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Reading the various discussions on HN, it is obvious that HN skews male. The vast majority of threads are either regarding the interpretation of legal framewor

by unsui 4y ago

Reading the various discussions on HN, it is obvious that HN skews male. The vast majority of threads are either regarding the interpretation of legal frameworks and their implications, or asserting a-priori values on start of life and following the rational implications thereof. No-where do I see any discussions, or even caring about, how this affects women directly: the ability to govern their own bodies, their reproductive (and civil) rights. Or just the fact that they are de-jure 2nd-class citizens.

AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
I often hear about "my body - my choice". But after spending nine months in woman's body the child becomes the part of her life for twenty next years. Should it rather be "my life - my choice"?
- lolinder 4y ago
  There are millions of parents who long to adopt a baby[0]. Having a baby does not necessarily imply raising them. [0] https://www.americanadoptions.com/pregnant/waiting_adoptive_families https://www.americanadoptions.com/pregnant/waiting_adoptive_...
  - notch656a 4y ago
    If the other parent doesn't consent to an adoption it usually can't happen. Then you either have to raise the child directly through your labor (custody) or indirectly through your labor (child support). There are lots of people raising children against their will with no mechanism to relieve them of that duty, even if they revoke consent to raise the child in any form.
xwdv 4y ago
HN is about technical, objective things and those other points you mentioned are mostly emotional subjective topics. It would be strange to see them discussed here at any significant length.
- jmull 4y ago
  I was about to post a reply that engages with your claims, but now I'm thinking you're not serious (I don't want to use the T-word here, but that's what I'm thinking.) If you're serious, could you explain your claims?
  - xwdv 4y ago
    I don’t know why you wouldn’t think I’m serious, nor do I think the claim that HN is about technical topics needs explanation.
- runarberg 4y ago
  The first paragraph of the HN guidelines: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Societal issues are apparently high up in what good hackers find interesting along with technical things.
  - least 4y ago
    > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. I think if you take this to heart, you might interpret what they're saying as a defense of HN readers; that they are more inclined to talk about the technicalities of this decision rather than the effect it may have on women because that is something they can comment on. Tact may also play a role in why people hesitate to make comments of empathy, especially since simply expressing your disdain for the decision isn't particularly substantive. I'm certain many of the people that are choosing to talk about other aspects of the decision are wholly empathetic to the people this affects.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      You hit the nail on the head. On my social media which isn’t always a particularly intellectual medium, people are already expressing their outrage… but not really saying much else. The result: reading about how yet another person is so mad about the ruling and “so tired of this country” and what a blow this is for women’s rights has gotten repetitive and uninteresting. After a certain point, reading such comments over and over again is just giving in to outrage porn. Most members of HN recognize this and prefer the intellectual stimulation that comes from discussing more nuanced technical details.
spacemadness 4y ago
It skews male and generally consists of a very well paid group of people that have never had to struggle economically. This is the wrong place to find lots of empathy toward disempowered groups of people.
- leereeves 4y ago
  > This is the wrong place to find lots of empathy toward disempowered groups of people. That's unfairly dismissing the possibility that a pro-life position could be motivated by empathy for the unborn, who are completely powerless. We can do better than demonizing people who disagree.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    Does having empathy in one situation change a lack of empathy in another? The parent didn't claim a lack of empathy for all
  - rfd4sgmk8u 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > There is no valid pro-life position. Its all anti-women, anti-human rights, anti-humanity. That's an extremely strong statement. It's the kind of thing someone firmly ensconced in a bubble would say. Is what you say true, or do you just lack the imagination or empathy to think of one?
      - feet 4y ago
        I'd like you to lay out, very specifically, why what is essentially an extension or growth has more rights than a fully formed and independently living human
endisneigh 4y ago
I’m curious (since you mention things skewing male), do you believe that a man who gets a woman pregnant should have to support the child? Why or why not? As for the reproductive rights, as long as contraception is legal (and who knows what will happen next) isn’t the choice at conception? Contraceptives should be untaxed and widely available. People talk about Roe v Wade as if women spontaneously get pregnant against their will and are forced to care for the baby. That being said women who are raped should be able to get an abortion imo
