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This is the final chapter of a decade-long saga which basically boils down to the Republicans obtaining votes from Evangelicals and other Christian denomination

This is the final chapter of a decade-long saga which basically boils down to the Republicans obtaining votes from Evangelicals and other Christian denominations in order to give them what they wanted. In exchange for that, they would use their power to cut taxes, regulations and let the riches become richer and richer at the expense of everyone else. I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right now, and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal about the fact that greed was not compatible with salvation. I'd like to see Evangelicals and other Christians being as vocal for social justice as they were for abortions and same sex marriage, but I guess they do care about putting woman back in the kitchen as indentured servants more than they do about social justice.

voisin 4y ago
> I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right now, and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal about the fact that greed was not compatible with salvation. I'd like to see Evangelicals and other Christians being as vocal for social justice as they were for abortions and same sex marriage, but I guess they do care more about putting woman back in the kitchen as indentured servants more than they do about social justice. It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. We need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and everything to do with power over others. Nietzsche is more relevant here than Jesus.
- qorrect 4y ago
  What possible argument against abortion exists besides "religion" ?
- emilsedgh 4y ago
  What enabled this is large populations who voted republican purely for this cause due to religious reasons.
  - boeingUH60 4y ago
    A continually tried and tested truth is that mixing religion and politics is likely to end up in disaster. This applies everywhere across the globe.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  This is simply a matter of law. The justification for Roe Vs Wade doesn't hold water, it never did, it asserts a right to privacy that apparently only applies in the specific case of abortion and not in warrantless surveillance or any other matter. It was a legal fiction.
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    > it asserts a right to privacy that apparently only applies in the specific case of abortion False.
  - avs733 4y ago
    Oh not this nonsense again. If this were true than it would be easy for the current court to write an alternative opinion upholding the right as a liberty interest. They didn’t because the argument you are repeating is wrong, as well as made in bad faith to undermine obviously correct legal analysis. You are a victim of propaganda and it makes me sad.
    - dang 4y ago
      Your comments in this thread have been breaking the site guidelines. Can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully, as they request? That means without name-calling, personal attack, and flamewar—especially religious flamewar, which you've been crossing into elsewhere. For example, your second sentence here would have been fine on its own, or as the nucleus of a more thoughtful comment. The other sentences are the ones that break the guidelines. I understand that on a fraught topic like this, it can be next to impossible not to write such things. But then one should edit them out. That's what I do, or try to. Edit: it looks like your comment history contains a fair bit of ideological battle. Please make sure you're not using HN primarily for that, because that's the line at which we ban accounts (regardless of which ideology is being battled, or battled for). https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
  - 4y ago
- jklinger410 4y ago
  The voters who support the policy believe it is about the lives of unborn children.
  - Miner49er 4y ago
    This isn't logical though. People will still get abortions, all this will change is who can get abortions. So it's clearly about control.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      If abortions are bad, then it's good if fewer people get them, whether or not the reduction is spread evenly across different demographics.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        If abortions are bad, why are the same people who want to ban abortions the ones who want to ban contraceptives? That would do a lot more to reduce abortions in reality than any law can.
        Clubber 4y ago
        >If abortions are bad, why are the same people who want to ban abortions the ones who want to ban contraceptives? That would do a lot more to reduce abortions in reality than any law can. I would imagine they believe the point of sex is to conceive. Both those things prevent conception.
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        I agree. They are not actually trying to reduce the number of abortions, they are taking a religious/moral position.
        rufus_foreman 4y ago
        That's a straw man. Only 6% of Americans think birth control should be illegal, https://today.yougov.com/topics/health/articles-reports/2022/06/09/birth-control-yougov-poll-may-9-12-2022 https://today.yougov.com/topics/health/articles-reports/2022....
- dorfsmay 4y ago
  > It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. Power and control is what organized religions have always been about.
- joshstrange 4y ago
  > We need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and everything to do with power over others. I can promise you that this has quite a bit to do with religion. My parents both voted republican because "Billy Graham's son endorsed Trump" and before Trump they voted republican for this issue among others. I fully understand that elected republicans are just paying lip service to religion/abortion but they have their constituents completely fooled (or happy with their cognitive dissonance).
- sandworm101 4y ago
  >> It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. The difference? Politics and religion are both about controlling the actions of people. It may be done for good or ill, but it is always about control.
- pmdulaney 4y ago
  Yes, it is about power and control in the same way that society's prevention of the sexual abuse of children is about power and control. That's what laws are about: power and control.
  - voisin 4y ago
    No one says we prevent sexual abuse of children because of Jesus.
    - pmdulaney 4y ago
      Well, first of all, it is a foundational principle of democracy that you can vote how you like for whatever reason you like. You can vote for a rule that every governing board have at least one woman because you hate men! But as a matter of fact, Christians who are Christians in more than name only do everything of import because of Jesus -- or because of biblical teaching more generally. I believe that I should tell the truth because of Jesus. I believe that divorce is wrong because of Jesus. I believe that those who take a life should forfeit their own because of Jesus (Gen 9.6).
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        > Christians who are Christians in more than name only do everything of import because of Jesus I am not sure Jesus would agree
        pmdulaney 4y ago
