There was considerable business opposition to reciprocity in 1911, vs in 1984.
As well, in the late 19th and early 20th Century it was often Liberals who were among the most vocal advocates of Prohibition. While this did cut across party lines, as a general rule teetotaller were more likely to be found amongst the Liberals given a higher degree of religious non-conformity and the frequent yoking of temperance with women's suffrage.
All of which is to say that how a party feels about a particular issue is mutable over time.
I mean secure in the sense that there doesn't seem to be a lot of serious effort among politicians or the public to overturn it. Gallup reports that same-sex marriage is supported by 70% of the public, a vast increase over the 26% of 1996. It's even a majority position (55%) among Republicans. I doubt there's any appetite on the court to revisit this issue.
Ah, gotcha. I thought you were assessing the strength of the legal foundations of the decision. I would note, though, that polling on reproductive rights also shows strong support.
FWIW, I’ve known quite a few liberal/progressive lawyers and law professors over the last 30+ years who are firmly pro-choice, but who think that from a legal perspective, the reasoning in Roe is shaky at best and wrong at worst. Some of these folks also think Roe did as much harm as good for the pro-choice movement in the long-run.
Not saying they’re right, just that it’s not only conservatives who have some issues with Roe.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text. @Nick Tamen, am I anywhere near the base?
It seems to me that the thing to do is to pass federal legislation that writes into law the right to abort a fetus prior to viability, and also make it a right to abort a viable fetus if the mother's life or health is in danger.
I mean secure in the sense that there doesn't seem to be a lot of serious effort among politicians or the public to overturn it. Gallup reports that same-sex marriage is supported by 70% of the public, a vast increase over the 26% of 1996. It's even a majority position (55%) among Republicans. I doubt there's any appetite on the court to revisit this issue.
Ah, gotcha. I thought you were assessing the strength of the legal foundations of the decision. I would note, though, that polling on reproductive rights also shows strong support.
FWIW, I’ve known quite a few liberal/progressive lawyers and law professors over the last 30+ years who are firmly pro-choice, but who think that from a legal perspective, the reasoning in Roe is shaky at best and wrong at worst. Some of these folks also think Roe did as much harm as good for the pro-choice movement in the long-run.
Not saying they’re right, just that it’s not only conservatives who have some issues with Roe.
That was the thought in the back of my mind - I'd heard the claim before that Roe v Wade was a bit of a reach, and equal marriage seems clearer cut in terms of equal protection, but IA most definitely NAL so what do I know?
Yes. I was refering to Conservative parties, federal and provincial, from the 1980s onward.
Though I will also say that there isn't as much of a contradiction as one might think between old-school pro-British Toryism and pro-American Mulroneyism, because the Conservatives have always represented the intetests of certain sections of the business community, who were protectionist in the late 19th to mid-20th Century, but by the 1980s saw their fortunes as tied to continentalism.
And the old-school Tories were just as socially conservative as any Ted Cruz-wannabe in the modern CPC: Diefenbaker criminalized female homosexuality, and voted against Trudeau's abolition of the sodomy laws, just for example.
Harper was an interesting case, as while his foreign-policy was generally pro-American, he also promoted British aesthetics on the home front, with his War Of 1812 commemorations and putting the "royal" back in a few of the military thingamabobs.
And as for the Liberals, yeah, they are ideologically descended from the rebels of 1838, whose leader(in Upper Canada) was William Lyon MacKenzie, who even the Americans regarded as too fanatically annexationist(they put him in jail when he went south and tried to organize American support for another rebellion).
And Pierre Trudeau, while reticent about actually abolishing the monarchy, pretty much did everything in his power to make Canada aesthetically republican.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text. @Nick Tamen, am I anywhere near the base?
It seems to me that the thing to do is to pass federal legislation that writes into law the right to abort a fetus prior to viability, and also make it a right to abort a viable fetus if the mother's life or health is in danger.
Yes, you’re quite right about reading a right to privacy into the Constitution that isn’t in the text. The concern was that made Roe a big target as a wrong decision.
They were also concerned that Roe short circuited, as it were, movements in legislatures that could have led to state and federal laws like you describe in your second paragraph. They believed that in the long run, laws of that kind would be more secure, and they thought that Roe polarized the debate, and centered in on control of the Court, in a way that movement in legislatures might not have. I’m not so sure about that, but that was their feeling.
I’ve known quite a number of honestly conservative people who are pretty libertarian when it comes to abortion—meaning they believe that government should stay out of it.
Seems to me that the pro-choice position is that a woman's right to autonomy over her own body is such an inalienable right that it must be respected even if a life is lost as a direct result.
And that anyone holding such a view would necessarily agree that a person's right to refuse vaccination must be respected even at the risk that lives will be lost as a result. Because that's equally a matter of autonomy over one's own body.
