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"Seek first to understand, then to be understood." -- habit #5 of the 7 habits of highly successful people

• ramesh31 4y ago
  • jaywalk 4y ago
    "It's hard to understand the most extreme position I can think up, which is held by such a small number of people that it's not even really worth discussing."
    • lkxijlewlf 4y ago
      That's not fair. Those extremists are succeeding in pushing their agenda.
      • jaywalk 4y ago
        Show me a law on the books in any state that would outlaw abortion in the case of rape. Obviously it would be a "trigger law" since states can't actually have such a law right now, but no such law exists as far as I'm aware. Unless you can do that, it's not fair to claim that those extremists are succeeding in pushing anything. Edit: I'm not going to individually address all of the dishonest rhetoric from the articles in the replies. The states have laws allowing abortion up to a certain number of weeks, and then after that don't make exceptions. I was referring to outright bans.
        • lostcolony 4y ago
          LMGTFY - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-roe-v-wade-no-rape-incest-exceptions/629747/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/supreme... 'In the past few years, though, the anti-abortion movement has moved in a different direction. In 2019, Alabama legislators passed an abortion ban that lacked rape and incest exceptions. Nine other states—Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas—have passed similar laws. Courts blocked all the laws but Texas’s; if Roe is overturned, it will be a felony for any Texas doctor to perform an abortion for a woman who was raped or impregnated by a family member. In March, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed an early-abortion ban without rape or incest exemptions.'
        • comrh 4y ago
          There are plenty of examples, do your research https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-04-08/red-states-eliminate-rape-exceptions-from-abortion-bans https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-04-08/red-states...
        • Cenk 4y ago
          Alabama: “The Human Life Protection Act "defines all unborn children as persons". It bans abortions AT ANY STAGE OF A PREGNANCY. The law provides for exceptions in cases where a fetus has a lethal anomaly (a medical condition that would cause the fetus to be stillborn or to die shortly following birth), or in cases where a pregnancy would "present serious health risk" to the woman. The law also allows abortions to be performed "upon confirmation from a psychiatrist" that a pregnant woman diagnosed with a "serious mental illness" might otherwise take an action that would lead to her own death or to the death of the fetus. The law does not ban procedures to end ectopic pregnancies or procedures in which a dead fetus is removed from the uterus. IT DOES NOT INCLUDE AN EXCEPTION IN CASES OF RAPE OR INCEST.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Life_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Life_Protection_Act Here is another example, from Texas: “Senate Bill 8, ushered through the Republican-dominated Texas legislature and signed into law by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, in May, bars abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, which is around six weeks, and offers NO EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE OR INCEST. Texas is the first state to ban abortion this early in pregnancy since Roe v Wade, and last-minute efforts to halt it through an appeal to the US supreme court by Tuesday did not succeed.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/01/texas-abortion-law-supreme-court https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/01/texas-aborti... Further reading: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-roe-v-wade-no-rape-incest-exceptions/629747/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/supreme... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/abortion-trigger-laws.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/abortion-trigger-laws....
        • lkxijlewlf 4y ago
          Probably 8 or 10 states are ready to push extreme abortion laws. DeSantis has one on his desk ready to sign as soon as RvW is overturned (probably this week).
        • elliekelly 4y ago
          Your edit is totally moving the goalposts. Do you realize many women won't even know they're pregnant until after the six weeks? By which point it will be much too late to get a legal abortion.
        • deleted 4y ago
          [deleted]
        • MockObject 4y ago
          If one honestly believes that abortion is murder, then the murder of an innocent person could not really be justified by a horrible crime between two other people.
    • dqpb 4y ago
      If the palatable position includes the extreme position, then it too is the extreme position.
  • mikece 4y ago
    Show me someone who is pregnant from rape and I'll show you 100 couples who eagerly want to adopt the baby.
    • lkxijlewlf 4y ago
      How does that help the rape victim?
    • lostcolony 4y ago
      And I'll show you 400k children -currently- in the foster care system, unadopted.
      • dane-pgp 4y ago
        This suggests there is a simple solution for the abortion debate that will satisfy the (claimed) intentions of both side: Abortion should remain legal until there are zero unadopted children in the foster care system (for more than a year), and the outcomes for children who have been adopted are at least as good as those raised by their natural parents.
        • robonerd 4y ago
          Clever idea, but a bad idea. What you propose would create an incentive for pro-choice activists to create red-tape in the adoption system, to ensure an adequate number of orphans remain unadopted. Furthermore, it would incentivize pro-life activists to adopt as many children as they can for all the wrong reasons.
          • lostcolony 4y ago
            So I think the poster was being facetious, but I'll point out neither of those incentives would hold. First, I've yet to meet a pro-choice person who didn't actually, you know, want the best outcomes for kids. They don't actually hate children, and there are other reasons to champion choice than "well, if they're born no one will adopt them" (despite what op says, pro-choice people don't ever list "no one will adopt them" as a reason to get an abortion. That whole line of reasoning is only a strawman presented by anti-abortion proponents. As you'll note even with this thread). Not to mention that if we got to "kid zero" with abortion at its current levels, it doesn't mean we'd stay at "kid zero" if you banned it. Second, op -did- say with the same quality of outcomes for adopted kids as raised by natural parents. If pro-life activists can adopt as many children as they can, for all the wrong reasons, and still lead to equivalent outcomes...I really don't see the problem.
