part - a woman should not be compelled to keep a fetus
| alive at the risk to her own health and well-being.
| bko wrote:
| That's fair, but to be clear, you think someone should be
| allowed to terminate their pregnancy up until the moment of
| birth?
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| This already happens when the fetus is unviable or
| already dead, called a D&C. If a doctor and a patient is
| legally obstructed from D&C, we will have cases where
| someone has to birth a dead baby or, if their
| contractions process isn't working, become septic and
| die.
| ryan93 wrote:
| He was obviously asking about viable pregnancies.
| wonnage wrote:
| Who decides if a pregnancy is viable?
|
| If we go back to coat hanger abortions and render fetuses
| "unviable" that way, is everything peachy keen?
|
| If not, then are miscarriages now occasion for criminal
| investigations?
|
| Pro-life logic is garbage
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| >If not, then are miscarriages now occasion for criminal
| investigations?
|
| In several states, this is now true
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| He's not though because anyone who follows this knows
| that late-term abortions are almost entirely situations
| where the fetus is incompatible with life (an actual
| medical term), there are ridiculous risks to the mother's
| life, or other very sad scenarios. I've never even heard
| of modern cases where perfectly healthy fetuses were
| aborted at late stages. I'm sure that they have happened,
| but the rarity of it happening -- not just because so few
| doctors do that work for medically necessary reasons and
| even fewer would do it for someone who just changed their
| mind, but because it is a prohibitively expensive
| procedure ($25,000 or more).
|
| This 2016 interview with a woman who had an abortion at
| 32 weeks after she found out her fetus would not survive
| outside the womb and who then had to suffer through 24
| hours of labor and have her dead child ripped from her
| womb (and prior brain surgery meant she couldn't push),
| really paints a picture of the terrible reality for
| anyone forced to be in a position to terminate a
| pregnancy at such a late stage:
| https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-recently-
| had-...
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| That's not how late-term abortion actually works.
| Practically all late-term abortions are wanted children
| who for one reason or another don't work out. They are
| cases of extensive tragedy. Banning very late pregnancy
| termination directly means that doctors will not be
| allowed to save lives because it will mean ending the
| pregnancy.
|
| When crafting law it is vitally important to understand
| how this would realistically affect people.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| That strikes me as very much of a strawman argument, as
| late-term abortions are not just incredibly rare (this
| interview with a woman who had to have an abortion at
| 32-weeks for medical reasons gives insight into how awful
| the whole process is -- and how expensive it was for
| something that was absolutely medically necessary in her
| case [1] as the fetus was incompatible with life and
| there were medical complications that would make a live
| birth a potential death sentence for the woman involved),
| but that there are very few doctors who will even perform
| them in cases when they are medically necessary. And very
| few states that even allow that to happen.
|
| But if you're asking directly if I think someone should
| be able to prioritize their own life in place of someone
| else's, well yes, yes I do.
|
| [1]: https://jezebel.com/interview-with-a-woman-who-
| recently-had-... anyone who wants to rail about late-term
| abortions without knowing the pain and suffering that is
| involved for the women that have to get them needs to
| read that interview. All of it. Then read it again. And
| then think about why the focus of this debate is on the
| extremely-rare scenarios that are not about people
| changing their minds and not wanting to bring a child
| into the world, but are terribly sad medical scenarios.
| hatware wrote:
| > I believe that individuals have rights over their own
| body
|
| Did you have rights over your own body when you had sex and
| started the process of conception? Why do your choices only
| matter depending on the result of conception?
| logifail wrote:
| > rights over their own body
|
| When does the offspring gain rights over its body?
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| Under Roe v. Wade, once the fetus is viable, so at about
| the 24-week mark
| divided wrote:
| ...the entire time?
|
| I think you're trying to ask a poignant question, but it
| misses the point.
|
| The fetus' body is not the mother's body, and bodily
| autonomy dictates one isn't obligated to give their body
| for another's survival.
|
| Removing the fetus from the womb results in termination
| of the fetus if done prior to viability, but at no point
| does any violation of the fetus' body need to occur for
| this outcome to happen.
| logifail wrote:
| > ...the entire time?
|
| Umm ... well, maybe.
|
| My views on this are definitely coloured by having three
| kids, but watching the process of creating new humans
| starting off with a discussion about "shall we try and
| start a family", the next bit <cough>, a result on a test
| kit, the highs and lows of pregnancy, feeling your unborn
| first child kicking along to music in my wife's almost
| comically round tummy while we sat in a concert hall a
| few weeks before the big day ..
|
| .. through to revising algebra and geometry at the
| breakfast table with my eldest this morning prior to an
| end of term maths test.
|
| > The fetus' body is not the mother's body
|
| Indeed, although the fetus survives due to the cord that
| connects them.
|
| I've personally been in the room for all our three kids'
| births, cut the cord for two of them. #1 needed the
| doctors in a hurry after his birth, I just sat out of the
| way, watching in awed and stunned silence.
|
| Life is wonderful, and complicated, and at times messy
| and confusing. Sometimes just downright awful. Pregnancy
| is some or indeed all of those.
|
| Like everything we do there are edge cases and I don't
| think we should design our societies to leave anyone
| feeling they are left with no choices. "Look after those
| who can't look after themselves" is something that goes
| beyond the technical discussion of when is a fetus
| viable, I've spent enough time feeding and changing
| babies to know that just because they can breathe unaided
| it doesn't mean they can survive unaided.
|
| TL;DR: I would be just as uncomfortable with a complete
| ban on abortion as I would be with unlimited easy access
| to it without any time limits.
| divided wrote:
| I admire that you have such a loving connection to your
| children.
|
| And I get what you mean with survival, it's a commonly
| discussed point in these debates. I think for the pro-
| choice side, if the technology existed to incubate
| outside the womb or to transplant from one person to
| another who wanted to give birth, we'd be for it. We are
| not pro-termination. But when it comes to the pregnant
| person's autonomy, that takes precedence.
|
| After viability and birth, others besides the mother and
| father can care for the child. And society owes its
| children that.
|
| I believe the vast majority of pro-choice supports a
| limit at viability except when the mother's life is in
| danger. Only 1% of abortions happen in the third
| trimester and nearly all of those are due to a threat to
| the mother's life.
|
| On the other side, I believe the majority of pro-life
| supporters want a complete ban.
|
| If your beliefs are between the extremes, I think only
| one side represents that.
| karencarits wrote:
| This is very close to the violinist example
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> If the fetus is a life, none of this stuff matters.
|
| > This is irrelevant to my personal views on abortion
| because I believe that individuals have rights over their
| own body which supersede anyone else's rights to their
| body.
|
| It absolutely is relevant, because you view collapses into
| nonsense unless you believe a fetus is a not an individual
| and that it has no rights. If the fetus is a person, then
| you're in a situation where their rights to their own body
| are getting superseded by another's right.
|
| > We hold this as true in all other facets of bodily
| autonomy.
|
| No, not all. You totally have the legal obligation to
| provide for your children, if you have them, and that
| almost always involves using your body in some way.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I completely agree with the comment you are responding
| to, but it is an argument that actually changed my
| position relatively recently. I used to believe in the
| "well, if you believe it is a person, then abortion is
| murder" argument, but I believe the bodily autonomy
| argument is much stronger.
|
| If you have a child, and you are the the only good
| potential donor match, and that child will die without,
| say, a bone-marrow transplant, you are _not_ forced to
| donate your own bone marrow. Saying "You totally have
| the legal obligation to provide for your children, if you
| have them, and that almost always involves using your
| body in some way" is a poor analogy that really doesn't
| encompass what it is to have another being living inside
| you.
|
| That's why I think the "viability" standard is the only
| one that makes sense, and also why that as technology has
| improved that I think the cutoff date for abortion should
| be lowered to the new age of viability. Any human should
| have the right to remove another from their own body. In
| the case of a child, if we have no technology to allow
| that child to survive outside the mother, so be it, but I
| think the much better analogy to forced birthing is
| actually slavery.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| > You totally have the legal obligation to provide for
| your children, if you have them, and that almost always
| involves using your body in some way
|
| You are not legally obligated to donate your organs to
| your children, fwiw.
|
| I think the discussion of ethical and legal obligation
| cannot possible be given broad swath of "no one is
| obligated to anyone" nor "you are entirely obligated to
| someone in every way". This isn't how reality works.
| Parents are considered obligated to their children,
| unless they choose not to parent their children and
| withdraw their parental responsibilities under existent
| legal frameworks. At the same time, parents are not
| entirely obligated to their children, as parents are not
| fined or jailed for not donating their blood or organs.
| [deleted]
| jyounker wrote:
| You don't have a legal obligation to feed your children
| from your own flesh.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > You don't have a legal obligation to feed your children
| from your own flesh.
|
| What a bizarre and morbid misunderstanding. You have the
| legal obligation to use that "flesh" to acquire food to
| feed your children.
|
| Also, it's not like a fetus eats its mother's flesh from
| the inside (until I suppose it emerges from the husk like
| a xenomorph?).
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It gets awfully close when it causes organ failure[1].
|
| What about when the child rips open the mother's vulva on
| the way out? If it's a person, should it be possible to
| try it for assault?
|
| [1] https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/hellp-
| syndrome.as...
| rednerrus wrote:
| Do you think it's acceptable for a mother who plans to
| carry their child to term to use drugs and alcohol or
| otherwise damage the fetus?
| hackyhacky wrote:
| From a legal standpoint? Yes, absolutely. Let me turn the
| question around on you: do you think that bars and
| restaurants should require a negative pregnancy test
| before they serve alcohol to customers?
| dahfizz wrote:
| Requiring a negative test is a bit intrusive, but a bar
| that refuses to serve obviously pregnant people would be
| fine IMO.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| What is "obviously pregnant"? How does a bar accurately
| distinguish someone who is pregnant vs obese? Do you
| really want to have that conversation with your 18 year
| old waiter?
| slg wrote:
| "Acceptable" is a vague word. Do I approve of it?
| Obviously not. Do I think society should be okay with it?
| Obviously not. Do I think they should be prosecuted for
| it? No.
| alangibson wrote:
| In the middle ages it was considered to become a person at
| the 'quickening', when it started to move. The reasoning
| being that the soul had entered the body at that point.
| Bud wrote:
| That's not a "fact" at all, actually. I can tell that you
| tried hard to frame the issue in such a way that you could
| present this "fact", but it's still just an opinion. In fact,
| for many centuries, a lot of people have felt and thought and
| believed that personhood is not conferred until birth.
| adamc wrote:
| No, they aren't irrelevant. The fetus is an obligate
| parasite. It could be a person and still not have the right
| to force the mother to carry it to term.
| simondw wrote:
| You're conveniently leaving out one major concern of the pro-
| choice side: the bodily autonomy of lives that are
| uncontroversially people.
|
| I also think you're dismissing privacy too quickly. How much
| privacy would you give up in the name of saving lives?
| bko wrote:
| I never understood the privacy aspect. If an alien were to
| come down and have human biology explained and was asked
| about their thoughts on abortion, I doubt they would invoke
| privacy. Maybe bodily autonomy, but not privacy. Perhaps
| I'm missing something.
|
| In regards to bodily autonomy, again if the fetus is a
| life, you have to be a good steward of the life. I don't
| think you have a (moral) right to harm your body to the
| detriment of the life, much like you don't have a right to
| drive off a cliff with someone inside your car with you.
| And if someone assaults you and results in you losing your
| baby, I don't think that's the same as a regular assault.
| brewdad wrote:
| The privacy aspect is simple. You have no right to know
| anything about my discussions with my doctor nor to
| dictate courses of action.
|
| The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine
| mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck
| about that now.
| lkjdsklf wrote:
| The privacy argument is tenuous at best. We regulate how
| and what medical procedures can be performed all the
| time.
|
| > The same people who (falsely) screamed about vaccine
| mandates being a HIPAA violation sure don't give a fuck
| about that now.
|
| If you're going to make the argument that privacy
| requirements protect abortion procedures, then that would
| also mean that vaccine mandates are not allowed for the
| same reason. You can't have it both ways.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > The privacy aspect is simple. You have no right to know
| anything about my discussions with my doctor nor to
| dictate courses of action.
|
| This is a pretty weak argument which could be used to
| justify any number of things. Can you rape or murder
| behind closed doors, and invoke the right to privacy when
| the authorities try to stop you?
|
| Just because X happens in private doesn't make it legal
| and protected by privacy rights.
|
| There are plenty of illegal medical procedures. You can't
| have a doctor remove a kidney and help you sell it, for
| example.
| simondw wrote:
| > Perhaps I'm missing something
|
| How is the government going to know which people have
| fetuses in them, and how long they've been there, without
| some loss of privacy? (Do you think menstrual cycles are
| private information, for example?)
|
| And how does the government know what people do (or plan
| to do) to their own bodies without some loss of privacy?
|
| > In regards to bodily autonomy, again if the fetus is a
| life
|
| Well yes, you can argue _against_ bodily autonomy as a
| compelling argument for legalizing abortion. My initial
| point was that you were just ignoring it.
|
| That said...
|
| > you have to be a good steward of the life
|
| Says who? Compelling someone to use their body as a host
| (not "steward") of another life is a violation of their
| bodily autonomy.
|
| If you're going to use car analogies, we also don't say
| that anyone involved in a car crash must donate blood or
| organs to save other victims.
| [deleted]
| jfk13 wrote:
| Ah, but how many lives would you sacrifice to maintain your
| privacy? (And whose lives would you be entitled to
| sacrifice?)
| simondw wrote:
| We can sit here and ask different questions all day, but
| let's at least recognize that they're different
| questions.
|
| Originally we were talking about many people forced to
| give up privacy in order to possibly prevent some
| potential future deaths.
|
| You're talking about one person consenting to give up
| privacy in order to prevent multiple _certain_ deaths.
| randcraw wrote:
| True, but of the three topics you mention, one clearly
| dominates the others: _when_ does human life begin. Bodily
| autonomy and privacy will always be secondary matters that
| cannot decide the legality of abortion.
|
| It's curious that the definition of human life is different
| in every state. The circumstances around brain death,
| euthanasia, and suicide are decided locally, not federally.
| In fact, I think before ROe v Wade, the Supremes never
| before tried to define what is "human" and what is not.
| Even the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the 14th amendment
| (which decided the citizenship and equal protection under
| law of black people) was not decided by the Supremes but by
| the states.
|
| Probably, now, it would be better if the states wrote
| legislation that clearly defines human life, thereby taking
| such an important issue out of the hands of unelected
| politicians like the Supremes.
| simondw wrote:
| > one clearly dominates
|
| Even if we agreed that life begins at conception, it's
| not at all clear to me that the bodily autonomy and
| privacy issues would go away.
|
| > it would be better if the states wrote legislation that
| clearly defines human life
|
| Except there's no objective answer _in reality_ , because
| "human life" is a fuzzy made-up concept. I doubt some
| arbitrary legislation would settle things down. People
| would still disagree just as vehemently.
| chasd00 wrote:
| The pandemic showed people will gladly sacrifice all of
| their privacy to "save lives".
| [deleted]
| jayd16 wrote:
| This is such horse shit. No one in this issue is for taking a
| life so to presuppose that that is where the issue lies is
| plainly insulting. The pro-choice movement doesn't believe
| its a life. Understanding the greater social impacts of
| limiting abortion doesn't muddy that.
| okaram wrote:
| Even when the fetus becomes a baby, it still matters. You are
| _forcing_ another person to help that baby, in a much
| stronger (albeit temporary) way than any other.
|
| Think about it; you are not _required_ to help somebody if
| they 're in an accident or a fire; you're not required to
| donate blood, but you would require a woman to donate blood
| and nutrients, spent several months of hardship and have a
| small but non-zero risk of serious health problems.
|
| At some point it changes; in my mind, around viability. If
| the baby is delivered, you cannot kill it (you may be
| required to take care of it, although many states allow you
| to give up your kids).
|
| Somewhere around 6 months, we _might_ require a woman to give
| birth... Maybe
| qqqwerty wrote:
| No, the framing should be around the women's right to bodily
| autonomy. In Florida, they have a "stand your ground" law. If
| someone threatens your life, or even great bodily harm, you
| are allowed to use lethal force.
|
| Giving birth is a life threatening process. Even under fairly
| routine births, women endure significant bodily harm, often
| irreversible. Look up prolapse. Your organs literally push
| out of you vagina. This impacts 20-35% of women and for many
| of them this condition is permanent.
