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Comment by khalic | Hacker News Reader

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The issue with abortion is that some think the fetus deserves legal protection because it is equivalent to a human baby. So, they don't think it should be killed. In Italy, abortion is allowed in the first 90 days. After that, it is illegal. These websites were providing abortion pills to be used past the 90 day period, which is illegal.

So, these websites were being blocked because they were engaged in illegal activity.

Would not illegality be handled by charging those suspected of the activity and hearing the case in a court of law?

Maybe those blocking the sites are not acting on behalf of law enforcement but rather their own ideas of legality and morality.

That doesn’t answer my question…

Because if you believe this fetus to be a human life then it follows believing that if it is terminated, it is akin to murder/infanticide.

I don't know why people are being so (deliberatively?) reductive ITT.

This logic never made sense to me.

The woman is clearly a human life too, and every western country has a right to self defense. A fetus is an imminent danger to women, their health, and their property. They have a right to remove it from their own body to stop that.

Or am I allowed to unconsentually put myself inside anyone for months, eating the food from their blood like a tapeworm, causing chronic pain, permanently changing their hormones, potentially risking death, just to come ripping my way out of their body and then demanding 18 years of pay and attention?

Am I entitled to an unconsenting healthy person's blood or organs or marrow if I'm going to die without it and we know they're "probably" going to be fine?

Yes but... you used the word "belief". Nothing scientific there.

If the mother was raped and knows for sure she will not bring up her rapist's kid ... or if there is a possibility that letting the baby be born will kill the mother, MY belief is to follow the mother's wishes.

It's her body and her life.

Whether or not a fetus is human life isn't a scientific concept. Pro-choice people "believe" that it isn't. That's not scientific either.

> Pro-choice people "believe" that it isn't.

Not all of us I would bet. One can believe the fetus is a human life, and still want to allow the mother ending it. Sure it’s rough, but this is a classic case of conflicting interest. Pretending the fetus isn’t human yet is just one of several ways to side with the mother’s decision. Malformations or danger to the mother’s life are two others. And then there’s the more radical position that as long as the fetus hasn’t left the womb, the mother’s autonomy is still more important than its life.

This last one is less a belief, (one week before birth the baby is clearly viable), than it is a value system. Though I’d be curious to see the statistics on countries that allow abortion up to birth itself. If it turns out practically no one aborts after 4 months or whatever, that particular point would be moot.

> This last one is less a belief, (one week before birth the baby is clearly viable), than it is a value system.

Upthread, a response to me indicated very clearly that, even at 1 day before delivery, it should be the mother's choice.

There's a lot of nuance here, with clearly many people stuck in denial: this is not a binary question. There's a spectrum, all the way from 1 day after conception to 1 day before delivery.

The pro-choicers are pretending that all the pro-lifers want to outlaw the morning after pill. The pro-choicers are also not doing themselves any favours by actually, on this story alone, positioning themselves as supporting 1-day-before-delivery abortions.

Everyone has a line they'll draw. Not everyone's line is in the same place.

But it’s not. The child has different DNA, and a different life.

• Survival rates begin to appear (still low) around 22 weeks (roughly 5–35% depending on the study, active treatment, and hospital, with high rates of complications). https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/154/4/e20240...

> Yes but... you used the word "belief". Nothing scientific there.

And you think the opposing arguments are?

And in Italy, she has 90 days to do it legally and for free.

And please stop that rape red herring. The overwhelming majority of abortions are carried out as contraceptive methods.

You are being downvoted, and I don't know why. The majority of abortions are a result of people getting pregnant and not wanting a baby. And that's alright, there's nothing wrong with that.

I say this as someone that is 100% pro-abortion. If a woman wants to not have a baby, it's her body, and her right to decide. The discussion ends there.

Life is hard in the best of times. It must suck to be brought into a world where your mother doesn't even fucking want you around.

Moreover, it's probably preferable that people that make poor decisions regarding pregnancy opt themselves out of the gene pool.

Even so, you are deliberately dismissing rape victims that got pregnant[1], what is their recourse? Or do you just care about the rights of a fetus while it's in utero and then they're on their own as soon as they pop out?

[1]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

Nothing in your link contradicts the fact that the vast majority of abortions are not terminating rape-related pregnancies.

Maybe because that is not the argument I am trying to make?

> Even so, you are deliberately dismissing rape victims that got pregnant[1], what is their recourse?

To have the legally available and free abortion that is offered within the first 90 days of their rape?

I linked to a study exploring the numbers in the US states where abortion was banned, not referring to Italy here. My response was to the "rape victim red herring" which i find incredibly distasteful.

The fetus has different DNA from its mother, so it's not "her body".

If someone is morally opposed to abortion, they don’t need to have one. That’s where it should end, there’s no need to control the bodies of others due to a moral belief that other people don’t hold.

The whole point of the debate is that the fetus has no choice during an absorption, not some “moral” ground that you are imposing to someone else.

The fetus is inside of an adult human with a life they’re living. The decision is theirs to make, nobody else should have input, but unfortunately that isn’t the case in some places.

Someone having an abortion have zero effect on a person who is against abortion but has never met them. The anti-abortion person should mind their own business.

