America transitions into Gilead

[Beelzebuddy]

And will you pay her hospital bill and the cost of all her doctor's visits? And take responsibility for raising the child once it's born?

I could probably accept a law that banned abortions but did this, while funding an extensive overhaul and build-up of the foster care system to make it suck less. I mean, if society really thinks that zygote is a human being, it should be willing to make arrangements for its care, regardless of the inconvenience of the situation.

What would you want for your daughter if she were raped and impregnated by a black man?

Five bucks says every answer will boil down to "I'd raise my daughter better than that." Surely the leopards will eat the other people's faces first, right?

 

[phiwum]

At what point should a woman lose the rights over her own health, and reproduction?

Nimble isn't arguing that she ought to lose her rights, but that her rights are outweighed by other competing rights in this case.

It is common when one's right to X conflicts with another's right to Y. One way to analyze these situations is to ask which right is more important. If the right to Y is more significant than the right to X, then I still have the right to X, but this right does not determine what ought to be done. I don't lose the right to X, but it is not a right to deprive someone else of the more significant right to Y.

 

[phiwum]

Most of those legislators are lawyers. They can figure out what the laws actually say.

I was with you up until this point, honestly I was, but when you suggest competence on the part of state legislators, you just go too far.

 

[phiwum]

I missed your post. I apologize. But it seems Zooterkin was on the ball.

No apology necessary. You aren't required to respond to my posts, but I'm glad Zooterkin did so.

That said, your characterization of the Alabama law (bill?) regarding penalties for false reports of rape was hyperbolic. One can regard rape as a dreadfully serious problem and false reports of rape as also a serious problem in its effects if not its pervasiveness. In fact, this is my position. Rape charges ought to be taken very seriously and because this is so and because being charged with rape ought to be a life-changing circumstance, false charges ought also face serious consequences.

I am not arguing in favor of the Alabama legislation, however, because I don't know why existing laws against false charges are insufficient. The severity of the charge ought to matter, but one would hope that's already in the law. A rape charge may be special since the harm done by alleging rape goes beyond the consequences of the trial, but I don't see why this requires an additional law. A false murder allegation is pretty devastating to one's social standing too. Perhaps (likely) the Alabama legislators are grossly exaggerating the number of false rape allegations. In that case they should be condemned, but not for claiming rape isn't important, but for denying how often it happens and exaggerating how often a charge is false.

 

[phiwum]

Why do you group an unformed clump of cells and mentally retarded people together as though they're even remotely the same? Further why do you exclude animals? In other words what is the criteria you use to determine it's okay to kill this living thing but not this living thing?

This is obviously a question that everyone with an opinion on abortion must answer, not just the pro-life camp. Why, indeed, is the living thing before viability or birth or the second trimester or whatever okay to kill but the living thing after that not okay?

Nimble's going to have a hard time defending his admittedly speciesist position and even that doesn't really entail his position on abortion, but others need to realize that the onus isn't on him. We all share it, so long as we have an opinion.

I find the abortion question a tough nut. I tend to think that abortion is acceptable in most circumstances, but I also recognize that I don't have an argument that I find anywhere near satisfactory.

 

[BobTheCoward]

This is obviously a question that everyone with an opinion on abortion must answer, not just the pro-life camp. Why, indeed, is the living thing before viability or birth or the second trimester or whatever okay to kill but the living thing after that not okay?

Wow! Glad I don't have a position on this.

 

[Armitage72]

It's probably a bad sign when Pat Robertson says the Alabama law goes too far.

Televangelist Pat Robertson said he thinks Alabama went "too far" with a controversial abortion bill that could punish doctors who perform abortions with life in prison.

"I think Alabama has gone too far," he said Wednesday during an episode of "The 700 Club." "There's no exception for rape or incest. It's an extreme law and they want to challenge Roe v. Wade."

Of course, he seems to be saying that the problem is that it will be struck down by the Supreme Court, and they need to be more subtle if they want to overturn Roe v. Wade.

He continued: "But my humble view is that this is not the case we want to bring to the Supreme Court because I think this one will lose."

 

[Bikewer]

I presume that the lawmakers think that the despicable hussies who find themselves pregnant out of wedlock should have listened to the "abstinence only" contraception advice in sex education and kept their knees together. Their pregnancy is just (and just) punishment for their wanton sinning.

Those who are victims of rape or incest should also consider what they did to stir such passion in the perpetrator and dress/act more modestly in the future.

I can’t recall the source, but the idea was that the “pro-life” movement was actually at heart an “anti-sex” movement.
That recreational sex was sinful, and that pregnancy was the “the wages of sin”.... The costs of bearing the child and raising it a form of punishment.

The whole notion of the fetus as a “person” is of course religiously informed... The notion that the fertilized egg is given it’s “soul” and is thus a person is completely informed by religion... And IMO has no place in any sort of legislation.

 

[Belz...]

Alabama passes total abortion ban. No exceptions.


Here. We. Go.

It's really amazing how backwards things are getting in the US as a whole. I though most Americans supported abortions, but I suppose the fear of 'white genocide' trumps all.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I can’t recall the source, but the idea was that the “pro-life” movement was actually at heart an “anti-sex” movement.
That recreational sex was sinful, and that pregnancy was the “the wages of sin”.... The costs of bearing the child and raising it a form of punishment.

