Being anti-sex is nothing new in the Republican party. And it is always women's fault. It is their fault if they don't use birth control, it is their fault if they get pregnant, it is their fault that the children don't have participating fathers, and it is always their responsibility for having sex in the first place. Men have continually been let off the hook for any responsibility regarding sex.
History bears this out going back to unwed homes for women while the father's happily continued their lives. They have just come out and said it now.
I do recall, in 2015 during an interview, Trump said that women and doctors should be punished/jailed for abortions. When he was asked, what about the man/father of the baby, he responded that they did not need to punished.
The rape exception to abortion laws has always been a massive tell on their motivations. If a woman had consensual sex for pleasure then she's a "wh*re" who must be punished by being saddled with a child. But if she was raped then she's still spiritually pure and doesn't need to be punished. Why this distinction has any bearing on the rights of the unborn has never been satisfactorily explained to me, but it makes perfect sense if you see abortion laws first and foremost as a punishment for having sex.
That's true. Years ago I read a comment by a young man against abortion. "Women should have consequences for having sex." I guess this guy did need to worry about his having consequences.
The only morally-consistent pro-life position is to be against any rape exception. If one believes the fetus is a person and has a right to life how can the circumstances of its conception matter? How can you decide it's OK to "murder" it because of how it was conceived? Makes no sense.
That's why the dodge surrounding rape and incest is especially abhorrent. If women have autonomy in those horrific circumstances, how is it they can argue she doesn't in all other circumstances. Being a little bit 'pro-life' seems like being a little bit pregnant.
Now, taking a realpolitik view and acknowledging the conflict would be a fair thing to do, i.e. "I know the rape exception is wrong but we need it to get a law passed and since so few pregnancies are from rape it's better to take 90+% of a loaf than none".
But that's not what these people do. I don't recall ever reading anything like that. The pro-life people who are OK with a rape exception don't say that. They just say stuff like "well, we can't punish the mother in a case like that". Which as noted is completely morally-inconsistent.
Just a quick note, as I agree with what you've said. But 90%+ is very optimistic. Here's a PubMed journal article from the American Journal of Ob/Gyn that puts the number of rape-related pregnancies at 5% of all pregnancies. That would be 1 out of every 20 pregnancies. I just don't see how we can bring down the number of abortions without reducing the number of rapes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8765248/
In looking at the study, I'm not sure that's what the 5% means.
Not my area, so bear with an honest question around their statistics, but:
"The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year."
I think what that means is that a rape has a 5% chance of resulting in a pregnancy. For it to be rape-related being 5% of all pregnancies that 32,101 number they mention would mean that there are 642K pregnancies per year, but in the US we have approaching 4M births per year.
And that's not to prove or disprove any position on abortion, just making sure I understand the statistics correctly.
Oh, you're absolutely right. Here's a study I can better understand from the the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, and it puts the rate of rape-related pregnancy at 2.9%. "Almost 2.9 million U.S. women (2.4%) experienced rape-related pregnancy during their lifetime." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30361141/ I'm going to poke around and try to find out more. Thank you very much for pointing out my weak understanding of percentages!
Honestly... you can trace the crazy all the way back to the Puritans. They ruined Christianity. Seriously. They were extremists, misogynists, and more or less the original "white nationalists."
It's a shame that toxicity has grown such deep roots here.
They were also as intolerant as today's christian nationalists when it came to dissent over doctrine. That's why Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson ended up in what is now Rhode Island.
Not to defend the Puritans (because I won't), but they were pre-dated by things like the 30 years war, the Spanish Inquisition, and the whole foundation of western religion being based on the concept that women are lesser.
Yes, knowltok, those things all happened in Europe. But the Puritans brought their misogyny and racism and paranoia here, much to the horror of the native Americans (to this day). For some reason, the Catholics in those days, were largely discriminated against, like the Irish and Italians (again, I'm talking about here in America), even though they're basically "white".
Organized religions always break bad... especially fundamentalists of any religion. Literally any and every religion. IMHO.
Ah, gotcha. The Catholics were discriminated against since they were the minority and for most of the time the religion out of power in the mother country. I think you can trace that anti-Catholic bias right back to England. Catholics weren't to be trusted, and not until 1960 did we have a Catholic President. Even that took him swearing up and down that he wouldn't be taking orders from Rome.
