Comment by ralmidani | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ralmidani | Hacker News Reader

The second paragraph regarding abortion is terrifying:

> The revelation raises grave medical privacy concerns, particularly in a post-Dobbs era in which many states are working to criminalize reproductive health care. Even if people in states with restrictive laws cross state lines for care, pharmacists in massive chains, such as CVS, can access records across borders.

I was “pro-life” from as long as I can remember thinking about the issue (I still recall the Bush v. Gore debates) until I voted last month in favor of making free access to abortion a constitutional right in Ohio. It initially took some coaxing from my wife, who helped me try to understand the issue from a woman’s perspective, and for a while I had doubts about whether I had done the right thing, but reading about far-right shenanigans (or potential shenanigans) makes me 100% confident I’m now on the correct side on abortion.

Wherever power __can__ be abused, it __will__ be abused. I wish abortion was less common, and we should work on making it less common, but the last thing we need is ideologues and extremist politicians second-guessing healthcare professionals and harassing women in what is one of the most desperate times in their lives.

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Edit: reading some of the strident and confrontational comments from some of those with whom I actually agree on the issue, it’s clear that “the cause”, if you will, doesn’t always have effective advocates.

I have a fairly thick skin, some I’m avoiding engaging in a similarly mean-spirited way, but extremists (on both sides) are their own worst enemy. In the same way that I was pushed away from being “pro-life”, in part by far-right extremists, I imagine the extremists on the far-left are also losing friends and alienating people.

Not sure why this is being downvoted, I agree that the privacy implications you called out are very serious, and I’m glad you’ve changed your mind and come to the conclusions you did. Thanks for posting about it, and sorry some people are being rude about it. I’m hearing there are a lot of people who were pro-life but didn’t ever expect Row-v-Wade to actually overturn, and now that they are seeing the real-world implications of that, are realizing it’s not a good idea to have dogmatic blanket bans. I heard a podcast about how Idaho’s in crisis because they’ve lost a bunch of their already very small number of obstetricians, because they’re now suspect and legally liable anytime a baby dies, and now women who are having serious pregnancy complications are unable to get care, and are being forced to travel long distances right at the moment they need help.

Thank you!

Retroactive shaming of anyone who was ever against your political position seems like some folks are devolving toward something even worse than cancel culture. The rudeness, as you put it, is not going to change my mind about the issue itself, but it does make me want to avoid the impossible-to-reason-with zealots.

Absolutely, we need to be doing the exact opposite and welcoming and praising people who join us. I’ll say it now: welcome! I’m glad you’re here. We will not make headway with this issue by yelling louder at each other or being more obstinate. What you did is actually hard to do, challenging your own beliefs and changing your mind. That’s commendable.

To be honest, I think if we could strip all existing talking points on both sides, and get people to truly derive their own personal conclusions from scratch, I would expect the vast majority of people to be both in favor of women having absolute autonomy over their health care and body choices, and also in favor of trying to avoid abortion as a contraceptive if we can, avoiding late abortions, and hopefully using it only or mostly as a tool to treat bad situations. In other words, I would expect a lot of people to have the exact stance you’re arriving at - that we need to allow people to do what they need to, and we still hope that abortion isn’t happening excessively or willy-nilly or late without medical necessity. The core idea behind the two camps, the ‘pro-‘ position of each side, is not necessarily in opposition at all, so it’s funny it’s gotten so extreme and presented as completely opposites.

I love it!

And I’ll do you one better:

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for all his faults (which are numerous), supported the 5-4 majority in a landmark case regarding flag burning.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._Johnson

Imagine if Justice William Brennan, who wrote the majority opinion, said to Scalia rudely and dismissively “you don’t really believe in civil liberties, you’re only an absolutist on free speech”. It could have led to it being illegal today to burn the flag (which I don’t approve of on a personal level) - and presumably many other ways of expressing disapproval with how the US government conducts itself.

> who helped me try to understand the issue from a woman’s perspective

Up until about 2020 men and women had more or less similar views on abortion.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/245618/abortion-trends-gender.a...

Even still, women's reproductive rights in general are ironically one of the least gendered opinions.

The problem is thinking there's a correct side.

If you believe life begins at conception and that ending a life is murder, then naturally you're going to believe that abortion is murder and is therefore immoral.

If you do NOT believe life begins at conception than naturally you're not going to believe it's murder and therefor not going to believe it's immoral.

It's possible to disagree with someone's stance on abortion without thinking of it as correct or incorrect.

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edit: why is it people insist on arguing even when the entire point is that arguing about it isn't all that meaningful? The overarching point is to stop acting as if people are definitely right or wrong. stop arguing over semantics of words.

Who decides if life begins at conception? Usually it’s fundamentalists and extremists who insist on that, and as a mainstream Sunni Muslim, I’ve not heard convincing evidence that Jewish, Christian, or Muslim texts support that position. In fact, I know that in Sunni Muslim tradition there is wide disagreement on when ensoulment of a fetus occurs. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion

And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that life does begin at conception. Isn’t the life and/or welfare of the mother also important? And who would you want making such a specific determination, a healthcare professional or Ron DeSantis?

