Just to add to my previous notes, I've read a whole lot of pieces this weekend about how terrible Sam Alito's opinion in Dobbs is; about the misogyny of conservatives; about their ignorance of history; about the Court's lack of democratic legitimacy; about all the other rights that are certain to fall now that Roe is toast; and about bodily autonomy and how it is so in the Constitution.
I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, but what's striking to me is how bad all these columns and essays and think pieces have been. I'm not sure I've read a single one that I'd call lucid or persuasive—and that's despite the fact that my personal view of abortion is about as extreme as it's possible to have.¹
We liberals really need to get our act together. How is it that after 50 years we're apparently still not able to defend abortion in any kind of simple, convincing way that appeals to anyone who's not already on our side?
¹I'm not in favor of any limits on abortion aside from the ordinary regulation applied to any outpatient surgical procedure. In the non-surgical arena, if I had my way abortion pills would be sold over the counter. Nor do I think abortion should be a "difficult" or "agonizing" choice. A fetus isn't a human life and deserves no more legal consideration than your tonsils.² I recognize, of course, that many people disagree with me.
²This is key, and it's a demonstration of the immense polarity in our political life. Conservatives talk endlessly about how abortion snuffs out a human life. That's the whole magilla. But if you read only among liberals, you might not even know this is an issue. We simply don't talk about it.
Why? I don't know how it polls or what effect it has on most people, but it has to be addressed if we want to win the war for public opinion. There are just too many people who care about this and need to hear simple, convincing arguments that a fetus isn't a human life in any reasonable sense of the term. We're cowards if we aren't willing to take that on.
Haven't seen much from the pundit class yet, but the IV-F people I know are incandescent with rage about this. It cuts them off from having a child, or another child. Given all they've already gone through, they aren't the type of people who back down easily.
When they start showing up at townhalls and constituency meetings, you'll know it.
"It cuts them off from having a child, or another child"
Well, see, the increased "domestic supply of infants" should address that. Everybody gets a white baby, now!
It’s mostly black women who get abortions, so I agree with the above except amended to a black baby
How do you defeat an argument, position, which is solely based on faith alone? It's not that,"Liberals", whatever that means, haven't been defending their position, it's just that you can't have a reasonable nor logical discussion when the other party is basing their position on faith.
I have a couple friends that are atheists and pro-life. You could try persuade them.
Elevate other faiths. A lot of Jewish people apparently believe that the life of the mother is paramount, and that includes her mental state too, so they’re suing now in Florida for religious exemptions to bans on abortion. Why should Catholics and evangelicals be the only religious view on abortion that we consider?
Well, one place to start would be to try understanding that plenty of people think the idea that the full value of a baby’s life is present immediately or quite soon after it is conceived, is not “solely based on faith”.
Most people are not caricatures.
So what else is it based on?
The Bible tells us we shouldn’t steal. But I don’t think everyone who is against stealing is against it solely based on faith. I assume most atheists are also against stealing.
Yea folks believe a bunch of cells is more important than the woman who is now involuntarily being forced to be the host for the parasite. Yes it's "real people" but primarily fall into three categories:
Men - well duh, they want to control women.
Older Women past childbearing years - they want men to control women
Teens & Collage students - mostly virgins who still haven't broken free of the cult they are in.
I figured it out in my teenage years -- the obsession about abortion that was being hammered into me by my Church and HS was a crock of you know what mean to keep me in control as a handmaiden to a man. Oh heck no. Ran far away from that and never looked back.
It is not a simple matter. It is theoretically a valid moral position that life begins at conception - there is nothing in science or religion that negates this (or in Judeo-Christian religion that posits it). It is also a reasonable legal argument that Roe was too much of a stretch in establishing a Constitutional right. There is no decisive argument against these positions - it is just a clash of opinions and values. Liberals typically do not face up to these theoretical positions squarely. To his credit, Kevin has put his finger on the beginning of life question.
Of course in the real world there is great hypocrisy in several aspects of the Republican's arguments and actions, and they obviously lied in confirmation hearings. They have rewritten the Constitution in other ways and overriden the will of the people (Congress) in many decisions. Republicans obviously do not believe in the sanctity of life in other contexts. It has devolved into a partisan and not a moral or legal battle and much of the dispute is on things secondary to the basic moral and legal questions in the first paragraph. As I keep saying, the issue is irresistible to Republicans because it allows them to characterize their partisan opponents as murderers. But making this accusation in campaigns is probably more than most politicians are willing to do.
+1 for the first paragraph
And I agree with part of your second paragraph. As a Catholic, I am anti-abortion and against the death penalty. But, admittedly, there are many republicans that are anti-abortion but are pro-death penalty.
There are many Catholics who are anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. There are many Catholics who are pro-choice.
America is not a Roman Catholic theocracy. Any argument for government control of reproductive choice that is based on papal teaching is a violation of the 1st Amendment.
Life begins with mitosis.
Well, yes, and you have actually demonstrated the problem of talking about when "life" begins.
I mean, a living human egg and a living human sperm fuse to form a living human zygote, which is a living human cell. And then it divides, creating more living cells.
