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.
But this is not the case and sometimes we regress.
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?
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.
Seems to me that the arc of the moral universe is actually more of a spaghetti. While some things improve, others regress.
Dr. Martin Luther King
As for paying for it… no taxes need to be raised. Just divert 1/1000th of the money going to the military.
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.
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.
sorry, this is not enlightened.
The key questions is, how many of such peope exist.
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.
Should we not wipe out polio because our ancestors couldn't?
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.
Or what about rape cases which take longer than 9 months to reach a conviction?
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.
Like… your opinion is that corner cases don’t matter in law?
That's not an enlightened or moral direction.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 naïveté, 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.
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.
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...
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_Environmental_...
[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/conservatives-are-more-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
You may disagree with the idea it is murder, but if it is in fact murder than it is completely consistent to support laws against it.
And people who are opposed to physics believe Earth is flat. Both views are the same in terms of rationality.
You may disagree with some of the premises but they follow one another and have decent reasons to believe them. That is hardly irrational.
Something to keep in mind. If you want to actually convince somebody in the future, saying their views are as irrational as believing the Earth is flat isn't the best way.
[1] https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.ht...
[2] https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes.htm...
Forced birthers are crazy, full stop. A fertilized egg is not a human any more than a sperm is a human.
And here you're making the same mistake again: you're assuming that if someone disagrees with your ideas about biology it means they don't understand it. In reality the reverse is true - pro-life myths might make sense to a high schooler, but not to someone who actually understands the topic.
(Also, you're conflating 'being homo sapiens' with 'being a person'; you've already tried this method of derailing the discussion two days before.)
Of course it would. Should you be able to murder your kids in your house because "your house, your choice"?
Does it mean a parent can be forced to donate an organ for transplant for their child?
>Should you be able to murder your kids in your house
Completely different situation; we are talking about bodily autonomy, not “housing autonomy”.
I am not who you were responding to, but since we were talking previously I will remind you what I said before. You are not obligated to provide what people need above the basic necessities. Organ donations go beyond that.
>You may disagree with some of the premises but they follow one another
You can say the exact same thing about antivaxers.
>If you want to actually convince somebody in the future, saying their views are as irrational as believing the Earth is flat isn't the best way.
Honestly, I don't think I can convince a flat-earther or pro-lifer. This kind of brainwashing appears to be unfixable. What can be done is limiting the spread.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Or is it common in your country, but the justice system nails the rapist every time?
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.
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?
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.
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.