It's interesting how fast political ideology goes out the window. Here we have the Republicans fighting for increased government regulation of private businesses, while Democrats are arguing it's unconstitutional and violates "free speech".
Also, trying to strong arm the media is well within the Republican political ideology, especially under the guidance of their current presidential nominee.
No one (except certain strains of anarchists) is against laws restricting "big" crimes like murder, theft, etc. Regardless of how you think about it, Republicans tend to think of abortion as murder, and so it is perfectly consistent to constrain that behavior while still being against government regulation broadly speaking.
Now, I'm not going to try and convince you that abortion is murder, I'm just saying your accusation of Republican hypocrisy is not convincing at all.
> Republicans say they are pro small government, but their actions clearly prove otherwise.
I would say that Republican politicians are much more comfortable with big government than the average voter that supports them.
So with years in prison for the woman, the supporting husband, the nurses and the MD.
To be clear, I do not think it is murder. But if I did, I would try to send to prison all participants. Not doing so seems philosophically weak, not quite hypocritical, but really self-serving or delusional 'look, those are murderers, a small fine and an administrative slap on the wrist seems enough'. I respect the opinion 'capital punishment/life sentence for any abortion, even in case of incest, rape, or unviable fœtus' way more, even if I find it unhinged. At least they are consistent.
Why? In no other place in the law do we completely ignore any potentially mitigating factors and always seek the maximum penalty. There's nothing more "consistent" about being overly-simplistic in this one area of law when we aren't anywhere else.
Every crime has degrees. There are always factors that affect the severity of punishment. When I say that conservatives see abortion as murder, what I mean is that they see it as falling on the spectrum that includes murder and manslaughter (voluntary and involuntary) etc. All of those people you listed bear legal and moral culpability, but the degree of culpability is something that has to be weighed in light of the facts.
There's also always an element of practical politics: the vast majority of abortions have nothing to do with rape, incest, viability, or threat to the life of the mother. Even allowing for these exceptions (some of which I would argue are in fact morally consistent) would result in a dramatic decline in the number of unborn deaths.
> the vast majority of abortions have nothing to do with rape, incest, viability, or threat to the life of the mother.
I wouldn't be so sure about that, especially if you count as rape removing the condom when the lady asked not to. And if you only count abortion after first heartbeat, 8 weeks (I don't, to me the limit should be 'when it can live out of the uterus'), at least in France, it's even the vast, vast minority. The number in the US should be different (50% of abortion here are for people already with children, vs 30% in the US, 32% are for women aged 14-29, vs almost 50 in the US), but that's probably because you don't do sex ed in some part of your country. Which would be a non-coercing, liberty-preserving way to reduce abortions btw.
What is the "intent" exactly? If a young woman has been propagandized by the surrounding culture into thinking the child growing inside her is nothing more than a clump of cells more akin to a tumor or parasite, the mental state she has when she has an abortion is much different then if she is aware of the full moral gravity of what she is doing.
> Is killing an infant a mitigating factor? Killing someone with a genetic handicap?
No, obviously.
> Maybe in case of 'threat to the life of the mother', you can argue for 'self-defense', but still, you would have to be judged.
Clear cases of self-defense rarely go to trial. It would be very rare that cases of medically necessary abortion would ever go before a judge.
> And that still leaves malformation, viability, rape and incest for which I don't find any moral mitigation tbf
Why wouldn't those be mitigating factors? There's no reason to think that (for example) a teen girl who was raped would be judged as harshly as a 30 year-old woman who intentionally had unprotected sex.
> I wouldn't be so sure about that...
That's a potentially interesting side debate, but I'll just say for now that as long as non-neglible number of children saved, a broad abortion ban that permits those limited exceptions would be a win.
> (I don't, to me the limit should be 'when it can live out of the uterus')
If you have a moral theory that justifies that position, please share. Because in my experience that's probably the most unprincipled position in the broader abortion debate.