        Most Christians agree that the Apostle Paul speaks authoritatively for Jesus (that's actually the definition of an apostle), and Paul said: "Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10.31).
      - geekbird 4y ago
        If you need a demigod and a book of fiction to tell you not to lie, cheat and kill then you aren't a very good person underneath. Morality and ethics are not the exclusive purview of Christianity, or even religion in general. Atheists and agnostics don't need a bible to tell right from wrong. In fact, religion is often used as an excuse to subjugate others, which is what they're doing by overturning RvW. They are subjugating women of breeding age as baby factories and unpaid child minders whose life course is decided on whether a man ejaculates in her and fertilizes an egg or not (whether she wanted him to or not.) If she catches, her life is no longer hers. It now belongs to the state as a incubation vessel for a potential citizen, and her wishes are now unimportant.
- InTheArena 4y ago
  Interestingly enough - Evangelicals where typically left of center prior to Roe v. Wade (even in states where abortion was legal). My hope is that things return to a more historical norm now that Roe V Wade can actually be "a fair fight" (to use Scalia's language)
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. We need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and everything to do with power over others. Nietzsche is more relevant here than Jesus. We, as a society, need to stop constantly creating straw men like this. Opposition to abortion is certainly about religion, or at least morality. Sure some politician can exploit morality to cynically gain power to accomplish other things, but that doesn't mean the voters are doing that. The voters are just caught in (many) moral dilemmas, and are therefore forced to make bad choices.
  - ineptech 4y ago
    > Only a quarter of evangelicals in the United States believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, according to a new poll showing that a majority of self-identified Christians in the U.S. identify as “pro-choice” and less than half of evangelicals identify as “pro-life.” https://www.christianpost.com/news/less-than-half-of-us-evangelicals-identify-as-pro-life-new-poll-suggests.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/less-than-half-of-us-evan... It's not a "religious issue" when the members of the religion are split along party lines just like everyone else.
    - rockemsockem 4y ago
      If you don't believe that there is some immortal soul endowed at conception then it is extremely unlikely that you'll oppose abortion. It is absolutely religious.
      - ineptech 4y ago
        Why isn't it a "science issue" because the pro-choice side is based on science? Or an "age issue" because old people are far more pro-life than young people? I'm not here to argue semantics. The point I'm here to make is that the people who call it a religious issue are trying to claim legal protection that is undeserved. "That law violates my religion!" is not a compelling argument when half of your religion supports it.
        4y ago
- yndoendo 4y ago
  Religion is the ruler's favorite tool This is seen very Authoritative Governments and Dictatorships because it allows for the exploit of self-identity. People often create their self-identity around a religion and if you try to talk about any logical flaws with their statements or show them whole evident of facts proving them wrong they will still stick with their religion because they then would destroy their self-identity. When religion becomes self-identity then the person stops living reality and in a religious dream-like state. Look at Benjamin Franklin, US Founding Father, was a Christian but didn't self-identity and also wrote a section in a book, Every Man His Own Doctor: The Poor Planter's Physician, how to perform an abortion. He is an example of self-identity that goes beyond religion. But also the self-identity factor can also be tie not to religion but political parties or other extreme identities leading to group think. With high confidence, and hopefully a good study is done, a high percentage of people that gave power to the anti-abortion / anti-liberty movements are self-identified with religion over other aspects.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
> while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention In his defense, Jesus came to fulfill the old law and not abolish it, as directly stated by himself. The old law has the 5th commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," which in the times of Jesus was unanimously interpreted to cover abortion (Psalm 139 being one reason why) and Jesus, by not speaking against this interpretation (unlike other interpretations), left that view unchanged.
- charonn0 4y ago
  Immediately after receiving the 10 commandments, Moses orders the Israelites to slaughter their friends, family, and neighbors who worshiped the golden calf. And God approved.
  - mcphage 4y ago
    And then God send them to genocide their way through the promised land.
- 0xB31B1B 4y ago
  You are incorrect. The bible does not support fetal personhood. The bible clearly gives fetuses a lower moral valence than a living person and discusses that an accident that results in a stillbirth is not equivalent to "killing a person". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Modern Judaism differs from Historical Judaism in this respect. For example, the "Rabbinic sources" sounds historical... but then the first person quoted lived in the 1700s.
    - 0xB31B1B 4y ago
      I wasn't referencing modern judaism, I was referencing the word of god itself, which clearly does not support any notion of fetal personhood.
d23 4y ago
Christianity’s true face has been shown. I’ve rarely seen it to have anything to do with the teachings of Christ.
- spacemadness 4y ago
  This isn’t really Christianity collectively. Lots of what’s happening in America is due to an American heretical brand of Christianity with its own motives outside the teachings of Christ.
  - d23 4y ago
    Yes, to be fair I perhaps should have narrowed it to American Christianity.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Do not murder. The claim that abortion is forbidden "in all major religions" is false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion
  - Covzire 4y ago
    As a Christian what strikes me is that very few who are free wish for slavery, and very few who are alive wish they had been aborted. Wealth makes this a virtually ironclad rule, and they'll have no excuse for killing those before they could find a voice or ability to defend themselves.
  - monocasa 4y ago
    It's not in Judaism, and in fact wasn't during Jesus's time.
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
turdit 4y ago
- tuckerman 4y ago
  There’s not a large number tyrannical Hindus, Jews, Muslims, or Atheists gerrymandering their way into office to push their religious nonsense into laws that threaten my life in the United States. I think singling out Christians is perfectly fine in this case.
SkyMarshal 4y ago
To be fair, we’ll never know all the things Jesus said since it’s not like he wrote an autobiography or anything. All records of him were selected and written by other people, who may or may not have been comprehensive.
1123581321 4y ago
My understanding is that abortion is a major social justice issue for Christians. So you would want to engage with them on their social justice priorities and strategies, finding overlap, and so forth. At least that’s how I approach these dialogues regarding policies of lower levels of government.