The question is when does a developing human become entitled to the full protection of the law, or become a compelling interest of the state, etc.
In other words, when does a developing human gain legal significance.
Hard question. It's not a scientific question or a religious question, though it can and should be informed by both.
Biologically, there is not a defined line. As a developmental biologist, I'm 100% comfortable with the idea that a developing human is NOT legally significant for the first trimester, and is quite legally significant (but, see below...) for the last trimester. The second trimester is more diffuse scientifically, and that is where thoughtful moral, ethical, legal, and sure, religious ideas come into play.
Oh by the way it is not lost on me that this discussion was had.....back.....when....Roe was originally decided. So fuck you Sam Alito. Anyway...
Anyway, we shy away from a full-throated defense of this idea. I thin that is what Kevin is getting at and is frustrated by.
For the moment I will avoid dealing with the second trimester, which is bad of me I know. I'm sorry.
The third trimester is more interesting, though. A lot of people see banning late term abortions as the moderate position. I do not. There are exceptionally few late term abortions. Conservatives have invented "prom dress girl", you know, the white girl from the burbs who "kills her baby" two weeks before it's due so that she can fit into a prom dress (btw this myth would never have been invented by anyone who has ever tried to get their body to do any damn normal thing soon after carrying a human baby nearly to term, but, whatever). But as far as we can tall "prom dress girl
doesn't exist.
You know who has third trimester abortions? Women who learn that their unborn child doesn't have a forebrain or will not live more than a day or a week or a year because of some absolutely horrible disease. Or a women who is herself very ill and can not carry the baby to term, and the baby is not far enough along to survive birth.
So while I think that a late term developing human does have legal status, you know who has MORE legal status? The woman developing the developing human in.....her....body. Which means if there is a conflict, not about, you know, fitting into prom dresses, but like, life and health, or if there is a medical diagnosis for a short life of pain, suffering, and expensive critical care for the developing human, well, come on. This is not hard to defend. We need to defend it.
The phrase "valid moral position" is doing all the work in that second sentence. Who determines validity? By what definition of morality? Not to go all Godwin, but the Nazis argued that exterminating all post-born Jews, Gypsies and physically/mentally impaired people was "moral."
There is no scientific basis for saying that human life begins at conception. The sperm and egg are both human and alive prior to conception. Without implantation, the conceptus dies, so why not the moment of implantation? The scientific reality is that while our somatic lives end, human life is biologically immortal through the germ line. Explaining that to the lay public is hard, but I don't see how imposing the religious views of a minority of Americans is a valid substitute in a democracy.
Here’s those states’ “ valid moral position” . States with toughest restrictions do the least to take care of the mothers and children they already have. Surprised?
Agree with all of this. (And to Kevin's point, see comment right above yours by one "RAB" that just shrieks "FAITH" without any notion of what that is, or how it relates to this issue.)
"there is nothing in science or religion that negates this (or in Judeo-Christian religion that posits it)."
Now, perhaps, at least to evangelicals.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/
" For example, one article by a professor from Dallas Theological Seminary criticized the Roman Catholic position on abortion as unbiblical. Jonathan Dudley quotes from the article in his book Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics. Keep in mind that this is from a conservative evangelical seminary professor, writing in Billy Graham’s magazine for editor Harold Lindsell:
'God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: “If a man kills any human life he will be put to death” (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22-24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense. … Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.'
Christianity Today would not publish that article in 2012. They might not even let you write that in comments on their website. If you applied for a job in 2012 with Christianity Today or Dallas Theological Seminary and they found out that you had written something like that, ever, you would not be hired."
What happened was that right wing activists realized that abolishing the income tax was much less emotive than "They're murdering babies!", and they've been driving that car ever since.
As for Catholics and the teaching authority of the church, that's been fading for years. Take your pick--this was probably the last straw in Ireland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Secours_Mother_and_Baby_Home
This may have done for Boston:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Francis_Law
Cardinal Malarkey:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_M._Dolan#Sexual_abuse_scandal
Go to an old Catholic cemetery and look for the Limbo section. It's the plot devoted to the burial of infants who died before they were baptized. The teaching then was that while their souls were not damned, they could never enter Heaven--they went to Limbo, a place of lesser grace. They would never be reunited in Heaven with their faithful grieving parents. While that teaching was abandoned years ago, there was never a great announcement about that. It was up to the priests to tell the parents, and a good many of those parents were never told, but denied that spiritual comfort. because the Church never makes mistakes, and when it does, it never admits it.
Scum.
Most fertilized eggs never implant, or the implantation does not survive the next cycle. The women does not know she is pregnant. Even when a woman knows she is pregnant, 20% will end in miscarriages. Claiming they are "human" and entitled to the full rights would mean...what???
It’s hard to argue that the propensity of fetuses to die (or “terminate” if you prefer the sanitized word) makes this a valid argument against their status as alive
If infant mortality were 20% (after birth), still no one would argue you can deal with them in the Spartan way if you wish. Nevertheless if a baby dies in an accident it is tragic but doesn’t mean someone needs to be punished for it. It’s just a tragedy
An earl stage fetus is not a human, but rather a collection of DNA that constitutes the information necessary to construct a human. Burning a house down is not the same as burning the plans for a house.
