You still have the problem that by all accounts at least 40% of conservative and/or Republican women want abortion to be legal. My mother said that if she were ever raped, the first thing she would do is preemptively make sure any possible pregnancy would be terminated before she missed her period.
Your sincere position is I think not representative of that held by at least a major fraction of the political forces exploiting this issue on the Republican side. The last couple of decades' cascade of laws and agitation against abortion is (I think) at most half driven by moral concern for the human life of the fetus (or as perhaps you might prefer, unborn person) and at least half driven by the political benefit of riding the heat and anger of the issue to power. There is at least a powerful core of this group for whom ending abortion is a purely instrumental objective -- merely a horse to ride in order to get and keep power, absolute and permanent power if at all possible. Its effectiveness as a wedge issue leads me to suspect that total victory will not result in the horse being retired to pasture -- I don't see this ending with abortion being "left to the states."
Leaving it to the states is really no different from leaving it alone to the individual woman. (It does have the advantage of leaving abortion as an option for the rich and powerful, and protecting their privilege is of course always one of their goals). This wedge has been far too useful to allow the matter to drop as long as there is the slightest remnant of blood in the turnip. The canny farmer prosecutes the harvest until every last reachable fruit is stripped from the tree. The end of Roe leaves a lot of apples yet to be plucked,
That such efforts will begin the morning after the reversal of Roe seems inevitable. There may even be legal argument that abortion itself is already prohibited by the fourteenth amendment, but at the very least there will be a ginned up campaign for a constitutional amendment, and doubtless also efforts to introduce, and if like dogs unlucky enough to catch the cars they chase, actually enact, Federal legislation to restrict and prohibit abortion everywhere.
It is in the interest of at least part of the pro-life movement to keep the fight alive, because there is much of the larger agenda yet to be implemented.
I fear that the result will not be -- cannot be, given the full purposes of the anti-abortion coalition -- making it easier for us to move forward together. The whole purpose has been to cleave apart everyone in the middle and force them to join one gang or other.
It's unfortunate that those with sincere beliefs get swooped up into the machinations of those just interested in power. The near-term benefits of the deal are too hard to resist, I suppose.
Yes, he has advanced in his political development. At the outset he imagined that politicians must appear to have principles and beliefs about law and policy benefitting the whole citizenry.
In his middle years he thought it was better to keep any principles out of sight, and just display energy in favor of policies that benefitted only his target electorate.
Eventually he came to the full realization that not only was it inadvisable to display principles, it was actually beneficial to show that he had none at all; and further, that hurting people his voters did not like is far more effective than helping any voters, even his own.
70% of Americans do not want Roe overturned. But the GOP has gamed the system to allow themselves to hold minority power over the entire country. 70% agreement on anything today is more than just the middle.
And 90% of Americans have no idea what the holding of Roe is. 70% of the American public doesn't want second term abortion which Roe requires states allow.
It doesn't say that. Which is why you leave the issue to democratic institutions, i.e. state legislatures rather than pretend the Constitution says something it does not.
Fine. Then I DEMAND that a law be passed that ALL males 16 years old be MANDATED to get a vasectomy. Once they can prove to a tribunal that they can support their progeny THEN they can petition it be reversed.
It makes more sense since a female can only get pregnant about once a year but a male can impregnate any female he is intimate with.
Since the male can impregnate any female and a female, once pregnant can't get pregnant again until after the child is born, it stands to reason that the MALE is more dangerous and this law should be passed to stop abortions.
If that is your argument, where does the constitution say that corporations are people and have the right to First Amendment? When isn't that left to the state legislatures?
That conundrum is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court has lost respect, as well as the curious number of 5-4 party-line rulings. A well-argued ruling should be nonpartisan and have more than the nominal majority.
To the Republicans who claim to be pro-life, no one said it better than Sister Joan Chittister back in 2004 in an interview with Bill Moyers:
"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."
When you mention the "sanctity and dignity of the human individual", you ought to be willing to stand up for it post-birth, don't you think?