|
| If you are allowed to shoot someone in Florida because they
| threatened your bodily autonomy, why shouldn't a women be
| allowed to terminate a pregnancy for the same reason?
| runarberg wrote:
| > The fact is that at some point between inception and time
| of delivery
|
| I don't think this is that complicated of an issue. The
| moment when the parent decides they want to keep the baby, is
| the moment when the fetus becomes a person. That precise time
| is when the fetus has someone that loves and cares for it,
| holds attachment towards it, etc.
|
| However if the parent carrying the child is not allowed to
| make that decision form them self, then this becomes
| unnecessarily complicated.
| [deleted]
| TylerE wrote:
| I would take the pro-lifers arguments a lot more seriously if
| 98% of them weren't pro-military and pro-death penalty.
| altruios wrote:
| hobs wrote:
| Why do you think that we need to agree on framing the issue
| when a significant minority will only agree to framing it at
| conception?
|
| You can't find a middle ground with religious extremism.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I think it's hard to draw that line on extremism.
| Conversation and finding consensus are much easier if
| people build their world view and values on as small base
| assumptions as possible. If we cannot agree on base
| assumptions and values it's much harder to have a fruitful
| conversation especially if these assumptions cannot be
| violated because they were hand down from god. Religion
| generally makes numerous and very large assumptions.
| cehlen wrote:
| This is not a religious argument. The 14th amendment
| prohibits the states from depriving "any person of life,
| liberty, or property, without due process of law." The
| first question is when does a fetus become a person. I
| don't know the answer to that for absolute certainty and
| pretty sure everyone else commenting on this does not
| either. If we can agree that no single person can identify
| when a fetus becomes a person, keeping in mind lots of
| people think they know everything about all things. The
| ultimate question that needs be answered is what number of
| people need to agree when life begins? Only one person
| decides when life begin i.e. the mother, nine i.e. the
| Supreme Court, or thousands i.e. we the people vote on it.
| I would argue we in U.S. tend lean more towards the more
| significant the issue the more people are required for
| consensus.
| hobs wrote:
| It's been the religious right stated strategy for
| decades, I don't know how I could take any of your
| argument as credible without acknowledging that fact.
| cehlen wrote:
| My friend, two things can be true at the same time. The
| religious right can have a strategy to end abortion for
| their own reasons and the 14th amendment can be an
| essential right that must be protected.
| bko wrote:
| I don't understand your point. If you want to convince
| someone that believes that the fetus becomes a life
| sometime in the gestation period, screaming about religion
| and privacy won't get you anywhere.
|
| What does this have to do with religion?
| sidlls wrote:
| In the US? Almost everything.
| hobs wrote:
| There was no attempt in my comment do to that, simply
| straight forward truth: the religious right have decided
| life begins at conception and will kill to enforce their
| rules.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/29/us/30abort
| ion...
|
| There's no compromise available on the table.
| jtdev wrote:
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| There are many people that aren't religious extremists who
| think that abortion is, at best, extremely morally
| problematic. It's fundamentally a question about the
| definition of life, not the adherence to certain religious
| beliefs.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Actually, the way you are framing it is a significant
| cause of the problem. In many cases, we are talking about
| a strictly amoral health care concern, IE: a clump of
| cells that are going to kill a woman if she doesn't get
| the necessary health care. It has absolutely nothing to
| do with a baby or life and everything to do with her
| bleeding out. THAT is the thing the right-wing ignores
| and wants you to ignore too. So they show you pictures of
| babies, they talk about babies, they come up with
| fictitious terms like "third-trimester abortion" because
| it's the only way they can frame the issue to rile up
| their base.
| mediaman wrote:
| Poll data suggests that the plurality of the population
| do not support third-trimester abortions, but neither do
| they support a prohibition on first-trimester.
|
| The reality is that what we consider a "life" is
| graduated, and the fetus progresses along that continuum
| during gestation. Most people know this intuitively,
| which is why popular opinion generally falls where it
| does. (See, for example, the Pew polls on the subject of
| abortion and trimesters.)
|
| We struggle to draw a bright-line to say, "this is where
| life begins," because there is not really a point where
| life "begins," merely a long series of points where it
| shifts by degree from "no life" to "life."
|
| As a society though we still are tasked with drawing this
| line and it is an arbitrary line. But it is illogical for
| it to begin at the very start of the continuum, or at the
| very end. The beginning because it is silly and
| unscientific to pretend as though some tiny clump of
| cells has any more life than a wart, and it comes at
| great cost to women's autonomy; the end because it is
| illogical to believe that a baby the moment prior to
| birth is a fundamentally different being than at the
| moment after. To believe that the moment is at either end
| is thoughtless dogmatism.
|
| Where should the line be? Pick a point. Give the woman
| enough time to be able to know that she is pregnant, to
| plan and provide for her bodily autonomy to make her own
| life choices, and to deal with lead times at clinics. And
| then draw a line where the choice has been made. Most
| people believe that line is somewhere around the end of
| the first trimester or early part of the second.
| tromp wrote:
| > the end because it is illogical to believe that a baby
| the moment prior to birth is a fundamentally different
| being than at the moment after. To believe that the
| moment is at either end is thoughtless dogmatism. > Where
| should the line be? Pick a point
|
| But in your own words, isn't it similarly illogical to
| believe that a baby the moment prior to that point is a
| fundamentally different being than at the moment after.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Yep. And if people think that fundamentalists will only try
| to enforce this in the South... No man these people want
| the whole country.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| This is something I wonder about... do they really want
| the whole country or do they want to make things so
| unpalatable that the country balkanizes and
| disintegrates? It's frankly really hard to get a read on
| what these extremists want, because if you play it out
| far enough, it looks pretty ridiculous, IE: be careful
| what you wish for as a lot of those right-wing states are
| going to be even poorer and more backward than they are
| now.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the other
| side's arguments, and thus there is no communication.
|
| Moreover, whatever your opinion of abortion rights, Roe vs
| Wade was not based on solid legal reasoning and it was
| foolish for liberals to depend on it over the last half
| century instead of explicitly codifying it into law or the
| Constitution.
| BackBlast wrote:
| > The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the
| other side's arguments, and thus there is no
| communication.
|
| This is the general case on most topics. Accepting the
| other side's framing is tantamount to "losing the
| argument" to most people. Often that framing defines the
| other side as essentially evil and thus not worth
| listening to or reasoning with. There are precious few
| places where actual debates where primary arguments are
| understood and rebutted by mutually respecting parties.
| brewdad wrote:
| > The rhetoric each side adopts precludes/ignores the
| other side's arguments, and thus there is no
| communication.
|
| This is the blue dress vs gold dress of politics. There
| is no communication because the two sides see the world
| in fundamentally different ways.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| It is not just that they see the world differently, their
| language does not even try to counter the opposing side's
| argument.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I have to disagree. I more or less understand the pro-
| life point of view, which is that a fetus is a precious
| life. Since I'm not religious, it's clear to me that the
| fetus is alive, but I don't see it's life as important
| until it is capable of thought, emotion, and sentience,
| in general. I would say this is the essential difference
| between most pro-life and pro-choice philosophy.
|
| After that, I switch to a much more consistent version of
| "pro-life" which includes a moral imperitive not to cause
| undue (frivolous, even) suffering or harm to any living
| thing.
| swat535 wrote:
| > You can't find a middle ground with religious extremism.
|
| Neither can you with liberal extremists, we have people in
| this thread who literally advocate for abortion less than
| 24 hours before delivery.
|
| Unless you are going to pretend that there is no such thing
| as liberal extremists, in which case I am not sure how to
| respond.
| hobs wrote:
| When that's a possibility that's actually on the table we
| can talk about it - today we have the opposite problem.
| starkd wrote:
| Except that the court relinquished its power to decide on these
| matters. It may not seem like it now to you, but it actually
| gains credibility by the courts, because they are not put in
| the middle of such a consequential decision. It allows the
| legislature to act. This isn't a power grab, but a
| relinquishing of power.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| https://thehill.com/regulation/court-
| battles/3535841-thomas-...
|
| It is a powergrab. Christian conservatives have the Supreme
| Court. This was all planned. Don't kid yourself.
| starkd wrote:
| What powergrab has ever relinquished power? It's literally
| the opposite of a powergrab. What power do Christian
| conservatives now suddenly have?
|
| This was a democrat party talking point to show supporters
| and fundraisers how indebted they should be for being
| "given" a right. No one owes any politician anything.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| What may I ask is your specific grievance with the
| Democratic Party, which you have twice in this thread
| incorrectly called the "democrat" party? You've clearly
| got some beef, so state it plainly.
| starkd wrote:
| My beef is with politicians in general. No one is
| indebted to a party, republican or democrat. But at least
| republicans aren't claiming credit for giving you your
| "rights".
|
| Sorry, for not capitolizing Democrat, since you seem to
| see such great offense in it.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >But at least republicans aren't claiming credit for
| giving you your "rights".
|
| Can you point to somewhere that Democrats have claimed to
| "give" rights? Democrats aim to "protect" rights, but the
| Constitution is where rights are enumerated and/or it is
| recognized that there are rights that may exist beyond
| what is enumerated. Further, if you were to read the
| party platform of the Democratic Party, you would see
| that protecting and enhancing rights is a fundamental
| core value.
|
| >Sorry, for not capitolizing Democrat, since you seem to
| see such great offense in it.
|
| It's "capitalizing" not "capitolizing" and it's not its
| state as a proper noun I was noting. The party is not
| "The democrats" or "democrat" it is the "Democratic"
| party. Sure, it's just words, but if you are going to
| repeatedly call out a party in a thread for some
| grievances, it's useful to call them by their actual
| name.
| starkd wrote:
| You've lost the thread of the discussion. I said the
| reason the Democrat party is so protective of Roe v Wade
| is because its a cornerstone of their powerbase and how
| they give their supporters and fundraisers the impression
| they are giving them their rights. Not from the
| constitution, but from them, because nothing about
| abortion is in the constitution. If you read Roe v wade
| decision, you'll note they had to introduce the idea of a
| right to privacy, which also does not exist. From a
| purely jurisprudence perspective, its all built on smoke
| and mirrors. These issues were supposed to be settled in
| state legislatures, which is what the decision today
| asserts. Now, state legislatures are in a position to
| circumscribe abortion around cases where it is
| acceptable. It may be extreme to call it a life at
| conception, but it's also extreme to call it not a life
| right before birth. There's middle ground here.
| afandian wrote:
| The supreme court can at least hide behind some abstract
| legal argument (spurious or otherwise).
|
| Much more concerning to me is the states who have enacted the
| actual bans with whatever passes for a democratic mandate.
| And it's that system which presumably will be the only tool
| that people have to protect themselves.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Also possibly illegal. 501c3, including churches, are
| prohibited from campaign activity. That includes advocating for
| any particular candidates.
|
| "Biden, the sitting POTUS, is a jackass" is probably ok.
|
| "Don't vote for Biden in 2024" is absolutely not ok.
| xxEightyxx wrote:
| I'm not as old as you (born in the late 80's) but my family
| left the church (protestant) for this exact reason. There was
| more discussion of social/political issues than of scripture.
| To be fair, I think it's OK to some extent, but the elders had
| made it a priority to denigrate liberal ideas and beliefs.
|
| Look up the Koch brothers. They're _largely_ responsible for
| much of the chaos we see in our country today.
| jtdev wrote:
| greyhair wrote:
| Look up the Federalist Society. That is where the Koch
| brothers brought together all their like minded rich friends.
| wdb wrote:
| In my opinion this is one step backwards for the US
| nabla9 wrote:
| Not just abortion. The Roe v. Wade established certain rights to
| privacy.
|
| Overturning Roe v. Wade opens the door for banning contraception,
| banning interracial relationships, messing with family
| relationships, right to intimacy, the right to personal control
| of medical treatment.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the
| legislature from protecting the right to abortion. It merely
| decided that it is not currently protected by constitution, which
| to me seems completely correct.
|
| If most people agree that it should be a constitutional right, no
| one stops the legislature from adding the required amendment. And
| if most people can't agree on that, well, adding that wouldn't be
| democratic.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > If most people agree that it should be a constitutional
| right, no one stops the legislature from adding the required
| amendment
|
| The issue is that we're forced into a two party system. If
| someone thinks "I want abortion rights, but the culture wars
| are more important to me" they vote republican. A large block
| of the republican base is single issue religious voters, so
| even if a majority of the republican voters want abortion
| rights they will never pass because the religious voters will
| primary anyone who supports abortion.
| causi wrote:
| scythe wrote:
| It's true that most people agreed that _Roe v. Wade_ should not
| be overturned. But a quick look at the polling will also show
| you that _Roe v. Wade_ was more popular than abortion _itself_.
|
| I think there is a simple way to interpret that: a lot of
| people thought that _Roe v. Wade_ meant that they didn 't have
| to think about abortion. And they liked _that_ , even if they
| didn't think it was the ideal way to resolve the issue. They
| simply cared more about other issues, like the PPACA subsidy
| gaps, environmental sustainability, gun rights, taxes, drugs,
| _et cetera, ad nauseam_. Even during the Barrett and Kavanaugh
| nominations, there were plenty of people, including the
| nominally pro-choice (e.g. a certain Senator from Maine), who
| argued that _Roe v. Wade_ was not in danger, which was most
| likely wishful thinking.
|
| So your idea doesn't work, and in fact nothing works. The era
| when a voter or politician can (effectively) ignore abortion as
| a substantive political issue is over, and it isn't coming
| back.
| portpecos wrote:
| > The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the
| legislature from protecting the right to abortion.
|
| Which means that New York, California, Massachusetts will
| retain abortion access. And Texas, Indiana, will remove
| abortion access.
|
| This sounds like States rights is actually working.
|
| But the media is distorting the overturning of Roe vs Wade with
| the sensational claim that "Abortion is banned in the US".
|
| No, it's not banned. This just means Texas and New York have
| differing policies with regards to abortion access. Yes, 46
| million women living in conservative states will lose access to
| abortion, but not all of those women are liberal quite frankly.
| Moreover, those states are exactly that: conservative. And the
| Conservative Majority of that state isn't required to
| accommodate the views of the Liberal minority of that state.
|
| Just like the Liberal Majority of California isn't required to
| accommodate their Conservative Minorities.
|
| That's the nature of how US Democratic institutions were built.
|
| Sounds fair to me and the Supreme Court made the correct
| decision by returning that authority back to the states.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| 63% of Americans support Roe v Wade and 80% support abortions
| in some cases.
|
| People agree on that. Adding it to the constitution hasn't
| happened because politics.
| missedthecue wrote:
| If this polling is true, we'll see it in the November
| elections. If it the elections don't show this, either people
| really don't care, or the polls were wrong.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| That is so not the case, it's not that the people don't
| care, it is that even if they vote, their vote doesn't
| matter.
| missedthecue wrote:
| It is the case. We can easily look at turnout figures.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >If this polling is true, we'll see it in the November
| elections. If it the elections don't show this, either
| people really don't care, or the polls were wrong.
|
| cf. Gerrymandering.
| missedthecue wrote:
| In spite of gerrymandering, we'll see it in the turnout.
| Or not.
| andrew_ wrote:
| It's getting the states to ratify the amendment that's
| difficult. General population poll numbers don't equate to
| state ratification support.
| gnicholas wrote:
| In polling I've seen, roughly 2/3 are pro-Roe, but roughly
| 2/3 also misunderstand what it would mean to overturn Roe.
| They believe that abortion would be illegal everywhere, not
| that the legality would devolve to the states. So while it's
| true that 2/3 of Americans say they want Roe kept in place,
| it's also true that many of them don't know what that
| actually means.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| >They believe that abortion would be illegal everywhere.
|
| While that will not be true, access to abortion will be
| very limited everywhere. With 26 states limiting it
| seriously and no constitutional protections on getting
| abortions in a different state, you could see a vast
| majority of population not have access to abortions.
|
| Even if everyone starts traveling for abortions, a huge
| amount of the population won't be able to travel. And the
| ones who travel will stress the medical facilities to the
| extent that people living in states that have legal
| abortion access, will still have it's populations access to
| abortions severely limited.
|
| It doesn't matter if 2/3 Americans don't know what it
| actually means. What matters is 2/3 Americans want access
| to abortions, and that access will be severely limited
| regardless of whether it's legal in your state.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _access to abortion will be very limited everywhere_
|
| This is surely not true. Forty percent of the US
| population lives in states with laws protecting access to
| abortion. The AP is reporting that 20 states have heavy
| restrictions/bans, and the remainder are to-be-
| determined. [1]
|
| I've seen the 26 state reference floating around on
| social media and wonder which states are included, beyond
| what news outlets are reporting. I'm open to the
| possibility that the AP has this wrong -- the reason I'd
| like to know the source of the 26 figure is to compare it
| to the mostly-trusted sources that are giving lower
| numbers.