In North Carolina, abortion pills are sold over the counter. In fact, the drive-through pharmacy lane at my CVS has a bunch of OTC stuff you can also pick up.
Prominently listed is Plan B.
Are you certain you aren't conflating contraceptives (eg Plan B) with medical abortion?
Plan B pills are not abortion pills. Plan B stops sperm from entering eggs, halting conception. Abortion pills cause fertilized eggs to dislodge from where they’ve implanted themselves on the uterus wall.
https://womenscenter.org/is-there-a-difference-between-plan-b-and-the-abortion-pill/
Right. Read one of my finance newsletter guys. Page after page of throat clearing, hem hawing, saying how icky it was....and he's an abortion supporter.
"Shit happens. Women need to be able to make a choice about what they want to do. They need to have all options available. The end."
See? It's not that hard.
National stories about how a 12 year-old girl was forced to give birth to her brother might cut through the fog, Kevin. I'm not sure at this point "liberals" need to mount convincing arguments. Real life and actual events may take care of this part.
This. As women get arrested and tried for murder after taking the abortion pills and other women die from self-induced abortions, the steady drip of government-induced contempt for female life will do the work.
This isn't about zygotic, embryonic or fetal life. This isn't about when life begins. This is about controlling women, full stop.
So agree with your second para...the anti-abortion movement is the hill that the patriarchs chose to die on.
Eventually the steady drip of awful news stories of women having to give birth to their rapists babies, some of which are their own siblings, give birth to dead fetuses and dying themselves during difficult pregnancies will lead the country to do what the Irish did, and vote to legalize abortion (either through referenda or through their legislators).
Of course, that’ll take years/decades to come to fruition. And in the meantime, the GOP might just do away with elections (probably by rendering them useless like Hungary did, but maybe just going full autocracy and eliminating them entirely).
Missing the forest for the trees?
This isn't specifically about abortion; it's about the Conservative Project™ slowly slicing away at norms and what was thought as fundamental. It's a rebranding operation, a STUXNET of the mind, to mislead, obfuscate, to entrance one with rage, while the world burns - with bombs, carbon dioxide, and with the desire for a full bank account.
Because now the dog has the car, what to do? The unthinkable.
True. The reason to oppose abortion was so they could call their opponents "baby killers!". And to hide behind that while doing things that are, for lack of a better word, evil.
The thing I don't understand is why liberals focus so much on the family planning aspect of abortion politics. It's a distraction. To me, the reason women should have access to abortions is that pregnancy and childbirth are immensely risky. Any woman should have the legal right to opt out of undergoing pregnancy and childbirth if she doesn't want to undergo pregnancy and childbirth. This seems like a pretty easily defensible position.
Yep. Forced pregnancy. That's what the focus should be on. And if we're being honest, more than a few rationally self-interested male voters also have a dog in this hunt, given the existence of child support laws.
If you think childbirth is dangerous for the mother, think how hard an abortion is for the baby.
Do you honestly think the "baby" experiences hardship during an abortion procedure?
I think it dies. A life, that is sacred, is extinguished.
What do you think the penalty should be for taking this “sacred life”? Death? Life imprisonment?
Whatever manslaughter charges are in that state. What do you think they should be?
So you think hundreds of thousands of women deserve to be imprisoned each year? You must have stock in a company that builds prisons.
As you know, I don’t think abortion should be illegal at all.
I don’t think there’s going to hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions every year. But I never said imprison the mother. I was referring to the doctors.
But wouldn't the mother be an accessory to murder? Why shouldn't she also be punished -- according to your logic?
Maybe she should be.
There were hundreds of thousands of illegal abortions per year prior to Roe. Your indication that you don’t think the woman should be prosecuted is inconsistent with your belief that an abortion is the termination of life. If I hire a hit man to kill someone I’m guilty of murder. If a woman hires a person to abort what you consider to be a baby how is that different? Most abortions these days are by pill. What penalties to you propose for that and for whom? Careful now with your response. If you think the manufacturer or the person who sold the pill then you would have to agree that gun manufactures and bullet salespeople should be prosecuted for manslaughter and not the person who pulled the trigger (at least if you wanted to be consistent in your beliefs.)
I assume it would vary by state. It’s up to the states to legislate, right?
Kind of a cowardly answer Atticus. Surely you have an opinion. Do you think a life is taken or not? If you think it’s ok for the “penalty” to be a $5 fine then you must not actually think so.
Won’t let me reply to your last comment so will reply to this one. You’re right it was a cowardly answer. (Although it was given more out of lack of time than cowardice.) The truth is, I don’t have all the answers, even to questions about how I feel and what I think the law should be. I can say I’m generally “pro-life” but not to the extant of some on the far right. I think there should be exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. I understand to some people that is contrary to my stated position that life (including the unborn) is sacred. As far as prosecuting women and doctors in states that have outlawed abortion, I guess my opinion is still forming and evolving. I don’t want women being tracked down and thrown jail. But I also think there should be a way to enforce the law.