- avs733 4y ago
  Why is there never an expectation that Christian’s engage in dialogue and civility about this issue? There is never a demand they convince the pro choice people just that they be allowed to control and threaten them. Calls for dialogue are just part of the intentional narrative created to undermine peoples rights. Rights do not necessitate dialogue.
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    Of course there has to be a mutual expectation in successful dialogue. I was just replying to someone who seemed not to realize both sides have the same concept of civil/social justice. Those realizations can be helpful for those trying to communicate with political opponents. It sounds like you have no interest, and that’s fine.
  - f154hfds 4y ago
    I'm a Christian and I've engaged people many times on this platform about this very issue. In fact your insinuation is so contrary to the truth I find it hard to believe you could possibly believe it in good faith! Let me start with this: why should we as rational human beings assume life doesn't begin at conception? Is there a more logical place to ascribe life beginning, whether it be human or otherwise?
    - rswail 4y ago
      For the sake of argument, assume that life does begin at conception. However murder is defined as taking the life of a human being. Conception is not a logical place to ascribe the beginning of a human being. As an example, is the loss of a zygote, or a blastocyte, or an ectopic implantation to be considered the death of a human being?
mostertoaster 4y ago
In 2016, Republicans who went to church weekly were far less likely to vote for Trump, than those who rarely or never went. That means the lower taxes and less regulations were likely desired for their own sake not as a trade off. Christians crazily believe Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and was God incarnate within the womb. As crazy as that may be, it logically follows they would adamantly be against ending human lives before they’re born.
ben7799 4y ago
I would be curious if this decision hurts the Republicans going forward. Religious Americans essentially held their noses to vote for Republicans just to get this issue rammed in. Now that they have gotten what they wanted, are they still going to vote for Republicans with the same transactional decision process? Or are they now going to say the Republicans can no longer offer them anything additional and now the problems with Republicans being immoral and unchristian become too large? Once Christians have an abortion ban do they become focused on helping the poor and other issues which were pushed by Jesus and whose teachings more closely align with progressive agendas? Or are they hypocrites and will vote for the Republicans to give the Pharisees & Rich of the world more power?
- Fauntleroy 4y ago
  It likely won't affect things much, or they wouldn't have let it go through. They will now be focusing on protecting this new status quo; "don't let liberals re-instate abortion and kill children!!!" etc
- spacemadness 4y ago
  Where are you getting that religious Americans held their noses to vote Republican? That is not the mental model I have of people religious enough to ban abortion.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Now that they have gotten what they wanted, are they still going to vote for Republicans with the same transactional decision process? Yes; that's why Thomas's concurring decision openly threatens the gay marriage, contraception, etc. decisions. (He left Loving v. Virginia off the list, though. For some reason.) There's plenty more red meat to throw to the Republican base as far as SCOTUS is concerned.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Republicans aren’t very strongly against those things (as they are abortion). So it’s not going to energize them to such an extent.
RHSeeger 4y ago
> Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention That is misrepresenting the argument. There's a lot of people that believe that abortion is the killing of a human being. And killing another human being is, most definitely, on the list of "bad things" for every flavor of Christianity. For a lot of them, killing one human being (not in self defense) to save another is still on that list; because only God is allowed to end life. You may not agree that an unborn child is a human life, but the people that are against abortion for actual Catholic religious reasons do believe it. And do believe it is against their religion, and against any reasonable set of morals.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- slg 4y ago
  Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? Why does the idea that abortion extinguishes life and therefore supersedes all other rights not apply in other situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death? Either life is sacrosanct or it isn’t. Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights to bodily autonomy aren’t?
  - LudwigNagasena 4y ago
    > Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? > situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death Not all people are utilitarians, especially religious people.
  - dpbriggs 4y ago
    It's rhetorically interesting to reach and point at this result as if it's some binary gotcha. For those who believe that abortion is murder, that's it. They don't need to care whether a state's gun laws are compatible with the US constitution.
  - hackinthebochs 4y ago
    Broadly, there's two types of views regarding justice and how to construct a moral society: systemic responsibility vs individual responsibility. For the systemic responsibility view, you pull any and every lever to result in more preferable outcomes. For example, the response to rampant gun violence is more gun control. Here it makes sense to ask why we are not pulling every lever to prevent deaths from gun violence as we are deaths from abortion. This is in contrast to the individual responsibility view. Here, the response to immoral behavior is punishment for the wrongdoer only. Systemic issues are not relevant. In this case, there is no contradiction to punish women who get abortions and not increase restrictions on guns. (Of course, individuals will have views that are varying combinations of the two.)
georgia_peach 4y ago
GekkePrutser 4y ago
I think the system is broken if the personal affiliations of supreme court judges plays such a big part in the outcome of cases. It should be about the law, not about politics. They're supposed to put that stuff aside when they take a legal office. Trias politica and all.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  You must be new
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    Not new. Just naive.
- l33t2328 4y ago
  Laws are the result of politics. I think it doesn’t make sense to say you can interpret/reason about laws in a non political way.
- svieira 4y ago
  This literally was about the law. Ruth Ginsberg held that Roe v. Wade as a bad decision. https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-offers-critique-roe-v-wade-during-law-school-visit https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsbur...