So logic might predict a political divide with the libertarian side standing up for individual choice against an authoritarian side which wants to compel people to do the right thing (and believes that that which saves the lives of others is the right thing).
But real-life politics doesn't seem to line up that way.
I’ve known quite a number of honestly conservative people who are pretty libertarian when it comes to abortion—meaning they believe that government should stay out of it.
Seems to me that the pro-choice position is that a woman's right to autonomy over her own body is such an inalienable right that it must be respected even if a life is lost as a direct result.
Seems to me you’re assuming that everyone agrees that “a life is lost as a direct result.” Everyone does not agree about that.
But then I’m betting you know that quite well but didn’t want to let it get in the way of the point you wanted to make about vaccinations.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text. @Nick Tamen, am I anywhere near the base?
It seems to me that the thing to do is to pass federal legislation that writes into law the right to abort a fetus prior to viability, and also make it a right to abort a viable fetus if the mother's life or health is in danger.
So the constitution has primacy over state law, so if SCOTUS finds a right to an abortion buried somewhere in the text of the constitution, the states don't have any choice except to accept it (and then pull this kind of nonsense years down the line to try to get it reversed.) On what grounds are you suggesting that an ordinary Federal law can create a right to an abortion within each state? I don't see a sensible way to bring the commerce clause in to play, for example.
And that anyone holding such a view would necessarily agree that a person's right to refuse vaccination must be respected even at the risk that lives will be lost as a result. Because that's equally a matter of autonomy over one's own body.
I think you (should) have the right to refuse vaccination - I just don't think you should have the right to refuse vaccination, and then go out in public spreading the virus. If you want to be an unvaccinated hermit not having contact with other people, I have no quarrel with you.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text. @Nick Tamen, am I anywhere near the base?
It seems to me that the thing to do is to pass federal legislation that writes into law the right to abort a fetus prior to viability, and also make it a right to abort a viable fetus if the mother's life or health is in danger.
So the constitution has primacy over state law, so if SCOTUS finds a right to an abortion buried somewhere in the text of the constitution, the states don't have any choice except to accept it (and then pull this kind of nonsense years down the line to try to get it reversed.) On what grounds are you suggesting that an ordinary Federal law can create a right to an abortion within each state? I don't see a sensible way to bring the commerce clause in to play, for example.
Under the supremacy clause of the Constitution (Article VI, clause 2), federal law trumps state law and must be adhered to by the states, assuming that Congress had authority under the Constitution to adopt the law in question. The Supremacy Clause provides:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding
Many if not most or all state constitutions also acknowledge the supremacy of federal law.
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We're not dragging vaccine refusal or vaccine mandates into this thread. Please leave this tangent alone.
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assuming that Congress had authority under the Constitution to adopt the law in question.
Isn't that the question, though - whether Congress has authority under the constitution to regulate whether an individual state may permit abortions within its borders? If you take Roe out of the picture, what's the mechanism for a federal law to force states to permit abortion? (Often, it seems, federal rules are imposed on the states via the wallet: the federal government says "if you want these federal funds, you've got to do A, B, and C.")
(Often, it seems, federal rules are imposed on the states via the wallet: the federal government says "if you want these federal funds, you've got to do A, B, and C.")
That is one way. The Constitution enumerates the areas where Congress has authority to legislate, and it’s often been pretty broad what can be worked into the areas listed.
For me - without talking about any particular issue of bodily autonomy within other spheres - the emphasis is more on medical autonomy rather than bodily autonomy. It wasn't so long ago that life beginning at conception was seen as a specifically RC viewpoint, and Protestants overwhelmingly were not anti-choice as a voting bloc - and RCs were far more likely to be solidly Democrat (or Republican before they switched allegiances). How to define personhood, at least within the Christian groups being discussed, varies so much that it's not necessarily a helpful way to frame it.
With regards to medical autonomy, once you frame giving birth as a risky medical procedure - and given US maternal death rates, it IS risky especially for women of colour - it becomes a lot harder to argue that someone should be forced to undergo such a procedure rather than safely and (more) comfortably having a medication-induced abortion at home. Even a surgical abortion is a lot safer than giving birth for US patients. It really demonstrates that the health and wellbeing of those seeking abortion is not important that this is so easily dismissed - they really would rather see women die in labour than have an abortion. I wonder when Texas and other states that will inevitably follow suit will have their Savita Halappanavar moment.
With regards to medical autonomy, once you frame giving birth as a risky medical procedure - and given US maternal death rates, it IS risky especially for women of colour - it becomes a lot harder to argue that someone should be forced to undergo such a procedure rather than safely and (more) comfortably having a medication-induced abortion at home. Even a surgical abortion is a lot safer than giving birth for US patients.
This is still why abortion is legal in England and Wales, right? Almost all abortions are carried out because of "the health of the mother" by which is meant that pregnancy is riskier than terminating a pregnancy.