Your Flying Spaghetti Monster is a myth. Just look at the Universe. Largish galaxies like ours have a couple of hundred billion stars in them. There are some 10,000 galaxies visible in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.....and seven Milky Way galaxy "local" stars in the foreground. 10K divided by seven rounds to 1,000 galaxies per star in the Milky Way galaxy.
Gosh, that's a REALLY big number.
So your FSM is "running the show" for that enormous space-time continuum. I guess It uses some high density quantum entanglement thingy to "express Its Will" in functional real-time.
Yes, I said "It" and "Its". If you were God you wouldn't have anybody to screw, so no need for a Holy Whanger. Though I guess Yahweh took a shine to the BVM and gave her The Business. At least, that's the tale, taken straight from Ovid.
I guess we’ll both find out some point.
BTW, your hatred of religion is a prime example of why Trump won in 2016.
Many or most human conceptions fail. In most of those cases, the women never even knows. God is the greatest abortionist of all time. How is that "sacred?"
Exactly. If God didn’t terminate the pregnancy who are we to terminate it?
Matthew 4:7
God gave us the intelligence to figure out how to manage our own reproductive choices. Don't expect God to come in and take care of you.
If life is so scared why are there so many dead babies buried at Catholic Indian Schools and Magdalene Laundries in Ireland?
The church doesn't care about life, it's only about controlling the souls and making more souls to control.
The sooner you figure this out the sooner you can escape the cult like so many of us have.
I wasn’t Catholic growing up. I went through RCIA and joined as an adult.
“… think how hard an abortion is for the baby.“
Why would they let a baby in the room? Mom’s gotta find a babysitter before going to the healthcare clinic.
And there is the schism.
The 13th Amendment ended "involuntary servitide." Yet we now have a class of citizens who are effectively enslaved by their respective states until they give birth. In addition, Alito's finding no mention of a right to abortion in the Constitution completely overlooks the 9th Amendment. Rights are reserved to the PEOPLE, not the states.
Alito's reasoning is specious. The practical results of Dobbs will, I hope, be the undoing of the Conservative Project.
In terms of constitutional law, it’s a pretty sound argument. Roe was not a great decision (except if you’re mostly concerned with practicality and the end result). Even RBG agreed it was a pretty astounding stretch of argument
Not every dispute will be resolved by our founding document, why would it be? It’s like 10 pages long (and half is about term limits and court appointments and electoral college stuff), that’s like expecting all of Christian theology to be detailed in the first 10 pages of the Bible. The gaps get filled by the other tens of thousands of pages of federal, state, and local law
I’d much prefer the democratic process for dealing with political disputes like this. Less contentious and less prone to being similarly reversed in an undemocratic way (wink wink). I firmly believe if not for Roe and the hope it gave to Republicans for a reversal, we would have resolved this issue by now. Instead now the wound has festered for 50 years and we just took the bandaid off and saw the mess that’s been created
If we had a democratic process. We don't. Otherwise President Hillary Clinton would have fixed this before it got this bad.
This doesn’t seem odd to me:
“How is it that after 50 years we're apparently still not able to defend abortion in any kind of simple, convincing way that appeals to anyone who's not already on our side?”
Simple: we haven’t felt that we actually NEEDED to come up with that defense. Sure, we all knew in the abstract that the Supremes could gut Roe v Wade, but how many really thought they would do it?
I remember a talk I had with someone after the death of RBG. And I said something about how the new composition of the court might actually have the numbers to overturn Roe. But that’s the first time I remember considering that outcome as something that could actually happen.
There always seemed to be more important and pressing issues, so why focus on a constitutional right settled for 50 years?
Well, now we know. And, speaking for myself, I seem quite a bit more patient and sympathetic to the Dem response (over this weekend) than just about everyone else. Sure, their rhetoric needs to improve. But I simply assume that it will. Why? Because now we really DO need to think of an eloquent defense for abortion. Suddenly it really IS the defining emergency of our time. But this is a brave new world. And it may take time for everyone to adjust…
There are just too many people who care about this and need to hear simple, convincing arguments that a fetus isn't a human life in any reasonable sense of the term.
Maybe Kevin will be proven right on this. But I doubt it. I don't think you want to fight the political battle on the turf chosen by your opponent. IOW don't get into a theological debate or epistemological discussion on abortion.
Rather, just focus on the very real, very dire consequences of the Republican Party's current extremist position on reproductive rights, and how this position (and their successful court-packing) is now playing out in the real world. Keep the focus, in other words, on forced pregnancy (a concept that was mostly theoretical to many people before last week, but no longer is).
I dunno what Kevin's been reading but nothing I've seen "sucked at explaining" the issue. Leave me out of that broad-brushed "liberals" group, please and thank you.
Thank you megarajusticemachine - to be fair I always did think the hoary old chestnut "safe legal and rare" was a stupid slogan. Fortunately a lot of folks agreed and it was gone by this century.
Forced pregnancy is slavery.
It's that simple.
This X100
It's the woman's body, she gets to control it.
Needing any more explanation makes you a fascist.