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    > Ruth Ginsberg held that Roe v. Wade as a bad decision. This is a very misleading reading of that critique. Ginsburg would've preferred the right to abortion be established a) explicitly a right of women, not a right of doctors to practice and b) via many incremental decisions, making reversal harder. Practical critique; not "bad law", but "not secure enough to trust". As the recent decision demonstrates quite effectively.
AlexandrB 4y ago
Obligatory Tim Kreider comic on this point: https://i.redd.it/u9c8patjifb51.jpg https://i.redd.it/u9c8patjifb51.jpg
jawns 4y ago
> while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention Did the U.S. Constitution give abortion the slightest mention? No, the right to abortion was inferred from a right to privacy, which was inferred from several amendments that did not explicitly mention abortion or privacy. The Ninth Amendment does makes allowance for rights that aren't explicitly enumerated, but it doesn't really give any guidance on how to know what those are. Similarly, many Christian denominations recognize that Jesus didn't need to explicitly mention every single moral issue for the Church to develop doctrine around them. Heck, even the doctrine of the Trinity, a core doctrine of mainstream Christianity, requires some level of inference from Scripture. So if your argument is that Jesus needed to explicitly mention abortion for there to be any justifiable Christian doctrine about it, you're applying a different standard than the standard that was used to define a constitutional right to abortion in the first place.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  As far as Christianity goes, equating Abortion to murder has only recently become the popular interpretation. Not only is it written multiple times in The Bible that life begins at breath, The Bible even contains instructions on how and when to perform abortion. As far as the constitution goes, amendments are treated as part of the text, not gotchas. The constitution protects your right to keep the contents of your pockets and your home private. Why not the contents of your uterus?
tablespoon 4y ago
> I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right now, and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal about the fact that greed was not compatible with salvation. Maybe so, but apparently it's been condemned from the earliest times in Christianity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion#Early_Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_o.... I don't really know the Bible, but I'm guessing Jesus probably didn't spend a lot of time condemning literal murder either, so it's probably not safe to assume that means he thought preventing greed is more important than preventing murder.
- pxc 4y ago
  The very same paragraphs talk about it being comparable among early Christians to such 'grave sins as contraception and sterilization'. How should this inform the relative weight of the use of condoms and murder, for contemporary Christians? This doesn't at all support the notion that Christianity has always been concerned with abortion as a corrolary to murder, which is at the center of contemporary conservative religious discourse on the issue.
pmoriarty 4y ago
"I guess they do care about putting woman back in the kitchen as indentured servants more than they do about social justice" Just poor women. Rich women will still be able to travel out of state (and out of country, if need be) to get an abortion. They'll also be able to hire a maid, cook, and nurse to do all their household chores for them. It's the poor who will be most screwed, as usual.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> This is the final chapter No, its not. The use of state power to exterminate trans people is the next chapter, and its already well under way. More broadly, much of the next series of chapters is using selective application of “religious liberty” to establish unique and particular entitlement for favored Christian groups across the board, by dismissing the sincerity of other beliefs and/or judging the burdens imposed on them by a different subjective standard in applying the “substantial burden” test than is applied on favored Christian beliefs. Viewed even more broadly, the focus is on dismantling substantive anti-discrimination protections for non-favored groups extending beyond religion by similar means (as is the case for the above trends, we’ve already seen some elements of this, such as the judicial dismantling of much of the Voting Rights Act; but that is just the beginning, there is much more to come.) EDIT: Heck, this isn’t even the end of this chapter, if one considers the way this is part of the integrated campaign against sexual and reproductive freedom and the right of privacy established in the line of cases running (through Roe) back to Griswold v. Connecticut, which are all under attack, and span issues beyond abortion to include contraception, same sex marriage, sodomy laws, etc.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  That.. seems excessively alarmist. It is on par with Sirius XM Channel channel reacting to the news by saying, and I am paraphrasing, 'they are going after all our rights next'. I might agree in an abstract manner it is not a final chapter the same way just imposing red flag laws is not the end goal for gun control activists, but the paragraphs that follow are a little out there.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > That.. seems excessively alarmist. Then you aren't paying attention to the actual legislation being passed in States, the advocacy of leading members of the Republican Party, and even the things explicitly stated in the writings of Supreme Court justices on this case. > It is on par with Sirius XM Channel channel reacting to the news by saying, and I am paraphrasing, ‘they are going after all our rights next’. Thomas literally (to anyone who understands the scope and impact of the Court’s substantive due process jurisprudence) said that in his concurrence.
toyg 4y ago
Not disagreeing, but this comes from further back than a decade. It goes all the way at the very least to Gingrich, when Republicans locked on the religious vote by attacking the "immoral conduct" of Bill Clinton. It worked so well that they've made it a structural element of their strategies. You can see the traces of this even in the political allegory of clintonism that is The West Wing - this episode was filmed in year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VHK1NXIBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VHK1NXIBw
dfxm12 4y ago
I don't think it's right to place blame totally on evangelicals and other Christians. The Republican platform is reactionary top to bottom. This is further reflected in Republican politician's votes. What I'm saying is, this happens even without fervent support from the religious right. This also likely isn't the final chapter, as the opinion also gives thoughts to overturning rulings related to contraception and same sex marriage.
jimt1234 4y ago
The fascinating thing about all this is the power of human manipulation. I grew up in a deeply religions area of the Midwest, the Bible Belt. Everyone was a hardcore Christian. However, as a youngster, I don't recall anyone talking about abortion. No mention of it. Back then churches would organize to help feed poor people and spread the word. That was it. Then, sometime around the mid-80s, everyone started talking about abortion. It seemed like that's all anyone talked about. And the tone changed, too. It went from, "Let me show you the way" to "You're going to rot in hell!"