|
| To be clear, I'm not weighing in on whether today's
| decision is good or bad. I just wanted to clear up some
| of the statistics that people hear a lot, since they are
| sometimes based on misunderstandings of the law (which
| are reasonable since the case was decided a long time
| ago, and until recently most people thought it would not
| be overturned anytime soon, if ever).
|
| 1: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-supreme-court-
| decision-8...
| gusgus01 wrote:
| There are 22 if you include 6-week bans and ones that
| have laws that are still being challenged:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
| shots/2022/06/24/1107126...
|
| I'm not sure what the exact right number is, but it
| probably comes down to the details and how you classify
| them.
| mattnewton wrote:
| > The Supreme Court neither banned abortion nor prohibited the
| legislature from protecting the right to abortion. It merely
| decided that it is not currently protected by constitution,
| which to me seems completely correct.
|
| The Supreme Court includes multiple justices put there in no
| small part due to lobbying by conservative faith groups, and as
| part of their lobbying plan, several states have trigger laws
| on the books that immediately make abortion legal in many
| states. The Supreme Court's decision is the immediate cause of
| these "trigger laws" going into effect. It's a part of a larger
| concerted effort, so this is a distinction with little
| difference for anyone living in these states or who may find
| themselves sued in Texas for providing abortions to a Texan who
| crossed into their state.
| ausbah wrote:
| most people _do_ think that abortion should be law in some
| form, but since the US doesn 't have a democratic basis in 5/6
| of the federal government - "leaving jit to the legislature" is
| just as bad as letting SCOTUS decide the law. that doesn't even
| touch upon how constitutional amendments aren't even on the
| table with how hard they are to pass
|
| and no matter what, you're dealing with laws regarding the
| bodily autonomy of 50% of the populace. if that can't be
| considered a fundamental right, what really can?
| rt4mn wrote:
| > It merely decided that it is not currently protected by
| constitution, which to me seems completely correct.
|
| First off, It was a momentous decision. It did not "merely"
| decide anything.
|
| Second, a right does not need to be explicitly spelled out in
| the constitution to be a constitutionally protected right. The
| right to an abortion is a clear and rational outgrowth of the
| constitutional protections of privacy and bodily autonomy (IE,
| the right to not have the government mess with our shit for no
| good reason).
| zionic wrote:
| Hearing the body-autonomy argument is pretty funny right now,
| given what the last 2 years have been like.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I love how black and white these counterarguments are. If a
| vaccine had side effects anywhere near as severe as the
| symptoms you see in a "normal" pregnancy it would not be
| considered safe and I don't think you'd see it mandated
| anywhere for something like COVID.
|
| It's a also comparing a response to an acute global crisis
| to laws dealing with a routine medical issue (pregnancy)
| that ~50% of the population will experience in their
| lifetime.
| rafale wrote:
| Indeed, we are in the age of make your mind based on
| feelings then cherry pick your arguments afterthr fact.
| rt4mn wrote:
| I'm not sure how to interpret your comment. Could you
| elaborate?
| daenz wrote:
| I think they're referring to the hypocrisy of compelling
| vaccination on someone if you support the idea of bodily
| autonomy.
| rt4mn wrote:
| Thats what I thought as well, but since neither myself
| nor the comment I was replying to mentioned it, I was /
| am confused how the hypocrisy in question was relevant.
|
| I'm probably overthinking a throwaway internet comment.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >think they're referring to the hypocrisy of compelling
| vaccination on someone if you support the idea of bodily
| autonomy.
|
| One of those things is not like the others.
|
| That's a fallacious argument. No one threatened me with
| jail for not getting vaccinated and no one threatened the
| medical folks who gave me my vaccines with jail either.
|
| There are millions of people who _may_ go to prison for
| providing a private, personal medical procedure. That 's
| wrong.
|
| I'd note that Mississippi and Missouri have both charged
| women who had _miscarriages_ with capital murder.
| daenz wrote:
| I don't think you're seeing the theme of bodily autonomy
| here. If the underlying argument for abortion is "my body
| my choice", then that same argument should logically
| apply to vaccinations.
| notch656a wrote:
| What's perplexing is why they don't apply this to the rest of
| the federal powers. Overturn Wickard v Filburn and cut it at
| the root. The federal government has no legitimacy to regulate
| intrastate trade, most gun laws, most of the civil rights act,
| the controlled substance act, etc. The fact that they picked
| abortion but not the root of anti-constitutional federal
| expansionism is truly baffling.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They decide what's in front of them. If you've got a good
| challenge case for _Wickard v Filburn_ , they might hear it.
| But _this_ case wasn 't a case that could overturn _Wickard v
| Filburn_.
| [deleted]
| andrew_ wrote:
| Agree it was a weird hill to choose. I can see more
| expansionism being picked at over the next few years.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I hope to god that regulation of interstate trade gets shot
| down, so California and New York can tax goods from red
| states into oblivion. That would be a poetic response to this
| egregious use of "state's rights."
| notch656a wrote:
| Constitution aside: the gangs and cartels will be licking
| their lips at the smuggling opportunities the second the
| gavel hits. You will hand them one of the biggest gifts
| since the war on drugs.
| disambiguation wrote:
| you realize import taxes turn into higher prices for the
| people buying the stuff right?
| scythe wrote:
| That's not what _Wickard v. Filburn_ was about. _Wickard_
| held that regulation of _individual_ behavior could be
| legislated under the Interstate Commerce Clause insofar as
| that individual behavior had a "rational basis" effect on
| the interstate market for a commodity. This effectively
| allowed Congress to regulate _most_ aspects of our lives
| under the auspices of the power to regulate interstate
| commerce.
| infamouscow wrote:
| > I hope to god that regulation of interstate trade gets
| shot down, so California and New York can tax goods from
| red states into oblivion.
|
| Punishing the poor and economically disadvantaged in red
| and blue states as political reprisal is the stupidest idea
| I've read all day.
|
| What are you accomplishing besides making yourself feel
| good at the literal expense of the most vulnerable?
| ryan93 wrote:
| Constitution prohibits it unless authorized by the US
| congress.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The problem with this legal OCD is that in the meantime, people
| suffer.
|
| This isn't a codebase refactor, this is people's lives. Pulling
| this ruling before you have "what the people want" in place is
| like deleting a feature you plan on rebuilding later before you
| actually rebuild it.
|
| Nobody in their right mind thinks that's a good idea in any
| other context, so why would it make sense here?
| kansface wrote:
| > Nobody in their right mind thinks that's a good idea in any
| other context, so why would it make sense here?
|
| We should give some deference to precedent, but the rule of
| law is paramount. Consider what the opposite of the rule of
| law really entails, or how hard won that victory was.
| softcactus wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale.
| .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott
|
| What is legal != what is just, ethical, or moral.
| kansface wrote:
| > What is legal != what is just, ethical, or moral.
|
| Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. We can't organize society
| to run on what is just, ethical, or moral. We can only
| make laws based on our understanding of those things. Our
| understanding of morality changes over time. Where the
| law is unjust, we should change the law. Abandoning the
| rule law ends badly.
| theknocker wrote:
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > The problem with this legal OCD is that in the meantime,
| people suffer.
|
| I am willing to empathize with the denial of service but
| thats it.
|
| Congress was the more appropriate federal authority to be a
| legislature, and failed to do so. In the absence of a federal
| law passed by Congress, state ones are the only ones that
| matter.
|
| The topic of how long the ruling lasted is a complete red
| herring, as this is not out of character for the court at
| all.
|
| I don't feel like the convenience of having the court being
| so hard to overrule is a good enough reason for it to act as
| a superlegislature when convenient.
|
| I am the same way on this regarding all topics. On this
| specific topic, in the past I had tried to point out how odd
| Roe v Wade was with the court acting as a superlegislature
| but I quickly learned this was not a conversation people were
| willing to have as they couldnt separate the "camps" from the
| case(s) so I stopped bringing it up. I'm glad that this case
| forces the conversation.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| So it's more important to you that common law not exist
| than it is for the Supreme Court to make rulings based on
| religious ideology?
|
| Are you really going to pretend not to understand why this
| ruling came _now_ , when the religious right just so
| happened to be in charge of the Supreme Court, and not at
| any other time in the past 50 years?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I don't feel like the convenience of having the court
| being so hard to overrule is a good enough reason for it
| to act as a superlegislature when convenient.
|
| I completely understand that only one party is willing to
| make that interpretation _on this topic_. I think it is
| noteworthy that "the religious right" did not act as a
| superlegislature itself, given the opportunity, and
| simply removed it back to Congress or the states when in
| the absence of a law from Congress.
|
| I observe that there are or were other ways to reach the
| outcome that the other party wants, that party has
| bungled all of those ways, and will likely continue to do
| so.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| You "understand" and "think it is noteworthy" and
| "observe", but what do you "feel" about the people who've
| lost freedom today, because of the observable fact that
| this primarily happened due to the religious beliefs of
| the new members of the Supreme Court?
|
| Not caring about the people for whom the system is
| designed for is exactly what makes this such a monumental
| problem. If the system doesn't work for the people it's
| designed to work for, it the outcomes don't reflect their
| will, then it's a broken system.
|
| If this is the "correct" way, then the system might need
| to be torn down and rebuilt, possibly violently. Consider
| that as you avoid empathizing with those affected.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I empathize with people that expected the option of one
| set of services and won't have that.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| And I'm sure that empathy is comforting to those who will
| now die because their miscarriage can't be handled in a
| medically sound way.
|
| Possibly less so to their loved ones, some of whom may
| act violently in response to a system that killed a
| person they care about.
|
| I doubt they're going to care meaningfully about which
| legal mechanism it was that would have been most
| appropriate to use to allow their loved one to live.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| That is a consequence of Congress not doing its job on
| this topic for 50 consecutive years.
|
| Contact your state and Congressional representations and
| find legislative candidates that are as passionate on
| this topic as you are, if there arent other causes you
| are _more_ passionate about that _different_ candidates
| care about of course.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Or it's a consequence of the Supreme Court changing its
| precedent after 50 years of leaving it alone, and its
| members _explicitly_ misrepresenting their position.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| As I also mentioned in my first reply to you, the topic
| of how long the ruling lasted is a complete red herring,
| as this is not out of character for the court at all.
|
| It is accurate that several judges lied to Congress
| during their nomination process and we do not have
| remedies or sanctions for that. (That are deemed
| politically rational)
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It's not a red herring, as it demonstrates that the
| protection via the Supreme Court was not in any jeopardy
| of failing to function, as it has successfully protected
| women's rights for over 50 years.
| bushbaba wrote:
| You're assuming the rest of the country shares your views. A
| large portion of America views abortion as murder.
|
| I do NOT share that viewpoint. But we are a republic. And the
| Supreme Court doesn't issue law, that's Congress's
| responsibility.
|
| What this represents is not a code refactor but a Change to a
| comment in the code base on what a function does.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| > You're assuming the rest of the country shares your
| views.
|
| 65% of the USA currently says that Roe v. Wade shouldn't be
| overturned.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > You're assuming the rest of the country shares your
| views. A large portion of America views abortion as murder.
|
| Except the vast majority do support abortion. I really
| don't care what "a large portion" of America thinks, the
| majority thinks it should be a right but due to the way we
| cast votes for presidents we have the minority picking
| supreme court seats and thus giving us this decision.
| ehsankia wrote:
| > A large portion of America views abortion as murder.
|
| That is not true, they are a very loud minority. Most
| polling puts people who really care about banning abortion
| (in the ways it is being done right now) at below 20%.
|
| The reason it is not passing legislation is because the
| Senate (which is required) is not a democratic institution.
| A state like Wyoming has 65x more voting power than a state
| like California. Current the Senate sits at 50/50 yet one
| side represents 40M more citizens than the other.
| [deleted]
| bushbaba wrote:
| 20% is a large portion of the USA. That's 1 out of every
| 5 Americans.
| [deleted]
| t-writescode wrote:
| If 80% of the USA wanted marijuana legalized, does that
| mean the 20% that say 'no' should keep it blocked?
| bushbaba wrote:
| There's been no ruling that Abortion is un-
| constitutional. The 80% has the full ability to elect
| representatives to pass a law on the matter at the state
| or federal level.
| t-writescode wrote:
| See, you're saying this, but with effective
| gerrymandering and friends, a collection of low-
| population states have successfully broken the democratic
| process by having a majority of power while being in the
| minority.
| hobo_in_library wrote:
| ta988 wrote:
| This is not true. This change, in a single day, the lives
| of millions. So it caused a change in behavior of the
| legislative system. It is not a let discuss this and change
| it so it reflects the views of the population. Look at the
| planned Parenthood that had to stop working today in some
| states. that's not the result of just changing a comment in
| code.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _But we are a republic. And the Supreme Court doesn't
| issue law, that's Congress's responsibility._
|
| Within the bounds of what is permitted by the Constitution.
| If you believe that bodily autonomy is a fundamental right
| guaranteed in the Constitution, then laws are _irrelevant_
| , as this is outside the bounds of what law is permitted to
| be written.
| mikevm wrote:
| The Democrats were fine with mandating experimental COVID
| vaccines, but when it comes to abortion "bodily autonomy
| is a fundamental right". What a joke.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Abortions aren't contagious, are you serious?
|
| Body autonomy means I don't have to catch a disease
| because other people are too selfish to get a vaccine
| that is only experimental in the same way air and water
| is experimental.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's trivial to flip this on its head:
|
| The Republicans fought tooth and nail against even simple
| mask mandates but now want to legislate what happens in a
| woman's uterus in the name of "protecting life"? What a
| joke.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| The point is if you believe this to not be up to the
| Supreme Court to decide, then you don't believe it's up to
| the Supreme Court to undo until the people have decided.
|
| The Supreme Court didn't issue a law here, they changed
| their interpretation of a decision they had made 50 years
| prior, for no reason at all except that the composition of
| the court had changed.
|
| That's like hiring a new guy and his first action is to
| remove an entire technology that was propping up your
| infrastructure, because it wasn't being stored in the
| "correct" VCS.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Say a supreme court 50 years ago interpreted the
| constitution that woman did not have a right to vote.
| Then today the court ruled, the constitution doesn't
| actually state anything of the sort and overturns that
| past judgment.
|
| In that case would you want the court to instead state,
| well a decision 50 years ago was made. So we wont change
| it. The US Congress needs to pass a law explicitly
| granting woman the right to vote. Such-as with say Minor
| v. Happersett, "Court held that, while women are no less
| citizens than men are, citizenship does not confer a
| right to vote, and therefore state laws barring women
| from voting are constitutionally valid"
|
| A good court in a Democratic government must be objective
| in interpretation of law . And the system is such that it
| is the US Congress's responsibility to pass law.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| A vote to prohibit women from voting isn't analogous
| because it's restrictive, not permissive.
|
| There is zero legitimate reason for this to be reversed
| _now_ , compared to after it's been codified in the
| legislature.
|
| But all of this is a silly distraction. The real reason
| has nothing at all to do with what the court's role
| should be, and everything to do with the religion of the
| people currently serving on the court.
|
| To keep the tech analogies going, it's like a new tech
| lead deleting the web app code because be doesn't believe
| in monorepos, but saying it's a security issue.
| bmelton wrote:
| > compared to after it's been codified in the legislature
|
| The legitimate reason it is reversed _now_ is that it is
| _now_ when the matter is before them in the court of law
| that conflicts with Roe in a way that is hard to
| reconcile against precedent.
|
| If your complaint is that it hasn't been codified into
| law by the legislature since 1973 (and you're right -- it
| hasn't) that is not the fault of the judicial branch,
| rather the legislative.
|
| To borrow from your analogy, it's more like a repository
| deprecating its code, watching everybody for years claim
| that "they're going to delete this any minute now" and
| nobody stepping to the plate to take over as maintainer.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| "It's not their fault" What? That brings exactly zero
| people the help they need.
|
| When your action is the proximate cause of the revocation
| of freedom from 165m people, it's definitely 'your
| fault'."
|
| This may not have been a great way to keep women safe
| forever, but _today_ was not the day it needed fixing.
| bmelton wrote:
| It also by itself does not restrict anyone from the help
| that they need.
