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Comment by unsui | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

> 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.

Does having empathy in one situation change a lack of empathy in another?

The parent didn't claim a lack of empathy for all

We can rule out empathy for most of pro-life folk, by what disturbingly little empathy they have for those same children post-birth.

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.

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.

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)

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.

All those programs have a reputation for being wholly inadequate. Better to let a woman abort a baby she's not prepared for for than tell her "But you will qualify for aid programs!"

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.

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

> 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.

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.

> 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.

I avoid that issue entirely by leaving it as a matter of viability. As I've said elsewhere: 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.

It doesn't matter if it's a baby or just a clump of cells, if it's literally living in and feeding off of another living person that person should have a right to decide to continue or to stop allowing that. The child's right to exist against the wishes of its mother start as soon as it can do so without her.

It's not like being born is some great prize that is fundamentally worth acquiring. That's your evolutionary reflexes speaking.

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.

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.

There have been several studies on the correlation between income/wealth and empathy. https://blog.ted.com/6-studies-of-money-and-the-mind/

Assume those studies are correct (I don't believe that conclusion, personally). It displays a certain lack of empathy to interact with people using assumptions about their presumed sociological groups. This may be the very definition of lacking empathy- abstracting people into groups might make sense in studies, but when those preconceptions bleed into condemning statements, it's just prejudice.

It's easy to have empathy for people like you or that you agree with, but the real test is having empathy for those who aren't / you don't.

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.

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

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.

> 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).

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!

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

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.

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

> Emotions, morals, etc., while important for driving the end result, still must comply with the legal system.

This is exactly backwards

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

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.

You conveniently ignore the 9th amendment in your incorrect analysis. The 9th amendment literally stands your conclusion on its head.

I'm not convinced. The 9th is hard for me to interpret because of its purposeful vagueness.

But we do have some notes from judges such as the following:

As Justice Scalia observed, “the [ Ninth Amendment’s] refusal to ‘deny or disparage’ other rights is far removed from affirming any one of them, and even further removed from authorizing judges to identify what they might be, and to enforce the judges’ list against laws duly enacted by the people.” https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-9/n...

IMO, Congress should attack this from a Constitutional ammendment which makes its legality clear: abortions cannot be outlawed. Anything else is just another ticking time bomb, especially something contingent on a 9th ammendment interpretation.

Edit: after rereading the 1st ammendment, the wording of an ammendment should be consistent, so something like, "Congress shall make no law prohibiting the seeking or procedure of abortion."

Thinking more on the 9th, one would have to consider the right to destroy an unborn person, not just the right to bodily autonomy. This becomes a moral or philosophical exercise, perhaps. With the 14th ammendment, it now becomes a question of personhood, which I don't believe the Constitution defines. So I think I am content with my request for an ammendment and not 9th Ammendment guesswork.

Final edit: Turns out we have prior rulings that state that the 9th ammendment does not cover assisted suicide, which may be applicable to the case (potentially Person definition pending).

Washington v Glucksberg https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/521/702/

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?

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.

>> 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.

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.

The court addressed that in Heller:

"United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, does not limit the right to keep and bear arms to militia purposes, but rather limits the type of weapon to which the right applies to those used by the militia, i.e., those in common use for lawful purposes."

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

It would have been nicer to codify the rights before pulling the rug on it.

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?

Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

anything else is none of your business.

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...

I agree, that’s an issue. That being said that’s not related directly to this ruling.

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.

The right to privacy is not related directly contraceptions. Alito said as much in the opinion.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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."

Sure, but Alito plus the others means it’ll never pass.

Many of the others called Roe v. Wade "settled law" in sworn statements. That didn't stop them from voting to overturn it today.

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.

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.

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

What you're saying is that the conservative judges are activists doing what's popular in their movement, not applying any principles.

> 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!

You nailed it perfectly. Thomas announced the slope.

> 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

>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.

While the Catholic Church does teach that artificial contraception is inherently sinful, it’s leadership has not - certainly in recent decades - displayed any interest in having that moral view enforced by law. If no state enacts a general ban on contraception, SCOTUS will never get the opportunity to directly rule on its constitutionality.

Also, much of the success of the movement to restrict abortion has been because it has been a cross-faith alliance - Catholics, Evangelicals, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, among others. The same winning formula won’t work for a general ban on contraception, because Catholics are the only member of that coalition who believe that artificial contraception is inherently sinful-the others view its moral acceptability as more situation-dependent.

> The vast vast majority of Americans are ok with contraceptives

The trigger laws that just went into effect in several cases would appear to ban some contraception, like IUDs (or, rather, criminalize it when they work), since they result in termination of pregnancy as the laws define it. (Because they use fertilization, not implantation, as the definition of the start of pregnancy.)

Of course, there's a proof issue for any actual prosecution for homicide, but that's a practical barrier to enforcement that doesn't affect what the law prohibits.

> 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.

> "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).

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.

>"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.

Why do you believe I’m pro life?

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.

Pro life does not support abortion under any circumstances

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”.