I submit the argument is -- and from a couple of comments I need to note this is an attempt to honestly try and imagine the perspective of a certain pro-life consistuency that results in being pro life before birth and more or less after that you're on your own-- which I do not share, but have actually heard expressed by people I know who are not, in most respects, monsters --
"Unlike murderers and rapists and other criminals, fetuses haven't done anything deserving of being killed. So I am perfectly justified making it illegal to have them aborted.
"On the other hand, the mothers of the fetuses haven't done anything to make them deserving of my help through their pregnancies. In fact most of them got pregnant due to their own bad decisions, so the government has no right to ask me to help pay the cost of bailing them out. Speaking as a man, nobody bailed me out because I had an unintended pregnancy. So responsibility.
"And after birth, until the babies have done something to deserve my support and maintenance like joining the army or police to protect me and my family, I see no reason I should be taxed to pay for their food, shelter, clothing, or education any more than we already do. Because freedom."
----------------
In fairness -- this is also wrapped up in a sincere moral problem because if fetuses are humans with human rights, it is not hypocrisy to try by law to protect those rights.
Since you will never be pregnant or give birth, you should not be allowed to force someone to go through those processes. I don't care if you think the fetus is a person or not. I agree that the woman who got pregnant was stupid, and I absolutely believe in birth control. But I've had two children and I believe it would be heinous to force someone to go through that against her will.
Apparently I was more successful imagining and attempting to summarize the mindset of a certain kind of "pro-life" male than I thought. Not my sentiments by any means. But I do think this is how some people justify what to me is an obviously morally contradictory congerie of opinions. I should have put quotes around it...
Basic human rights (and the Declaration of Independence) - that the fact that you are BORN means you are deserving of support and maintenance. Yo, ding dong, babies are HELPLESS and can't do a one damn thing for themselves. Sometimes the parents are NOT able to give them the care they need through NO FAULT of their own or because of their decisions. That is a causality fallacy.
Ignorant and arrogant. Also, ever heard of dead beat dads. There are many men who abdicate ANY responsibility WHATSOEVER and it happens to MILLIONS of women. But you still BLAME the woman. What a load of SHIT
Have you listened to yourself? "And after birth, until the babies have done something to deserve my support and maintenance like joining the army or police to protect me and my family, I see no reason I should be taxed to pay for their food, shelter, clothing, or education any more than we already do." How many babies do you know in the army or police?
This was my slightly tendentious take on the perspective of what I think is probably the vast majority of those who think of themselves as pro-life but don't want to think of themselves as inconsistent, sincerely have no inkling that there could be an element of unconscious hypocrisy involved, and (like all of us) want to believe everything they enjoy is due to their own merit and effort, but they are surrounded by undeserving people trying to live the high life at others' expense.
I think we see this in the pro-death penalty facet of this social opposition. "Pro life" and "pro death penalty" are perfectly compatible if cast in the context of personal responsibility. Execution is justified because criminals have chosen to commit crimes. Abortion is unjustified because babies have not chosen to be aborted. Welfare and public assistance is only minimally justifiable because the beneficiaries haven't worked hard to deserve it. Children caught in the middle are tougher -- my hypothetical pro-lifer has to squirm a little here, but fudges it by saying parents have responsibilities, and if a person has a child, it's that person's duty to care for it, not everyone else's.
This is certainly not my perspective. It's interesting that what I wrote as an obvious posited expression of a different viewpoint could be taken as being plausibly sincere. This implies perhaps that I'm on target, more so than I wish were the case.
I did think that writing "speaking as a man, nobody ever bailed me out because I had an unintended pregnancy" was over the top in this regard!
It is famously said, never criticize another until you have tried walking a mile with his foot in your mouth. Or something like that.
I hear you, but if "It's why I can't be a Democrat again- at least as long as it remains a partisan issue.", then there is zero chance that what Sister Chittister advocates, and what you agree with, will ever happen under a GOP majority.
You still have the problem that by all accounts at least 40% of conservative and/or Republican women want abortion to be legal. My mother said that if she were ever raped, the first thing she would do is preemptively make sure any possible pregnancy would be terminated before she missed her period.