|
| It is not the job of the Supreme Court to care for the
| reproductive health of the American people. Of the
| federal government, that would either be the job of the
| executive or the legislature, depending on your preferred
| view of the executive branch.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| It is absolutely the job of the Supreme Court to care for
| the _entire_ health of the American people, there is
| literally no other reason for the body to exist other
| than to maximally enable Americans ' life, liberty, and
| their pursuit of happiness.
|
| If the Supreme Court cannot do this, it should not exist.
| josho wrote:
| > The legitimate reason it is reversed _now_ is that it
| is _now_ when the matter is before them in court.
|
| And it's in the court now because this is the first time
| in 50 years that we've had a court regressive enough to
| vote it down.
|
| It hadn't been codified in law because there wasn't a
| need because the court's had settled the issue.
|
| To follow your analogy it's like finally removing that
| deprecated code after 50 years and seeing side-effects
| across the code base that are hugely disruptive to a tiny
| percent of users and anger inducing to a majority, while
| also making a minority of users feel smug about it
| finally being removed.
| bmelton wrote:
| > And it's in the court now because this is the first
| time in 50 years that we've had a court regressive enough
| to vote it down.
|
| This is silly. It's basically always in the courts. This
| particular case has been ongoing since 2018 IIRC. Before
| that it was June Medical. Before that it was Whole
| Women's Health v Hellerstedt.
|
| > It hadn't been codified in law because there wasn't a
| need because the court's had settled the issue
|
| Except it had not legislatively, and it needed to have
| been. At the same time as Ruth Bader Ginsburg was
| lamenting the flaws of Roe halting legislative process
| that she knew still needed to happen, Joe Biden was
| proposing amendments to overturn Roe v Wade so that
| abortion could be outlawed.
|
| It is and always has been balanced on the head of a pin.
| Both sides have of course been using it more as a
| platform for fund-raising than doing anything
| legislatively, while warning that the other side was
| moments away from winning. Please donate $5, $10, or $50
| to the cause.
| portpecos wrote:
| > The real reason has nothing at all to do with what the
| court's role should be, and everything to do with the
| religion of the people currently serving on the court.
|
| You're inferring that the court made it's decision on a
| religious reason, and you're entitled to your inference.
|
| So here's my inference, as an atheist conservative. No
| the Supreme Court did not overturn the case for religious
| reasons. They overturned it exactly for the reasons they
| stated:
|
| "The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each
| State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and
| Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those
| decisions and return that authority to the people and
| their elected representatives"
| bushbaba wrote:
| The analogy is flawed as the codebase is to laws. And the
| supreme court didn't change any law. Instead this would
| be like the new guy coming in and stating, "Wow that
| codebase actually mutates objects and the commentary of
| it being non-modifying to its parameters isn't valid."
| Aunche wrote:
| > That's like hiring a new guy and his first action is to
| remove an entire technology
|
| That isn't a good analogy. A better analogy is the
| security team modifying ACLs that allow them push
| changes. It may be a destructive change, but it's outside
| of scope of the security team.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| How about a new customer support director deleting your
| Postgres instance backing your main SaaS product because
| it's hosted on a server in their cage?
|
| Shouldn't have been in the CS datacenter, so screw the
| customers and the business as a whole who relied on that
| system, right?
| hossbeast wrote:
| That is actually a great analogy
| [deleted]
| halostatue wrote:
| A relatively _small_ portion (under 30%, IIRC), and most of
| those don't actually oppose abortion qua abortion, they
| just don't want Those People to have access to it. (Many
| vocal opponents to abortion rights have quietly sought
| abortions on their family's or mistresses behalf.)
| KallDrexx wrote:
| > You're assuming the rest of the country shares your
| views. A large portion of America views abortion as murder.
|
| Is this backed up by data or your personal view? Because
| every piece of data that I've seen is that only ~30% of
| americans support a ban of abortion, while the large
| majority are in favor for it being legal.
| analog31 wrote:
| The amendment is at best quasi-democratic, since amendments
| that would have broad public support are almost prohibitively
| difficult to carry out, and requires the cooperation of states
| that are themselves quasi-democratic.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"If most people agree that it should be a constitutional
| right, no one stops the legislature from adding the required
| amendment. "
|
| Meanwhile bunch of states will make abortions illegal. I think
| Texas already has with some technicalities but correct me if I
| am wrong.
| standardUser wrote:
| 40 million women in about 20 states just lost all legal
| access to abortions.
|
| Additional states will follow soon, but there is no
| "meanwhile" for a lot of the country. It's already done.
| MrDresden wrote:
| andrew_ wrote:
| > via this all precious constitution of yours?
|
| This reveals that you didn't ask in good faith.
| MrDresden wrote:
| thebradbain wrote:
| I'm an American and I think the same thing:
|
| Why is it so important?
|
| It's either so heavily interpreted that it means different
| things than what's written (2nd Amendment), it's needed
| complete adjustment to even pretend to meet its ideals
| (Slavery), the adjustment needed adjustments (Voting Rights
| Act), and every step of the way those adjustments get
| watered down, stripped, rendered meaningless...
|
| It's a document written by people from a different time.
| Why be beholden to the past, when it's not even
| recognizable in its current form to when it was first
| drafted?
| tshaddox wrote:
| Not really. The United States Constitution can be mocked in
| good faith.
| sophacles wrote:
| How is it completely correct? The 9th amendment acknowledges
| that rights not enumerated in the constitution exist. It's
| perfectly reasonable to say that bodily autonomy is in fact one
| of those rights, as the concept is required for other rights to
| even exist.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| The court decision goes over the process it uses to determine
| if something is an unenumerated right:
|
| "We have held that the "established method of substantive-
| due-process analysis" requires that an unenumerated right be
| "'deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition'"
| before it can be recognized as a component of the "liberty"
| protected in the Due Process Clause. Glucksberg, 521 U. S.,
| at 721; cf. Timbs, 586 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7)."
|
| There is a lengthy appendix to the ruling that goes through
| the list of prior state laws that criminalized abortion and
| shows that a right to abortion is not, in fact, "deeply
| rooted in this Nation's history and tradition".
| sophacles wrote:
| So you want to force women to die and easily preventable
| death (e.g. ectopic pregnancy)? That's the only way
| "completely correct" works here - the trigger laws on the
| books that result in that outcome were in place before the
| court took this case. They chose to rule broadly rather
| than a ruling that still enshrined the right of someone to
| have a medical procedure that would preserve their life say
| in the case of a non-viable pregnancy that would end in the
| death of both the woman and the fetus.
|
| edit: i was wrong about the trigger laws having exceptions
| for life endangering pregnancies - its the new laws the
| same people are passing that remove the exceptions. I still
| stand by my statement, because the "completely correct"
| ruling allows those exceptions to be removed.
| mirceal wrote:
| Cute take but I'm going to ask the question: why did something
| that was in place for 50 years needs to be revisited? Is it
| maybe needed for the nutjobs that do want to ban abortion to do
| their thing?
|
| Also, you need to ask yourself: is this about abortion? Or is
| it really about literally keeping the people poor, stupid and
| uneducated?
|
| Think about it: if you're not poor this is not an issue. If you
| have 5 kids instead of 1, good luck getting them the proper
| education. But it's cool...we can use all that almost free
| labor to drive our corporate empires forward.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| > why did something that was in place for 50 years needs to
| be revisited?
|
| Because it was poorly reasoned judicial activism and always
| has been. The amount of time that a decision stands should
| have no bearing on how good of a decision it is.
|
| One of the dissents in Casey v Planned Parenthood in 92 also
| wanted to overturn Roe, for the same reasons that the current
| court did.
|
| Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought that Roe v Wade was poorly
| reasoned.
| notch656a wrote:
| But what is baffling is why they picked Roe V Wade to
| overturn rather than cut it at the root, such as Wickard v
| Filburn which would have undone a massive swath of the kind
| of unconstitutional expansion of the federal government.
|
| They could have applied their logic uniformly but bizarrely
| singled out an abortion case.
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| If you want the cynical lawyer's answer, it is simple.
| Wickard, as a ruling, allows the government more power
| and the ability to better project that power via the
| courts and legislature. Roe is a side-show for the
| government. The ability for someone to have a pregnancy
| terminated does nothing systemic to enhance the
| government's ability to project power in a way which
| enhances the government. Which is why the parties will
| fight over abortion rights, but would never dream of
| trying to squash the government's ability to regulate
| what a person does with material goods a la Wickard.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Because it was roe v wade in question. Not the other
| case. I don't believe the Supreme Court can issue
| judgment on any law they choose. It has to be relating to
| the court case in question
| notch656a wrote:
| They get to pick which case they take cert on. There is
| absolutely gonna be _something_ out there that would
| allow them to work at the root of Wickard v Filburn.
| Framing it as "they have to work with this one case they
| got" is disingenuous.
|
| They intentionally chose to go for the contradictory
| choice of singling out abortion while not attacking the
| root -- which suggests to me think this is more about
| judicial activism than upholding the constitution.
| jonathanwallace wrote:
| Disingenuous and/or incredibly naive as to how politics
| have been impacting cases coming before the courts.
| coryfklein wrote:
| > why did something that was in place for 50 years needs to
| be revisited?
|
| Ruth Bader Ginsburg made it her career to overturn precedents
| around women's rights that had been around far longer than 50
| years.
| dang wrote:
| I'm afraid your comments in this thread have been breaking
| the site guidelines. Can you please make your substantive
| points thoughtfully? That means without fulminating and
| without calling names.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| hatware wrote:
| > why did something that was in place for 50 years needs to
| be revisited?
|
| Please answer the same question, but for slavery.
| lanstin wrote:
| The law in New York City was from 1905. The current court
| doesn't seem to value stability so much as their own agenda
| for how things ought to be.
|
| Personally I think the root cause is an alliance between
| people with hateful beliefs and people that want the
| government not to tax or regulate large companies and rich
| families. Fine, slut shame people because they had sex and
| got pregnant (no matter the circumstances) and let us keep
| sponsoring fake research that carbon burn is good. Be openly
| racist again and lower those taxes even at the cost of not
| educating the young.
|
| Just my theory tho. Hard to know.
| andsoitis wrote:
| It is worth considering the larger shape of things.
|
| Do you imagine, if the Republicans control all three branches
| of government, that they would not create a federal law that
| bans abortions everywhere?
|
| All signals point to that, and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade
| is there to remove friction to get there.
| tenpies wrote:
| thebradbain wrote:
| > I do, mostly because just a few years ago when they
| controlled the executive and legislative, they showed they
| had no interesting in "banning abortions everywhere".
|
| Because that would've been an obvious and flagrant
| violation of Roe and a waste of time.
|
| > This Handmaid's Tale scenario continues to be Leftist fan
| fiction to rally the troops.
|
| I mean, overturning a long-held right is the first big step
| on that path. It wouldn't have such staying power if there
| was no concrete evidence, such as this ruling, to back up
| those fears.
|
| > The same cannot be said for some of the scenarios the
| Right warns about - as we're witnessing right now.
|
| Like what? Use your words
| andrew_ wrote:
| It's just as feasible that Democrats control all three, and
| it's happened before. The Democratic party had complete
| control over both Houses and the presidency from 1933 to
| 1947, 1949-1953, and 1961-1969; 26 years of full control of
| the legislative and executive branches thanks to the New Deal
| Coalition. By 1939, FDR had formed a more liberal court
| through his appointments, and that lasted a while through
| this Democratic control of the branches into the 1950s.
|
| As the pendulum swings, so does policy. It would be more
| difficult IMHO if there were more than two parties.
| [deleted]
| coryfklein wrote:
| > if the Republicans control all three branches of
| government, that they would not create a federal law that
| bans abortions everywhere?
|
| If the voting public of the US shifts to where it adopts a
| view you disagree with then of course the democratic
| institution would continue to reflect the public.
|
| But we have good reason to believe this will never happen.
| Polling shows that most individuals support a woman's right
| to abortion. And even if the Republican party gained control
| of all 3 branches, they aren't a monolithic and unified block
| when it comes to policy. "States rights" is a HUGE motivation
| for most Republicans, and a federal policy banning abortion
| would be a big stumbling block for getting the votes to pass
| such legislation _even with_ a Republican majority.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Are you kidding? Republicans vote in lock step according to
| The Great Leader. They would send us back to the 1800s if
| they could. I have no doubt in my mind.
| confidantlake wrote:
| States rights is a huge talking point, it has never been a
| sincerely held belief. Take marijuana, the same people
| clamoring for "state's rights" don't let federal states
| decide the issue. They support federal law that makes it
| illegal nationwide. You can bet every dollar they will do
| the same for abortion.
| inlined wrote:
| 1. The us is a failed democracy. The senate and the POTUS
| are incredibly not representative, thus many extremist
| policies get pushed contrary to popular opinion 2. The
| modern GOP is decidedly against states rights; they want
| their preferred laws and nothing else. For examples, see
| Trump's plan to take away CAs ability to have its own
| emissions laws, the SCOTUS scrapping any ability for a
| state to require any burden of need to carry a gun, and the
| early anti-abortion laws that I believe will attempt to
| charge women for murder even if they get an abortion out of
| jurisdiction.
| ghosty141 wrote:
| The US democracy is a huge joke compared to most european
| states for example. The two party system, gerrymandering,
| etc etc make this system really awful at governing such a
| diverse country.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Clearly biggest problem is the whole first past the post
| and winner takes all. Fix those and move to proportional
| representation and it would be lot better.
| roflyear wrote:
| US is also too big.
| standardUser wrote:
| Protecting the rights of marginalized groups is the _only_
| thing that makes democracy a workable system. What you are
| supporting is called mob rule.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| I'm asking in good faith, and ask for answers in the same: in a
| pro-choice framework, why do in-womb Homo Sapiens Sapiens have
| _no_ rights to be considered, vis a vis the rights of the mother?
|
| In this context, I'm not implying that an unborn human's rights
| _override_ those of its mother, nor imply what the right balance
| should be (50:50? 20:80? 80:20?). But pro-choice arguments tend
| to assume that the in-womb human has no rights, since mother has
| the right to terminate the pregnancy basically without any good
| reason at all. I 'd argue that where welfare of two beings is
| affected, you need to consider the rights of both. Is it clear
| that an unborn human has _no_ rights?
|
| Perhaps this can be straightforwardly spelled out, or is obvious
| - in which case I'm curious to know what that argument is. If
| not, doesn't some kind of cautionary approach require that err on
| the side of caution in considering the rights of the unborn
| human? For example, if a healthy woman is pregnant with a healthy
| human, but decides to terminate the pregnancy for no extreme
| reason (health reasons I guess), what is the argument that says
| "the unborn human's right to mature and be born and live is non-
| existent or trumped by the mother's preferences"?
|
| There is a myriad of difficult scenarios that life can write, and
| for now I'm moving away from those. Not every pregnancy is
| terminated for life-threatening reasons, for example.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| An important related question is: why don't animals have
| rights?
|
| I think something special happens to humans on the journey from
| embryo to child. Something like an awareness of their
| relationship to the world, that makes death more tragic.
|
| As an aside, I think the same transition happens in many
| animals and their deaths can be just as tragic, although
| obviously nothing in U.S. law acknowledges that.
|
| In fetuses, I don't know when this "relationship to the world"
| begins, if it has really begun in earnest in the womb, or if it
| even has begun in earnest as a newborn.
|
| But the problem with law is that such things must be codified.
|
| I know "at conception" is too early, since we destroy similar
| creatures by accident every day. And even a sparrow has a
| richer concept of their relationship to the world than an
| embryo.
|
| I'll also add that "on their first day of kindergarten" is
| certainly far too late. By that time many of us have a very
| rich self concept.
|
| "At first breath" is a clear middle ground, easy to interpret
| legally. It certainly seems that the "understanding of one's
| relationship to the world" is greatly enriched at that moment
| of birth, and quite actively thereafter. And importantly, "at
| first breath" happens to be a moment where the child is no
| longer a danger to the mother. People have a right to self
| defense that clearly ends for the mother at that point.
|
| All of that said, I think it's possible some form of person is
| "murdered" in some abortions. Just like some people are
| "murdered" in war. But there are simply limits to what can be
| fairly decided through the legal system.
|
| At some point, other forms of justice take over. For me, not
| trying to push this on anyone, but that's God's justice. Many
| evils are punished not by the courts but by something greater,
| and that's OK with me.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| > why don't animals have rights?
|
| I believe it's self-evident that there is something in our
| brains that causes us to mentally separate things into in-
| group and out-group. In other words, we evolved to be social
| and generous, but only tribally so. Visual and behavioral
| differences such as skin color and culture can be the
| difference between in/out-group delineation. And so it is
| with animals. They are so similar to us and have so many of
| the traits that make us "human" that it's obvious they should
| have certain rights, if you think about it. In fact, some
| animals do enjoy rights to be protected against humans, as
| cruel treatment of animals is ostensibly taboo in Western
| cultures as long as you ignore current American factory farm
| practices, and in the case of some protected classes of
| animals such as dogs, enforced by law. But the differences
| between humans and other animals is enough to trigger the
| in/out group delineation, so almost no one bothers to
| recognize they should have rights, let alone fight for them.
| Those that do fight for those rights are typically relegated
| to the out-group themselves.
|
| In short, it has nothing to do with logic, and everything to
| do with the primitive parts of our brains running the show.