"Life" is meaningless. Animals are a live. Plants are alive. Who cares when "life" begins?

What should matter is when humanity begins, or, sapience. There's no world in which it makes scientific sense to afford a small cluster of cells without anything even resembling a cow's brain (remember cows? the things we legally slaughter by the hundreds of thousands every day?), let alone a human brain, more rights than the woman the organs of whom are supporting it.

Not only that, but we don't allow the harvesting of organs post mortem without explicit, written consent, even if someone could use them to live. If we're not allowed to use other people's organs to ensure survival, even if the other person is dead, that should apply just as much to fetuses.

There's very obviously a correct side if you want to apply any semblance of logic, reasoning, and thought to the issue. There isn't one if you want to apply religion to it, and follow your gut to conclude that your all-powerful, all-benevolent god is putting souls in fetuses he knows will be aborted, taking them up to heaven for eternal happiness, and getting mad at us for it.

> your all-powerful, all-benevolent god

As OP I agree that government has no business getting involved in these debates. But don’t you think insulting and ridiculing religious people, including those who agree with you on the general issue, is a bit much? You’re not really helping your cause by alienating those folks.

Is that an insult? And I don't think I'm ridiculing anyone that agrees with me on the general issue.

I didn't invent the concept of god being all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-benevolent. That's my genuine, good-faith understanding of what people believe.

I'm also not mocking it. I disagree with it, but I'm taking it seriously, arguing with the assumption that people believe what they tell me they believe.

It's wild that religious people can say "You condone murder, and will be tortured for eternity for your beliefs" and that's just business as usual, but if I say "That's a bit silly, I would expect the god you tell me you believe in to be more forgiving and understanding" all of a sudden I'm being too mean.

It feels like there's no way to say "I simply don't believe that, and the evidence points to you being incorrect" that's polite enough for religious people, but they can say whatever they want to non-believers and it's ok because it's just what they believe.

and if your post had actually been that neutral, the other poster wouldn't have called you out on it.

My post wasn't neutral, but what little I said about religion more or less was.

I'll try to respond to your edit.

People are arguing about your words because the ones you pick to make your argument DO matter. You've chosen the dichotomy generally pushed by the Right, rather than a discussion of health care or women's safety. Consider the difference in feel if you posted this as your two conditionals:

If you believe that doctors should be given leeway to treat their patients as they best see fit even if sometimes you disagree with their rationale, you're going to believe abortion should be available.

If you believe that moral rules should be followed and your moral rules are paramount regardless of any doctor's opinion on the ground, you're going to believe abortion should not be available.

This gives a very different feel and perspective to the conversation. The words you pick matter.

the ideas matter, not the words.

the art to disagreeing with someone without vilifying them is to recognize their beliefs come from their values.

Even what you're trying to argue about healthcare.

someone who believes in the word of God is going to argue an individual is less important than God's commandments, someone who does not will argue the individual is more important.

And I don't want to hear any whiffle about a dichotomy here, consider it a spectrum between 0 and 1 if it makes you feel better.

------------

The point is that framing this as correct/incorrect is a very poor way to frame it, it leaves no room for understanding.

It isn't really a spectrum -- it's binary. The question ultimately is: should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months? If you say no, you're on the side that claims to be pro-choice. If you say yes, you're on the side that claims to be pro-life.

Whether or not you believe that abortion is right or wrong isn't really relevant, except in so far as it informs your opinion about government coercion.

That depends on what your "it" is, and I agree here that framing is really key. Consider the difference between your formulation:

> should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months?

and: When should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months?

You can take my version and reduce it to yours with "always" and "never" responses, but the world is not digital, it is analog. My question allows for a lot more answers, a lot more debate, and compassion for one another.

A binary response leads only to argumentation because we can't find the edges that we agree on, only the boundary we fight over.

well said, this is what I was getting at when I said the ideas matter more than the words.

> When should the government be able to force you at gunpoint/threat of imprisonment to carry a fetus for 9 months?

If you get to the point where you're asking "when", you're already saying the government should be able to force you to carry a fetus. I'm not sure how else to interpret it.

If it helps I guess you can twist my formulation to be "the government should be able to force you to carry a fetus under some circumstances that are evaluated by people on a case-by-case basis". All that "under" and beyond stuff is redundant, however.

As soon as we say that a case requires evaluation we apply force. We coerce the person by threatening them with imprisonment if they don't stop seeking an abortion. Further, we open the door to imprisoning people in a system that is already slow and burdensome; we then give people in government power to wait 9 months for the question to become moot.

> A binary response leads only to argumentation because we can't find the edges that we agree on, only the boundary we fight over.

The debate is not nor has it ever been over circumstances or conditions -- that is a distraction from the pro-life crowd.

For example, some propose exceptions for cases of rape. But can rape be proven in less than 9 months, including appeals? Obviously not. If an allegation or mere statement that a rape occurred is enough then we might as well not issue the threat.

Others propose exceptions if the pregnancy threatens the pregnant person, which just means that some cases will be decided by the government, ultimately.

The boundary is well-defined and fixed. You may just be uncomfortable with it, and that's your choice.