I don’t believe in god and think religion is generally harmful but I don’t go around campaigning to eliminate religious freedoms. I don’t tell religious people I think their beliefs are ridiculous, I keep it to myself.

Abortion wasn’t even an issue in the US until Atwater->Reagan realized there were a bunch of religious people they could manipulate into voting for the GOP by making abortion a wedge issue.

That is unfortunate, but the opposing view entitles a fetus to use of another persons body. This is something I am not entitled to, even if a blood transfusion, marrow transplant, or organ donation would save my life with certainty.

That wasn’t really my question, was it?

As other commenter said, control over women. But this is not just some desperate attempt, but a way to get back to the roots.

There are several aspects to this. One is control over women. Another is panic over the idea that other people with darker skin tone might overrun us with their reproductive might; either by mating like rabbits, or straight up stealing our our women. (They’re ours, right? Riight?) Also, the Book said something like "Be fruitful and multiply".

The weird thing about Great Replacement bullshit, is how it manages to mix superiority complex with inferiority complex. Like viewing oneself as less attractive than the "inferior" brother accros the street, or believing in the superiority of one’s culture, and in natural selection, and be afraid of being overrun by an "inferior" one…

Controlling reproduction means controlling women. Controlling women seems to be a high priority for crotchety old men. But that doesn't really answer your question, it just rephrases it.

I think it is like anorexia. Someone who has no control over their own lives tries to control the few things they can. An anorexic controls their food, but a married man controls his wife and kids. It makes even the weakest person feel strong to have someone to boss around.

> Controlling reproduction means controlling women. Controlling women seems to be a high priority for crotchety old men.

You ignore that so many leading anti-abortion activists are women. I think for example of Joanna Howe, [0] who is arguably the most prominent activist against abortion rights in contemporary Australia-and far from some “crotchety old man”, she is a 43 year old law professor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Howe

I don't think you need an analogy like that to explain why people want to control women. They want to control women for the same reason they want to control men. Is it any mystery why people seek power? Those with power can decide how to distribute the resources of the society in a way that preferences them and their inner circle.

Access to reproduction is one of the most basic resources a society has available. It is common for the old men to control the young men by being the ones to decide who gets access to women. "Work for us loyally, and we'll allow you to get married"

I don't think they are trying to control men. I'm not seeing any evidence of that. When I see a law that attacks women, it is very clearly targeted towards women, but I don't see anything that clearly targets men.

Controlling women means controlling men. The most basic way to do that is by controlling who is allowed to get married. Attacks against the reproductive rights of women are caused by a desire to avoid "side channels" by which a couple could avoid passing through the systems established to control marriage.

Society became much more complex than a tribal village where the elders decide everything, and so have the levels of indirection in how control of reproduction is wielded. The situation is also quite a bit more complicated now that populations are able to grow so far above the local carrying capacity of the land. Yet we can still trace a line back to when it was necessary for a community to collectively maintain the sustainability of their population by deciding how many children could be supported at any one time.

> When I see a law that attacks women, it is very clearly targeted towards women, but I don't see anything that clearly targets men.

Drafts? They typically only targeted men, with a large possibility of maiming or death as the result.

"After you get back from the war, your reward will be a wife and household."

> Access to reproduction is one of the most basic resources a society has available.

The topic is not access to reproduction. Nobody is controlling access to pregnancy.

> the ones to decide who gets access to women.

Nor is access to women.

> crotchety old men

Such as Giorgia Meloni?

I don't know what is going on in Italy, but that's why we are doing it in America.

Oh, a post about Italy. Let's take this opportunity to talk about America :-D

I zeroed in on khalic's mention of "far right populism" which I thought was a universal term, but skrebbel made it sound like that doesn't apply to Italy (but I still think it does), so I clarified.

The first thing she did in office was a order to be called "il signor presidente", masculine of the correct "la signora presidente". She's not an old man but behaves as such and the fascist side of her support is strongly misogynist.

This is the kind of rational you arrive to, if you spend too much time in feminist circles and never bother to actually try to understand the other side. I can assure you that nobody thinks in terms of "controlling women".

The worse the experience of working life gets, the more important an idealized family life becomes for many downwardly mobile or precarious people. Most people's family lives cannot actually live up to this fantasy, so scapegoats - gender non-conforming people, feminists, immigrants - are required to deal with the cognitive dissonance.

So, providing information on how to carry out abortion after the 1st trimester in a country where abortion in the first 90 days is legal and free is not the disturbing part to you… it’s trying to prevent abortions after those 90 days.

I believe there’s something very wrong with your moral compass, pal.

the question was why do far right populists care so much about genitals and reproduction, nothing to do with whatever you are saying here

Reproductive control undermines most right-wing ideologies; outlawing it patches up the cracks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder,_K%C3%BCche,_Kirche

And in the US [1,2]:

2016 election: Approximately 39% to 42% of female voters cast their ballots for Trump.

2020 election: Approximately 44% of female voters cast their ballots for Trump.

2024 election: Approximately 46% of female voters cast their ballots for Trump

Like it or not -- and make no mistake, I don't like it -- many women want this.

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1: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...

2: https://www.cfr.org/articles/women-voters-pivotal-role-elect...

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