No she doesn’t, if she intends to terminate the life inside her.
So, don't remove tumors from the body?
We have to be precise and explicit when discussing "life". One way is (as I've implied above) think of it as any growing tissue with human DNA. Other definitions range from that to various levels of structure and capability.
One way out from biological criteria is to bring in the notion of having a soul, which is an Iron Age concept that I'm not sure holds up well nowadays.
Why doesn’t it hold up? At what point do you think the soil enters the body? At birth?
What soul? The so-called "soul" only exists in the minds of certain religious sects. The US is supposed to be a secular representative democracy. Keep your Chrisitanist sharia "soul" to yourself.
The vast majority of this country is Christian and therefore thinks humans have souls. You are the radical outlier.
The vast majority of this country is non-Catholic. A clear majority support Roe. You are the radical outlier.
The vast majority of Christians once believed that the earth was at the center of the solar system.
Heh.
The biggest category of faith in the US today is "none" so you are very, very wrong.
https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/
Here is another link that proves you are wrong.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx
We each terminate life inside us every day. Each of the cells in our bodies are human and are alive, but they die, and sometimes we actively kill them (apoptosis, surgery). I terminated human life when I elected to have Mohs surgery. I terminated human life when I had prostate reduction surgery. Tonsilectomies, appendectomies, wart removal all terminate human life.
The decision to valorize the life of one cluster of cells in a female over any other cluster of cells in that female is purely religious. I get that you identify as Roman Catholic, but keep it to yourself.
You seem reasonably intelligent. I’m sure you can see the silliness of that argument.
I am a PhD geneticist who has authored or co-authored over 100 scientific articles that have collectively been cited by the scientific community over 8700 times. I've been a medical school professor for over 35 years and have done research and taught in genetics, cell biology and developmental biology.
I am the recipient of five of the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. I've been an altar boy and my boy scout troop was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. My wife and I are CYO success stories. I've worked at a Catholic university for 35 years.
But sure, go ahead and explain precisely what is silly about that argument. Take all the time you need.
Tonsils will never become a human.
Human tonsils are human, by definition. I’m sure you can see the silliness of that argument.
Also too, most conceptuses don't become a human. Your charge of silliness is simple projection.
I’m not sure what your point is. Tonsils are part of a human just like a pinky finger is part of a human. So what? No one is suggesting you can’t remove part of your body UNLESS it is a fetus which is/will be a complete human with its own pinky, tonsils, etc.
Abortion does not remove a woman's heart. Abortion removes a bit of replicating tissue that the woman has determined is unwanted.
You don't get the right to tell me what to do with my body period. Your Church never cared about this until the late 19th century. It's not a Catholic tradition, it's a newly (less the 150 years old) found con to generate more parishioners and keep women in check.
Yes, you’re right. That’s the goal of of the Church. To “keep women in check”. And you’re right I do t get to tell you what to do with you’re body. But it looks like your state legislature does.
A woman gets to control her own body, or you're a fascist who thinks you can control her body.
I don't give one fuck about "the life" inside of her, because it's HER body, not mine.
That's what makes me a non-fascist.
You wanting to control her body is what makes you a fascist.
The "law" is irrelevant to that, shitbag.
It really feels in my experience of politics of the last 20 years that dems/progressives/liberals have gotten steadily worse at describing their policies in a way that is attractive to anyone not already pretty convinced of liberal values.
Liberals keep trying to use reason and logic. The right uses emotion. Note how Atticus refers to any fertilized egg as a “baby”. Time to stop trying to bring a sound argument to a knife fight. Time to kick them in the balls.
Give Atticus credit for one thing. It does admit above that women should not be allowed to have dominion over their bodies. Difficult to get a statement that straight from any “anti abortion “ person.
Atticus is also anonymous. I wonder if he is so forthright with actual owners of uteruses in real life, including the ones he’s close to. I doubt it, anti abortion believers are generally cowards when it comes to the logical ends of their beliefs.
And Atticus has never presented any opinions that I have seen that reflected a humane or remotely sympathetic viewpoint. That individual seemed to accuse me of "not caring about the babies," & likely having aborted one myself.
For those of you who weren't overly concerned when "conservative" clergy, judges (!), & politicians were blaming females as young as kindergartner age for seducing adult males,* Barrett's casual assurance that forcing a woman to bear the offspring of her (unprosecuted, because never searched for) rapist brings back every moment of the fear, plus outrage.
For the men who appear to believe that all of their seed is more valuable to society than a woman's rights or even life, please think again.
Until/unless you know the pain &fear of someone breaking in at 1:30 AM, cracking your head against a corner wall, threatening to kill you, you don't have any moral right to govern a woman's response to:
The fear of being murdered
The fear of being infected with a potentially fatal disease
The fear of EITHER abortion or forced birth - neither of which at that time were legally or financially available to a single woman.
If I had been impregnated, my insurance would not have covered prenatal care, delivery, or post-deuvrry care. I would have lost my employment, home, & expected future (bad enough that my employer felt free to make this incident known to everyone in the office).