If they think it's murder, it's murder. Full stop. They can put everyone in psych wards if they want to, but it is still what i said at first, either really self-serving or delusional.
> It would be very rare that cases of medically necessary abortion would ever go before a judge.
In most cases, it does not pose a 100% clear cut threat to the life of the woman, so it isn't really clear self-defense. A threat to her reproductive capacity very often, sometimes a threat to her internal organs, leaving her unable to walk for long durations and forcing her to stay laying down for years (or for life when unable to survive[0] the necessary surgery), and sometime a high risk of death, but never 100%. All those would have to pass in front of a judge, don't you think?
> Why wouldn't those be mitigating factors?
"Moral mitigation". Murder is murder. I agree there would be legal one. And even in the case of murdering an abuser, you would have to go in prison, so if abortion is murder, you would to. So would the doctor, and doctor assistants. Wouldn't matter anyway, because how the doctor are supposed to know this is a rape? Judges would have to decide that, and if they decide it is not, the MD is liable for direct murder. The best for them is to avoid taking that risk altogether.
> If you have a moral theory that justifies that position, please share.
Yes, to me, letting die is not the same as murdering. First I don't think anybody really think that prior to at least heartbeat, the foetus can be considered alive (to me it's brainwaves that does it, but my mum took care of a person without any for years as a nurse, which formed my opinion, i don't begrudge people thinking it's heartbeat). But even if you do, i do not accept that anybody should be legally or even morally liable for letting anything die, even a full adult human, if trying to prevent this death would cost human suffering. Murder however, is morally reprehensible even in self-defense (Manslaughter in self-defense isn't though).
[0] Or pay if she's in the US and terminated and lost insurance due to her inability to work :)
They also like regulating people's private lives. Who you can marry, who can have kids, who can use birth control, who can go to pornhub.com, who you can have sex with, what sex positions you're allowed to use, what books you can read, what you can teach in schools, what meat you can eat, etc.
Nope, but I think most Republicans think that.
Personally, I think politics is more about money and power than adherence to any kind of ideology.
While in the same breath removing regulatory oversight by revoking Chevron
But the actual decision is just that when there is no clear rule in the law, the federal agency can no longer unilaterally decide what they want it to be.
Quite literally those agencies can decide what is available for judges to review.
> [1] to define the scope of judicial review.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act
eta: I like to think of it in terms of "implied powers". So, the previous standard was that if Congress says the police are allowed to fine people for speeding, the courts should probably assume that the police are allowed to measure people's speed. Now congress is expected to explicitly state everything the police are allowed to do, e.g. congress has to say
The city is allowed to set speed limits. Speed limits are a maximum speed you are allowed to go. If you go faster than the speed limit, you are breaking the law. Police are allowed to measure your speed. Police are allowed to record your speed. Police are allow to compare their measured recording of your speed to the speed limit, to determine whether or not you were speeding. If police determine that you were speeding, they are allowed to fine you. The police are allowed to fine you greater amounts if you break the speed limit by greater quantities If the police fine you, they are allowed to take money from you If the police fine you, and you don't pay it, you are breaking the law.
Previously if they said "The city can, at their discretion, manage speeds for the safety of all concerned, and use the police for enforcement", the rest was implied. Now it's not.
A federal agency was tasked with monitoring herring fishing. This is done by having an inspector on the boats to see that things are done right.
The agency was short on money, so they decided to have each boat pay $700/day for the inspector. Nothing in the law says they can do that. But also, nothing says they can't.
By the Chevron rule, since this isn't mentioned in the law, the agency can decide that they have the right to demand money.
I think it's hard to claim that, as experts in fishing regulation, the agency is best suited to decide if they should be allowed to take money from those it regulates or not.
Chevron includes the phrase "when rules they make are reasonable." There was already plenty of room for courts to overturn things at their discretion, Chevron was just saying "If there's no obvious wrong on either side, defer to the agencies."
It seems courts just haven't done that, for some reason.
Anyway, the way the Supreme Court works is that cases make their way all the way up there not just to settle a fishing village quibble, but to decide if the underlying law is good or bad.