>"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.

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.

> 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.

>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.

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.

Yes, HN skews male.

I'm a woman and extremely poor. I've been a member for nearly thirteen years.

It's possible but challenging to present a female point of view here. Reproductive issues and what I generally think of as human sexual morality are always hard to talk about anywhere.

I think for a lot of women, this is a very threatening turn of events. That's going to make it challenging to discuss it in the rational style required by HN guidelines even before accounting for the gender ratio here.

I'm quite fond of HN and have come to see a lot of the practices here as not male per se but as best practices for public discourse and I have come to believe that women tend to be raised to engage in a fashion more appropriate for private discourse.

So I think there's a somewhat steep learning curve involved for most women that gets conflated with sexism and complicates attempts by women to give voice to a female point of view here.

If you can express yourself in accordance with best practices for public discourse, you can be heard here. Trying to figure out how to do that while not spazzing about sexism ...well, it's challenging and I think most women lack sufficient reason to keep at it, so they tend not to.

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.

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?

I don't understand your take. Do you assume that all consensual sex happens with the intention of reproduction?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

>Is your opinion that anyone can renege on known consequences of their actions?

That's usually how medical treatment works, yes. We don't tell people who fall off a ladder, slice their finger chopping vegetables, or break a bone playing sports "You knew the risk, you're just gonna have to live with the consequences of your choices"

> 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.

Sex inherently has the risk of pregnancy no?

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?

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.

> 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.

What? For most of history birth is the inevitable outcome of pregnancy. Women aren’t being forced to give birth.

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)

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.

> 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.

> "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?

> 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.

> 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.)

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.

> 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.

That’s a fair point.

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.

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."

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.

> 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.

Persuasion isn’t that important when the vast majority of the public already agrees with you.

Considering pregnancy can result in death (at a higher rate than kidney donation as noted elsewhere in the thread) as well as countless other long term conditions your 9 month limit doesn’t really make sense. But let’s say you could loan out a kidney for a few months, would you really find it acceptable for the state to forcibly seize your kidney to keep someone else alive?

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.

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.

But freedom of association is legal.

No. You're legally not allowed to discriminate among customers, employees, neighbors, or renters.

Would that not be freedom of disassociation?

Regardless of what you call it, these are the kinds of ideas you get when you reject the social parts of government and go full libertarian.

Fortunately there is nothing else the state forces you to purchase so this is a very clean ideological point you are making.

Libertarians should be protesting against violence toward the unborn child... libertarianism's core principle is nonviolence towards others.

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.

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.

Capital punishment is legal in 27 states, 20 of which support the death sentence, why is that not inextricably linked with abortion?

But it’s not. In no other case is one human forced to sacrifice their own body to keep another human alive.

The fetus is welcome to continue living. It simply can’t live in this particular womb.

If ‘pro-life’ people genuinely cared about the unborn (rather than controlling women) they would have invested in researching artificial wombs and pregnancy transfers. But they don’t.

> In no other case is one human forced to sacrifice their own body to keep another human alive.

Here's an analogy: if you're flying people somewhere in your helicopter, are you allowed to push them out, or are you required to "sacrifice" your own helicopter to keep them alive until you land safely?

> The fetus is welcome to continue living. It simply can’t live in this particular womb.

Your passengers are welcome to stay in the air. They simply can't in that particular helicopter.

> If ‘pro-life’ people genuinely cared about the unborn (rather than controlling women) they would have invested in researching artificial wombs and pregnancy transfers. But they don’t.

If people genuinely cared about helicopter passengers (rather than controlling pilots), they would have invested in jet packs and antigravity devices. But they don't.

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...

“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.

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.

You said: 1. Outlawing abortion isn’t helpful at all 2. Actually helpful would be contraceptives

I (and the vast majority of people) agree that contraception is important and should be widely available. You’re argument against abortion restrictions is completely incorrect though and that’s the point I made

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.

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.

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.

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?

I don’t know why you wouldn’t think I’m serious, nor do I think the claim that HN is about technical topics needs explanation.

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.

> 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.

You hit the nail on the head. On my social media which isn’t always a particularly intellectual medium, people are already expressing their outrage… but not really saying much else.

The result: reading about how yet another person is so mad about the ruling and “so tired of this country” and what a blow this is for women’s rights has gotten repetitive and uninteresting. After a certain point, reading such comments over and over again is just giving in to outrage porn.

Most members of HN recognize this and prefer the intellectual stimulation that comes from discussing more nuanced technical details.

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.

Shouldn't the legal analysis of a legal opinion be the norm? Facts don't care about your feelings.

HN is full of coders. It's for coders, run by coders. Coders are 99% male.

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"?

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_adoptive_...

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.

> 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.

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.

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...

> 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.

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.

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”.)

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.

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?

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.

I “fixate” on that question because that’s the argument everyone is making: that any interference in abortion is unjust. The reality is (as you seem to agree) is that in some instances there’s little difference from baby murder - hence why restrictions on abortion can be just

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