Have been having flashbacks for quite some time now, & wonder just how far the shameless "religious" minority can go in their vicious denial of women's rights to their bodies. It has been impossible to get all states to even automatically & promptly test rape kits, or even fingerprint the crime scenes.
And my horror at the calculated denial of abortion to victims of incest, raped children, as well as women whose lives are endangered by a pregnancy, is even greater.
For you see, I was "lucky." My visible scars lasted only the better part of a year.
* Some American men are as incapable of taking responsibility for their depraved treatment of females of all ages as the Taliban that they denounce. But blaming women asleep in their own homes is beyond the pale.
I don’t recall every accusing you of having had an abortion. And if you think I’m inhumane and unsympathetic I am sorry I’ve presented myself that way. I’m really not but I can see how if you only know me from some of my comments here it may seem that way.
I’m truly sorry for what happened to you previously. A nightmare that no one should have to endure and I hope you are able to find peace. For the record, I support the ability have abortions in the case of rape and invest and to save the life of the mother.
Your comment previously- something to the effect that made it sound as if I have no concern about " the babies" - seemed to be the result of your thinking that my view resulted from my having had an abortion.
While there is no way under heaven that I would feel obligated to carry the criminal's offspring nine months, there were no financial or legal options available, so I am grateful that there was no pregnancy, but hearing so many "religious" people stating that they think that pregnancy isn't common as a result of rape angers me for its total lack of compassion. As a result, I may have read too much into your earlier remark, so I apologize if that is the case.
It wasn't my plan to detail that part of my life, but a casual comment by a longtime friend about something having occurred "a long time ago" - combined with Alito's desire to base his decision on a particularly nasty man who lived centuries ago - made me relive it in nightmares. Maybe it's PTSD, but I've survived a lot of stuff here in the south & had thought myself to be tough.
So if I was overly sensitive & misjudged you as a result, I regret it & hope that you'll understand & forgive.
Kevin Drum's Jabberwocking deserves better than overling personal memories, no matter how adversely any woman feels about the self-righteous people who forget the people murdered by their advocates & those frightened by being surrounded & nearly losing an eye to a huge sign picturing a fetus- all because my husband's daughter & I were on our way to get a haircut.
@KawSunflower
I am truly sorry for the horror you experienced.
Saw this earlier and thought it was effective, and also not surprised it didn't get much traction during the 2020 season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP4lFtw0Hfo
Thank you. I had missed this one & am surprised that the rightwing didn't cite this as proof of Democrats' immorality- but guess that might be because it is effective.
In what alternative reality did liberals lose the war for public opinion? Every poll I've seen finds that hefty majorities of Americans support abortion being legal and oppose the reversal of Roe v Wade. Unless Kevin thinks liberals should somehow be able to persuade the religious right to abandon one of their core values, I've no idea what he's on about.
Just to quantify my point, this is from FiveThirtyEight:
These findings make it abundantly clear it's the religious right which has lost the war for public opinion. But they've won the war to stack the Supreme Court and control Republican Party policy, so they don't care about public opinion.
And worse- because they've taken over so many state legislatures by using many tactics to influence & control voting, the rightwing insistence that the states should decide, as if creating a "united" states of differing or no rights for half its citizens is acceptable, may prevail.
The people of my home state had no federal support when the southern advantage in Congress overturned the Missouri Compromise, replacing it with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. But the territorial residents refused to let invaders force them to accept slavery to join the union. It is no longer the source of true populist & progressive movements, but its women had the right to vote years before all US women did, & the state was the first to outlaw the KKK. We should have had some (not physical) fighting spirit about Roe long ago.
But i don't think that citizens of states should have to use extreme measures in the 21st century to ensure that Margaret Atwood's fiction doesn't come close to reality, in that women are seen as breeders to shore up the "European" ethnicity here.
I wonder how many people think it should be legal in at least some circumstances but should still be legislated by the states.
The polling cited by other posters tell you that beyond normal sane regulation of any other healthcare procedure most folks want the government to butt out by clear majorities.
Abortion is a different animal. Other health care procedures don’t intentionally extinguish a life.
I really truly cannot wait to read mr. Drum’s take on how you “defend abortion”. I disagree that there are a significant number of people just waiting for a good argument to believe that women are people. But we’ll see.
“Forced Pregnancy”?
A significant boost in poverty and misery?
An increase in women who die or suffer health declines from childbirth? (In some areas where the local government demands that residents not get decent healthcare, the risk to women is practically third world.)
Little girls giving birth to their brothers?
Here’s an important thing to remember, folks. So write this down:
They. Don’t. Care.
They already know what is about to happen. Couldn’t give a flying fig.
This is especially true with the religious cult and Trump fans like the congresswoman thanking Trump and the court for saving the white race. Those folks in particular just want more White people. They have no intention of taking care of them. (I’m Christian. And so many “Christians” never cease to amaze me with their insistence that they must do the opposite of what Jesus would want them to do.)
Which is why I hope that mr. Drum’s take isn’t just another opinion easily tossed aside with “They. Don’t. Care.”
My take is at least as lame as anyone else’s, so I’ll give it a shot. ….