- notch656a 4y ago
  Personally, no. Consent can be revoked. Involuntary servitude is a violation of the 13th amendment. IMO a child can be abandoned without any moral guilt, so long as you leave them to their own devices or surrender them to someone else rather than say physically attacking them. I actually find abortion a much trickier subject because there's an eviction involved, and it becomes a trickier subject because some physical force is typically needed to remove the entity.
  - rfd4sgmk8u 4y ago
    The only person it is tricky for is the mother, who is the only person in the universe whos opinion matters on abortion, and we must abide by the decisions of the individual. Anything else is absolute horror of biological control and loss of bodily autonomy, and should be rightfully ignored, and anyone that thinks differently needs to think about minding their own business and not making a difficult thing more difficult. Those that use the legal system to enforce their hatred of women? Get off the planet please.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Personally I'm pro-abortion but I think it's trickier than you say. Evicting a living entity, even for people who are pretty progressive, is usually seen as a delicate subject. To me evicting an entity is a lot trickier subject than merely abandoning it, and the points against using force to evict that entity could have merit. Although we are both in agreement that you can safely abandon the life you created without any moral obligation. Personally I see no moral difference between abandoning life before or after birth. Neither wrong, but abandoning before birth requires a forceful eviction. >The only person it is tricky for is the mother, who is the only person in the universe whos opinion matters on abortion, and we must abide by the decisions of the individual. I mean to frame it as only involved life as the mother I think is disingenuous. Perhaps the fetus is not viable but it has to be at least considered in this equation, even if only to decide offspring has no rights to compel their parent to keep them alive.
AlimJaffer 4y ago
Well said. Too much of the debate on here is around logical fallacies rather than the direct impact this will have on women - particularly those who are poor and unable to travel for safe abortions in other states. Banning abortion only makes access to safe abortions harder - if the right wing want to reduce abortions, making contraceptives freely available has been proven to dramatically reduce the abortion rate as evidenced in Colorado[1]. [1] - https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/06/05/abortion-teen-pregnancy-decline-colorado https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/06/05/aborti...
- tjs8rj 4y ago
  “If you really want to reduce murders, you can’t outlaw it, that just lets rich people murder. Instead, you make guns and other self protection widely available” To anyone who is convinced abortion is baby murder, this is what you just said. This argument only ever makes sense if you treat the fetus like a non entity and believe the opposition to abortion is purely hatred of female autonomy. The vast majority of Americans in favor of some abortion restrictions (which 75% of Americans are) have that opinion not because of the above but because they believe that fetus becomes a person at some point between conception and birth.
  - AlimJaffer 4y ago
    Except that contraception prevents conception from ever occurring? Your analogy is fundamentally flawed, and there's no point in arguing in good faith with people who equate contraception to murder.
    - tjs8rj 4y ago
      You said: 1. Outlawing abortion isn’t helpful at all 2. Actually helpful would be contraceptives I (and the vast majority of people) agree that contraception is important and should be widely available. You’re argument against abortion restrictions is completely incorrect though and that’s the point I made
eric_cc 4y ago
I think it’s totally fair to respond to this in multiple ways. Legal and economic repercussions are important discussions. So is the practical impact to women. There is no reason to belittle people for considering various aspects of this ruling.
- feet 4y ago
  The impact on women, the human impact, should come before everything else But of course the slave owning framers of the constitution didn't care about that, considering the whole slave thing, so the federalist society judges that have been placed on the supreme court won't either
  - hellojesus 4y ago
    I would argue that legal consistency should be the priority. The legal argument is simple: - The Constitution enumerates federal powers. - Abortion is not enumerated federally (Article 1 Section 8) - 10th Ammendment states that anything not explicitly enumerated to the federal gov or explicitly denied to the States is the legal territory of the States This reversal doesn't ban abortion across the US. It returns the decision to the states, where it should be legally. If we want a federal solution, we need an ammendment. This is exactly the same as how prohibition required an ammendment to ban alcohol. Emotions, morals, etc., while important for driving the end result, still must comply with the legal system.