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Why should you first put on your own oxygen mask on a plane in
| the event of decompressing, before helping others?
|
| Because the damage is much greater otherwise. A child brought
| into this world under duress, to an unprepared mother and/or
| unprepared parents will have all the odds against him/her.
| There's a greater risk of dying. Of poverty. Of sickness. Of
| crime.
|
| It's not that the unborn has _no_ rights. It 's rather that
| these rights cannot be realized partially. It's either the full
| package or none.
|
| So just like the US electoral system, some people are in favor
| of abortion even if they are 49% in favor of the embryo.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Right, but in living/walking humans, we tend to prioritise
| right to live over many other rights. We don't euthanise
| children in adverse material conditions, for example. These
| get, or most people agree should get, state help, foster
| parenting and so on. "Let's euthanise the child" is not on
| any menu of interventions.
| [deleted]
| uniqueuid wrote:
| That's true, there are sudden changes in our collective
| evaluation of what rights a human has.
|
| There are some really plausible reasons for birth, for
| example, as an important turning point:
|
| - Before (and in particular during) birth, a child's life
| and physical well-being is immediately tied to the
| mother's. There is a real risk of one's sickness killing
| the other.
|
| - Before birth, there is no mandatory, conscious care-
| taking. The embryo is automatically taken care for.
| Afterwards, it requires a (excuse my wording as a parent)
| shit-ton of work to keep a kid alive, happy and successful
| (however you define that)
|
| - The risk of death is vastly higher for an embryo than for
| a child (with about 1/3 of pregnancies being unsuccessful)
| and decreases strongly after birth. I suspect this is one
| of the reasons why abortion is often intuitively seen as
| different from euthanasia.
|
| That said, I completely agree with your argument that it's
| wrong to argue as if there was a sudden point at which
| humans are suddenly and naturally protected but aren't
| before. But I think that not many advocates would argue for
| such a radical position.
| menomatter wrote:
| I'm undecided on abortion when it's not early (X weeks) and/or
| for medical reasons. As for the rights: Do we have the right to
| not carry another humanbeing even if it meant their "death"?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| We don't when the human is born. If you don't feed a newborn
| and it dies, it's criminal neglect.
|
| What is the root difference?
| mercutio2 wrote:
| A fetus clearly is a collection of human cells. It is an
| example of living Homo sapiens.
|
| The question abortion ethicists ask is whether a fetus or
| embryo is a _person_.
|
| If, in fact, all embryos are persons, then the logical ethical
| reasoning would be that taking steps to minimize miscarriages
| should be one of our highest priorities. This doesn't appear to
| match most people's moral intuitions, however.
|
| It is not obvious that a newborn baby is a person, either. But
| defining a being as receiving the rights of a person at birth
| is a schelling point that many people are more comfortable with
| than spots earlier or later in development.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| That's it. And I'm wary of intuitions, because clearly people
| have very different intuitions.
|
| What's the scientific argument for or against personhood for
| the unborn homo sapiens?
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| "personhood" is not a scientific term so there is no
| scientific argument for or against.
|
| It is a philosophical question.
| zajio1am wrote:
| Generally, brain and neural system complexity is seemed to
| be necessary for personhood. During fetal development, the
| evolutionary older parts forms earlier, while cerebral
| cortex starts to develop at the end.
| ausbah wrote:
| >I'd argue that where welfare of two beings is affected, you
| need to consider the rights of both.
|
| if you consider the welfare of the whole population then, you'd
| be ok if we took some people without asking and "donated" all
| their organs and other useful body parts to those who could use
| them
| rich_sasha wrote:
| erm, no, that's clearly not considering the rights of the
| "donors".
| ausbah wrote:
| yes clearly, so it follows the right of pregnant person's
| to decide what happens to their body trumps anything else
| rich_sasha wrote:
| You're implying the unborn human is not in fact a human
| and thus has no rights to consider. Or at least that the
| only rights to consider are those of the mother. Which
| may be true, but the whole point of my question is to see
| a proper argument in support of that.
| mherdeg wrote:
| > I'd argue that where welfare of two beings is affected, you
| need to consider the rights of both.
|
| About 5,000 people die in the US annually while waitlisted for
| a kidney transplant; they are deemed medically eligible and a
| donation would give them more quality adjusted life years, but
| there is not a willing donor available.
|
| Consider, pairwise, the rights of two particular people: a
| person on the waitlist who will die unless they receive a
| kidney but who is below the cutoff line; and a healthy adult
| who lives next door to the sick person, who has two kidneys,
| and who could relatively safely donate one of them.
|
| The law currently forbids the sick person from paying the
| healthy person money in exchange for their kidney. This
| prevents coercion[1] which could endanger the health of the
| healthy person.
|
| In other words, the law prioritizes the healthy person
| infinitely and does not prioritize the welfare of the sick
| person.
|
| Do you think this setup is correct? Or should we make legal
| changes that would balance the rights of sick people against
| those of healthy people? Under your proposed framework, should
| we sometimes allow sick people who have money to pay healthy
| people for their organs, buying a chance to live?
|
| [1] Some discussion here:
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/698563807
| brigandish wrote:
| I heard this argument a couple of years ago via Youtube video
| and I liked its novelty (instead of having sides talk past
| each other it's gladdening to see some thought put into
| things).
|
| That being said, for me, it fails on the responsibility
| front. The healthy person did not cause the sickness, is not
| the sick one's parent and did not in any way "give" life, so
| to speak. If we reimagine the sick neighbour's predicament so
| that her husband and child both need a new kidney and the
| healthy neighbour convinces her to give them up because the
| he has a special room in his house where she can convalesce
| and regrow her kidneys. Should the healthy neighbour now be
| allowed to withdraw the offer after the sick neighbour had
| donated both kidneys?
|
| That kind of situation seems to align with some of the
| factors at play a bit better.
| mherdeg wrote:
| Yeah ... I'm fortunate that neither I nor my immediate
| family are immediately affected by this decision, which
| affords me the luxury of thinking about the ethics in the
| abstract.
|
| > If we reimagine the sick neighbour's predicament so that
| her husband and child both need a new kidney and the
| healthy neighbour convinces her to give them up because the
| he has a special room in his house where she can convalesce
| and regrow her kidneys. Should the healthy neighbour now be
| allowed to withdraw the offer after the sick neighbour had
| donated both kidneys?
|
| While I'm totally willing to engage in this kind of
| Talmudic thought experiment, is there a way you could
| recast your question to be more biologically plausible?
|
| For example, suppose you offer to donate a kidney to your
| child, who is suffering from a fatal, heritable condition
| for which you carry a recessive gene. You thought that you
| were incurring a 0.007% risk of mortality (the average).
| During the surgery, the surgeon performing the extraction
| discovers that you have unexpected extra risk factors and
| their process will not work; they stop. They tell you that
| they can try again, but the new procedure they need to use
| will incur a 10% chance of your death. There is no other
| donor, and your child will die.
|
| 1 - Should you be allowed to withdraw your consent for the
| surgery?
|
| 2 - Should your child's wealthy spouse be allowed to pay
| you money to continue with the surgery?
| brigandish wrote:
| > is there a way you could recast your question to be
| more biologically plausible?
|
| It's a thought experiment, isn't the point that it is
| unencumbered by what is plausible? The reason for setting
| it up that way is to put responsibility for the sick
| person's life onto the healthy person _through an action
| they took_. I have no current alternative.
|
| > 1 - Should you be allowed to withdraw your consent for
| the surgery?
|
| Yes, the circumstances have changed.
|
| > 2 - Should your child's wealthy spouse be allowed to
| pay you money to continue with the surgery?
|
| I'm not against it but I can see why there could be rules
| against it.
| mherdeg wrote:
| > It's a thought experiment, isn't the point that it is
| unencumbered by what is plausible? The reason for setting
| it up that way is to put responsibility for the sick
| person's life onto the healthy person through an action
| they took. I have no current alternative.
|
| > ... > If we reimagine the sick neighbour's predicament
| so that her husband and child both need a new kidney and
| the healthy neighbour convinces her to give them up
| because the he has a special room in his house where she
| can convalesce and regrow her kidneys. Should the healthy
| neighbour now be allowed to withdraw the offer after the
| sick neighbour had donated both kidneys?
|
| > That kind of situation seems to align with some of the
| factors at play a bit better.
|
| I'll admit that my preference for ethical questions to be
| realistic is an irrational preference. I don't know why I
| feel this way but I think we get answers which are more
| likely to be meaningful if we start with scenarios that
| could plausibly happen.
|
| Let me try revisiting the one you propose:
|
| Suppose there is a healthy person whose husband and child
| both need kidneys. Donating her kidneys to them both
| would ordinarily kill her -- people need at least one
| kidney to live, and she only has two. But her neighbor
| says "if you donate your kidneys to your family, I'll let
| you live in a special room in my house where you can
| regrow your kidneys".
|
| Let's say this process takes 40 weeks, and at about week
| 10 the neighbor says "I don't want you in my house any
| more -- please leave". Should the neighbor be allowed to
| say this, even if this means the formerly healthy person
| will require daily dialysis, and may indeed die?
|
| I wonder whether the answer changes on why the neighbor
| is saying "get out":
|
| * What if the neighbor themself has suddenly developed
| kidney failure, no transplants are available, and the
| only thing that will save them is an immediate 30-week
| stay in the special room?
|
| * Does the answer to the above change if the room's
| special-ness is tied to the neighbor being alive (if they
| die, no one else can ever use it to regrow organs)?
|
| * What if the neighbor's own infant child has suddenly
| developed kidney failure, no transplants are available,
| and the only thing that will save them is an immediate
| 30-week stay in the special room; should they be allowed
| to evict the recovering kidney donor? Does the answer
| change if the kidney donor has a 1% chance of surviving
| on dialysis until the room is available again? 10%? 99%?
|
| * If the neighbor is just being selfish and wants their
| room to be empty because they've decided think it looks
| better when it's tidy, should that be forbidden?
|
| * One way or another, if the room is empty at the end of
| the 40 weeks, should the state use eminent domain to
| seize the room and force the neighbor to take in gravely
| ill people from local hospitals, housing them until they
| are well, for as long as the room is working?
|
| When I have interrogated these views personally I have
| found that some things may be wrong to do, but society
| should still be structured in such a way that people may
| sometimes do wrong things.
| mherdeg wrote:
| And, btw, in this thought experiment my gut feeling is:
|
| > What if the neighbor themself has suddenly developed
| kidney failure, no transplants are available, and the
| only thing that will save them is an immediate 30-week
| stay in the special room?
|
| The neighbor should be allowed to evict the donor, even
| if this causes terrible outcomes for the donor.
|
| > Does the answer to the above change if the room's
| special-ness is tied to the neighbor being alive (if they
| die, no one else can ever use it to regrow organs)?
|
| My answer doesn't change.
|
| > What if the neighbor's own infant child has suddenly
| developed kidney failure, no transplants are available,
| and the only thing that will save them is an immediate
| 30-week stay in the special room; should they be allowed
| to evict the recovering kidney donor? Does the answer
| change if the kidney donor has a 1% chance of surviving
| on dialysis until the room is available again? 10%? 99%?
|
| My answer doesn't change; the neighbor should be allowed
| to evict the donor.
|
| > If the neighbor is just being selfish and wants their
| room to be empty because they've decided think it looks
| better when it's tidy, should that be forbidden?
|
| The donor should be allowed to stay under EMTALA.
|
| > One way or another, if the room is empty at the end of
| the 40 weeks, should the state use eminent domain to
| seize the room and force the neighbor to take in gravely
| ill people from local hospitals, housing them until they
| are well, for as long as the room is working?
|
| Yes. If there exists a special room which can heal people
| and if it is idle, the government should seize control of
| it and distribute its healing ability to help as many
| people as possible. Ideally we should raise taxes to
| investigate how this healing room works and replicate it
| until we can end all death in the world and heal all
| disease. But in the short term we should immediately
| maximize its use, and compensate its owner accordingly.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| My view has always been that it does not even matter if the
| fetus has full rights.
|
| People do not have the right to physically attach themselves to
| another person, and leach blood, oxygen, nutrients, etc off the
| other person. Period. Fetuses would not be an exception. This
| is not a rights balancing issue. A woman has the complete and
| absolute right to stop another person from parasitically
| draining her of resources.
|
| I feel that a person who wakes up with another person
| surgically attached to them by some sort of mad-scientist
| doctor could have surgery to have the second person removed,
| even if this means certain death for the second person. I don't
| view abortion as any different.
|
| I could support a ban on abortion methods that directly kill
| the fetus, but as long as the method is primarily about
| severing the connection to the mother and removing it from the
| body, I see nothing wrong with that, even if removal means
| certain death for the fetus.
|
| If people feel fetuses have human rights, I could also support
| laws or medical ethics requiring doctors to attempt to save the
| fetus after it is expelled (if the condition was such that
| saving them might be possible) just like they would try to save
| any other person.
| stocknoob wrote:
| Your phrasing begs the question. Would you run into a burning
| IVF clinic to save the embryos?
| purplerabbit wrote:
| Pro choice frames the question differently. To put it in an
| overly reductionist way: it's not a human, it's a fetus.
|
| This framing does create a problem of defining when exactly it
| _becomes_ a human, which I haven't heard a good answer to.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Right, so apart from semantics, I'd say it's the same
| question. I feel like the widely-presented pro-choice
| arguments simply make that assumption and _then_ conclude,
| well there 's no human in the womb so let's move on.
|
| I'd like to probe into this assumption - and if with good
| reason the conclusion is that, indeed, it's not a human, then
| so be it. But it being a "naked", or poorly-supported
| assumption, irks me.
| koonsolo wrote:
| For me it's pretty simple: what causes the least suffering.
| Don't act that an unwanted child will have a great life.
|
| Most sane countries have sane rules related to abortions. But I
| guess some people still hang on to an imaginary superpower that
| will make them live forever, if they follow certain rules.
|
| I also find it funny that most pro-life zealots are also pro
| death penalty. Completely bonkers.
|
| With retarded shit like this I'm very happy to live in Europe,
| where we already figured these things out generation(s) ago.
| bambax wrote:
| The fact that the same institution (SCOTUS), reading the same
| text (US Constitution) could conclude that abortion is a right,
| then isn't, tells us much of what we need to know about said
| institution, text... and certainly "historicism" as well.
|
| It's all arbitrary; clever and well-read people spending a lot of
| time justifying and rationalizing their predjudice.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Which is why I think that making this decision should be done
| via a legislative branch instead, rather then unelected
| partisan, unaccountable, lifetime appointed judges.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Yeah, it's a bunch of humans with opinions.
| mattnewton wrote:
| always has been :/
| fassssst wrote:
| It's about power over women and always was.
| noasaservice wrote:
| There's some really ugly things now opened up - now there are no
| more protections for states to force an abortion or
| sterilization. A lot of 'undesirables' were sterilized in the
| early 20th century America, to the point that even Hitler in his
| Mein Kamph wrote highly about the US program of mass
| sterilization.
