Supreme Court strikes down restrictive Louisiana abortion law

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Why would you construe that as a punishment? It is a biological process. Are we punished because we will likely all defecate today?

How do we determine which normal processes are punishments?

Wait, in the US you can defecate wherever you want? No consequences?
In the street?
In a public building?
In a restaurant on the floor?

Because in most countries that biological process IS regulated and you get punished if you don't obey the regulations.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Wait, in the US you can defecate wherever you want? No consequences?
In the street?
In a public building?
In a restaurant on the floor?

Because in most countries that biological process IS regulated and you get punished if you don't obey the regulations.

EXACTLY! The punishment comes from the violation of the regulation. The punishment isn't the regulation itself.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

EXACTLY! The punishment comes from the violation of the regulation. The punishment isn't the regulation itself.

Which is why there should be a regulation that lets women choose what they want, supported by the state.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Which is why there should be a regulation that lets women choose what they want, supported by the state.

It seems everyone posting here agrees with that. I think it is clear anti abortion laws are rights violations

 

[Ziggurat]

Its a little bit more complex than you are really letting on.

*I'm* the one oversimplifying this? Not the people saying abortion opponents all want to punish women?

Yeah, no.

 

[catsmate]

If a person was prevented from getting treatment for lung cancer because they had been a smoker by politicians that were anti-smoking, all on the basis that Lung Cancer is a biological process, would you insist that wasn't a punishment too?

I wonder how many women are resident "libertarian" anti-abortion fanatics would prefer to let die....

 

[catsmate]

That's often not true. The push for birth control pills to be available OTC has been coming from Republicans, not Democrats.

Really? The only congressional bills have been introduced by Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ami Bera, Patty Murray and Katie Hill.
A few Republicans have supported these efforts, with restrictions on age availability, cost et cetera.

But then why Trump and his cronies are going after the affordable birth control
elements of ACA and this "support" is part of that attempt to deny healthcare.

 

[Ziggurat]

Really?

Yes, really. You seem to have forgotten the claim I was responding to.

Of course it is. We know that the pro-life cause is being pushed by the right wing fundamentalist religious because they see sex outside of marriage as a sin (heck half of them see sex that's not for procreation to be a sin) and want to use the law to force people into following their form of morality. If it wasn't then we'd see the same people protesting against abortion also pushing for birth control, and... oh yeah, they're not the ones pushing for birth control, they are the ones protesting that too.

The Catholic Church's position is to oppose abortion and all artificial birth control. Even there, though, it's a straw man to say that they oppose abortion to "push" people into their conception of sexual morality. They oppose abortion for married couples too, for example, even when they are already following the church's conception of sexual morality. For them, it really is about the sanctity of the fetus's life.

But more directly in terms of what I said before, the fact that some abortion opponents also oppose birth control does not mean, and never meant, that all opposition (even religiously based opposition) to abortion is coupled to opposition to birth control. That was an absurd claim from the start. One counter-example suffices to disprove it, but you're being willfully blind if you think that this is the only counter-example.

As Segnosaur said (but failed to appreciate himself), it's more complex than that.

 

[Segnosaur]

*I'm* the one oversimplifying this?

Yes you are.

Not the people saying abortion opponents all want to punish women?

Nope. Because if a pregnancy is unwanted for whatever reason, there is no rational, logical reason access to abortion should be denied. It is better financially and socially for the woman (not to mention cheaper for society), it causes less pain, and causes less risk for the mother. Plus, there's the whole "personal rights" thing going on.

Anti-abortionists want a course of action that will cause women to suffer both physically and emotionally.

And while you may try to claim "Oh, look at the republicans who are pro-birth control", the fact is republican policies (when taken as a whole) will make birth control harder to obtain for many women (even if it is made available over-the-counter). Not to mention the fact that no birth control is 100% effective, so if republicans have their way women will still be forced to suffer economically and physically.

Now, Republicans may claim "We don't want to punish women.... we just want to protect babies", but in the vast majority of cases, the desire to protect babies comes from supposed instructions from an invisible sky-daddy.

Sp, claiming anti-abortionists want to "punish all women" is a simplification that works because, well, that's pretty much what's happening.

By the way, I notice you totally ignored several of the key points I made:
- That your claim that "only republicans are pushing for over-the-counter birth control" is wrong... some democrats are also pushing for it
- That even if birth control is made available over-the-counter, it will be harder to get if republicans are successful in their attempts at health care reforms.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Yes you are.

Nope. Because if a pregnancy is unwanted for whatever reason, there is no rational, logical reason access to it should be denied. It is better financially and economically for the woman (not to mention cheaper for society), it causes less pain, and causes less risk for the mother. Plus, there's the whole "personal rights" thing going on.

Anti-abortionists want a course of action that will cause women to suffer both physically and emotionally.

You are presuming a consequentialist approach.

 

[Ziggurat]

Nope. Because if a pregnancy is unwanted for whatever reason, there is no rational, logical reason access to abortion should be denied. It is better financially and socially for the woman (not to mention cheaper for society), it causes less pain, and causes less risk for the mother.

Morality is never based on logic. It is always, at its foundation, axiomatic. If one of those axioms is that a fetus is a life worth protecting, then that is a reason to deny an abortion. You have assumed that a fetus is not a life worth protecting, but this is not a logical conclusion, it is also an axiom. Your axiom might be a layer or two down from that, but it's still going to rest on an axiom that isn't universally shared.

Plus, there's the whole "personal rights" thing going on.