voisin 4y ago

> I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right now, and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal about the fact that greed was not compatible with salvation. I'd like to see Evangelicals and other Christians being as vocal for social justice as they were for abortions and same sex marriage, but I guess they do care more about putting woman back in the kitchen as indentured servants more than they do about social justice. It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. We need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and everything to do with power over others. Nietzsche is more relevant here than Jesus.

qorrect 4y ago
What possible argument against abortion exists besides "religion" ?
emilsedgh 4y ago
What enabled this is large populations who voted republican purely for this cause due to religious reasons.
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  A continually tried and tested truth is that mixing religion and politics is likely to end up in disaster. This applies everywhere across the globe.
willcipriano 4y ago
This is simply a matter of law. The justification for Roe Vs Wade doesn't hold water, it never did, it asserts a right to privacy that apparently only applies in the specific case of abortion and not in warrantless surveillance or any other matter. It was a legal fiction.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago
  > it asserts a right to privacy that apparently only applies in the specific case of abortion False.
- avs733 4y ago
  Oh not this nonsense again. If this were true than it would be easy for the current court to write an alternative opinion upholding the right as a liberty interest. They didn’t because the argument you are repeating is wrong, as well as made in bad faith to undermine obviously correct legal analysis. You are a victim of propaganda and it makes me sad.
  - dang 4y ago
    Your comments in this thread have been breaking the site guidelines. Can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points thoughtfully, as they request? That means without name-calling, personal attack, and flamewar—especially religious flamewar, which you've been crossing into elsewhere. For example, your second sentence here would have been fine on its own, or as the nucleus of a more thoughtful comment. The other sentences are the ones that break the guidelines. I understand that on a fraught topic like this, it can be next to impossible not to write such things. But then one should edit them out. That's what I do, or try to. Edit: it looks like your comment history contains a fair bit of ideological battle. Please make sure you're not using HN primarily for that, because that's the line at which we ban accounts (regardless of which ideology is being battled, or battled for). https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- 4y ago
jklinger410 4y ago
The voters who support the policy believe it is about the lives of unborn children.
- Miner49er 4y ago
  This isn't logical though. People will still get abortions, all this will change is who can get abortions. So it's clearly about control.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    If abortions are bad, then it's good if fewer people get them, whether or not the reduction is spread evenly across different demographics.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      If abortions are bad, why are the same people who want to ban abortions the ones who want to ban contraceptives? That would do a lot more to reduce abortions in reality than any law can.
      - Clubber 4y ago
        >If abortions are bad, why are the same people who want to ban abortions the ones who want to ban contraceptives? That would do a lot more to reduce abortions in reality than any law can. I would imagine they believe the point of sex is to conceive. Both those things prevent conception.
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        I agree. They are not actually trying to reduce the number of abortions, they are taking a religious/moral position.
      - rufus_foreman 4y ago
        That's a straw man. Only 6% of Americans think birth control should be illegal, https://today.yougov.com/topics/health/articles-reports/2022/06/09/birth-control-yougov-poll-may-9-12-2022 https://today.yougov.com/topics/health/articles-reports/2022....
dorfsmay 4y ago
> It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. Power and control is what organized religions have always been about.
joshstrange 4y ago
> We need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and everything to do with power over others. I can promise you that this has quite a bit to do with religion. My parents both voted republican because "Billy Graham's son endorsed Trump" and before Trump they voted republican for this issue among others. I fully understand that elected republicans are just paying lip service to religion/abortion but they have their constituents completely fooled (or happy with their cognitive dissonance).
sandworm101 4y ago
>> It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. The difference? Politics and religion are both about controlling the actions of people. It may be done for good or ill, but it is always about control.
pmdulaney 4y ago
Yes, it is about power and control in the same way that society's prevention of the sexual abuse of children is about power and control. That's what laws are about: power and control.
- voisin 4y ago
  No one says we prevent sexual abuse of children because of Jesus.
  - pmdulaney 4y ago
    Well, first of all, it is a foundational principle of democracy that you can vote how you like for whatever reason you like. You can vote for a rule that every governing board have at least one woman because you hate men! But as a matter of fact, Christians who are Christians in more than name only do everything of import because of Jesus -- or because of biblical teaching more generally. I believe that I should tell the truth because of Jesus. I believe that divorce is wrong because of Jesus. I believe that those who take a life should forfeit their own because of Jesus (Gen 9.6).
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > Christians who are Christians in more than name only do everything of import because of Jesus I am not sure Jesus would agree
      - pmdulaney 4y ago
        Most Christians agree that the Apostle Paul speaks authoritatively for Jesus (that's actually the definition of an apostle), and Paul said: "Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor 10.31).
    - geekbird 4y ago
      If you need a demigod and a book of fiction to tell you not to lie, cheat and kill then you aren't a very good person underneath. Morality and ethics are not the exclusive purview of Christianity, or even religion in general. Atheists and agnostics don't need a bible to tell right from wrong. In fact, religion is often used as an excuse to subjugate others, which is what they're doing by overturning RvW. They are subjugating women of breeding age as baby factories and unpaid child minders whose life course is decided on whether a man ejaculates in her and fertilizes an egg or not (whether she wanted him to or not.) If she catches, her life is no longer hers. It now belongs to the state as a incubation vessel for a potential citizen, and her wishes are now unimportant.
InTheArena 4y ago
Interestingly enough - Evangelicals where typically left of center prior to Roe v. Wade (even in states where abortion was legal). My hope is that things return to a more historical norm now that Roe V Wade can actually be "a fair fight" (to use Scalia's language)
tablespoon 4y ago
> It isn’t about religion. It’s about power and control. We need to stop pretending it has anything to do with Jesus and everything to do with power over others. Nietzsche is more relevant here than Jesus. We, as a society, need to stop constantly creating straw men like this. Opposition to abortion is certainly about religion, or at least morality. Sure some politician can exploit morality to cynically gain power to accomplish other things, but that doesn't mean the voters are doing that. The voters are just caught in (many) moral dilemmas, and are therefore forced to make bad choices.
- ineptech 4y ago
  > Only a quarter of evangelicals in the United States believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, according to a new poll showing that a majority of self-identified Christians in the U.S. identify as “pro-choice” and less than half of evangelicals identify as “pro-life.” https://www.christianpost.com/news/less-than-half-of-us-evangelicals-identify-as-pro-life-new-poll-suggests.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/less-than-half-of-us-evan... It's not a "religious issue" when the members of the religion are split along party lines just like everyone else.
  - rockemsockem 4y ago
    If you don't believe that there is some immortal soul endowed at conception then it is extremely unlikely that you'll oppose abortion. It is absolutely religious.
    - ineptech 4y ago
      Why isn't it a "science issue" because the pro-choice side is based on science? Or an "age issue" because old people are far more pro-life than young people? I'm not here to argue semantics. The point I'm here to make is that the people who call it a religious issue are trying to claim legal protection that is undeserved. "That law violates my religion!" is not a compelling argument when half of your religion supports it.
      - 4y ago
yndoendo 4y ago
Religion is the ruler's favorite tool This is seen very Authoritative Governments and Dictatorships because it allows for the exploit of self-identity. People often create their self-identity around a religion and if you try to talk about any logical flaws with their statements or show them whole evident of facts proving them wrong they will still stick with their religion because they then would destroy their self-identity. When religion becomes self-identity then the person stops living reality and in a religious dream-like state. Look at Benjamin Franklin, US Founding Father, was a Christian but didn't self-identity and also wrote a section in a book, Every Man His Own Doctor: The Poor Planter's Physician, how to perform an abortion. He is an example of self-identity that goes beyond religion. But also the self-identity factor can also be tie not to religion but political parties or other extreme identities leading to group think. With high confidence, and hopefully a good study is done, a high percentage of people that gave power to the anti-abortion / anti-liberty movements are self-identified with religion over other aspects.