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/feb/06/race.usa . This
| reversal re-allows this possibility.
|
| In fact, according to what ICE was/is doing, is already happening
| to non-citizens at our borders
| https://forward.com/culture/454663/ice-hysterectomies-eugeni...
|
| But next up is attacking Obergefell... So, if that's deemed
| unconstitutional, what happens to the gay and lesbian people who
| are married to same-sex partners? Are their marriages nullified?
| What of the legal issues in unwinding a marriage of X years?
|
| And people who are trans - will they then have to "marry in line
| with respect to their listed gender"? Can their gender be changed
| legally? Will this pathway be available for gay and lesbian same-
| sex partners so they can "legally become opposite of their
| gender" to then re-marry their partners?
| malauxyeux wrote:
| > What of the legal issues in unwinding a marriage of X years?
|
| In the case of a binational couple, does the non-citizen (now-
| former?) spouse get to keep living in the US? Or is the
| situation going to go back to how it was previously, with no
| federal recognition, even if legally married in "gay marriage"
| state?
|
| Married same-sex binational couples are minorities in a
| minority. They don't exist on the political radar unless a
| larger group takes up their cause. I fully expect them to get
| rolled here (again).
| coliveira wrote:
| Supreme Court has shoot itself in the foot. It they can overturn
| their own decisions based on political schemes, then we can
| overturn EVERYTHING they do, including this decision itself.
| InTheArena wrote:
| One can argue that the original Roe V. Wade had exactly this
| problem, and this is them fixing it.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Overturning isn't some new thing. And sometimes it's hugely
| beneficial. Overturning precedent is how we got rid of
| separate-but-equal!
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I'm surprised this is news to anyone. Why do you think
| Republicans fought so hard to own the courts?
| metadat wrote:
| Actually now SCOTUS just doesn't really mean anything, and no
| longer stands for anything consistent.
|
| They've undermined their own position.
| voisin wrote:
| So why doesn't Biden change the size of the court to stack it
| with liberals?
| LanceH wrote:
| Could such an effort be challenged and go through the courts?
| Would the decision of whether it could be challenged go through
| the courts?
| jfk13 wrote:
| And then what will the next president from the other side
| do...?
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's probably not a bad idea to have a gigantic SCOTUS.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Because its a huge balancing act, if 25% of population (no
| matter political beliefs) views the government as illegitimate
| it leads to chaos.
|
| Our current technological civilization is EXTREMELY fragile. 5
| attackers in 2014 took down a CA power grid and caused millions
| in damages. They were never caught.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/05/272015606...
| Markoff wrote:
| jasonlotito wrote:
| There was no US government mandate forcing people to get
| vaccinated.
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| Do you have the right to light your body on fire in a crowded
| room? It's your body after all.
| jjgreen wrote:
| The day that the coat-hanger became a medical instrument (again).
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| Pennyroyal is not hard to grow at home!
| ncallaway wrote:
| We very thankfully have more options for women that are much
| safer than coat hangers.
|
| There are drugs that will allow women to have illegal abortions
| that are much much safer than a coat hanger. The important
| factor will be finding ways to get such drugs to women in
| states where they cannot be legally used, and ensuring that
| such a delivery mechanism delivers safe, and authentic drugs.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| so basically corner meth dealers will now deliver abortion
| pills? IDK if thats gonna last, because you know we can
| always police the drugs out of the system.
| mywittyname wrote:
| A lot of fairly common prescription drugs are
| abortifaciants. Prostaglandin is the substance used in
| drugs designed for that specific purpose, but many drugs
| that influence muscle control, inflamation, or bloodflow
| can do the same thing.
|
| It's going to be very difficult to regulate all of these
| drugs.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Well, I hope we can find systems that avoid it being
| dangerous.
|
| For example, pills can be acquired safely from outside of
| the jurisdiction and mailed in.
|
| Or, many such pills have on-label uses that are not
| abortion related. So there could be avenues to helping
| people who need them for abortion purposes obtain them from
| reputable providers for legal purposes.
|
| But, yes, the war on drugs has shown that trying to police
| drugs out of the system is incredibly difficult.
|
| I'd just like to make sure that, once the war ramps up, we
| can find ways to keep the delivery of the drugs as timely,
| authentic, and the use of them as safe as possible.
| evan_ wrote:
| yeah the war on drugs in the US has been famously
| successful
| Sakos wrote:
| A significant number of comments here make me ashamed to be a
| part of this community. A lot of you, way too many of you, are
| awful human beings.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| At least there is a discussion here.
| Sakos wrote:
| I don't feel like there's any point in discussing the issue
| with people who care so little about the suffering of others.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| If I was a woman, I'd be deleting my period tracker right about
| now. It's absolutely going to be subpoenaed and used in court
| belter wrote:
| "How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the
| very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape."
|
| Christopher Hitchens
| duped wrote:
| I'm tired of having the minority religious and bigoted views
| dominate politics and starve us of progress. Regardless of what
| the "right" ruling is on the law, or the roles of the different
| branches of government, the practical impact of this ruling is
| millions of Americans denied the right to healthcare while
| simultaneously being denied free access to any democratic process
| to secure it.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| It's not a minority view, both in the United States and in the
| world at large.
|
| I don't quite understand why American progressives think they
| represent the world at large. Neo-colonialism, I suppose.
| menomatter wrote:
| Curious how do you know that? Going by the traditional
| popular vote I'd say it's technically the minority.
| lesstyzing wrote:
| >> I'm tired of having the minority religious and bigoted views
| dominate politics and starve us of progress.
|
| Is it minority views? Surely, when it comes down to states
| legislating this, people can make their opinion heard at the
| ballet box. And if a majority of people in a state vote
| conservative and abortion is restricted then we are legislating
| based on the wants of the majority. It will be interesting to
| see if this is an important enough issue for some conservative
| voters to swing them (and states) to the democrats.
| InTheArena wrote:
| They can now. They previously couldn't under Roe V. Wade.
|
| This is a improvement.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > Is it minority views? Surely, when it comes down to states
| legislating this, people can make their opinion heard at the
| ballet box
|
| How about instead of deferring this to states rights, we
| defer directly to individual rights and let individual people
| decide what to do? You know.. like in some sort of 'free'
| country.
| lesstyzing wrote:
| Because depending on your viewpoint there's multiple
| persons rights at play. The woman, the man, the "child".
| They need to be balanced some way.
| metadat wrote:
| There is no child in the picture, only an unborn fetus.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| The child is not a child nor a person. Not even the
| Catholic church considers a fetus a person, nor the
| government (as you can't get a tax deduction for your
| fetus). I used to be fairly religious and godfathered a
| couple of kids. Neither of them were baptized in the womb
| though. Or maybe I had the 'wrong' religion?
|
| If you think the fetus is a person, then don't get an
| abortion. It's super easy. And if your fetus is killing
| you, then feel free to die for your beliefs.
| charwalker wrote:
| It's hugely minority. 60-73% support abortion access the
| question is where the limits/timelines should be and that
| number is only growing especially now that there is a
| spotlight on the issue. You will now see some 18 mostly small
| population red states pass extreme laws restricting abortion
| access while a majority of voters even in those states are
| against such laws.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > You will now see
|
| Many states, mine included, have "trigger laws" that go
| into effect if Roe v Wade is overturned. Abortion is now
| illegal in KY.
| softcactus wrote:
| There is a filibuster at the Federal level that prevents a
| majority of elected officials from passing laws. The
| electoral college can prevent the candidate with the most
| votes from being elected. These are both tools that allow a
| minority to block what a majority of voters want. Three of
| the SC justices were appointed during a president's term who
| did not win the popular vote.
|
| At the state level there is no filibuster meaning that a
| dissenting minority has no way to protect themselves. Re-
| districting (gerrymandering) also neuters the voting power of
| minority groups.
|
| There is a bias for majority rule at the state level, and
| minority rule at the federal level. So yes, it's minority
| views. This is why issues like Slavery and segregation were
| argued as "states rights". The way conservatives prefer our
| government to be set up is with a weak federal government and
| strong state governments so that a localized majority can
| enforce moral legislation on a disenfranchised minority
| without Federal intervention. It has always been about power
| and any arguments about "returning the decision to the
| people" is no different that someone in 1964 saying it should
| be up to the states whether or not minorities can use the
| same bathroom as white people.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Is it minority views?
|
| Yes, unquestionably, the vast majority of Americans support
| the right to abortion. That said you can do a lot with
| gerrymandering, suppressing voters, and our archaic electoral
| college that gives people more/less voting power based on the
| state they live in.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Define "pro-life" as "no abortions ever" and it's a
| minority opinion. Define "pro-choice" as "abortions at any
| stage of pregnancy for any reason" and it's a minority
| opinion. Saying your side is the clear majority on this
| issue proves nothing other than you are in an echo chamber.
| softcactus wrote:
| You are objectively wrong.
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-
| abo...
| overrun11 wrote:
| Am I misreading this? Your link seems to verify the claim
| of the person you are responding to. Only 19% support
| legal abortion in all cases without exceptions.
| softcactus wrote:
| Pro-choice is the clear majority. There's no argument of
| "it depends on how you cut it". It's natural for people
| to disagree within a movement but 69% of Americans oppose
| Roe V. Wade being overturned.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Ok but the original comment from andrewclunn was clearly
| correct and your response incorrect. His point was that
| when nuance is added, the majority belief is less clear.
| This seems pretty important when there is no definitive
| understanding of exactly what "pro-choice" means.
|
| You've now retreated to an argument that no one was
| making.
| softcactus wrote:
| His argument was negating a true claim by playing a game
| of definitions. Regardless of how you cut it, pro-life is
| a minority view. Attempting to use shades of pro-choice
| to diminish that is not arguing in good faith. It's the
| argument equivalent of going "I'm not touching you! I'm
| not touching you!" while holding your finger in front of
| someone's face.
|
| Ultimately though, what matters is how many approve of
| Roe being overturned, which is a binary, and those who
| oppose Roe V. Wade are in a very clear cut minority.
| overrun11 wrote:
| There's no possible reading of the original comment where
| it is "objectively incorrect." Clarifying what is meant
| by extremely vague labels like "Pro-choice" and "Pro-
| life" is far from a definition game.
|
| > what matters is how many approve of Roe being
| overturned
|
| Exceptionally few people understand exactly what the
| implications of Roe are so this framing is useless.
| qweqweqwe90i1 wrote:
| softcactus wrote:
| Only 27% think Roe should be overturned. Roe only
| protected first 3 months (first trimester) except in
| extreme cases. Your statistics do not support Roe being
| overturned.
| johnny313 wrote:
| I found this discussion of unenumerated rights [0] to be helpful
| in explaining how a right to privacy was derived from the US
| constitution, and how difficult it is to establish a "test" for
| unenumerated rights.
|
| _[The Griswold case] says the penumbras around the First, Third,
| Fourth and Fifth Amendment create a right to privacy. So what
| they 're getting at -- a penumbra is just a shadow, right? -- is
| that these textual provisions cast these shadows. And those
| shadows, which all contain this notion of privacy overlap with
| each other such that they coalesce into a right in its own right,
| so that the right to privacy under which the right to
| contraception is protected is derived from the shadows of actual
| textual provisions. _
|
| Very disconcerting that the rights to contraception, same sex
| marriage, and consensual adult sexual relationships are up for
| debate because they are not explicitly enumerated in the
| constitution.
|
| [0] https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/05/31/the-fragility-of-
| une...
| kyleblarson wrote:
| What is the over under on the number of hours before the "fiery
| but mostly peaceful" riots begin?
| fight4ourrights wrote:
| nus07 wrote:
| I fail to see what moderates can do in a two party system where
| gerrymandering is so heavily done that often Democrats have to
| win 3-1 to control any majority. At this point I see it as a
| fight between rich landowners+business owners+religion vs all the
| rest of the people . For a country where political lobbying and
| donations to effect legal decisions is common , I do not expect
| judgements to ever be fair. The battle between union and state
| rights only muddies the waters for legal speak.
| noslenwerdna wrote:
| Where is gerrymandering so bad that Democrats have to win 3-1?
| This doesn't represent the experience of the median voter.
| scythe wrote:
| I can't endorse his specific numerical claim, but if you look
| at the FiveThirtyEight projections for Georgia, a state that
| voted for Biden in 2020 and elected two Democratic Senators
| in statewide elections, also with Democrat Stacey Abrams
| coming within 2% of the governor's seat in 2018, you see four
| blue districts, one toss-up, and nine safe Republican seats:
|
| https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/redistricting-2022-maps.
| ..
|
| I think any reasonable person would find it unfair that a 2%
| difference in the popular vote (for governor, before the
| major Trump controversies) leads to _doubling_ the number of
| Congressional seats.
| yowzadave wrote:
| 3-1 is an exaggeration, but e.g. in Wisconsin 2018, Democrats
| won 54% of the popular vote and ended up with only 36% of the
| state assembly seats:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/VoteBlue/comments/fwa7sa/regarding_.
| ..
| mjochim wrote:
| If the numbers 54 and 36 is correct, then one could be
| inclined to a simplified calculation and say that 1.5% of
| popular vote (54/36) equals 1.0% of seats. In that case,
| 75% of popular vote would equal 50% of seats. Or in other
| words: 3-1.
|
| (and 50% of seats are not even a majority)
|
| Another model would require 15% more to go from 36% to 51%
| of seats. In this case, 69% of popular vote (54+15) would
| be required for a majority of seats, or in other words:
| 2-1. Which effectively is just as egregious as 3-1.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Between gerrymandering and electoral college it's pretty
| bad, see https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-new-
| national-congre... recently
| slg wrote:
| Not exactly gerrymandering, but there is a systemic bias
| against Democrats due to the structure of our government. The
| most obvious example, Republicans have won the national
| popular vote once in the last 8 presidential elections.
| setr wrote:
| That statistic seems pointless? Republicans won 3/8 of the
| last elections (bush x2 , trump x1) with 2 losing the
| national vote. So 6/8 rounds came through properly.
|
| More importantly, there's apparently only been 5 presidents
| elected where popular vote != electoral vote[0].
|
| Based on this metric... everything seems to be working
| mostly fine, with no apparent bias?
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_p
| resid...
| etchalon wrote:
| The issue is the trend is accelerating. It used be rare.
| It is no longer rare.
| prepend wrote:
| It's not accelerating, you're just biasing your sample
| based on what's happened recently. These are different
| things.
|
| It's pretty hard to declare a trend with such small
| numbers.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is not my definition of mostly fine.
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| Democrats in general have some unhealthy obsession with the
| presidency that leaves important downstream races from
| local municipal government to gubernatorial races ignored.
| Republicans have been doing the grueling work for decades
| to dominate local politics and it shows.
|
| Roe v Wade is so devastating of a defeat largely because
| democrats who support it don't care enough about state and
| local government.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| National Popular vote for President is about the most
| worthless static one can cite to bluster their position for
| political balance
|
| National Popular vote should not be used for any reason for
| any purpose, unless you want to completely change the
| American system of government ending federalism completely,
| which I have no desire for, I like federalism
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Getting rid of the electoral college is not the same as
| killing federalism. It's not even close.
|
| What planet are you living on? Seems not to be earth...
| mypalmike wrote:
| They seem to live on a planet where "PHP is the best".
| It's definitely one of the stranger parallel universes.
| slg wrote:
| >National Popular vote should not be used for any reason
| for any purpose, unless you want to completely change the
| American system of government
|
| Well, yes, that is exactly what many people want, a
| government that is more representative of the will of the
| people. We don't have to throw out federalism to get
| there, but a system that was not intentionally designed
| to support minority rule would be nice.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| The system was intentionally designed to reserve power to
| the people AND the states, just not the people. Aka
| Federalism
|
| If you remove the power of the states, leaning only on
| "the will of the people" you are getting rid of
| federalism,
| purephase wrote:
| It's easy to like it when it provides you the outcome
| that you're favourable towards. For people, the majority
| in this case (as evidence by the popular vote count), who
| do not agree with these outcomes, federalism is a fucking
| mess.
|
| In no way it makes sense that the Senate should wield the
| power it has when South Dakota has the same weight as
| California. It's ludicrous.
| guelo wrote:
| You like federalism because you're a conservative and
| there is a higher percentage of conservative states than
| conservative people. And that is just a result of
| political territory gerrymandering battles of the 1800s.
| For example splitting Dakota into two states or admitting
| Wyoming as a separate state were all political
| gerrymandering battles that benefit your ideology today.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I am far far far from conservative so that is fail.
|
| 1990's democrat platform I was probally 60-70% aligned
| with, 2020's democrat platform I am 20% aligned with
|
| Republicans I probably agree maybe 40% with, 50% on a
| good day.
|
| In this context as an example, I do not agree with
| banning abortions, but I also think Roe was bad law and
| decided incorrectly so.....
| guelo wrote:
| The point I was trying to make is that federalism is dumb
| because states are arbitrarily gerrymandered based on
| 1800s politics.
| hollerith wrote:
| We just had a demonstration in the US of the desirability
| of a process that unambiguously reveals the winner of a
| presidential election. Well, having 50 smaller elections,
| then combining the results in an electoral college is one
| such process. In particular, if it werent for the
| federalized structure, i.e., if we had a purely popular
| vote, in 2000 we would've had to re-count not just the
| Florida ballots, but also the ballots in the other 49
| states.