In fact, you don’t “defend abortion.” If someone can be persuaded , what you tell them is that pro-choice supporters want to end abortions at least as much as they do. The argument isn’t over abortion. It’s over birth control. And it’s their refusal to support access to birth control that tips their hand on what they really are about. (That and the millions of embryos discarded by fertility clinics that they don’t care about.) But if they are sincere about stopping abortions, then they would support birth control. But I ain’t holding my breath.
KD: A fetus isn't a human life and deserves no more legal consideration than your tonsils
I'll take the opposite position: Tonsils are human life*, yet we have no qualms destroying them.
* It's got human DNA and is growing. What more do you need?
You really perceive zero difference between an organism and an organ?
I write this not to dunk on you or score a point, but rather to push back against what I perceive as bad advice on the part of Kevin. Don't get into theological or metaphysical debates with the right on abortion. That's exactly what they want, because it's very unlikely large numbers of up-for-grabs-voters can be persuaded a fetus has the same moral importance as a tumor or an appendix. And if Democrats don't use the overturning of Roe to their potlical advantage, then all really may be lost.
Don't fight the enemy on the battlefield of his choosing. America isn't a madrasa or a seminary. There are myriad, compelling seculuar arguments as to why enforced birth is terrible and monstrously unjust public policy, and there numerous real world (and frankly terrifying) examples demonstrating why. Democrats should be running commercials about woman who lost their lives because of inadequate reproductive care; or about girls who who forced to carry and give birth after being raped by adult relatives; and so on, and so forth.
Kevin's right, though, that liberals do suck about defending abortion rights. This very thread provides some good examples as to why.
"You really perceive zero difference between an organism and an organ?"
Nobody is saying there is zero difference. That's not the point. The point is that any difference doesn't explain why the state can't prevent a woman from having her tonsils removed but can prevent her from having an abortion.
Liberals may or may not suck at defending abortion rights, but the pro-forced birthers really suck at defending nanny state oversight of woman's reproduction. This very thread provides some good examples as to why.
Nobody is saying there is zero difference. That's not the point.
And my point is discuss angels on pinheads all you like (or tonsils vs zygotes). Just don't expect to win elections doing so.
The lurch of the judiciary to the right is a dangerous crisis. But if Republicans can be made to pay an unbearable political price, we might be all right, yet.
But that means Democrats beating Republicans more frequently than they've been doing lately. The most effective way to do so isn't to try and convince unpersuadable voters about the ethics or morality of abortion. Most of them have neither the inclination to listen to you on this score nor the background in the relevant disciplines. Rather, it's to point out the very real consequences to them personally of continued rule by Republicans. As terrible as the Dobbs decision was, it gives Democrats an opportunity to do just that.
Most people wouldn’t assume there is a need to differentiate between a fetus and tonsils. One will grow into a human with a soul.
I think the proper criteria for when replicating cells deserve to be considered a human should be based on form and function, Growing tissue (i.e. "life") is too broad a category to employ and makes no distinction between a blastocyst and a very late-stage, nearly-viable fetus. I think aborting the latter should be proscribed.
Form and function is where we are headed with end-of-life issues (e.g. Alzheimer's)), so why not also at the beginning?
+1
There is no formal difference between tonsil tissue and a blastocyst in terms of their function. Both are masses of diploid cells. Yes, tonsils are differentiated and blastocysts aren't, but that doesn't explain why one should be valorized over the other.
Apparently, some folks believe that the "function" of a blastocyst resides in its future potential to develop within the mother into a baby. Well, oocytes share that function, as to sperm.
Ascribing mystical properties like ensoulment to a zygote or embryo is a religious belief of certain Protestant and Catholic sects, it isn't a real thing that can be seen or measured. When we use such superstitions to justify government control of the reproductive autonomy of women, we turn the country over to Christianist Taliban,
Because in order to accrue individual Constitutional rights, you must be…uh, an individual? Like separate and distinct from another, which neither tonsils or fertilized eggs are
Of course, you know my belief: This is about women's rights.
That any government, local or federal, can selectively abrogate individual rights tied to a gender on the basis of a presumed rights of a fetus, that is granted selectively at best, is detestable and contrary to the concept of human rights.
The Declaration of Independence reads, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I think we can, from a historical perspective, understand this to really mean all men and not men and women -- as it was necessary to pass the 19th Amendment before women had the right to vote.
So I again say to you, this is about women's rights and this is why we need the ERA. All men and women were created equal, and therefore, the right of one cannot be subsumed or abrogated to a theoretical right to a fetus, when such a right was never explicitly granted in the Constitution.
Lol, ERA is whiney shit that means nothing.
The "civil rights" point of this is what I have talked about for months on this site. It's just not a women's rights issue. Yet, consistently, that is all that comes up.
I don't give a shit about civil rights part about some "kid". But I ain't no liberal. That is your problem.
To be frank, your viewpoint is about as helpful to this cause as "defund the police" was to the cause of police reform. The vast majority of people are viscerally uncomfortable with late term abortion for reasons that should not take much explaining. We need to focus on early term abortion and contraception or we're going to lose everything.
