5 ms·

> I'd understand if "the left" was trying to take away some other person's right, but this is the opposite. They're trying to preserve rights. The thing that m

by gwd 4y ago

> I'd understand if "the left" was trying to take away some other person's right, but this is the opposite. They're trying to preserve rights. The thing that makes these discussions so frustrating is that people often seem to be completely deer-in-the-headlights ignorant of the other side's arguments. The argument of pro-life people is that there are two human beings involved in the abortion: the mother, and the child. Making abortion legal gives the mother the right over her body by removing the right of the child to not have her life taken away. In the eyes of pro-life people, "taking away some other person's right" is exactly what "the left" are doing. Now you might not agree that there is a child in this case; you might think that children begin existing and having rights once they pass through the birth canal and not before. Or you might think that even if there is a child that has rights, the mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps the child's right to life. But you can't say "I don't understand where they're coming from; 'the left' isn't trying to take away some other person's right" without being profoundly ignorant of the basic views of the people you're arguing against.

bardworx 4y ago
That's a really good point but unfortunately its just a surface level argument. Same states that demonize abortions also cut health services for children and mothers. All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave. So they only kinda sorta care about the child in the womb but not about the mother or the child when they are born. If folks are going to ban abortions they should at least expand child and mother care, in my opinion. On the other hand, pre-Roe, the maximum tax rate was 70%, with 25 different tax brackets. I'm guessing that folks that support today's decision are probably okay with the tax increases and big government that will follow. Put another way, the case several days ago that allows child school credit to be used for Catholic school ALSO allows the same credit to be used for the Church of Satan School of the Gifted. The unintended consequences of all the rulings during the past week are going to be an interesting things to observe.
- forty 4y ago
  Exactly, so much bullshit when the only goals are really to make sure poor people stay poor and that women don't work...
  - bardworx 4y ago
    I believe the “real” reason is to disenfranchise voters and seal their majority.
- gwd 4y ago
  > Same states that demonize abortions also cut health services for children and mothers. All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave. Suppose for the sake of argument that you're a person who thinks health services for children and paid family leave are important; but you also think that abortion is the moral equivalent of murder. You can vote for: * Team Blue, who will increase children's health services and advocate for paid family leave, but slaughter millions of innocent children [Remember, I'm not claiming this is true, I'm trying to put you in the mind of a hypothetical person who believes this way] * Team Red, who will decrease children's health services and family leave, but restrict the slaughter of innocent children. I mean, if that's what you actually believe, then it really has to be Team Red, doesn't it? I don't pretend to know what politicians think; it seems pretty likely that a lot of them are cynically using abortion as a ploy to get people to vote for policies that favor their rich donors. But I can tell you that an awful lot of people who actually vote are genuine in their opposition to it. If you want people to vote differently, you have to understand where the voters are coming from, not where their politicians are coming from.
  - bardworx 4y ago
    That’s a really good point and thanks for sharing. Definitely food for thought with regards to this sensitive topic. Personally, I believe anti-abortion is a double edged sword that I don’t know how to traverse. I respect everyone’s right to choose but I also understand how politicizing the issue is favorable for politicians as they can yank at the heart strings and at the same time effect specific class of citizens more than others. And that last part bothers me. It’s not so much the belief but the use of that as a belief to disenfranchise communities who are most vulnerable. I don’t know how to reconcile that fact, internally.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Team Blue has fewer abortions than Team Red, thanks to contraception. Team Red just has their abortions as safe for rich people while poor people use coat hangers. Team Red is only opposed to abortions for other people. "The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion": https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/ https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
- eric_cc 4y ago
  > All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave. So they only kinda sorta care about the child in the womb but not about the mother or the child when they are born. Or they’re more capitalist in their thinking and expect people to take care of themselves as opposed to leaving it up to the government. Who is right and who is wrong comes down to opinion. But I don’t believe it’s as simple as “the other side doesn’t care as much as we do”
  - bardworx 4y ago
    That's a fair counter-point. If we had to create a model to test my hypothesis, what do you believe is the best way to go about it? My proposal is as follows: Take the GDP, per capita, per state and compare expansion/contraction of before Roe and after Roe. We can measure % change in the 10 years pre Roe to 10 years post Roe. The hypothesis is that states never cared about children and as such, post Roe, GDP expansion in states that had abortion abolished experienced a much higher GDP, per capita growth than before. Information can be sourced from St. Luis FED. If you have another idea, please let me know. I'm personally curious about this and would like to explore so feel free to pick apart my post as it will just render a more thought out experiment. Thanks. edit: If someone is a data scientist that can comment on what is the correct methodology to take or what pitfalls to consider, I would highly appreciate it.
- jl6 4y ago