Your sincere position is I think not representative of that held by at least a major fraction of the political forces exploiting this issue on the Republican side. The last couple of decades' cascade of laws and agitation against abortion is (I think) at most half driven by moral concern for the human life of the fetus (or as perhaps you might prefer, unborn person) and at least half driven by the political benefit of riding the heat and anger of the issue to power. There is at least a powerful core of this group for whom ending abortion is a purely instrumental objective -- merely a horse to ride in order to get and keep power, absolute and permanent power if at all possible. Its effectiveness as a wedge issue leads me to suspect that total victory will not result in the horse being retired to pasture -- I don't see this ending with abortion being "left to the states."
Leaving it to the states is really no different from leaving it alone to the individual woman. (It does have the advantage of leaving abortion as an option for the rich and powerful, and protecting their privilege is of course always one of their goals). This wedge has been far too useful to allow the matter to drop as long as there is the slightest remnant of blood in the turnip. The canny farmer prosecutes the harvest until every last reachable fruit is stripped from the tree. The end of Roe leaves a lot of apples yet to be plucked,
That such efforts will begin the morning after the reversal of Roe seems inevitable. There may even be legal argument that abortion itself is already prohibited by the fourteenth amendment, but at the very least there will be a ginned up campaign for a constitutional amendment, and doubtless also efforts to introduce, and if like dogs unlucky enough to catch the cars they chase, actually enact, Federal legislation to restrict and prohibit abortion everywhere.
It is in the interest of at least part of the pro-life movement to keep the fight alive, because there is much of the larger agenda yet to be implemented.
I fear that the result will not be -- cannot be, given the full purposes of the anti-abortion coalition -- making it easier for us to move forward together. The whole purpose has been to cleave apart everyone in the middle and force them to join one gang or other.
It's unfortunate that those with sincere beliefs get swooped up into the machinations of those just interested in power. The near-term benefits of the deal are too hard to resist, I suppose.
Fun fact: McConnell used to be pro choice.
Yes, he has advanced in his political development. At the outset he imagined that politicians must appear to have principles and beliefs about law and policy benefitting the whole citizenry.
In his middle years he thought it was better to keep any principles out of sight, and just display energy in favor of policies that benefitted only his target electorate.
Eventually he came to the full realization that not only was it inadvisable to display principles, it was actually beneficial to show that he had none at all; and further, that hurting people his voters did not like is far more effective than helping any voters, even his own.
I'm guessing you've already read Alec MacGillis's book. Looking forward to the upcoming Ira Shapiro one.
70% of Americans do not want Roe overturned. But the GOP has gamed the system to allow themselves to hold minority power over the entire country. 70% agreement on anything today is more than just the middle.
And 90% of Americans have no idea what the holding of Roe is. 70% of the American public doesn't want second term abortion which Roe requires states allow.
Where's the constitution say that the rights of the unborn supersede & nullify the rights of living citizens? Let's hear that originalist explanation.
It doesn't say that. Which is why you leave the issue to democratic institutions, i.e. state legislatures rather than pretend the Constitution says something it does not.
Fine. Then I DEMAND that a law be passed that ALL males 16 years old be MANDATED to get a vasectomy. Once they can prove to a tribunal that they can support their progeny THEN they can petition it be reversed.
It makes more sense since a female can only get pregnant about once a year but a male can impregnate any female he is intimate with.
Since the male can impregnate any female and a female, once pregnant can't get pregnant again until after the child is born, it stands to reason that the MALE is more dangerous and this law should be passed to stop abortions.
If that is your argument, where does the constitution say that corporations are people and have the right to First Amendment? When isn't that left to the state legislatures?
That conundrum is one of the reasons why the Supreme Court has lost respect, as well as the curious number of 5-4 party-line rulings. A well-argued ruling should be nonpartisan and have more than the nominal majority.
Let me repeat this for you then:
To the Republicans who claim to be pro-life, no one said it better than Sister Joan Chittister back in 2004 in an interview with Bill Moyers:
"I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."