    - jyrkesh 4y ago
      > This is exactly the same as how prohibition required an ammendment [sic] to ban alcohol. Can't wait for SCOTUS to apply the same logic to drug prohibition, which is also not at all an enumerated federal power (assuming the same logic that alcohol regulation isn't one either).
      - hellojesus 4y ago
        Agreed! I just finished writing a comment to someone else specifically stating that Schedule 1 drugs should be handed the same result as R v. W just got!
armitron 4y ago
> the ability to govern their own bodies I see this frequently repeated, but it's clearly sophistry, similar to the language trick in a comment below where "It's not a baby, it's a fetus" is used to subvert reality. Women can very well govern their own bodies, but a 6 month old baby is definitely not "their own body" and one can very well understand why large portions of society would want to see it protected against abuse.
- Hallucinaut 4y ago
  It's not a baby, it's a fetus. The potential for being a baby is not a baby. And by what mental contortion is it not a woman's body? You're obviously not speaking from the position of having your life and health put at risk by carrying something that puts the greatest strain on a human body most will ever endure.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    My wife believes exactly the same as the OP, and she is most definitely speaking from that perspective. :) This isn't a gendered issue, it's a worldview one. There's a very small skew towards males preferring it be illegal, but it's not enough to write off all opposition as male: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opini...
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > There's a very small skew towards males preferring it be illegal Women favor legality by +28 percentage points Men favor legality by +17 percentage points That's...not a particularly small gender skew.
      - lolinder 4y ago
        That's not how to read these numbers. Your way of counting doubles the actual gender gap. 63 percent of women say abortion should be legal in all/most cases. 58 percent of men say abortion should be legal in all/most cases. That's an ~5 percentage point gender gap, not a 10 percentage point gap.
human_person 4y ago
Not only that but once half of the population has lost bodily autonomy why would anyone believe that their rights are safe? Today a woman can be compelled to use an organ in her body to keep another person alive. What’s to stop the court from ruling that if you have 2 kidneys you can be compelled to donate one to keep someone else alive? What happens when a deadbeat dad is the only match for a child with organ failure? Why shouldn’t they be compelled to give up an organ to keep their offspring alive? Libertarians should be in the streets protesting the loss of bodily autonomy. And all of us should be afraid.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  I’ve never understood this take - other than rape (in which abortion should be allowed imo), why is it a loss of bodily autonomy? Women choose to have sex consensually, no?
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    I don't understand your take. Do you assume that all consensual sex happens with the intention of reproduction?
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      The intention isn’t relevant - sex leading to kids is hardly some unknown fact. Other than rape, in which case agency is removed, why is conception not the point in which the choice is made? Is your opinion that anyone can reneg on known consequences of their actions? Don’t misunderstand, women should have a choice in what their bodies are used for. My assertion is, other than rape, they already have it with respect to having a kid or not.
      - drdaeman 4y ago
        I don't agree or disagree with the consequences part, but... > sex leading to kids is hardly some unknown fact Oh, I'd wish. There are people who still - in the 21st century - do not have like basic knowledge about sexual wellness and have very weird (and sometimes very dangerous) ideas about contraception, safety and risks of pregnancy. I mean, it's hard for any educated person to believe in this shit, but I've met or read some pretty insane opinions. Like people who genuinely believe really weird nonsense such as that virgins cannot get pregnant their first time. And they aren't malicious folks (well, maybe some are, of course) - just awfully misinformed. Humanity is in a very weird place. On the one hand we've walked on the Moon and about to conquer nuclear fusion power, but on the other hand we've just climbed down from the trees and learned how to make a fire.
f38zf5vdt 4y ago
Voted up. Reading comments here I feel like I'm watching Robert McNamara describe the hundreds of thousands of casualties that were required to win the second world war as if they were just figures on paper. Lives are going to be destroyed by this and women will be going to prison for what many civilized countries consider a fundamental right.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
- f38zf5vdt 4y ago
  Transgender men are speaking out loudly about this on social media right now, as they are also obviously impacted.
- epylar 4y ago
  The overwhelming majority of men can't get pregnant.
  - throw_m239339 4y ago