  Another part of the pro-life/conservative mindset is that positive rights (freedom to) and negative rights (freedom from) tend to be treated very differently, leading to no inherent contradiction between believing in the unborn child’s right to not be killed, and believing that same child has no right to free care.
  - bardworx 4y ago
    I don’t inherently believe that to be true for most Red voters. I do believe that is the inherit belief of most Red politicians and oligarchs.
withinboredom 4y ago
> Now you might not agree that there is a child in this case; you might think that children begin existing and having rights once they pass through the birth canal and not before. Or you might think that even if there is a child that has rights, the mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps the child's right to life. But you can't say "I don't understand where they're coming from; 'the left' isn't trying to take away some other person's right" without being profoundly ignorant of the basic views of the people you're arguing against. I think people want to make it about that, and that's fine. But should we force people to donate their livers, kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise? Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's and you have to take care of them until either one of you die. Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some ways), they may not even live through the event, and then take care of it for the rest of each others lives. Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in such a way she could not have a child without losing the ability to walk for the rest of her life. She couldn't get her 'tubes tied' because she was too young. Think about that for a minute and the position she was in and now think about a position she might be in if she were in her early twenties today. She wouldn't be able to have a normal life and even back then, she never wanted to be unable to run with her child. IIRC, she's "tied" her tubes and her and her husband have adopted a child. But damn, it isn't always so black and white.
- gwd 4y ago
  > I think people want to make it about that, and that's fine. Well, from a moral perspective, it is about that. I'm not sure which of those two positions you take (not a person / mother's rights supersede children's rights), but if you're going to be honest you've got to figure out which it is and why. And for the vast majority of people who vote pro-life (at least, all the ones that I know), that's what it's about too. And I note that you haven't really challenged the core logic I've put forward there, but rather on some of the sticky implications. > Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's and you have to take care of them until either one of you die. ...The woman is forced to... take care of it for the rest of each others lives. And, here's again where there's a basic ignorance that a five-minute conversation with someone who's pro-life would clear up. Nobody who's pro-life would say that women should be forced to raise the children; they can be put up for adoption. > But should we force people to donate their livers, kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise? There's a difference between causing someone to die by action, and allowing someone to die by inaction. Pushing someone into a raging river is different than failing to dive in to rescue them. > Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some ways), they may not even live through the event... This is your strongest point. I mean, yeah, birth is crazy. And it would totally suck to go through it if it wasn't something you'd chosen to do. But it's not like the child was able to choose this either. It's a terrible situation for both people. > Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in such a way she could not have a child without losing the ability to walk for the rest of her life. So first of all, this sort of situation is quite uncommon; and while there are zealots who would take a hard line, lots of people would be willing to compromise in this sort of a case. Secondly, there are lots of people worldwide who are OK with abortion in the first trimester, but not the second and third. I think there are reasonable justifications for this. But thinking about it from a moral perspective, let's try this scenario. You're taking a tour of some tall factory with a bunch of people you don't know. While you're on a catwalk 4 stories up, something catastrophic happens, and at the end of it you're holding for dear life to a railing, and a stranger is dangling over the factory floor, holding for dear life to your legs. You're not afraid of falling yourself; your arms are wrapped firmly around the railing, which you're pretty sure isn't going anywhere. But you have some sort of a degenerative joint disorder in your hips. You can already feel the tendons stretching from the stranger dangling below you; you're pretty sure that by the time help arrives to pull him up that enough damage will be done that you'll never walk again. You're also pretty sure that if you kick him hard enough right now, he'll let go and fall to his death, leaving your legs intact. Is it moral for you to kill the stranger to save your legs? Should it be legal to kill the stranger to save your legs?
diob 4y ago
Honestly, if the Supreme Court had ruled unborn children as having rights beyond this I could take you seriously, but they literally have nothing beyond the right to a womb. Do they count in the census? Can I say they're a dependent? Heck, why don't we make periods and ejaculation illegal. After all, those eggs and sperm are viable! Men shouldn't be allowed to pull out, wear condoms, or masturbate. Won't someone think of the children?! Oh, I almost forgot to ban sodomy too! Good heavens! And what about contraception? That's coming next. What is your argument then? The thing is, we have evidence based ways to reduce the need for unnecessary abortions, but the "right" isn't concerned about that. We know, for a fact, that access to contraception and sex education dramatically reduce abortion levels. We know for a fact that making it illegal does not, it merely causes dangerous abortions to increase. How do you square that? The "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd somehow can't grasp, or refuse to grasp, the consequences of their actions. I'm also interested in how you feel about the rights of rape victims. Perhaps you'd like to carry the baby for them?