gjsman-1000 4y ago

> while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention In his defense, Jesus came to fulfill the old law and not abolish it, as directly stated by himself. The old law has the 5th commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," which in the times of Jesus was unanimously interpreted to cover abortion (Psalm 139 being one reason why) and Jesus, by not speaking against this interpretation (unlike other interpretations), left that view unchanged.

charonn0 4y ago
Immediately after receiving the 10 commandments, Moses orders the Israelites to slaughter their friends, family, and neighbors who worshiped the golden calf. And God approved.
- mcphage 4y ago
  And then God send them to genocide their way through the promised land.
0xB31B1B 4y ago
You are incorrect. The bible does not support fetal personhood. The bible clearly gives fetuses a lower moral valence than a living person and discusses that an accident that results in a stillbirth is not equivalent to "killing a person". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Modern Judaism differs from Historical Judaism in this respect. For example, the "Rabbinic sources" sounds historical... but then the first person quoted lived in the 1700s.
  - 0xB31B1B 4y ago
    I wasn't referencing modern judaism, I was referencing the word of god itself, which clearly does not support any notion of fetal personhood.

d23 4y ago

Christianity’s true face has been shown. I’ve rarely seen it to have anything to do with the teachings of Christ.

spacemadness 4y ago
This isn’t really Christianity collectively. Lots of what’s happening in America is due to an American heretical brand of Christianity with its own motives outside the teachings of Christ.
- d23 4y ago
  Yes, to be fair I perhaps should have narrowed it to American Christianity.
koheripbal 4y ago
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Do not murder. The claim that abortion is forbidden "in all major religions" is false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_abortion
- Covzire 4y ago
  As a Christian what strikes me is that very few who are free wish for slavery, and very few who are alive wish they had been aborted. Wealth makes this a virtually ironclad rule, and they'll have no excuse for killing those before they could find a voice or ability to defend themselves.
- monocasa 4y ago
  It's not in Judaism, and in fact wasn't during Jesus's time.
- thomastjeffery 4y ago

turdit 4y ago

tuckerman 4y ago
There’s not a large number tyrannical Hindus, Jews, Muslims, or Atheists gerrymandering their way into office to push their religious nonsense into laws that threaten my life in the United States. I think singling out Christians is perfectly fine in this case.

SkyMarshal 4y ago

To be fair, we’ll never know all the things Jesus said since it’s not like he wrote an autobiography or anything. All records of him were selected and written by other people, who may or may not have been comprehensive.