"Organized religions always break bad... especially fundamentalists of any religion. Literally any and every religion. IMHO."
In their minds, her body isn't hers. It's the property of her father or husband. So -- a rape is a violation of her father's right to her purity when he sells her off to a husband -- or to the husband's right to her sexual exclusivity.
It's the same mentality of dudes at the bar who won't leave you alone until you tell them you have a boyfriend.
Few people in the pro-life movement believe such nonsense. And women dominate the pro-life movement. It is not a men v. women thing. Men in fact are more supportive of abortion rights, on average, than women.
Overall, both are supportive but women over men. I appreciate the correction. Still interested on where Paul got his info. Pew is a great source for objective information so it depends on where Paul’s stats (if he has any) comes from.
Do you have any stats on that, Paul, in terms of men’s support for abortion? Almost all the ardent pro-lifers I know are women. TBH, I kinda wish men would keep their opinions to themselves on the issue. As you’ve pointed out, most pro-lifers are women but men in politics and culture yak it up which is why the “men want to control women’s bodies” nonsense still gains traction. Men might, but pro-life women’s views at least are more complex. It’s actually rather dismissive to women that the pro-life viewpoint is reduced back to men’s desires.
Just anecdotally, my experience is that men are very much in favor of abortion and have been known to put pressure on to encourage it. How many men were on the SCOTUS who voted for Roe? Oh yeah, all of them.
There is no comparison between the understanding of abortion in 1973 and now. There was no organized pro-life movement, and fetuses were a scientific mystery. The Republican SCOTUS that decided Roe meant what it said, namely, if there was a right to privacy then abortion had to be legal.
I’ve never perceived men to be more anti-choice than women. They’re just more indifferent to what the right means for women.
I need to do a deep dive into the written opinions themselves to understand what drove each court to make the decision they did. It might be more complex then wanting to control (or not control) women’s bodies though. That particular argument doesn’t wash with me. It’s simplistic and leaves pro-life women out of the equation.
I admit I think the justices you mention are mostly partisan hacks. I’m very cynical about the overturning. I think it was an issue created and nurtured to gain a reliable voting block. You did notice they further gutted unions’ power before tackling abortion. How handy.
Now that it has been overturned, they’re free to go their pro-corporate, pro-wealthy, anti-people-power way. Look for more decisions which support reducing benefits and increasing private profit and power.
Not to disagree, but it isn't so much the selling of the daughter is it, but rather the price the father has to pay to get her supported? Dowries and all that?
I admit to not being fully versed in that stuff, because I've always rejected any of that stuff up to and including the idea that the woman's parents pay for the wedding.
Just look at the usual formulation: there's a lot of talk about the scourge of unwed mothers and never any mention of all the unwed fathers who were equal partners in that mix.
I guess it doesn't matter, just like Trump's many indiscretions don't matter, because they are firmly within the traditional patriarchal hierarchy. Single women are not, so they get all the venom. The idea that women have agency over their bodies and decisions is antithetical to everything these a**holes believe in, as does the notion that a single woman can cast a vote that counts the same as their superior, white male vote.
When people talk about a crisis of masculinity, this is what they mean. These guys are so insecure that the thought of a single woman having a political voice is absolutely terrifying to them.
But more seriously, when it comes to the GOP's views on women, do a little thought exercise. Imagine a woman with the same track record as Hershel Walker running as a Republican. Yeah, I can't either, and it says everything you'd not want to know about Republicans on that subject.
Being anti-sex is nothing new in the Republican party. And it is always women's fault. It is their fault if they don't use birth control, it is their fault if they get pregnant, it is their fault that the children don't have participating fathers, and it is always their responsibility for having sex in the first place. Men have continually been let off the hook for any responsibility regarding sex.
History bears this out going back to unwed homes for women while the father's happily continued their lives. They have just come out and said it now.
And the men are often not “on the hook”…
I do recall, in 2015 during an interview, Trump said that women and doctors should be punished/jailed for abortions. When he was asked, what about the man/father of the baby, he responded that they did not need to punished.
He was just an innocent bystander, then? Good grief!