by gwd 4y ago

bardworx 4y ago

That's a really good point but unfortunately its just a surface level argument. Same states that demonize abortions also cut health services for children and mothers. All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave. So they only kinda sorta care about the child in the womb but not about the mother or the child when they are born. If folks are going to ban abortions they should at least expand child and mother care, in my opinion. On the other hand, pre-Roe, the maximum tax rate was 70%, with 25 different tax brackets. I'm guessing that folks that support today's decision are probably okay with the tax increases and big government that will follow. Put another way, the case several days ago that allows child school credit to be used for Catholic school ALSO allows the same credit to be used for the Church of Satan School of the Gifted. The unintended consequences of all the rulings during the past week are going to be an interesting things to observe.

forty 4y ago
Exactly, so much bullshit when the only goals are really to make sure poor people stay poor and that women don't work...
- bardworx 4y ago
  I believe the “real” reason is to disenfranchise voters and seal their majority.
gwd 4y ago
> Same states that demonize abortions also cut health services for children and mothers. All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave. Suppose for the sake of argument that you're a person who thinks health services for children and paid family leave are important; but you also think that abortion is the moral equivalent of murder. You can vote for: * Team Blue, who will increase children's health services and advocate for paid family leave, but slaughter millions of innocent children [Remember, I'm not claiming this is true, I'm trying to put you in the mind of a hypothetical person who believes this way] * Team Red, who will decrease children's health services and family leave, but restrict the slaughter of innocent children. I mean, if that's what you actually believe, then it really has to be Team Red, doesn't it? I don't pretend to know what politicians think; it seems pretty likely that a lot of them are cynically using abortion as a ploy to get people to vote for policies that favor their rich donors. But I can tell you that an awful lot of people who actually vote are genuine in their opposition to it. If you want people to vote differently, you have to understand where the voters are coming from, not where their politicians are coming from.
- bardworx 4y ago
  That’s a really good point and thanks for sharing. Definitely food for thought with regards to this sensitive topic. Personally, I believe anti-abortion is a double edged sword that I don’t know how to traverse. I respect everyone’s right to choose but I also understand how politicizing the issue is favorable for politicians as they can yank at the heart strings and at the same time effect specific class of citizens more than others. And that last part bothers me. It’s not so much the belief but the use of that as a belief to disenfranchise communities who are most vulnerable. I don’t know how to reconcile that fact, internally.
- lupire 4y ago
  Team Blue has fewer abortions than Team Red, thanks to contraception. Team Red just has their abortions as safe for rich people while poor people use coat hangers. Team Red is only opposed to abortions for other people. "The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion": https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/ https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
eric_cc 4y ago
> All states that had a trigger law to ban abortions also do not have paid family leave. So they only kinda sorta care about the child in the womb but not about the mother or the child when they are born. Or they’re more capitalist in their thinking and expect people to take care of themselves as opposed to leaving it up to the government. Who is right and who is wrong comes down to opinion. But I don’t believe it’s as simple as “the other side doesn’t care as much as we do”
- bardworx 4y ago
  That's a fair counter-point. If we had to create a model to test my hypothesis, what do you believe is the best way to go about it? My proposal is as follows: Take the GDP, per capita, per state and compare expansion/contraction of before Roe and after Roe. We can measure % change in the 10 years pre Roe to 10 years post Roe. The hypothesis is that states never cared about children and as such, post Roe, GDP expansion in states that had abortion abolished experienced a much higher GDP, per capita growth than before. Information can be sourced from St. Luis FED. If you have another idea, please let me know. I'm personally curious about this and would like to explore so feel free to pick apart my post as it will just render a more thought out experiment. Thanks. edit: If someone is a data scientist that can comment on what is the correct methodology to take or what pitfalls to consider, I would highly appreciate it.
jl6 4y ago
Another part of the pro-life/conservative mindset is that positive rights (freedom to) and negative rights (freedom from) tend to be treated very differently, leading to no inherent contradiction between believing in the unborn child’s right to not be killed, and believing that same child has no right to free care.
- bardworx 4y ago
  I don’t inherently believe that to be true for most Red voters. I do believe that is the inherit belief of most Red politicians and oligarchs.