  • idoh 4y ago
    That's the point of the article - you can understand without agreeing.
  • UnpossibleJim 4y ago
    It's also hard to understand why a fetus is to be protected but homeless children and people shouldn't be sheltered or fed, wars shouldn't be protested and education shouldn't be funded, but here we are. Political tools are used as wedge issues, not as logical thinking points. "Not in my back yard" is a wonderful summation of this. While many upper class liberals support more homeless shelters, they don't want one in their neighborhood. While many neoconservatives support a ban on abortions, they wouldn't want low income, single mother housing placement shelters in their neighborhoods, with job training.
    • FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
      Only the Catholics are consistent here, and only some of them.
    • recursive 4y ago
      > It's also hard to understand why a fetus is to be protected but homeless children and people shouldn't be sheltered or fed. I believe it's the distinction between active killing vs. the passive lack of support.
      • UnpossibleJim 4y ago
        This argument falls down when talking about sending American troops to any situation, however. Not sending troops in would be a passive lack of support. Sending in troops would be the active killing, on a national level.
        • swat535 4y ago
          The counter argument to that is: If pro lifers are assuming that a fetus is indeed a living human being, then it follows that the child is completely innocent and its survival is completely dependent on the mother. A soldier signing up for the army knows very well what he is up against..
          • UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  • lostcolony 4y ago
    Not to mention it's awfully presumptive to apply it to people facing the issue. I.e., invariably its those who are pro-rights who are told to understand the other side; why? If you can't get pregnant, your opinion on abortion -necessarily- is secondary to those who can, and it's they who need to seek to understand (and, I would argue, that in the same way that "wisdom is knowing you know nothing", sufficient understanding means realizing you can't fully understand because it doesn't directly effect you; that doesn't mean you can't have an opinion, but it does mean you shouldn't be trying to enforce it upon those actually effected by it).
  • nicoburns 4y ago
    Is it? I strongly disagree with such a position. But it seems clear to me that many such people: 1. Believe that the foetus is alive (and often also that it is human) 2. Believe that life is sacred or otherwise precious. 3. Believe that the foetus's right to life outweighs the mother's right the self-determine use of her body. I can understand how one can have a thought process like that even if I think it's wrong in numerous different ways.
    • astrange 4y ago
      People certainly do believe these things and I don’t know if it’s even something they can be “logically” wrong about. Where they are factually wrong is that they think they’re traditional but these are fully modern ideas. The actual Jewish tradition is against several of those; the actual Christian tradition may be for them, but the idea that you should actually read the Bible, know what an official position is, or do anything yourself outside of talking to a priest is a modern invention of Protestantism. And Protestants weren’t against abortion until recently, because they defined themselves as against Catholicism.
      • lostcolony 4y ago
        Oh, it's logically wrong on a number of levels. If they believe all three of these things, as well as the unsaid and equally necessary fourth that it is the government's job to enforce them regardless of the will of the people, then they must also believe - It is the government's job to ensure -everyone- receives necessary care. That means, minimally, food, shelter, healthcare, regardless of your work situation, age, (dis)ability, etc. Life > personal autonomy, so organ donation is not optional, nor is blood donation. If your kidney is a match for someone who needs one, you're forced to donate, that sort of thing. And expect monthly trips to the blood donation van. Etc. Anything else and these are logically inconsistent.
        • astrange 4y ago
          It’s fairly common to believe you shouldn’t kill people but have no responsibility to keep them alive. Actually, believing they’re the same thing is more like EA utilitarianism, isn’t it? Almost noone has that philosophy and most would find it repulsive.
  • FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
    The phrase "your rapist's baby" is linguistically a bit like "the time traveler's wife": The wife is not a person; she is chattel belonging to the (male) time traveler. Likewise with this hypothetical baby: It has no identity of its own. That we believe we can justly inflict capital punishment on a rapist's child is also interesting. You know, there was once another Supreme Court case where individual rights (namely, property rights) came into conflict with (controversial) claims of personhood: Dred Scott. You could say I'm trolling here, because the truth is I do not vote on the basis of abortion issues, and, when push comes to shove, I would tend to allow it. So I am not, politically, quite the person you might think I am. Nevertheless, it does make me extremely, morally, uncomfortable; it's something I wouldn't want to be mixed up in; and I can absolutely understand the philosophical arguments against it. Which is why I am able to make analogies like those above. If you stop and think about it, Republicans' opposition to abortion, perversely, demonstrates that at least in some areas they have moral principles (though you might disagree with them) -- that they do what they believe is right, even when it's not in their interest. Because the people most disproportionately impacted by restrictive abortion rules are women of color. If Republicans were ruthless consequentialists, this is exactly the person whose abortion rights they would not want to restrict. So in a perverse way it tells me that (some of them) actually believe something.
    • AftHurrahWinch 4y ago
      > the people most disproportionately impacted by restrictive abortion rules are women of color. If Republicans were ruthless consequentialists, this is exactly the person whose abortion rights they would not want to restrict. Maybe! Or, maybe: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." ~ Frank Wilhoit ...some political philosophies are strongly hierarchical and see a benefit in having a numerous and economically precarious out-group. [0]: https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-high-cost-of-unintended-pregnancy/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-high-cost-of-unintend...
      • FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
        > numerous and economically precarious out-group. Keeping a large group of people oppressed is incredibly dangerous; it's bound to blow up in your face. The Spartans did not last. You're better off expanding the in-group.