| giaour wrote:
| Yes, we'll need to completely change everything about our
| government, just like we did when we mandated elections
| for senators in 1913. /s
| corrral wrote:
| Those stats might hold regardless, but _to be fair_ one
| would expect different voting patterns under the current
| system, versus a direct popular-vote election, so it 's not
| accurate to say that anyone "won" the popular vote in any
| US Presidential election, since that wasn't the contest and
| the fact that it wasn't _affected how voters and candidates
| behaved_. It 's like challenging someone to a foot race,
| losing, and then deciding afterward that you won on "style
| points" or something. That wasn't the contest, and the
| other participant might have done things differently under
| different rules.
|
| The system as it stands makes voting pointless for people
| who are in districts that reliably go for the "other team".
| If they could at least influence the Presidential election,
| more of those voters might show up at the polls. GOTV and
| other campaign efforts take this into account, which
| magnifies the effect.
| slg wrote:
| Fine, you want another example of systemic bias in our
| government? The 50 Democratic senators represent 41.5
| million more people than the 50 Republican senators.
| refurb wrote:
| That's not a systemic bias against Democrats, that's an
| intention design so that small states and large states
| have more balance of power.
| devmor wrote:
| Which is literally a bias against democracy.
|
| States are not fixed entities. It's people that should be
| represented, not an arbitrary geographic boundary.
|
| That intentional design makes it so depending on where
| you physically live, your vote is worth many times less
| or more than someone else's. That makes no sense.
| refurb wrote:
| Please bone up on government design. Democracy sucks,
| it's majority rule. We're a republic that is
| intentionally designed to provide balance rather than
| "51% voted to spend 99% of the budget on the cities so I
| guess rural folks can pound sand".
|
| Note that pretty much every country has something similar
| - some body that acts on a check of pure democratic
| representation.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| idk why you're getting downvoted. This was literally a
| compromise made by the founders to protect smaller states
| from larger states
| corrral wrote:
| The downvotes are probably because intentional bias is
| still bias.
| claystu wrote:
| That's not a systematic bias. The senate was DESIGNED
| from the beginning to be immune to population
| differences: each state gets two senators, regardless of
| population. It was one of the compromises that convinced
| the small states to join the union in the first place.
| corrral wrote:
| Intentional, designed-in bias is still bias. Right?
| [deleted]
| dntrkv wrote:
| I don't really have an issue with the way the senate is
| setup, since that was intentional. My issue is with the
| house, where we are supposed to have equal
| representation, but don't.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't really have an issue with the way the senate is
| setup, since that was intentional.
|
| Why is bad intent less bad than bad accident.
|
| > My issue is with the house, where we are supposed to
| have equal representation, but don't.
|
| House representation was supposed to be approximately
| equal limited by granularity and it remains approximately
| equal limited by granularity.
| slg wrote:
| >House representation was supposed to be approximately
| equal limited by granularity and it remains approximately
| equal limited by granularity.
|
| But the "limited by granularity" part is growing more and
| more limited. The size of the House originally grew as
| the size of the population grew. Once we capped the size
| of the House, we lost relative granularity allowing this
| problem worsen as the gap between the smallest and
| largest congressional districts increased.
| adamc wrote:
| It was intentional and a big part of it was to protect
| slave-owners. Evil intent does not get a pass.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Also: don't forget that the District of Columbia has no
| voting representation in Congress.
|
| DC has a larger population than Wyoming or Vermont, and
| will probably overtake Alaska by the next Census based on
| its current trajectory.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Not just DC. American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Northern
| Marianas Islands, US Virgin Islands, and Guam are all
| American citizens but can't vote for president at all,
| don't get a Senator, and collectively only get a few
| representatives, most of whom are ceremonial and don't
| get to vote.
| jofer wrote:
| > The most obvious example, Republicans have won the
| national popular vote once in the last 8 presidential
| elections.
|
| Isn't that the other way around? https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/List_of_United_States_presiden... (i.e. Democrats have
| won the popular vote in the last 8 presidential elections,
| but have only won the office in 5 of those).
|
| Also, I had forgotten this (and it was huge at the time,
| and I voted in those elections, so I should remember), but
| Bill Clinton didn't win the majority popular vote either.
| The democrats had a larger popular vote that the
| republicans, for sure, but not over 50% due to third party
| / independent candidates.
|
| Contrast that with the last 6 elections where the
| democratic party has had more than 50% of the popular vote
| each time.
|
| Ah... And W's second term the republicans had more than 50%
| of the popular vote...
| [deleted]
| IndySun wrote:
| >Republicans have won the national popular vote once in the
| last 8 presidential elections.
|
| You mean Democrats.
| [deleted]
| TimedToasts wrote:
| If the Presidential vote was decided on popular totals then
| this stat would mean something.
|
| Everyone knows the rules going in.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Exactly. Everyone must know and accept that some people's
| votes are worth more than others. Whether it is for a
| senator in Iowa, or for the electoral college that
| selects the president, the people in some areas of the
| country are allotted more power than those in others. It
| has always been that way and so shall it remain.
|
| Anyone not happy with the power allotted their vote is
| free to up stakes and move somewhere where votes are
| worth more, from California to Iowa or New York to New
| Hampshire.
| chimprich wrote:
| > Everyone knows the rules going in.
|
| Does knowing that a system is undemocratic make it more
| democratic in some way?
| giaour wrote:
| Before 2000, it was an interesting thought experiment but
| dismissed as highly unlikely that a president could
| technically win office without winning the popular vote.
| Republicans (but also some purist democrats) were
| apoplectic when Bill Clinton took office with an
| electoral majority and a mere popular plurality in 1992.
|
| The ground shifted has shifted around the rules many
| times in the past, but the current rural vs urban divide
| of the two parties combined with the majority of
| Americans living in urban and suburban areas has led to
| some really distorted and unintended outcomes of the
| rules.
| lostdog wrote:
| The crown was passed down by primogeniture. Everyone knew
| the rules going in, so it was fair and democratic.
| api wrote:
| Gerrymandering needs to be tackled possibly at the level of a
| constitutional amendment, but like the filibuster it's a
| nonsense loophole power that neither side wants to give up.
| mbreese wrote:
| There is no way to tackle gerrymandering that doesn't
| ultimately end geographic representation. If you try to
| balance a map for every potential group, the end game is
| proportional representation. I think that's the bridge that
| people would be afraid to cross.
| scythe wrote:
| >that doesn't ultimately end geographic representation.
|
| False.
|
| >the end game is proportional representation
|
| True. As I've said before, there are so many ways to do
| it that it's hard to unite people behind a single one:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31347226
|
| And in fact, even when I tried to make a list of all the
| methods in the comment above, I missed at least two:
|
| https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE_FAQ
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_proportional_app
| rov...
| bergenty wrote:
| Why do we need geographic representation? People that eat
| everyone's tax dollars and contribute very little to the
| economy should not have an order of magnitude in voting
| advantages just because they decide to move to places no
| one else would. Those might have been worthy incentives
| during the frontier days but are completely unnecessary
| now.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| One thing I have been thinking more on lately is just
| that. Why are we so attached to geographic
| representation, why does a congressional district, or
| even a state need to be a continuous polygon on a map.
|
| Why cant we break representation to be based on something
| else. I dont know what, and the simple answer it well
| geography is the easiest way but easy it often not the
| best
| salawat wrote:
| Because of it wasn't geographic, it would end up going
| resident centric, and if you think the system is toxic or
| confusing now, imagine switching it up such that your
| representatives seat was assigned to you like a Social
| Security Number, and followed you through life. Also
| imagine that seat's occupant's job, trying to represent a
| bloc of people sharing little more than an accident of
| being born in a particular jurisdiction at a particular
| time, that have spread hither and yon with no
| geographical anchor to point to and go, "that's where the
| stuff is happening that I'm here on behalf of".
|
| Physical locality was the primary social constraint when
| the government was architected. I honestly have a great
| deal of difficulty imagining any other way of doing
| things that would make even a lick of sense in terms of
| information propagation.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| That seems like a False Dilemma there is no technical or
| logical reason to assume that anything other than
| geographic would mean you are assigned a seat at birth
| that would follow you for ever with no ability to "move"
| to a different seat.
|
| Also my comment does not say to forego all geographic
| basis but more so questioning the idea that we need
| continuous geographic zones.
|
| Maybe 3 counties in Iowa and 3 counties in Texas, and 3
| counties in Montana all want for form a new zone....
| dahfizz wrote:
| A geographically connected population is going to have a
| lot in common, and it makes sense that they would share a
| representative.
|
| Two neighboring farmers in Alamaba are going to have a
| lot more in common with each other than with someone
| living in LA. For political representation purposes, it
| makes sense for those two farmers to share a
| representative.
|
| You're correct that this isn't necessarily optimal, but I
| don't think it's that bad either. It's a pretty good
| heuristic in making sure that:
|
| 1) everyone has a representative.
|
| 2) each representative is representing a group of people
| who can reasonably be represented (because they have
| shared interests/goals/concerns).
| smileysteve wrote:
| Alabama is an interesting look, because of metro Atlanta,
| metro Birmingham, Huntsville in the North - and then the
| blue belt that is the Piedmont.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I think that breaks down if you dig even a little deeper.
|
| Sure 2 Alabama Farmers farmers are in common.
|
| But does a farmer in near Austin has more in common with
| the Farmer in Alabama or the Urbanites in Austin?
|
| Would Occupation, be a better class than geographic, or
| age, or something else
| ochoseis wrote:
| I have been wondering about this. Every state gets two
| senators representing the _entire state_, so you can't
| gerrymander senate seats. I wonder if we need something
| similar for congressional districts, perhaps by allotting
| no less than two seats per district, which themselves are
| composed of one or more counties (the idea being county
| lines are not drawn by election boards).
| [deleted]
| stormbrew wrote:
| > the idea being county lines are not drawn by election
| boards
|
| Until they're important for elections...
|
| The house is screwed up largely because it's capped by a
| law passed a century ago. It's essentially impossible for
| it to be actually proportional with the current
| voter:representative ratio and districts being allocated
| along state lines.
| mbreese wrote:
| Originally, the ratio was one representative for ~30,000
| people. When the number was capped at 435 in 1929, the
| number of constituents for a representative was ~
| 210,000.
|
| The current ratio is over 700,000.
|
| One could easily make an argument for geographic
| representation of 30,000 people. Those people should have
| a lot in common and have similar concerns. You could also
| make a good argument for 100k-200k people. However, 500k+
| people cannot be properly represented by one voice in
| congress.
|
| If we had even the ratio of representation when the
| number was fixed (1:210,000), we'd have over 1500 members
| of Congress.
|
| https://history.house.gov/Institution/Origins-
| Development/Pr...
| thebooktocome wrote:
| Some of the maps proposed by the Ohio GOP this year (and
| rejected as unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court) are
| close to this. I believe I read an estimate that the dems
| would need to average 70-30 statewide to control half the
| seats.
| mbreese wrote:
| Note: All of those unconstitutional rejections by the Ohio
| Supreme Court are moot. The committee ran out the clock and
| even though the maps were ruled unconstitutional, they are
| the ones that will be used. The law that forced the
| committee to be formed left no way for the courts to force
| a valid map to be used. So, even though there was a very
| successful anti-gerrymandering campaign in Ohio a few years
| ago, it ultimately didn't matter. How that came to be is
| another story entirely.
| heymijo wrote:
| In Ohio we passed a state law demanding fair districts. The
| GOP led Ohio congress and governor repeatedly submitted
| districts that the courts struck down.
|
| It went to a federal court who ruled the districts not fair
| but will let them stand for the 2022 elections.
|
| The GOP ignored the rule of law, ignored the courts, and
| ran out the clock. They will cement their hold on the state
| in 2022.
| api wrote:
| The far right has been fighting a locality-by-locality
| state-by-state war of attrition for a long time. There's
| far too much focus on national elections when local and
| state elections can sometimes influence your life a lot
| more.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Forget 3-1, what about 65-1?
|
| Legislation needs to pass both Senate and the House, and in
| the senate, someone from a state like Wyoming has 65x more
| voting power than someone living in California.
| dahfizz wrote:
| That is intentional. The same mechanisms exist in the EU to
| protect smaller states, for example.
| bluesnowmonkey wrote:
| States don't need to be protected. States are not people.
| Government is of the people, by the people, for the
| people. Not of the states, by the states, for the states.
| prepend wrote:
| Do small countries in Europe not need to be protected?
|
| I think the issue is that small states and countries
| would not join if they would be subject to whatever large
| states decided.
|
| So the option would be to have a country without Vermont
| and stuff or to have them in the current config. Because
| that's the math that was done 250 years ago that resulted
| in NY and VA choosing to accept it, and also smaller
| states.
| oezi wrote:
| And it is has led Europe to serious problems when there
| are two countries (Hungary and Poland come to mind) which
| protect each other from anything inconvenient.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I don't know the numbers, but this article was linked from
| the Guardin's coverage of the decision:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-
| interactive/2021/nov/...
| pilotneko wrote:
| Well, Tennessee literally just split the 5th Congressional
| District, represented by U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Nashville,
| among three different outlying districts. Literally makes it
| 3X harder for a Democrat to represent Nashville.
|
| https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2022/01/12/republican-.
| ..
| achenet wrote:
| Change to proportional representatin or runoff elections. [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
| jamie_ca wrote:
| Canadian here, I also would like to see multi-member
| districts of any variety rather than the status quo.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31864204.
| i5Aj7PXGjUPy wrote:
| > At this point I see it as a fight between rich
| landowners+business owners+religion vs all the rest of the
| people
|
| Based off of the responses itt, it's clearly not "all the rest
| of the people". But you know, maybe if you keep insisting that
| the political coalition in favor of Roe represents "all the
| rest of the people" it might magically become true
|
| > I fail to see what moderates can do in a two party system
| where gerrymandering is so heavily done that often Democrats
| have to win 3-1 to control any majority.
|
| Ofc democrats don't gerrymander. The Illinois redistricting
| wasn't a gerrymander, it was a fair process. Wherever the
| democrats have a hard time winning it's always because there
| was a gerrymander, and not because the people don't want them
| in office. /s
| vlunkr wrote:
| If you look at the popular vote then this is clearly wrong in
| two ways. Rich land and business owners don't make up half the
| population. And if you're implying that most religious people
| vote republican, then they should be absolutely destroying the
| popular vote. This is just the worldview that's been sold to
| you by social media.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The religious are in control because you can't win a
| republican primary without their support.
| zackees wrote:
| liminvorous wrote:
| Gerrymandering is where you make sure all your districts are
| 51/49 in favor of you, and all your opositions are 90/10, so
| you get more representatives
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Gerrymandering is an explicitly anti-democratic mechanism to
| allow for persistent minority rule. Both parties are engaging
| in this process and benefit in a localized way - but the US
| population a whole loses.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| This is backwards thinking. It's not a sports game, this is
| not about "winning" and "losing."
|
| The goal is not to have voters choose their representatives,
| not the other way around. In a contested or closely divided
| district, the representatives must adapt to appeal to a
| majority, resulting in a more moderate position. In a
| gerrymandered district, the politician can do anything they
| want, because they know they effectively won't lose.
|
| You're right that gerrymandering is not new, but it's gotten
| more aggressive, thanks to new technology and de facto
| sanctioning by SCOTUS.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| This is blatantly untrue to the level of fear mongering.
| The politician can't do whatever he wants. The election
| simply moves from republican candidate against democrat
| candidate to the primaries where the top 3 politicians from
| the dominant party are running against one another for the
| nomination. If they adopted policies the majority of their
| party didn't like they would be replaced by another member
| of the party in the next election.
| silisili wrote:
| It's important to remember gerrymandering cuts both ways. In my
| state, the D's just redistricted into a crazy looking map that
| will effectively give them a clean sweep.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| What choice do they have? It's an arms race.
| achenet wrote:
| it shouldn't be. If party loyalty trumps good governance,
| you messed up somewhere.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Is sitting back and letting you political opponent steam
| roll you good governance?
| achenet wrote:
| The fact that you view this as a fight (using the word
| "opponent") is the problem.
|
| It's not a boxing match. The fact that it has become one
| means your electoral system is flawed.
|
| In a proper system, you have different people with
| different goals (eg Greens who want less pollution,
| businesspeople who want lower taxes, socialists who want
| worker's rights, etc) and they have to compromise (greens
| cancel the carbon tax is businesspeople accept to ban a
| certain type of very toxic manufacturing, for example)
| and WORK TOGETHER.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > electoral system is flawed.
|
| Obviously this is the problem. But its flaws have lead us
| to a situation that makes it impossible to fix them.
| Either we work within the system we have or we're left
| powerless.
| silisili wrote:
| Neither is right, obviously. Wish they'd codify into law
| something that restricts the shapes...something like that
| all districts must be contiguous, and smallest possible
| perimeter of a given area size.
| ZainRiz wrote:
| I mean, the other side can make the claim too, right?
|
| Then it just becomes two kids pointing at each other
| shouting "he started it!"