withinboredom 4y ago

> Now you might not agree that there is a child in this case; you might think that children begin existing and having rights once they pass through the birth canal and not before. Or you might think that even if there is a child that has rights, the mother's right to bodily autonomy trumps the child's right to life. But you can't say "I don't understand where they're coming from; 'the left' isn't trying to take away some other person's right" without being profoundly ignorant of the basic views of the people you're arguing against. I think people want to make it about that, and that's fine. But should we force people to donate their livers, kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise? Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's and you have to take care of them until either one of you die. Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some ways), they may not even live through the event, and then take care of it for the rest of each others lives. Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in such a way she could not have a child without losing the ability to walk for the rest of her life. She couldn't get her 'tubes tied' because she was too young. Think about that for a minute and the position she was in and now think about a position she might be in if she were in her early twenties today. She wouldn't be able to have a normal life and even back then, she never wanted to be unable to run with her child. IIRC, she's "tied" her tubes and her and her husband have adopted a child. But damn, it isn't always so black and white.

gwd 4y ago
> I think people want to make it about that, and that's fine. Well, from a moral perspective, it is about that. I'm not sure which of those two positions you take (not a person / mother's rights supersede children's rights), but if you're going to be honest you've got to figure out which it is and why. And for the vast majority of people who vote pro-life (at least, all the ones that I know), that's what it's about too. And I note that you haven't really challenged the core logic I've put forward there, but rather on some of the sticky implications. > Oh, and the person you are donating to has Alzheimer's and you have to take care of them until either one of you die. ...The woman is forced to... take care of it for the rest of each others lives. And, here's again where there's a basic ignorance that a five-minute conversation with someone who's pro-life would clear up. Nobody who's pro-life would say that women should be forced to raise the children; they can be put up for adoption. > But should we force people to donate their livers, kidneys, bone marrow because someone will die otherwise? There's a difference between causing someone to die by action, and allowing someone to die by inaction. Pushing someone into a raging river is different than failing to dive in to rescue them. > Forced birth is kinda/sorta/almost the same thing. The woman is forced to donate aspects of themselves that will affect them forever (more than just 'organs' in some ways), they may not even live through the event... This is your strongest point. I mean, yeah, birth is crazy. And it would totally suck to go through it if it wasn't something you'd chosen to do. But it's not like the child was able to choose this either. It's a terrible situation for both people. > Long ago, I dated a woman who had broken her hip in such a way she could not have a child without losing the ability to walk for the rest of her life. So first of all, this sort of situation is quite uncommon; and while there are zealots who would take a hard line, lots of people would be willing to compromise in this sort of a case. Secondly, there are lots of people worldwide who are OK with abortion in the first trimester, but not the second and third. I think there are reasonable justifications for this. But thinking about it from a moral perspective, let's try this scenario. You're taking a tour of some tall factory with a bunch of people you don't know. While you're on a catwalk 4 stories up, something catastrophic happens, and at the end of it you're holding for dear life to a railing, and a stranger is dangling over the factory floor, holding for dear life to your legs. You're not afraid of falling yourself; your arms are wrapped firmly around the railing, which you're pretty sure isn't going anywhere. But you have some sort of a degenerative joint disorder in your hips. You can already feel the tendons stretching from the stranger dangling below you; you're pretty sure that by the time help arrives to pull him up that enough damage will be done that you'll never walk again. You're also pretty sure that if you kick him hard enough right now, he'll let go and fall to his death, leaving your legs intact. Is it moral for you to kill the stranger to save your legs? Should it be legal to kill the stranger to save your legs?

diob 4y ago

Honestly, if the Supreme Court had ruled unborn children as having rights beyond this I could take you seriously, but they literally have nothing beyond the right to a womb. Do they count in the census? Can I say they're a dependent? Heck, why don't we make periods and ejaculation illegal. After all, those eggs and sperm are viable! Men shouldn't be allowed to pull out, wear condoms, or masturbate. Won't someone think of the children?! Oh, I almost forgot to ban sodomy too! Good heavens! And what about contraception? That's coming next. What is your argument then? The thing is, we have evidence based ways to reduce the need for unnecessary abortions, but the "right" isn't concerned about that. We know, for a fact, that access to contraception and sex education dramatically reduce abortion levels. We know for a fact that making it illegal does not, it merely causes dangerous abortions to increase. How do you square that? The "facts don't care about your feelings" crowd somehow can't grasp, or refuse to grasp, the consequences of their actions. I'm also interested in how you feel about the rights of rape victims. Perhaps you'd like to carry the baby for them?