    > The overwhelming majority of men can't get pregnant. Human males obviously can't get pregnant, only human females.
coward123 4y ago
Consider this a bit of code switching. Many of us absolutely are concerned about what this means for women, but we also know that this forum skews male and a particular kind of male. So we are making the argument here that resonates with this forum. You are right though that more people overall - even those who skew conservative and pro-individual rights, should realize that if you take away rights from women, and then homosexuals, and then people who want to be married to someone of a different race... where does it end in terms of stripping away individual rights? I'd argue that if you view women's health care as a matter of individual freedom and rights, then is that not the same argument being made in interpreting the 2nd amendment as not about militias (IE: a standing army) but the rights of the individual? If I can tell women they can't have a set of health care services, what's stopping the government from telling men that they can't have a different set of health care services?
- hellojesus 4y ago
  Rights has a very specific meaning in the US legal system. Abortion is not listed as a right in the Constitution, and it therefore is not a federal right. We can argue that it should be, but now we're talking about an ammendment, which is legally necessary and the real conversation the nation should be having. *I don't think it could ever qualify as a right. Rights are negative, not positive. You could not guarantee the right to an abortion because now you're guaranteeing someone to the right to have someone else do work for them. Instead, it would need to be enumerated as a negative right, meaning that there would be federal protection against the outlawing of abortions.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  >> is that not the same argument being made in interpreting the 2nd amendment as not about militias (IE: a standing army) but the rights of the individual? Militia does not mean standing army. From the Supreme Court Heller decision https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf, page 2: "The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved." You can read pages 1 and 2 of that decision to see the summary of the Supreme Court's argument for why 2nd Amendment rights are individual rights.
hobo_in_library 4y ago
swayvil 4y ago
HN is full of coders. It's for coders, run by coders. Coders are 99% male.
lr4444lr 4y ago
Maybe because it's just unanswerable? We're not talking about the right to pierce their ears or vote. We're talking about the termination of a living organism. I am pro-choice, but an intelligent mostly pro-life friend of mine tasked me to ask the most ardent activists on their side to answer, "when does human life begin?" It's a simple question to state, and yet many on the pro choice side absolutely refuse to grapple with it. It's become a great shibboleth question to find who is beyond reasoned debate on this issue. Yes, we are male. Yes, we acknowledge their is a thorny rights issue. There's also the question of rights of the organism being aborted. And the science of what a "viable" fetus is has progressed greatly since the 1970s. This is an uncomfortable conversation to have, but no one has a right of gender to say it can't be had.
belorn 4y ago
This would then be an excellent time to introduce universal human rights. Reproduction should only occur through consent, and no one should be forced to be a parent against their will. Any action done to our own bodies or action people ask that we perform with our bodies should require continuously consent. Any negative outcome to society of people not providing consent should be address by the government in the form of social support. It is also about time that we abolish all laws that makes distinctions based on gender and sex. That way there won't be any 2nd-class citizens encoded in law that is based on gender.
pyronik19 4y ago
Shouldn't the legal analysis of a legal opinion be the norm? Facts don't care about your feelings.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
Yes, HN skews male. I'm a woman and extremely poor. I've been a member for nearly thirteen years. It's possible but challenging to present a female point of view here. Reproductive issues and what I generally think of as human sexual morality are always hard to talk about anywhere. I think for a lot of women, this is a very threatening turn of events. That's going to make it challenging to discuss it in the rational style required by HN guidelines even before accounting for the gender ratio here. I'm quite fond of HN and have come to see a lot of the practices here as not male per se but as best practices for public discourse and I have come to believe that women tend to be raised to engage in a fashion more appropriate for private discourse. So I think there's a somewhat steep learning curve involved for most women that gets conflated with sexism and complicates attempts by women to give voice to a female point of view here. If you can express yourself in accordance with best practices for public discourse, you can be heard here. Trying to figure out how to do that while not spazzing about sexism ...well, it's challenging and I think most women lack sufficient reason to keep at it, so they tend not to.