1123581321 4y ago

My understanding is that abortion is a major social justice issue for Christians. So you would want to engage with them on their social justice priorities and strategies, finding overlap, and so forth. At least that’s how I approach these dialogues regarding policies of lower levels of government.

avs733 4y ago
Why is there never an expectation that Christian’s engage in dialogue and civility about this issue? There is never a demand they convince the pro choice people just that they be allowed to control and threaten them. Calls for dialogue are just part of the intentional narrative created to undermine peoples rights. Rights do not necessitate dialogue.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  Of course there has to be a mutual expectation in successful dialogue. I was just replying to someone who seemed not to realize both sides have the same concept of civil/social justice. Those realizations can be helpful for those trying to communicate with political opponents. It sounds like you have no interest, and that’s fine.
- f154hfds 4y ago
  I'm a Christian and I've engaged people many times on this platform about this very issue. In fact your insinuation is so contrary to the truth I find it hard to believe you could possibly believe it in good faith! Let me start with this: why should we as rational human beings assume life doesn't begin at conception? Is there a more logical place to ascribe life beginning, whether it be human or otherwise?
  - rswail 4y ago
    For the sake of argument, assume that life does begin at conception. However murder is defined as taking the life of a human being. Conception is not a logical place to ascribe the beginning of a human being. As an example, is the loss of a zygote, or a blastocyte, or an ectopic implantation to be considered the death of a human being?

mostertoaster 4y ago

In 2016, Republicans who went to church weekly were far less likely to vote for Trump, than those who rarely or never went. That means the lower taxes and less regulations were likely desired for their own sake not as a trade off. Christians crazily believe Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and was God incarnate within the womb. As crazy as that may be, it logically follows they would adamantly be against ending human lives before they’re born.

ben7799 4y ago

I would be curious if this decision hurts the Republicans going forward. Religious Americans essentially held their noses to vote for Republicans just to get this issue rammed in. Now that they have gotten what they wanted, are they still going to vote for Republicans with the same transactional decision process? Or are they now going to say the Republicans can no longer offer them anything additional and now the problems with Republicans being immoral and unchristian become too large? Once Christians have an abortion ban do they become focused on helping the poor and other issues which were pushed by Jesus and whose teachings more closely align with progressive agendas? Or are they hypocrites and will vote for the Republicans to give the Pharisees & Rich of the world more power?

Fauntleroy 4y ago
It likely won't affect things much, or they wouldn't have let it go through. They will now be focusing on protecting this new status quo; "don't let liberals re-instate abortion and kill children!!!" etc
spacemadness 4y ago
Where are you getting that religious Americans held their noses to vote Republican? That is not the mental model I have of people religious enough to ban abortion.
ceejayoz 4y ago
> Now that they have gotten what they wanted, are they still going to vote for Republicans with the same transactional decision process? Yes; that's why Thomas's concurring decision openly threatens the gay marriage, contraception, etc. decisions. (He left Loving v. Virginia off the list, though. For some reason.) There's plenty more red meat to throw to the Republican base as far as SCOTUS is concerned.
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Republicans aren’t very strongly against those things (as they are abortion). So it’s not going to energize them to such an extent.

RHSeeger 4y ago

> Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention That is misrepresenting the argument. There's a lot of people that believe that abortion is the killing of a human being. And killing another human being is, most definitely, on the list of "bad things" for every flavor of Christianity. For a lot of them, killing one human being (not in self defense) to save another is still on that list; because only God is allowed to end life. You may not agree that an unborn child is a human life, but the people that are against abortion for actual Catholic religious reasons do believe it. And do believe it is against their religion, and against any reasonable set of morals.

deleted 4y ago
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slg 4y ago
Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? Why does the idea that abortion extinguishes life and therefore supersedes all other rights not apply in other situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death? Either life is sacrosanct or it isn’t. Why are rights to guns more important than life but rights to bodily autonomy aren’t?
- LudwigNagasena 4y ago
  > Then how do you explain them supporting the removal of gun laws like the court did yesterday? > situations in which someone’s rights will lead to death Not all people are utilitarians, especially religious people.
- dpbriggs 4y ago
  It's rhetorically interesting to reach and point at this result as if it's some binary gotcha. For those who believe that abortion is murder, that's it. They don't need to care whether a state's gun laws are compatible with the US constitution.
- hackinthebochs 4y ago
  Broadly, there's two types of views regarding justice and how to construct a moral society: systemic responsibility vs individual responsibility. For the systemic responsibility view, you pull any and every lever to result in more preferable outcomes. For example, the response to rampant gun violence is more gun control. Here it makes sense to ask why we are not pulling every lever to prevent deaths from gun violence as we are deaths from abortion. This is in contrast to the individual responsibility view. Here, the response to immoral behavior is punishment for the wrongdoer only. Systemic issues are not relevant. In this case, there is no contradiction to punish women who get abortions and not increase restrictions on guns. (Of course, individuals will have views that are varying combinations of the two.)

georgia_peach 4y ago

GekkePrutser 4y ago

I think the system is broken if the personal affiliations of supreme court judges plays such a big part in the outcome of cases. It should be about the law, not about politics. They're supposed to put that stuff aside when they take a legal office. Trias politica and all.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
You must be new
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Not new. Just naive.
l33t2328 4y ago
Laws are the result of politics. I think it doesn’t make sense to say you can interpret/reason about laws in a non political way.
svieira 4y ago
This literally was about the law. Ruth Ginsberg held that Roe v. Wade as a bad decision. https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-offers-critique-roe-v-wade-during-law-school-visit https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsbur...
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  > Ruth Ginsberg held that Roe v. Wade as a bad decision. This is a very misleading reading of that critique. Ginsburg would've preferred the right to abortion be established a) explicitly a right of women, not a right of doctors to practice and b) via many incremental decisions, making reversal harder. Practical critique; not "bad law", but "not secure enough to trust". As the recent decision demonstrates quite effectively.