And so it becomes the occasion for conservative justices to do away with what they've thought was wrong for decades.
I wonder for how many decades? Chevron is 40 years old. It was a 6-0 decision (two justices were sick and one recused herself due to conflicts of interest). It was overturning a pro-environment/anti-pollution ruling by the court of appeals below-written by RBG, before she joined the Supreme Court. At the time it was handed down, conservatives cheered it, while liberals and environmentalists condemned it. Obviously at some point the tables turned, conservatives soured on it, liberals decided they liked it after all. But I wonder when in those 40 years was the decisive tipping point, at which the majority of its critics went from being liberals to being conservatives.
> No one expected the Supreme Court decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council would become a landmark of federal administrative law, least of all its author.
The difference between Chevron and Loper was that the Chevron decision actually took the real world into account. The decision noted that agencies simply needed a delegation of authority from Congress as Congress could not be expected to think of every little thing; the agencies existed to deal with that sort of minutiae.
However, Loper throws the real world (and actual history) out the window and requires that Congress explicitly authorize every little thing an agency does; a strict (i.e., "textual") reading of the Loper decision would mean that federal agencies could not even change the toilet paper in their offices without Congressional authorization. (Yes, this is a silly example but that's why textualism has only ever been embraced by extreme far-right justices; you need to be dissociated from the consequences of your actions in order to justify using textualism in a SCOTUS decision affecting hundreds of millions of people.)
It’s ironic - in 1984, SCOTUS ruled against environmentalists and in favour of an oil company that wanted to pollute more. And at the time liberals and environmentalists condemned the decision, and conservatives praised it.
By 2024, the situation had reversed: conservatives now condemning the decision and calling for its reversal, liberals and environmentalists defending it and calling for it to be upheld
It is as if everyone just forgot what the original Chevron case was actually about
Furthermore, in Chevron they were overturning an appellate court ruling written by future justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s also ironic to hear liberals, many of whom praise RBG and have a high opinion of her, defending a conservative decision in which her ruling on environmental law was overturned
Protecting free speech has been the ideology of democrats for ages. The Free Speech Movement was fought by those on the left side of the political spectrum.
https://www.salon.com/2024/05/02/jewish-groups-decry-passage...
Both parties broadly support the idea that the government shouldn’t sanction speech, but also the right to not associate with particular individuals depending on the sorts of things they say. There’s variation in the sorts of things that might make members of either party think you are a bad person for saying them, or for associating with people who say them.
The right strategy is a two pronged approach:
The first (and most important) is to address government pressure, and to establish strong First Amendment protections against Congress and federal agencies from putting their thumb on the scale. This unfortunately failed in Murthy v. Missouri, but since it was rejected for reasons of standing rather than on statutory grounds, I think there is good reason to think this could succeed in the future (especially because there is prior precedent stating that the government cannot pressure private actors to do anything the government itself does not have the power to do directly).
The second approach is to focus on how Section 230 is enforced. Section 230 grants broad immunity to social media companies to engage in content moderation without liability (as it should) but I think we need to establish what is meant by "good faith" moderation. The best way I see to establish "good faith" is to set clear expectations about what content is allowed, and any moderation beyond that is done by users customizing their own experience. A pattern of moderation which is contrary to stated policy, especially when it is contrary to the interests of users, could be "bad faith" moderation that would exempt the platform from Section 230 protections, and possibly be considered an unfair business practice (and thus subject to civil litigation).
I think this would be in the best interests of all social media users of every political stripe. And none of this would prevent social media companies from systematically suppressing conservative content as "disinformation", but it would prevent them from doing so surreptitiously or under pressure from the government.
This sounds a lot like we're kicking the can of worms down the road.
Now we have to define what content is allowed and someone has to decide if some action is contrary to that policy.
We're also giving the power to the government to rescind 230 and I don't doubt for a moment that an administration could find reason to do so particularly for media sites it doesn't appreciate...