by unsui 4y ago

AlexTWithBeard 4y ago

I often hear about "my body - my choice". But after spending nine months in woman's body the child becomes the part of her life for twenty next years. Should it rather be "my life - my choice"?

lolinder 4y ago
There are millions of parents who long to adopt a baby[0]. Having a baby does not necessarily imply raising them. [0] https://www.americanadoptions.com/pregnant/waiting_adoptive_families https://www.americanadoptions.com/pregnant/waiting_adoptive_...
- notch656a 4y ago
  If the other parent doesn't consent to an adoption it usually can't happen. Then you either have to raise the child directly through your labor (custody) or indirectly through your labor (child support). There are lots of people raising children against their will with no mechanism to relieve them of that duty, even if they revoke consent to raise the child in any form.

xwdv 4y ago

HN is about technical, objective things and those other points you mentioned are mostly emotional subjective topics. It would be strange to see them discussed here at any significant length.

jmull 4y ago
I was about to post a reply that engages with your claims, but now I'm thinking you're not serious (I don't want to use the T-word here, but that's what I'm thinking.) If you're serious, could you explain your claims?
- xwdv 4y ago
  I don’t know why you wouldn’t think I’m serious, nor do I think the claim that HN is about technical topics needs explanation.
runarberg 4y ago
The first paragraph of the HN guidelines: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Societal issues are apparently high up in what good hackers find interesting along with technical things.
- least 4y ago
  > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. I think if you take this to heart, you might interpret what they're saying as a defense of HN readers; that they are more inclined to talk about the technicalities of this decision rather than the effect it may have on women because that is something they can comment on. Tact may also play a role in why people hesitate to make comments of empathy, especially since simply expressing your disdain for the decision isn't particularly substantive. I'm certain many of the people that are choosing to talk about other aspects of the decision are wholly empathetic to the people this affects.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    You hit the nail on the head. On my social media which isn’t always a particularly intellectual medium, people are already expressing their outrage… but not really saying much else. The result: reading about how yet another person is so mad about the ruling and “so tired of this country” and what a blow this is for women’s rights has gotten repetitive and uninteresting. After a certain point, reading such comments over and over again is just giving in to outrage porn. Most members of HN recognize this and prefer the intellectual stimulation that comes from discussing more nuanced technical details.

spacemadness 4y ago

It skews male and generally consists of a very well paid group of people that have never had to struggle economically. This is the wrong place to find lots of empathy toward disempowered groups of people.

leereeves 4y ago
> This is the wrong place to find lots of empathy toward disempowered groups of people. That's unfairly dismissing the possibility that a pro-life position could be motivated by empathy for the unborn, who are completely powerless. We can do better than demonizing people who disagree.
- themitigating 4y ago
  Does having empathy in one situation change a lack of empathy in another? The parent didn't claim a lack of empathy for all
- rfd4sgmk8u 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > There is no valid pro-life position. Its all anti-women, anti-human rights, anti-humanity. That's an extremely strong statement. It's the kind of thing someone firmly ensconced in a bubble would say. Is what you say true, or do you just lack the imagination or empathy to think of one?
    - feet 4y ago
      I'd like you to lay out, very specifically, why what is essentially an extension or growth has more rights than a fully formed and independently living human

endisneigh 4y ago

I’m curious (since you mention things skewing male), do you believe that a man who gets a woman pregnant should have to support the child? Why or why not? As for the reproductive rights, as long as contraception is legal (and who knows what will happen next) isn’t the choice at conception? Contraceptives should be untaxed and widely available. People talk about Roe v Wade as if women spontaneously get pregnant against their will and are forced to care for the baby. That being said women who are raped should be able to get an abortion imo