AlexandrB 4y ago

Obligatory Tim Kreider comic on this point: https://i.redd.it/u9c8patjifb51.jpg https://i.redd.it/u9c8patjifb51.jpg

jawns 4y ago

> while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention Did the U.S. Constitution give abortion the slightest mention? No, the right to abortion was inferred from a right to privacy, which was inferred from several amendments that did not explicitly mention abortion or privacy. The Ninth Amendment does makes allowance for rights that aren't explicitly enumerated, but it doesn't really give any guidance on how to know what those are. Similarly, many Christian denominations recognize that Jesus didn't need to explicitly mention every single moral issue for the Church to develop doctrine around them. Heck, even the doctrine of the Trinity, a core doctrine of mainstream Christianity, requires some level of inference from Scripture. So if your argument is that Jesus needed to explicitly mention abortion for there to be any justifiable Christian doctrine about it, you're applying a different standard than the standard that was used to define a constitutional right to abortion in the first place.

thomastjeffery 4y ago
As far as Christianity goes, equating Abortion to murder has only recently become the popular interpretation. Not only is it written multiple times in The Bible that life begins at breath, The Bible even contains instructions on how and when to perform abortion. As far as the constitution goes, amendments are treated as part of the text, not gotchas. The constitution protects your right to keep the contents of your pockets and your home private. Why not the contents of your uterus?

tablespoon 4y ago

> I hope that whomever supported this ruling is happy right now, and I'd like to remind them that, while Jesus Christ never gave to abortion the slightest mention, he was quite vocal about the fact that greed was not compatible with salvation. Maybe so, but apparently it's been condemned from the earliest times in Christianity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion#Early_Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_o.... I don't really know the Bible, but I'm guessing Jesus probably didn't spend a lot of time condemning literal murder either, so it's probably not safe to assume that means he thought preventing greed is more important than preventing murder.

pxc 4y ago
The very same paragraphs talk about it being comparable among early Christians to such 'grave sins as contraception and sterilization'. How should this inform the relative weight of the use of condoms and murder, for contemporary Christians? This doesn't at all support the notion that Christianity has always been concerned with abortion as a corrolary to murder, which is at the center of contemporary conservative religious discourse on the issue.

pmoriarty 4y ago

"I guess they do care about putting woman back in the kitchen as indentured servants more than they do about social justice" Just poor women. Rich women will still be able to travel out of state (and out of country, if need be) to get an abortion. They'll also be able to hire a maid, cook, and nurse to do all their household chores for them. It's the poor who will be most screwed, as usual.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> This is the final chapter No, its not. The use of state power to exterminate trans people is the next chapter, and its already well under way. More broadly, much of the next series of chapters is using selective application of “religious liberty” to establish unique and particular entitlement for favored Christian groups across the board, by dismissing the sincerity of other beliefs and/or judging the burdens imposed on them by a different subjective standard in applying the “substantial burden” test than is applied on favored Christian beliefs. Viewed even more broadly, the focus is on dismantling substantive anti-discrimination protections for non-favored groups extending beyond religion by similar means (as is the case for the above trends, we’ve already seen some elements of this, such as the judicial dismantling of much of the Voting Rights Act; but that is just the beginning, there is much more to come.) EDIT: Heck, this isn’t even the end of this chapter, if one considers the way this is part of the integrated campaign against sexual and reproductive freedom and the right of privacy established in the line of cases running (through Roe) back to Griswold v. Connecticut, which are all under attack, and span issues beyond abortion to include contraception, same sex marriage, sodomy laws, etc.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
That.. seems excessively alarmist. It is on par with Sirius XM Channel channel reacting to the news by saying, and I am paraphrasing, 'they are going after all our rights next'. I might agree in an abstract manner it is not a final chapter the same way just imposing red flag laws is not the end goal for gun control activists, but the paragraphs that follow are a little out there.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > That.. seems excessively alarmist. Then you aren't paying attention to the actual legislation being passed in States, the advocacy of leading members of the Republican Party, and even the things explicitly stated in the writings of Supreme Court justices on this case. > It is on par with Sirius XM Channel channel reacting to the news by saying, and I am paraphrasing, ‘they are going after all our rights next’. Thomas literally (to anyone who understands the scope and impact of the Court’s substantive due process jurisprudence) said that in his concurrence.

toyg 4y ago

Not disagreeing, but this comes from further back than a decade. It goes all the way at the very least to Gingrich, when Republicans locked on the religious vote by attacking the "immoral conduct" of Bill Clinton. It worked so well that they've made it a structural element of their strategies. You can see the traces of this even in the political allegory of clintonism that is The West Wing - this episode was filmed in year 2000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VHK1NXIBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VHK1NXIBw

dfxm12 4y ago

I don't think it's right to place blame totally on evangelicals and other Christians. The Republican platform is reactionary top to bottom. This is further reflected in Republican politician's votes. What I'm saying is, this happens even without fervent support from the religious right. This also likely isn't the final chapter, as the opinion also gives thoughts to overturning rulings related to contraception and same sex marriage.

jimt1234 4y ago

The fascinating thing about all this is the power of human manipulation. I grew up in a deeply religions area of the Midwest, the Bible Belt. Everyone was a hardcore Christian. However, as a youngster, I don't recall anyone talking about abortion. No mention of it. Back then churches would organize to help feed poor people and spread the word. That was it. Then, sometime around the mid-80s, everyone started talking about abortion. It seemed like that's all anyone talked about. And the tone changed, too. It went from, "Let me show you the way" to "You're going to rot in hell!"