Why do personal rights matter? That's not logical.

And I don't say that because I think they don't matter. I think they do matter. But the reason they matter is, again, axiomatic. The value of personal rights for everyone is an axiom I suspect we both largely share. But it's not so fundamentally different to think that these personal rights extend to the fetus as well.

Anti-abortionists want a course of action that will cause women to suffer both physically and emotionally.

And abortion rights want a course of action that will cause the fetus to suffer.

There is no easy way out of this problem. Neither side has any sort of monopoly on the claim of trying to act morally. And you're only preaching to the choir if you can't even acknowledge that.

 

[Segnosaur]

Nope. Because if a pregnancy is unwanted for whatever reason, there is no rational, logical reason access to abortion should be denied. It is better financially and socially for the woman (not to mention cheaper for society), it causes less pain, and causes less risk for the mother.

Morality is never based on logic.

Everything I pointed out above is based on actual facts. Numbers. Statistics.

Anti-abortionists want a course of action that will cause women to suffer both physically and emotionally.

And abortion rights want a course of action that will cause the fetus to suffer

Fetuses don't "Suffer". They don't have the neurological development to perceive "suffering". The suggestion that they are suffering is based largely on the belief in what certain christians think their invisible sky-daddy wants (who never actually gave clear instructions on abortion in the first place)

Again, you can argue all you want that "anti-abortionists don't want to punish women", but if their "morality" is based on such a shaky foundation as "this is what my invisible sky daddy wants", then their actions do reach the level of punishment for the women.

By the way, I notice you still haven't addressed the points I raised:
- That Democrats are just as active in pushing for over-the-counter birth control (despite your earlier claim, or should I say lie, that it was only the republicans who wanted that)
- That despite your claim of their being pro-birth control/anti-abortion republicans, that the republican health care plans would, if taken as a whole, make birth control less available to thousands/millions of women.

 

[Ziggurat]

Everything I pointed out above is based on actual facts. Numbers. Statistics.

That, plus unstated assumptions. Which is... kinda the point, which you keep missing.

Fetuses don't "Suffer". They don't have the neurological development to perceive "suffering".

That very much depends on the stage of development. An 8 month fetus certainly does. Again, ironic given your previous objection about oversimplifying things.

By the way, I notice you still haven't addressed the points I raised:

Because it's all tangential. None of it changes that PhantomWolf was wrong, a point you haven't addressed either.

 

[Lurch]

To lay down a useful axiom on the permissability of abortion outside the tenets of religion, do the answers to these two questions serve as a foundation?

1) At what point is a fetus viable outside the womb? (Let's be generous and iinclude all extraordinary care modern medicine can bring to bear.)

2) At what point is brain development sufficient to experience what we would term suffering?

Until a certain point at least, a fetus is more a parasite than an individual, utterly dependent on the mother (host). If its survival is tied inextricably to that of its mother, I see that the health of the mother is the sole concern. Period. And that includes mental health, and all the real or potential consequences that impact it.


If humanity were down do the last few dozen mating pairs, I could see taking all steps to outlaw conception and abortion. But we are instead a teeming plaque of well over 7 billion wrecking the planet. I should think millenia-old thinking and edicts could be overlooked for reasons of practical benefit at least.

To put this in terms of the religious (Christian) thinker... In the end, Sky Daddy himself performs more 'abortions' than do we. And the majority I wager involve women who do or might want to keep their baby. Why should Sky Daddy be so capricious and malicious as to do this, but withhold from his creation the ability to exercise the same act, for reasons of practicality? Is it fine that a mother suffer the loss of the future child she wants, yet wrong that a mother be rid of the one she would not want? It's hard to escape the conclusion that for at least one religion of the desert all women must suffer.

 

[Belz...]

Everything I pointed out above is based on actual facts. Numbers. Statistics.

Yes but the point is that without the emotional "axioms" that Ziggurat mentions you can't reach a conclusion. You need moral values for that. One can't just reach moral conclusions with logic or facts.

 

[Ziggurat]

To lay down a useful axiom on the permissability of abortion outside the tenets of religion, do the answers to these two questions serve as a foundation?

1) At what point is a fetus viable outside the womb? (Let's be generous and iinclude all extraordinary care modern medicine can bring to bear.)

2) At what point is brain development sufficient to experience what we would term suffering?

No, they don't really serve as a useful foundation. Whether or not those are even relevant questions is itself axiomatic. They may be the relevant questions for a lot of people, but not certainly not everyone.

 

[gabeygoat]

We were not talking about "complaining". If someone said complaining, I wouldn't have bothered. They used the word punishment. I wouldn't view a disease running it's course as punishment, either. Natural cause of death is an element of life.

C’mon, you’re not that dumb. Surely, you understand that withholding treatment would be a punishment

 

[BobTheCoward]

C’mon, you’re not that dumb. Surely, you understand that withholding treatment would be a punishment

It Is a prohibition applied to nearly everyone. The punishment is what would come from the response to violating the prohibition
To compare to another victimless crime, withholding access to marijuana is not a punishment. The punishment is the excessive incarceration for getting caught in possession

 

[gabeygoat]

It Is a prohibition applied to nearly everyone.

Nope. Let’s say it would apply only to say, 51 percent of the population.

 

[Ziggurat]

Nope. Let’s say it would apply only to say, 51 percent of the population.

No, he's right. Men would be prohibited from having abortions too. It may be a prohibition that's only relevant to ~51% of the population, but the restriction still applies to all regardless. As the quote goes, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."