notch656a 4y ago
Personally, no. Consent can be revoked. Involuntary servitude is a violation of the 13th amendment. IMO a child can be abandoned without any moral guilt, so long as you leave them to their own devices or surrender them to someone else rather than say physically attacking them. I actually find abortion a much trickier subject because there's an eviction involved, and it becomes a trickier subject because some physical force is typically needed to remove the entity.
- rfd4sgmk8u 4y ago
  The only person it is tricky for is the mother, who is the only person in the universe whos opinion matters on abortion, and we must abide by the decisions of the individual. Anything else is absolute horror of biological control and loss of bodily autonomy, and should be rightfully ignored, and anyone that thinks differently needs to think about minding their own business and not making a difficult thing more difficult. Those that use the legal system to enforce their hatred of women? Get off the planet please.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    Personally I'm pro-abortion but I think it's trickier than you say. Evicting a living entity, even for people who are pretty progressive, is usually seen as a delicate subject. To me evicting an entity is a lot trickier subject than merely abandoning it, and the points against using force to evict that entity could have merit. Although we are both in agreement that you can safely abandon the life you created without any moral obligation. Personally I see no moral difference between abandoning life before or after birth. Neither wrong, but abandoning before birth requires a forceful eviction. >The only person it is tricky for is the mother, who is the only person in the universe whos opinion matters on abortion, and we must abide by the decisions of the individual. I mean to frame it as only involved life as the mother I think is disingenuous. Perhaps the fetus is not viable but it has to be at least considered in this equation, even if only to decide offspring has no rights to compel their parent to keep them alive.

AlimJaffer 4y ago

Well said. Too much of the debate on here is around logical fallacies rather than the direct impact this will have on women - particularly those who are poor and unable to travel for safe abortions in other states. Banning abortion only makes access to safe abortions harder - if the right wing want to reduce abortions, making contraceptives freely available has been proven to dramatically reduce the abortion rate as evidenced in Colorado[1]. [1] - https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/06/05/abortion-teen-pregnancy-decline-colorado https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2019/06/05/aborti...

tjs8rj 4y ago
“If you really want to reduce murders, you can’t outlaw it, that just lets rich people murder. Instead, you make guns and other self protection widely available” To anyone who is convinced abortion is baby murder, this is what you just said. This argument only ever makes sense if you treat the fetus like a non entity and believe the opposition to abortion is purely hatred of female autonomy. The vast majority of Americans in favor of some abortion restrictions (which 75% of Americans are) have that opinion not because of the above but because they believe that fetus becomes a person at some point between conception and birth.
- AlimJaffer 4y ago
  Except that contraception prevents conception from ever occurring? Your analogy is fundamentally flawed, and there's no point in arguing in good faith with people who equate contraception to murder.
  - tjs8rj 4y ago
    You said: 1. Outlawing abortion isn’t helpful at all 2. Actually helpful would be contraceptives I (and the vast majority of people) agree that contraception is important and should be widely available. You’re argument against abortion restrictions is completely incorrect though and that’s the point I made

eric_cc 4y ago

I think it’s totally fair to respond to this in multiple ways. Legal and economic repercussions are important discussions. So is the practical impact to women. There is no reason to belittle people for considering various aspects of this ruling.

feet 4y ago
The impact on women, the human impact, should come before everything else But of course the slave owning framers of the constitution didn't care about that, considering the whole slave thing, so the federalist society judges that have been placed on the supreme court won't either
- hellojesus 4y ago
  I would argue that legal consistency should be the priority. The legal argument is simple: - The Constitution enumerates federal powers. - Abortion is not enumerated federally (Article 1 Section 8) - 10th Ammendment states that anything not explicitly enumerated to the federal gov or explicitly denied to the States is the legal territory of the States This reversal doesn't ban abortion across the US. It returns the decision to the states, where it should be legally. If we want a federal solution, we need an ammendment. This is exactly the same as how prohibition required an ammendment to ban alcohol. Emotions, morals, etc., while important for driving the end result, still must comply with the legal system.
  - jyrkesh 4y ago
    > This is exactly the same as how prohibition required an ammendment [sic] to ban alcohol. Can't wait for SCOTUS to apply the same logic to drug prohibition, which is also not at all an enumerated federal power (assuming the same logic that alcohol regulation isn't one either).
    - hellojesus 4y ago
      Agreed! I just finished writing a comment to someone else specifically stating that Schedule 1 drugs should be handed the same result as R v. W just got!

armitron 4y ago

> the ability to govern their own bodies I see this frequently repeated, but it's clearly sophistry, similar to the language trick in a comment below where "It's not a baby, it's a fetus" is used to subvert reality. Women can very well govern their own bodies, but a 6 month old baby is definitely not "their own body" and one can very well understand why large portions of society would want to see it protected against abuse.