That and that they found they had political power and they realized that keeping blacks out of their schools was not a long term issue. When Roe v Wage was ruled of course protestants even evangelicals didn't take a serious stand against abortion.

"But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism."

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

 

[Belz...]

It strips her of her "right" to kill the human being gestating inside her.

Sorry, the mass of human tissue. It becomes a "being" once you can take it out and it can breathe and live on its own, without its life support system.

 

[Belz...]

Allow me to put the 'E' in the (former) JREF:

While you're busy with that, look up the word "essentially".

 

[phiwum]

It's really amazing how backwards things are getting in the US as a whole. I though most Americans supported abortions, but I suppose the fear of 'white genocide' trumps all.

An uncharitable interpretation. The Bible Belt has never, I think, been in favor of abortion rights and you don't have to attribute this to racist beliefs. (There is a correlation, but I don't regard it as racism causing pro-life beliefs.)

 

[uke2se]

Why do you USAians insist on regressing when the rest of the world is progressing?

 

[Belz...]

An uncharitable interpretation. The Bible Belt has never, I think, been in favor of abortion rights and you don't have to attribute this to racist beliefs. (There is a correlation, but I don't regard it as racism causing pro-life beliefs.)

Oh, I don't attribute it to racist beliefs. I attribute it to supernatural beliefs, but the racist bit sure helps connect the dots.

 

[phiwum]

Oh, I don't attribute it to racist beliefs. I attribute it to supernatural beliefs, but the racist bit sure helps connect the dots.

I don't regard it as essentially a religious view, though many are motivated by religion.

It is a question about morality, specifically, who counts, morally speaking. One might come to conclude that the fetus counts because of a religious authority, but one might also conclude that the fetus counts for other reasons.

I don't regard a pro-life position as stupid, depending on the reasons for taking that position. I don't think that it is at all obvious that a fetus isn't the sort of thing that has a right to life. In order to determine that it doesn't, we need to ask a deep and hard question: what sorts of beings have such a right?

ETA: Just to be clear, a religious belief is not a good reason to make abortion illegal. We don't restrict the right to free speech so that one can't draw pictures of Mohammed. We shouldn't make abortion illegal because a majority of Alabama have the religious belief that abortion is wrong. That doesn't preclude other reasons for making it illegal, though the current interpretation of the Constitution precludes it. Personally, I never thought the actual reasoning in Roe v. Wade was persuasive, since I don't see how a right to privacy matters unless one determines that a fetus hasn't a right to life (legally, not morally, speaking). That's not to say that I disagree with the consequence, but the reasoning was bumfuzzling to me. It has, admittedly, been years since I read the opinion.

It's no good just saying this thing doesn't because it's just a bunch of cells. It's a bunch of cells that will develop into a thing that has a right to life. How and when does this thing get such a right, if not at conception? Without a decent answer to that question, dismissing abortion as obviously not like murder is unpersuasive. Saying that it's okay for the first two trimesters but not the third except in certain cases requires some argument why the first two trimesters are different than the third and why the third is different than immediately after birth.

 

[Belz...]

It is a question about morality, specifically, who counts, morally speaking. One might come to conclude that the fetus counts because of a religious authority, but one might also conclude that the fetus counts for other reasons.

Such as? The overwhelming majority of the pro-life argument stems from the belief that a Zygote has a soul. The rest is attempts to rationalise that.

 

[phiwum]

Such as? The overwhelming majority of the pro-life argument stems from the belief that a Zygote has a soul. The rest is attempts to rationalise that.

Such as the fact that we all agree the newborn has a right to life. Prior to conception, surely there is no such right. At the point of conception or some time shortly thereafter, there's an obvious change. We now have a thing that will naturally develop into a human. Some argue that a potential human has the same rights as a human.

There are good arguments against such a position. But such arguments fail to settle the question unless they are accompanied by a positive account of when a right to life is reasonably granted. I haven't seen any argument which I can say totally satisfies the question to my addled thinking.

It is fundamentally a moral, not religious, question, no matter how many folk defend their decision on religious grounds. We may disregard such appeals to (religious) authority since we reject the authority. Then we are left to ask how we ought to settle the question. Since I've not seen any obviously correct and undeniable solution, I won't say that a pro-life position is stupid, depending on the reasons for that position.

 

[Belz...]

Such as the fact that we all agree the newborn has a right to life. Prior to conception, surely there is no such right. At the point of conception or some time shortly thereafter, there's an obvious change. We now have a thing that will naturally develop into a human. Some argue that a potential human has the same rights as a human.

But what you're describing is the range of possible answers, not a list of answers not based on religious beliefs.

 

[ponderingturtle]

An uncharitable interpretation. The Bible Belt has never, I think, been in favor of abortion rights and you don't have to attribute this to racist beliefs. (There is a correlation, but I don't regard it as racism causing pro-life beliefs.)

I don't know the fundamentalists didn't care about abortion when Roe V Wade happened, so why would you think that they would have serious issues with abortion then? It was years later when they realized that fighting for segregation was a poor choice that they picked it. They just rewrote history like with the civil war.