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Yea, that's the problem. Our government is dysfunctional
| and unable to pass laws even if they have widespread
| support.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Someone starting an arms race is very significant point
| and not the minutiae you consider it to be.
| scythe wrote:
| That's hardly a _defense_ of gerrymandering. If anything, it
| shows that fixing gerrymandering should be an issue anyone
| can get behind.
| silisili wrote:
| Oh no not a defense. I would never defend it, it's
| disgusting behavior.
|
| I'm just pointing that out because the parent said
| gerrymandering screws Democrats. It does. But it also
| screws Republicans, and well, all of us.
|
| I understand it's now a tit-for-tat so I'm not blaming
| either side more than the other. I just want it gone.
| kolanos wrote:
| > In New York Democrats want to add four new seats through
| gerrymandering, to try to retain control of the U.S. House. One
| district is designed to guarantee the reelection of Rep. Jerry
| Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
| which has held hearings on the evil of -- you guessed it --
| gerrymandering. [0]
|
| [0]: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/592968-dismantling-
| demo...
| [deleted]
| 838812052807016 wrote:
| Can anyone provide a summary of the logic behind this decision?
| Preferably with references to the source document.
| tcj_phx wrote:
| I think the real issue is that states often make horrible health
| decisions for individuals. People's right to make decisions for
| themselves needs to be acknowledged and protected.
|
| I have a case pending in the United States Supreme Court that's
| fundamentally about Medical Freedom:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do...
| (original PDF is readable: https://teslabox.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/06/220503-Petit... )
|
| tl/dr: my friend is forced by the State of Arizona to take
| prescription medications that do not help with her genetic
| condition of requiring methylated forms of Vitamin B-9 (she is
| harmed by foods with the shelf-stable food fortification folic
| acid). Her tendency to self-treat malnutrition-caused depression
| with substances (alcohol, mainly) is worsened by the psychiatric
| drugs forced on her. The FDA black box warning on one of them is
| for 'compulsive behavior'. Last January she was 'stabilized' with
| the medication that the Soviets used to re-educate their
| dissidents, when all she really needs is sobriety and an adequate
| diet.
|
| On May 8 2022 she escaped from her guardian's custody, choosing
| to live on the street instead of a care home. After my petition
| appeared on the SCOTUS docket I agreed to help her. She got a
| housekeeping job at that motel. Her manager had no idea her
| forced treatment with anti-psychotic medications had lapsed.
|
| While my petition is fundamentally about whether the States may
| perpetrate fraud on the United States Court, the core issue I
| presented is about medical freedom. From Page 21 [1]:
|
| > While it may not be this court's place to tell doctors that
| they don't always know what they're doing, it is the requirement
| of Constitutional governance that doctors be required to respect
| bodily autonomy. If a citizen of the United States does not
| consent to being injected with the Soviets' preferred medication
| for dissident re-education, doctors should not able to use the
| courts to force this, or any other drug, approved or
| experimental, on any person.
|
| > The principle of health freedom requires that people be allowed
| to make decisions for themselves, without coercion from others.
| If a person doesn't want to have their brain electrocuted by
| their doctor, they shouldn't be forced to endure this treatment.
| If a person is concerned they'll have an adverse reaction to a
| medication or condition that the experts think is good for
| everyone, there can be no coercion against people making
| decisions for themselves, no matter their perceived competency
|
| [1] https://teslabox.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/06/220503-Petit...
|
| I'm now trying to whip up outrage on the internet about Arizona's
| use of the Soviet techniques of torture on our most vulnerable.
| But maybe Medicine is a sacred cow? How do I convince people that
| doctors and politicians should not be able to make medical
| decisions for anyone?
| Zigurd wrote:
| There is a reason this decision is so backward-looking and out of
| touch with the general trend in favor of the rights of women
| globally. This is the fulfillment of a religious fundamentalist,
| dominionist agenda. That's invisible to most people in the tech
| industry because tech is mostly irreligious. The nation as a
| whole is increasingly irreligious.
|
| Don't argue the case. Marginalize the dominionists. Neutralize
| their effectiveness. Exclude them from institutions and
| communities. Dominionism is a movement closely related to white
| supremacism and the American flavor of fascism. It is as
| fundamentally dangerous as those related movements. Debating
| dominionists is just as useless as debating neonazis, and for the
| same reasons.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Now let's see if far right leaning adults start lining up in
| droves for foster/adoption care classes. This will let them put
| their time/money where their mouths are. Cause and affect: you
| don't want abortion, you now have to take care of those who are
| not wanted.
| abvdasker wrote:
| They obviously won't. The Republican Party is explicitly
| opposed to expansion of the social safety net which would
| support the children from unwanted pregnancies. Outlawing
| abortion has nothing to do with protecting children. It's about
| exerting religious control over women and that's it.
| jquery wrote:
| grnmamba wrote:
| Yeah, now the USA have the same federal legislation as civil
| war torn federations like... the european union?
| darkteflon wrote:
| Roe vs Wade was the very first case we studied in first-year
| jurisprudence at law school 20-odd years ago, _half a world
| away_, in Australia.
|
| Devastating to see this outcome. Reinforces the sense that we've
| somehow ended up in a deeply weird timeline.
| jetsnoc wrote:
| My great grandmother Julianna died in 1935 aborting herself with
| a coat hanger in Southern Idaho. She was born in 1915 and died in
| 1935. Twenty years old. I'm a fifth-generation Idahoan, my family
| moved to Idaho during the great Mormon exodus of Illinois.
|
| They were extremely impoverished. It was the Great Depression and
| in one of her letters, she writes about not even having the
| luxury of bone broth They were barely able to take care of their
| two children and she writes that it was better to save two
| children than let three starve. In her letters, she describes her
| guilt and the emotional pain she endured watching her two
| children be hungry. One of those children was my grandmother. She
| describes her concerns of being malnourished, she had been opting
| not to eat as much to let her two children eat, and how that
| would affect her unborn child.
|
| She wrote that her pregnancy was early enough that she could
| reconcile her faith in allowing her two other children to survive
| and that not giving birth to a malnourished child would also be
| the right thing to do for that child as well. In college ethics
| classes, I became enamored with her situation and had a dozen or
| more conversations with my grandmother, I read my great-
| grandmother's letters and heard the story as passed through the
| generations. I will always cherish those conversations with my
| grandmother.
|
| This of course ultimately developed my personal beliefs. I am
| thinking of her and my grandmother today.
|
| I'm in a same-sex marriage and my stomach dropped reading
| Clarence Thomas's opinion and his reference to Obergefell. It
| wasn't that long ago I wasn't able to see my now-husband in the
| hospital -- the emergency room - here in conservative Idaho. I do
| understand his opinion and context but even if legally sound, it
| affects me.
|
| We the people of the United States of America know how to edit
| our living constitution and make the rights that we want a
| constitutional guarantee. It seems impossible at the moment with
| the divisiveness, polarization and in-fighting but we know that
| religion is on the decline and you will see that represented in
| elections in the coming decades. It is possible, we just don't
| know the path today. It can be done, but it won't be easy.
|
| I'm sorry, this isn't all that related to Hacker News. To relate
| it back, I guess I am saying that we're hackers, we can hack
| society, we can hack belief systems, we can take unrelated ideas
| and bring them together to create something new just like we do
| inventing new categories of products. We can disrupt things
| through big ideas and through execution. If we want change, it
| will be a lot of hacking and hard work. After all, I think it was
| social / political hacking by the creators of this movement that
| got us here to today.
| HNTA_1 wrote:
| throwaway11789 wrote:
| Emanation wrote:
| If you want to come across as genuine, you might want to take
| a stab at not taking someone's ancedote and bastardizing to
| fit the scope in which you want to limit the topic you want
| to discuss.
|
| It makes you appear out of touch with reality and self
| serving, rather than trying to make any attempt to
| understand.
| rat87 wrote:
| Just telling you the personal responsibility/slut shaming
| argument for banning abortion makes your side look weak as
| hell. At least those who claim fetus are alive have a
| somewhat respectable looking moral framework but when you
| reveal it's really about blaming women for having sex and
| forcing them to suffer for it it no matter how bad it is for
| woman and offspring , shows how nasty many "pro life" views
| are
| throwaway11789 wrote:
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Could a woman in the 1930s enforce a decision not to have sex
| with her husband?
| throwaway11789 wrote:
| I don't know, It was more of a hypothetical. They certainly
| can now.
| espressor wrote:
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| How is this seen like it's the end of the world?
|
| Just vote with the people that won't ban abortion.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| "Just vote with the people that won't ban abortion" in
| insufficient in a system with an undemocratic Senate. The
| Senate controls who gets on the Supreme Court, and it requires
| 60 votes to advance legislation.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Personally I think this is a good thing. My hope is that SCOTUS
| passing rulings down from the federal level to the states will
| encourage more (young) people to vote in their city and state
| elections. The voter turnout for presidential elections is
| always decent, however for local and state issues there's a
| clear difference in number of voters. Additionally, younger
| people don't vote as often in local and state elections. I wish
| it was not true but there's no arguing the statistics.
|
| https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/prior-elections/statewide-e...
|
| http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout...
| monocasa wrote:
| Because in contrary to the states' rights argument being
| touted, the legal theory underpinning the decision opens the
| door to a federal ban. You might not get the chance to vote for
| the people that ban abortion for you.
| tzs wrote:
| In many states that has no effect whatsoever because district
| boundaries have been gerrymandered to ensure that the party
| that favors banning abortion will not lose control of the
| legislature.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Because the media is making it out to be the end of the world.
| This ruling does not ban abortion, it lets the states have
| jurisdiction over the issue.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| In practice, this ruling bans abortion in those states.
| Regardless of your opinion of those states, people DO live in
| them and will be adversely affected. Lives will be ruined,
| people will die, and ultimately this will probably be
| counterproductive wrt lowering the number of abortions
| overall.
| ncallaway wrote:
| And in many states there are laws on the books that make
| abortion illegal effective today.
| Clubber wrote:
| I mean isn't that the will of the people in that state? If
| you live in a state that will be affected, it could
| certainly be a problem for you. If you don't then you are
| wanting to subvert their democratic process, no?
|
| Imagine if it was something else like marijuana
| legalization and whatnot.
| evan_ wrote:
| Some states are pretty big, and have diverse populations-
| maybe we should make it the choice of the county! Then
| again, some counties are pretty big, maybe we should make
| it the choice of the city or town! Then again, some
| cities are pretty big, maybe we should make it the choice
| of the block! Then again, there might be a lot of
| differing opinions even on a single block, maybe we
| should make it a choice of the individual!
| ncallaway wrote:
| > I mean isn't that the will of the people in that state?
|
| That really depends on when those laws were passed, and
| whether attitudes have changed since then, doesn't it?
|
| Most of these laws weren't passed last year, and the
| issue has been legislatively moot for 50 years, so you're
| going to have a _very_ hard time convincing me that those
| laws represent the current will of the people in every
| state.
|
| > you are wanting to subvert their democratic process,
| no?
|
| Yes. I believe there _are_ and _should be_ restrictions
| on what the majority of a state can pass.
|
| I _do_ want to subvert the democratic process in some
| specific instances. For example, if the majority of a
| state I didn 't live in wanted to legalize slavery, I
| would say that they do not get that choice and that they
| may not.
|
| It's not like this is groundbreaking. There are all kinds
| of federal laws that preempt state laws on various
| topics.
|
| Pretty sure CA just had the will of its voters thrown out
| just yesterday relating to their gun laws, so maybe it's
| not _so_ sacrosanct.
| hylaride wrote:
| The US senate is 2 senators per state. The smaller states are
| mostly rural conservative issues. The senators that confirmed
| the three trump justices represent 43% of the population.
|
| It's not that easy.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Rule by minority is probably the "end of the world" feeling
| you're getting from all this.
| gnicholas wrote:
| As expected, the 5 justices on the leaked Alito opinion
| constitute the majority, Chief Justice Roberts filed a concurring
| opinion (in which he argues that the principle of judicial
| restraint requires merely upholding the law in question, not
| overturning Roe), and the 3 liberal justices dissented.
|
| In total, the opinions are 217 pages long.
|
| Anyone able to quickly run a diff on the leaked majority opinion
| and the official one?
| jonathanjaeger wrote:
| Don't have that for you, but I found one difference cited on
| Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/notjessewalker/status/154034207000234803...
| gnicholas wrote:
| Tweet deleted -- what did it say?
| cm277 wrote:
| It hurts me to say this, but American democracy is broken. Checks
| and balances have been twisted to subvert true democratic rule.
| We should stop worshipping the Founders and their intent, and aim
| for a Second American Republic, built around the tested and true
| practices of mature European republics (that have done a lot more
| revisions than our 1.0.33 release...):
|
| - Parliamentary democracy, two chambered if need be, with slowly
| changing electoral maps (drawn from the Census and controlled by
| judges, not politicians)
|
| - Ban on non-government funding of political parties. Money
| raised comes from the government or small donations.
|
| - Parliament/senate majority is enough. Enough of that 19th
| century filibuster nonsense.
|
| - Faster constitutional amendment cycles that don't require
| supermajorities
|
| - No assinine lifetime appointments to anything. A 10- or 12-year
| term and a healthy pension are controls enough
|
| Law is code: it needs to be easy to change when it's not working
| and it needs good change processes when it does change. But we
| cant be running a modern economy and society on 250 year old
| COBOL...
| [deleted]
| pluc wrote:
| No abortion rights and a shooting every other day. Good luck
| attracting talent if you keep this up. You're gonna run
| yourselves right out of the game.
| dogman144 wrote:
| All those red states that courted tech employees the last two
| years are about to get a challenging political period from that
| new donor base.
|
| Alabama has Huntsville, Texas has Austin, TN has chatt and
| Nashville, NC has Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, Florida has
| Miami/Tampa, AZ has Phoenix, CO has Denver (CO isn't super red
| but it's somewhere). This will get more interested and remote
| workers go deeper into small towns.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| A large part of why the right has disproportionate political
| power is because left-leaning folks tend to cluster together
| geographically and dilute their votes. Now that they're
| beginning to spread out, this may change a bit.
| cyphercat wrote:
| What a travesty! What these pro life nuts don't understand is
| that if I can't have sex without consequences, my Friday nights
| will be ruined! A woman should have the right to choose whether
| or not to sleep with whoever and whenever! Support the right to
| choose!
| nullcipher wrote:
| Sad sad day
| imchillyb wrote:
| > The issue reverts to the states, many of which have taken steps
| to curtail or ban abortions.
|
| Sounds like people need to get off their asses and vote now.
| Voting is more important now that it's ever been before. It's up
| to individual states how they want to treat abortion and related
| services.
|
| This ruling isn't an end to anything, unless the populace doesn't
| care enough to grass-roots the effort to change their state's
| laws.
|
| Now, go vote. Voting is the only say we have in this tumultuous
| country.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Welcome back to the dark ages America.
| bilekas wrote:
| Its somewhat hypocritical that the supreme court takes away an
| inherit right. That was part of the constitution. It was a
| demonstration of right to privacy concerning your own body. And
| they take it away and call it conservative.
|
| You really couldn't make this up.
| nus07 wrote:
| aaplok wrote:
| I remember reading an article back in 2015-16 where the author
| argued that Trump's election was exactly about Ros vs Wade.
| Specifically they explained that a number of SCOTUS judges were
| expected to be appointed during the term. Once enough
| conservative judges were in place, one of the conservative States
| was going to pass a law with the express goal that it be
| challenged in front of the SCOTUS,so that they could overturn Roe
| vs Wade.
|
| That is precisely what happened. I wish I had kept that article,
| given how impressively prescient it was. Sadly I don't even know
| where to start looking.
|
| There is a lot that blows my mind with this. The level of
| planning involved, and the willingness by the American right to
| set the country on fire to be able to control women's right is
| just amazing.
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