The rape exception to abortion laws has always been a massive tell on their motivations. If a woman had consensual sex for pleasure then she's a "wh*re" who must be punished by being saddled with a child. But if she was raped then she's still spiritually pure and doesn't need to be punished. Why this distinction has any bearing on the rights of the unborn has never been satisfactorily explained to me, but it makes perfect sense if you see abortion laws first and foremost as a punishment for having sex.
That's true. Years ago I read a comment by a young man against abortion. "Women should have consequences for having sex." I guess this guy did need to worry about his having consequences.
Agreed.
The only morally-consistent pro-life position is to be against any rape exception. If one believes the fetus is a person and has a right to life how can the circumstances of its conception matter? How can you decide it's OK to "murder" it because of how it was conceived? Makes no sense.
I think your analysis has good explanatory power.
That's why the dodge surrounding rape and incest is especially abhorrent. If women have autonomy in those horrific circumstances, how is it they can argue she doesn't in all other circumstances. Being a little bit 'pro-life' seems like being a little bit pregnant.
In either case, it's nobody's business but hers.
Now, taking a realpolitik view and acknowledging the conflict would be a fair thing to do, i.e. "I know the rape exception is wrong but we need it to get a law passed and since so few pregnancies are from rape it's better to take 90+% of a loaf than none".
But that's not what these people do. I don't recall ever reading anything like that. The pro-life people who are OK with a rape exception don't say that. They just say stuff like "well, we can't punish the mother in a case like that". Which as noted is completely morally-inconsistent.
Just a quick note, as I agree with what you've said. But 90%+ is very optimistic. Here's a PubMed journal article from the American Journal of Ob/Gyn that puts the number of rape-related pregnancies at 5% of all pregnancies. That would be 1 out of every 20 pregnancies. I just don't see how we can bring down the number of abortions without reducing the number of rapes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8765248/
In looking at the study, I'm not sure that's what the 5% means.
Not my area, so bear with an honest question around their statistics, but:
"The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age (aged 12 to 45); among adult women an estimated 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year."
I think what that means is that a rape has a 5% chance of resulting in a pregnancy. For it to be rape-related being 5% of all pregnancies that 32,101 number they mention would mean that there are 642K pregnancies per year, but in the US we have approaching 4M births per year.
And that's not to prove or disprove any position on abortion, just making sure I understand the statistics correctly.
Oh, you're absolutely right. Here's a study I can better understand from the the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, and it puts the rate of rape-related pregnancy at 2.9%. "Almost 2.9 million U.S. women (2.4%) experienced rape-related pregnancy during their lifetime." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30361141/ I'm going to poke around and try to find out more. Thank you very much for pointing out my weak understanding of percentages!
Honestly... you can trace the crazy all the way back to the Puritans. They ruined Christianity. Seriously. They were extremists, misogynists, and more or less the original "white nationalists."
It's a shame that toxicity has grown such deep roots here.
They were also as intolerant as today's christian nationalists when it came to dissent over doctrine. That's why Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson ended up in what is now Rhode Island.
Not to defend the Puritans (because I won't), but they were pre-dated by things like the 30 years war, the Spanish Inquisition, and the whole foundation of western religion being based on the concept that women are lesser.
Yes, knowltok, those things all happened in Europe. But the Puritans brought their misogyny and racism and paranoia here, much to the horror of the native Americans (to this day). For some reason, the Catholics in those days, were largely discriminated against, like the Irish and Italians (again, I'm talking about here in America), even though they're basically "white".
Organized religions always break bad... especially fundamentalists of any religion. Literally any and every religion. IMHO.
Ah, gotcha. The Catholics were discriminated against since they were the minority and for most of the time the religion out of power in the mother country. I think you can trace that anti-Catholic bias right back to England. Catholics weren't to be trusted, and not until 1960 did we have a Catholic President. Even that took him swearing up and down that he wouldn't be taking orders from Rome.
"Organized religions always break bad... especially fundamentalists of any religion. Literally any and every religion. IMHO."
There we're in full agreement.
Where's the political/cultural equivalent of Roundup when you need it?
Perhaps it is a disease that spreads rapidly, is deadly enough to affect voting results, and has a vaccine that one side refuses.
Nah, no one would believe that.
Meeee-YOOOOOOW...I love that comment :-)
🤣
The idea that a woman only has the right to her bodily autonomy after it's already been violated is repulsive.