Folks are uncomfortable because the right has succeeded in falsifying the reasons why they occur, much like election disinfo an vaccine disinfo. Late term abortions occur for heartbreaking reasons, it's nobody's business but the woman, her medical providers and if she desires her partner.
We are all missing the point here.
We need more children
Gotta give gun lovers like Adam Lanza and Salvador Ramos a more target rich environment.
The Vatican put it bluntly:
"The Vatican hailed the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but said it is imperative that people who identify as “pro-life” also fight for critical life-protecting issues like gun control.
“Being for life always means defending it against the threat of firearms, which unfortunately have become a leading cause of death of children and adolescents in the U.S.,” the Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, chided Saturday in an essay.
“Pro-life” is not just about opposing abortion, he pointed out. Anti-abortion activists must be concerned with all issues that threaten life, such as easy access to guns, poverty and rising maternity mortality rates, which are alarmingly high in the U.S., Tornielli emphasized."
*********************************************************************
Christo fascism cannot be "limited" to protecting the lives of the unborn
Picking and choosing which lives to defend be they unborn or alive in a classroom is the height of hypocrisy.
It surprises me that Kevin thinks his own position is (1) extreme, and (2) the position that you must convince anyone of if you want to change their position. But opinion polling indicates that most people have settled on some middle position. I believe that liberal abortion policies can be made acceptable to most people in the middle, by admitting it's not simple and arguing for practicality, while arguing for extreme views gets you nowhere.
Most folks have not settled in the middle. There isn't a middle to have. Most folks are pro-choice but either are not given the correct question to articulate that or haven't done the mental exercise to realize they are because they haven't had to do so.
Well, Kevin Drum, they're louder & more lethal - & more willing to cheat & lie, not to mention ignoring even past church positions and science
Teh whole preo-life cult is a sham. Why?
As a lawyer, I can flat out say abortion is murder. First degree murder. This crime is punishable by death or life in prison in pretty much every state. The fact that the pro-life side is not seeking such penalties for women means that they think it is not really murder. Teh fetus MUST be something other than a person.
It's silly to say liberals suck at convincing the other side to drop a core belief. The only argument that gets any traction with anti-abortion folks is the one of personal freedom. Sure, we disagree with regard to when life begins, but I think there is some agreement that the government should not be making such personal decisions for anyone. Right after the decision came down I saw a jacked up pickup truck driving around flying huge Trump and Don't Tread on Me flags. Cognitive dissonance.
Kevin’s position isn’t extreme. You get to control your body.
I also think it’s strange how god seems to only fall on one side of an issue where if he didn’t want abortion he surely could have created us such that it would be impossible.
I will also add that the death penalty vs abortion is an interesting dichotomy between the two sides.
Alito stated there is no explicit right to an abortion, but that actually wasn’t even the central question posed by Roe. It was accepted that a woman had autonomy over her body under the Constitutional Right to Privacy, which umbrellas all sorts of rights not enumerated, but the main question was whether or not there was another individual right in conflict, which could justify State intervention. No one could accept that a fertilized egg accrued Constitutional rights, but no one could deny that a fetus days away from delivery wasn’t protected? Somewhere in between, so the central thesis of Roe is not about the woman’s right, it is about when thr fetus accrues rights because that allows the State to intervene. The first trimester does look at thr fetus as tonsils being removed; the second trimester, but the fetus does not have rights, but in the third, the court granted rights to fetus.
Alito never addressed this, but it was also main reason why court took it up in first place. They saw it could lead to 50 different definitions of a Constitutional being and 50 different definitions of murder. The Reps will helpfully demonstrate this be enacting definitions all over the map, which they will have to defend in court.
Best way to restore Roe? Make sure Dems have Presidency and Senate when Alito or Thomas dies. Roberts made clear he did not support overturning and would likely strike down any law before 12 weeks because he actually knows what Roe was really about
It's clear where this Court wants to go next: getting rid of same-sex marriage, and access to contraception. There are a number of thing that we could do to block them:
1 -- pass a Federal law guaranteeing access to contraceptive devices and drugs. My guess is that we could get to 60 votes in the Senate for that, and if not, make the Republicans filibuster it and then run on this issue in the fall.
2 -- pass a Federal law legalizing same sex marriage in all states.
3 -- use an executive order to offer space to abortion providers on Federal land. At a minimum, allow them to provide abortion pills, but I'd go for allowing full abortion services.
4 -- pass a law blocking law suits like those authorized by the Texas vigilante law.
Have every Democrat run on preserving access to abortion rights in the first trimester or to preserve the health or life of the pregnant woman, preserving access to contraception and preserving same-sex marriage. Make Republicans campaign against these thing -- they will lose the suburbs, and that's enough.
Every time a pro-life candidate goes out in public, he/she/they should be asked this question: If I were ever to be involved in one of those heartbreaking dilemmas over pregnancies involving rape, incest, or the health of the mother, please describe what in your medical, theological or philosophical background makes you more qualified to reach that decision than I am.
Even better, ask about discarded fertilized eggs for IVF, I mean if they have rights at conception that allows state intervention, what do they plan to do about that massacre?