Hallucinaut 4y ago
It's not a baby, it's a fetus. The potential for being a baby is not a baby. And by what mental contortion is it not a woman's body? You're obviously not speaking from the position of having your life and health put at risk by carrying something that puts the greatest strain on a human body most will ever endure.
- lolinder 4y ago
  My wife believes exactly the same as the OP, and she is most definitely speaking from that perspective. :) This isn't a gendered issue, it's a worldview one. There's a very small skew towards males preferring it be illegal, but it's not enough to write off all opposition as male: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opini...
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > There's a very small skew towards males preferring it be illegal Women favor legality by +28 percentage points Men favor legality by +17 percentage points That's...not a particularly small gender skew.
    - lolinder 4y ago
      That's not how to read these numbers. Your way of counting doubles the actual gender gap. 63 percent of women say abortion should be legal in all/most cases. 58 percent of men say abortion should be legal in all/most cases. That's an ~5 percentage point gender gap, not a 10 percentage point gap.

human_person 4y ago

Not only that but once half of the population has lost bodily autonomy why would anyone believe that their rights are safe? Today a woman can be compelled to use an organ in her body to keep another person alive. What’s to stop the court from ruling that if you have 2 kidneys you can be compelled to donate one to keep someone else alive? What happens when a deadbeat dad is the only match for a child with organ failure? Why shouldn’t they be compelled to give up an organ to keep their offspring alive? Libertarians should be in the streets protesting the loss of bodily autonomy. And all of us should be afraid.

endisneigh 4y ago
I’ve never understood this take - other than rape (in which abortion should be allowed imo), why is it a loss of bodily autonomy? Women choose to have sex consensually, no?
- mindcrime 4y ago
  I don't understand your take. Do you assume that all consensual sex happens with the intention of reproduction?
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    The intention isn’t relevant - sex leading to kids is hardly some unknown fact. Other than rape, in which case agency is removed, why is conception not the point in which the choice is made? Is your opinion that anyone can reneg on known consequences of their actions? Don’t misunderstand, women should have a choice in what their bodies are used for. My assertion is, other than rape, they already have it with respect to having a kid or not.
    - drdaeman 4y ago
      I don't agree or disagree with the consequences part, but... > sex leading to kids is hardly some unknown fact Oh, I'd wish. There are people who still - in the 21st century - do not have like basic knowledge about sexual wellness and have very weird (and sometimes very dangerous) ideas about contraception, safety and risks of pregnancy. I mean, it's hard for any educated person to believe in this shit, but I've met or read some pretty insane opinions. Like people who genuinely believe really weird nonsense such as that virgins cannot get pregnant their first time. And they aren't malicious folks (well, maybe some are, of course) - just awfully misinformed. Humanity is in a very weird place. On the one hand we've walked on the Moon and about to conquer nuclear fusion power, but on the other hand we've just climbed down from the trees and learned how to make a fire.

f38zf5vdt 4y ago

Voted up. Reading comments here I feel like I'm watching Robert McNamara describe the hundreds of thousands of casualties that were required to win the second world war as if they were just figures on paper. Lives are going to be destroyed by this and women will be going to prison for what many civilized countries consider a fundamental right.

rufus_foreman 4y ago

f38zf5vdt 4y ago
Transgender men are speaking out loudly about this on social media right now, as they are also obviously impacted.
epylar 4y ago
The overwhelming majority of men can't get pregnant.
- throw_m239339 4y ago
  > The overwhelming majority of men can't get pregnant. Human males obviously can't get pregnant, only human females.