In their minds, her body isn't hers. It's the property of her father or husband. So -- a rape is a violation of her father's right to her purity when he sells her off to a husband -- or to the husband's right to her sexual exclusivity.
It's the same mentality of dudes at the bar who won't leave you alone until you tell them you have a boyfriend.
I've found a made up fiance is more effective than a boyfriend.
Few people in the pro-life movement believe such nonsense. And women dominate the pro-life movement. It is not a men v. women thing. Men in fact are more supportive of abortion rights, on average, than women.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/#h-views-on-abortion-by-gender-2022
Pew would seem to indicate otherwise on your second point.
Overall, both are supportive but women over men. I appreciate the correction. Still interested on where Paul got his info. Pew is a great source for objective information so it depends on where Paul’s stats (if he has any) comes from.
I'll second Mel's ask about the stats on men being more supportive of abortion rights.
Do you have any stats on that, Paul, in terms of men’s support for abortion? Almost all the ardent pro-lifers I know are women. TBH, I kinda wish men would keep their opinions to themselves on the issue. As you’ve pointed out, most pro-lifers are women but men in politics and culture yak it up which is why the “men want to control women’s bodies” nonsense still gains traction. Men might, but pro-life women’s views at least are more complex. It’s actually rather dismissive to women that the pro-life viewpoint is reduced back to men’s desires.
Just anecdotally, my experience is that men are very much in favor of abortion and have been known to put pressure on to encourage it. How many men were on the SCOTUS who voted for Roe? Oh yeah, all of them.
There is no comparison between the understanding of abortion in 1973 and now. There was no organized pro-life movement, and fetuses were a scientific mystery. The Republican SCOTUS that decided Roe meant what it said, namely, if there was a right to privacy then abortion had to be legal.
I’ve never perceived men to be more anti-choice than women. They’re just more indifferent to what the right means for women.
Like Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and John Roberts?
I guess Amy Coney Barrett is support for your position.
I need to do a deep dive into the written opinions themselves to understand what drove each court to make the decision they did. It might be more complex then wanting to control (or not control) women’s bodies though. That particular argument doesn’t wash with me. It’s simplistic and leaves pro-life women out of the equation.
I admit I think the justices you mention are mostly partisan hacks. I’m very cynical about the overturning. I think it was an issue created and nurtured to gain a reliable voting block. You did notice they further gutted unions’ power before tackling abortion. How handy.
Now that it has been overturned, they’re free to go their pro-corporate, pro-wealthy, anti-people-power way. Look for more decisions which support reducing benefits and increasing private profit and power.
Not to disagree, but it isn't so much the selling of the daughter is it, but rather the price the father has to pay to get her supported? Dowries and all that?
I admit to not being fully versed in that stuff, because I've always rejected any of that stuff up to and including the idea that the woman's parents pay for the wedding.
Right, but no one is going to take her if she's not "pure". So then the father is saddled with her. Damaged goods and all that.
Don't forget they are responsible for all those Incels out there too.
And for the associated rape culture. They're"asking for it."
Just look at the usual formulation: there's a lot of talk about the scourge of unwed mothers and never any mention of all the unwed fathers who were equal partners in that mix.
Ditto Musk.
To hear Steven Colbert tell it, they may represent a plurality of Georgia voters.
This is why Steven Colbert is a national treasure. 😂
I guess it doesn't matter, just like Trump's many indiscretions don't matter, because they are firmly within the traditional patriarchal hierarchy. Single women are not, so they get all the venom. The idea that women have agency over their bodies and decisions is antithetical to everything these a**holes believe in, as does the notion that a single woman can cast a vote that counts the same as their superior, white male vote.
When people talk about a crisis of masculinity, this is what they mean. These guys are so insecure that the thought of a single woman having a political voice is absolutely terrifying to them.
I wish I could ❤️ this comment 1000 times.
There ya go. We hear a lot of talk about his 'baby mamas'. Does anybody refer to him as a 'baby daddy'?
Probably dozens.
But more seriously, when it comes to the GOP's views on women, do a little thought exercise. Imagine a woman with the same track record as Hershel Walker running as a Republican. Yeah, I can't either, and it says everything you'd not want to know about Republicans on that subject.
He can’t count that high. (I’m assuming it’s 8-12.)