Finally, we have to define if something is contrary to the interests of users, meaning we have to define the interests of users... holy cow.
I think less is more in this case. There are enough social media sites out there that you can dial in pretty exactly what you want to see, no matter your persuasion.
> Now we have to define what content is allowed and someone has to decide if some action is contrary to that policy.
I mean that the social media platform has to be explicit about what they allow. It doesn't matter what social media platform wants to allow (provided it is legal) so long as they tell their users what it is.
> Finally, we have to define if something is contrary to the interests of users, meaning we have to define the interests of users... holy cow.
IANAL, but it seems to me this kind of thing already comes up all the time in things like contract law, employement law, unfair business practices, etc.
> I think less is more in this case. There are enough social media sites out there that you can dial in pretty exactly what you want to see, no matter your persuasion.
I agree. What I am proposing requires no new legislation, and merely requires us to enforce existing legislation more or less as it is written.
One of the reasons Elon Musk bought Twitter was because the Babylon Bee was moderated for misgendering a trans person. I could see an argument for why this might not be ok, but for me the same argument to me would fall apart on the /lgbt or /trans subreddits.
I don’t love the idea (nor do I think it’s feasible to distinguish) when you’re social media site becomes a “public square” and now your moderation decisions have to have some standard… regulated by the government? Which I think circles back to being a valid 1st amendment concern.
That's sort of precisely my point. It's all about social media companies setting forth clear policies about what is acceptable on their platform, and ensuring that their moderation is consistent with that policy.
If Twitter wants to ban misgendering, let them. But they have to tell people. You can't claim to be the town square on the one hand and try to shape the discourse on the other.
I personally would prefer to use social platforms which establish boundaries on content. HN is an excellent example, and essentially the only "social media" I publish on for that very reason. But HN makes sure to tell people what is acceptable.
> The best way I see to establish "good faith" is to set clear expectations about what content is allowed
What I mean is that each social media platform needs to define what content is acceptable within its own terms. They don't necessarily need to be super detailed, but they should be explicit enough that people are able understand what is and is not allowed (or de-ranked, shadow-banned, etc.)
What I am trying to avoid here is people using social media under false pretenses. If a social media platform claims to be a neutral town square, but then behind the scenes tries to shape the discourse for their own political ends, that would be a false pretense.
In reality, both sides all just serve at the pleasure of the elite.
What I love about Trump (despite never having a desire to votefor him) is he makes no attempt to hide that, often times going so far as to rub the political class' noses in it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/s-ha...
Does he not? His speeches promise a "great America again!" to the conned masses, when the reality it's "Put me back into power so I can stay out of jail, and grift, for another 4 years at least.".
It would be interesting if one could put an actual "what I actually want" translator next to Trump like in this sketch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkAK9QRe4ds .. not that the conned masses would hear it and get a "Wow! He's a conman!" moment; they've projected onto him their hopes, dreams, and the idea that he will be the one to avenge their angers.
(BTW In Obama's post-presidential book he lamented about the same thing in 2008, that his voters were placing their hopes of all sorts of change on him, and that his campaign/supporters were inadvertendly creating cult-of-personality around him.)
I wonder why they did that. It's almost like he built his entire campaign on the promise that electing him would bring hope/change.
I don’t think “I have faith we can change but don’t put your faith in me” has the same ring to it as a campaign slogan.
I don't think state regulation of private business is an ideology in itself. It's not an all or nothing choice. You may want it for some aspects, not for others. Social democrats tend to use regulation to protect little folk, conservatives see it as a power tool.
That is not an accurate statement of the conservative view of government regulation.
I think a more accurate description of the difference would be to look at Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations theory, and in particular how the political left and the political right understand the idea of "fairness"[1]. I think it is our ideas about fairness that primarily drive the different views of regulation.
What is that difference? Well, as you said about social democrats, I think that people on the left view regulation primarily as a way to protect the little guy. Conservatives see it as a way to ensure that rewards are proportional to one's contribution and merit.