coward123 4y ago

Consider this a bit of code switching. Many of us absolutely are concerned about what this means for women, but we also know that this forum skews male and a particular kind of male. So we are making the argument here that resonates with this forum. You are right though that more people overall - even those who skew conservative and pro-individual rights, should realize that if you take away rights from women, and then homosexuals, and then people who want to be married to someone of a different race... where does it end in terms of stripping away individual rights? I'd argue that if you view women's health care as a matter of individual freedom and rights, then is that not the same argument being made in interpreting the 2nd amendment as not about militias (IE: a standing army) but the rights of the individual? If I can tell women they can't have a set of health care services, what's stopping the government from telling men that they can't have a different set of health care services?

hellojesus 4y ago
Rights has a very specific meaning in the US legal system. Abortion is not listed as a right in the Constitution, and it therefore is not a federal right. We can argue that it should be, but now we're talking about an ammendment, which is legally necessary and the real conversation the nation should be having. *I don't think it could ever qualify as a right. Rights are negative, not positive. You could not guarantee the right to an abortion because now you're guaranteeing someone to the right to have someone else do work for them. Instead, it would need to be enumerated as a negative right, meaning that there would be federal protection against the outlawing of abortions.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> is that not the same argument being made in interpreting the 2nd amendment as not about militias (IE: a standing army) but the rights of the individual? Militia does not mean standing army. From the Supreme Court Heller decision https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/07-290.pdf, page 2: "The “militia” comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense. The Antifederalists feared that the Federal Government would disarm the people in order to disable this citizens’ militia, enabling a politicized standing army or a select militia to rule. The response was to deny Congress power to abridge the ancient right of individuals to keep and bear arms, so that the ideal of a citizens’ militia would be preserved." You can read pages 1 and 2 of that decision to see the summary of the Supreme Court's argument for why 2nd Amendment rights are individual rights.

hobo_in_library 4y ago

swayvil 4y ago

HN is full of coders. It's for coders, run by coders. Coders are 99% male.

lr4444lr 4y ago

Maybe because it's just unanswerable? We're not talking about the right to pierce their ears or vote. We're talking about the termination of a living organism. I am pro-choice, but an intelligent mostly pro-life friend of mine tasked me to ask the most ardent activists on their side to answer, "when does human life begin?" It's a simple question to state, and yet many on the pro choice side absolutely refuse to grapple with it. It's become a great shibboleth question to find who is beyond reasoned debate on this issue. Yes, we are male. Yes, we acknowledge their is a thorny rights issue. There's also the question of rights of the organism being aborted. And the science of what a "viable" fetus is has progressed greatly since the 1970s. This is an uncomfortable conversation to have, but no one has a right of gender to say it can't be had.

belorn 4y ago

This would then be an excellent time to introduce universal human rights. Reproduction should only occur through consent, and no one should be forced to be a parent against their will. Any action done to our own bodies or action people ask that we perform with our bodies should require continuously consent. Any negative outcome to society of people not providing consent should be address by the government in the form of social support. It is also about time that we abolish all laws that makes distinctions based on gender and sex. That way there won't be any 2nd-class citizens encoded in law that is based on gender.

pyronik19 4y ago

Shouldn't the legal analysis of a legal opinion be the norm? Facts don't care about your feelings.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

Yes, HN skews male. I'm a woman and extremely poor. I've been a member for nearly thirteen years. It's possible but challenging to present a female point of view here. Reproductive issues and what I generally think of as human sexual morality are always hard to talk about anywhere. I think for a lot of women, this is a very threatening turn of events. That's going to make it challenging to discuss it in the rational style required by HN guidelines even before accounting for the gender ratio here. I'm quite fond of HN and have come to see a lot of the practices here as not male per se but as best practices for public discourse and I have come to believe that women tend to be raised to engage in a fashion more appropriate for private discourse. So I think there's a somewhat steep learning curve involved for most women that gets conflated with sexism and complicates attempts by women to give voice to a female point of view here. If you can express yourself in accordance with best practices for public discourse, you can be heard here. Trying to figure out how to do that while not spazzing about sexism ...well, it's challenging and I think most women lack sufficient reason to keep at it, so they tend not to.