When you mention the "sanctity and dignity of the human individual", you ought to be willing to stand up for it post-birth, don't you think?
I submit the argument is -- and from a couple of comments I need to note this is an attempt to honestly try and imagine the perspective of a certain pro-life consistuency that results in being pro life before birth and more or less after that you're on your own-- which I do not share, but have actually heard expressed by people I know who are not, in most respects, monsters --
"Unlike murderers and rapists and other criminals, fetuses haven't done anything deserving of being killed. So I am perfectly justified making it illegal to have them aborted.
"On the other hand, the mothers of the fetuses haven't done anything to make them deserving of my help through their pregnancies. In fact most of them got pregnant due to their own bad decisions, so the government has no right to ask me to help pay the cost of bailing them out. Speaking as a man, nobody bailed me out because I had an unintended pregnancy. So responsibility.
"And after birth, until the babies have done something to deserve my support and maintenance like joining the army or police to protect me and my family, I see no reason I should be taxed to pay for their food, shelter, clothing, or education any more than we already do. Because freedom."
----------------
In fairness -- this is also wrapped up in a sincere moral problem because if fetuses are humans with human rights, it is not hypocrisy to try by law to protect those rights.
Since you will never be pregnant or give birth, you should not be allowed to force someone to go through those processes. I don't care if you think the fetus is a person or not. I agree that the woman who got pregnant was stupid, and I absolutely believe in birth control. But I've had two children and I believe it would be heinous to force someone to go through that against her will.
Apparently I was more successful imagining and attempting to summarize the mindset of a certain kind of "pro-life" male than I thought. Not my sentiments by any means. But I do think this is how some people justify what to me is an obviously morally contradictory congerie of opinions. I should have put quotes around it...
Basic human rights (and the Declaration of Independence) - that the fact that you are BORN means you are deserving of support and maintenance. Yo, ding dong, babies are HELPLESS and can't do a one damn thing for themselves. Sometimes the parents are NOT able to give them the care they need through NO FAULT of their own or because of their decisions. That is a causality fallacy.
Ignorant and arrogant. Also, ever heard of dead beat dads. There are many men who abdicate ANY responsibility WHATSOEVER and it happens to MILLIONS of women. But you still BLAME the woman. What a load of SHIT
Have you listened to yourself? "And after birth, until the babies have done something to deserve my support and maintenance like joining the army or police to protect me and my family, I see no reason I should be taxed to pay for their food, shelter, clothing, or education any more than we already do." How many babies do you know in the army or police?
This was my slightly tendentious take on the perspective of what I think is probably the vast majority of those who think of themselves as pro-life but don't want to think of themselves as inconsistent, sincerely have no inkling that there could be an element of unconscious hypocrisy involved, and (like all of us) want to believe everything they enjoy is due to their own merit and effort, but they are surrounded by undeserving people trying to live the high life at others' expense.
I think we see this in the pro-death penalty facet of this social opposition. "Pro life" and "pro death penalty" are perfectly compatible if cast in the context of personal responsibility. Execution is justified because criminals have chosen to commit crimes. Abortion is unjustified because babies have not chosen to be aborted. Welfare and public assistance is only minimally justifiable because the beneficiaries haven't worked hard to deserve it. Children caught in the middle are tougher -- my hypothetical pro-lifer has to squirm a little here, but fudges it by saying parents have responsibilities, and if a person has a child, it's that person's duty to care for it, not everyone else's.
This is certainly not my perspective. It's interesting that what I wrote as an obvious posited expression of a different viewpoint could be taken as being plausibly sincere. This implies perhaps that I'm on target, more so than I wish were the case.
I did think that writing "speaking as a man, nobody ever bailed me out because I had an unintended pregnancy" was over the top in this regard!
It is famously said, never criticize another until you have tried walking a mile with his foot in your mouth. Or something like that.
OK! I tried to hit like but it wouldn't let me!
I hear you, but if "It's why I can't be a Democrat again- at least as long as it remains a partisan issue.", then there is zero chance that what Sister Chittister advocates, and what you agree with, will ever happen under a GOP majority.