> We coerce the person by threatening them with imprisonment if they don't stop seeking an abortion.

citation needed. I've heard of fines, I've heard of public shaming, I have not heard of imprisonment for attempting to get an abortion.

Most of the force you're discussing is against doctors rather than women.

You left out some context from my comment: if we call abortion murder, then we coerce the person by... etc.

FWIW, this is where we're at today, in the UK:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/12/uk/woman-jailed-abortion-pill...

> A British woman who used medication to induce an abortion after the United Kingdom’s legally allowed limit has been sentenced to prison for 28 months, the PA Media news agency reported.

And in the US:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/17/alabama-pre...

> Like Caswell, many of the women at the Etowah County Detention Center are detained under chemical endangerment of a child charges for alleged drug use during pregnancy, according to the lawsuit. Alabama passed the statute in 2006 to target people who put children at risk by converting their homes into methamphetamine labs, The Post previously reported. But the law has been increasingly applied to cases of fetal endangerment — a byproduct of Alabama’s 2018 personhood constitutional amendment that ensures “the protection of the rights of the unborn child.”

and https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/alabama-case-over-m...

> [O]fficials in Shelby County, Alabama, more than seven years ago brought and later dismissed chemical endangerment charges against a woman who [...] wasn't pregnant, AL.com reported in June 2015. And, in 2019, an Alabama grand jury indicted a woman who lost her unborn baby when she was shot, after declining to charge the shooter because it found she had fired in self-defense.

We're close, if not already there. It's a really bad time to be pregnant in some states.

I'm not even going to bother refuting this, that's how confident I am that your bullshit is transparent to everyone.

"someone had a stiffer sentence for doing drugs while pregnant ... that's like imprisonment for abortion maaaaaaan!".

Right, each side is correct within its own framing of the issue, they are both right according to their own separate standards. Both sides are villainizing the other side, and you’re right: they don’t have to. It’s not necessary to say the other side is wrong or immoral. The problem is that in many ways it is pretty effective rally & argument strategy, at least locally & temporarily; it does help some people who mildly agree with it to cement their position and have dramatic talking points that spread.

How do we break the cycle of increasing polarization? I honestly don’t know. It seems to be happening not just for abortion but for everything. All policy and culture, even innocuous stuff, seems to be getting polarized and tribalized in service of the politicians. Rejecting the extremist and villainizing framings of the opponent, on both sides, might help. Listening to and accepting the other side’s reasoning often does wonders for having civil conversation. I like to think of political debates as simply prioritizing what we want, and I wish our political debates would stop name-calling and just evaluate and rank the priorities rationally. This is hard to do though, it takes a lot of work, and there are conflicting priorities. Yelling and polarizing is way easier, takes less work, and is helping some politicians get what they want without having to be polite to their opponents or spend time evaluating their arguments. Maybe it would do some good if we can just help everybody we know see that our debates are mostly making us all tools of the politicians?

Thank you for this. Assuming that people disagree with you for valid reasons is a skill people generally seem to have lost. It's a lot easier to just pigeon-hole them as "other".

I have always thought that the phrase that was popular some years ago "science tells us that life begins at conception" was odd, and misunderstands what we know about life from science.

Life does not begin at conception because it never stopped. The sperm and the egg were both alive at the time of conception, and were life that split off of the collections of cells that we call the parents. Those parents were in turn conceived of live cells (again: a live sperm and a live egg) that came from their parents.

The whole point is that life is one big unbroken chain going back to some first cell (and at that point what is "life" gets complicated).

Rather the whole thing is about a "human life", as in when do we decide that this ball of cells is a separate individual deserving of the protection we give "people". And that is almost completely arbitrary, and science can offer no input on this at all.

Why is a fertilized egg a person? Why are the skin cells that have scraped off on your keyboard not a person deserving protection? If you start chopping bits of a person off (I am not recommending this), is the severed limb not a person? If you could chop off the head and keep both that and the body alive, would those be two people? Or would only the head count as a person?

No one treats people who want to legislate veganism with this level of charity, there's no reason to do so for the "pro-life" crowd.

Thank you for all of us that this issue impacts and should be able to make their own medical choices.

Strange to read something like this on HN, but better late than never, I guess...

Thanks!

Being a hacker and/or entrepreneur, even loosely defined, doesn’t imply you’re a conformist. In fact, I think what makes HN one of the most desirable places to engage with on the internet is that it’s less of an echo chamber than most.

I'm not entirely convinced that being "pro life" is some dangerous to have, heroic, non-conformist position to take for Ohio resident, but whatever...

I thought it was pretty clear from the context that I meant conformist in regard to HN, not Ohio.

I also don’t think of myself as a hero by any means.

Sorry, I misunderstood you. Thanks for clarifying and props for being open minded to change your position.

No problem, and thank you!

For what it’s worth, I don’t think changing a political stance should be considered “flip-flopping” unless it’s done for a self-serving purpose. Reevaluating should be considered an attempt to learn and grow. That’s why wisdom is often (but not always) associated with age and/or experience.

Unfortunately in my experience the older the person the less likely that they will be open to re-evaluating their core beliefs and political stance. Wonder if there is a research on the subject.

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