AIUI, about half the time, the mother's mental health is cited as the reason, and even of one were able to make pregnancy so physically safe that it wasn't more physically dangerous than a termination, it's difficult to argue that forcing an unwilling person to carry a pregnancy to term could be anything other than worse for their mental health than permitting a termination.
It seems to us that you're making a statement based on what you think "the pro-choice position is", even though your understanding of that is different from most people who hold that view. This is the second time this week that your posting in Epiphanies has come to my attention, which is not a good thing. We're revoking your ability to contribute to discussions in Epiphanies, where the subject matter deserves a much higher quality of discussion.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text.
No, the right to privacy was famously argued for in a law journal article by Louis Brandeis around the end of the nineteenth century. The article was very influential and is often cited as an example of a non-judicial "precident" that changed the law of the land. It was used in a variety of legal decisions before Roe v Wade, notably Griswold v Connecticut in the 1960s, which claimed that the right to privacy was clearly established through the "penumbra" of the Constitution. Roe v Wade invoked that long history, but it did not create the right in US legal history. FWIW
For me - without talking about any particular issue of bodily autonomy within other spheres - the emphasis is more on medical autonomy rather than bodily autonomy. It wasn't so long ago that life beginning at conception was seen as a specifically RC viewpoint, and Protestants overwhelmingly were not anti-choice as a voting bloc - and RCs were far more likely to be solidly Democrat (or Republican before they switched allegiances). How to define personhood, at least within the Christian groups being discussed, varies so much that it's not necessarily a helpful way to frame it.
With regards to medical autonomy, once you frame giving birth as a risky medical procedure - and given US maternal death rates, it IS risky especially for women of colour - it becomes a lot harder to argue that someone should be forced to undergo such a procedure rather than safely and (more) comfortably having a medication-induced abortion at home. Even a surgical abortion is a lot safer than giving birth for US patients. It really demonstrates that the health and wellbeing og
With regards to medical autonomy, once you frame giving birth as a risky medical procedure - and given US maternal death rates, it IS risky especially for women of colour - it becomes a lot harder to argue that someone should be forced to undergo such a procedure rather than safely and (more) comfortably having a medication-induced abortion at home. Even a surgical abortion is a lot safer than giving birth for US patients.
This is still why abortion is legal in England and Wales, right? Almost all abortions are carried out because of "the health of the mother" by which is meant that pregnancy is riskier than terminating a pregnancy.
AIUI, about half the time, the mother's mental health is cited as the reason, and even of one were able to make pregnancy so physically safe that it wasn't more physically dangerous than a termination, it's difficult to argue that forcing an unwilling person to carry a pregnancy to term could be anything other than worse for their mental health than permitting a termination.
Abortion isn't legal in England and Wales except in certain circumstances. Risk to the health of the mother is one of those circumstances in which it is legalised. Northern Ireland now has far less restrictive abortion law than England and Wales as it is now decriminalised there rather than just legalised to a very limited extent. The difference is more important than people think - if abortion is still a crime except in xyz scenario, someone can still be prosecuted for seeking an abortion. It's unlikely to happen now, but it still legitimises the idea that abortion should be a crime and a legal issue rather than a medical one.
Have there been any calls for Texas to bring in free healthcare and paid maternity/parental leave given this new law? Ted Cruz defended criminalising the sale of sex toys in Texas, so maybe someone should remind him that more masturbation would result in fewer abortions.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text.
No, the right to privacy was famously argued for in a law journal article by Louis Brandeis around the end of the nineteenth century. The article was very influential and is often cited as an example of a non-judicial "precident" that changed the law of the land. It was used in a variety of legal decisions before Roe v Wade, notably Griswold v Connecticut in the 1960s, which claimed that the right to privacy was clearly established through the "penumbra" of the Constitution. Roe v Wade invoked that long history, but it did not create the right in US legal history. FWIW
Thanks! I only vaguely remembered something about Roe maybe being a bit shaky because the right to privacy is not spelled out in so many words in the Constitution -- now I know what to read.
I think a lot of people who oppose the right to an abortion really are against it - it's not just an electoral ploy.
As I've discovered, when you point out to people who "oppose abortion" that banning abortion has repeatedly been shown to increase the number of abortions, they're likely to just increase the level of outrage.
They're not interested in the practical outcome. They're interested in the morality, which is a mixture of the (unbiblical) belief that a human being is fully human at the moment of conception and an implicit desire to punish women who didn't have sex in the right circumstances.
I’ve known quite a number of honestly conservative people who are pretty libertarian when it comes to abortion—meaning they believe that government should stay out of it.
Seems to me that the pro-choice position is that a woman's right to autonomy over her own body is such an inalienable right that it must be respected even if a life is lost as a direct result.
And that anyone holding such a view would necessarily agree that a person's right to refuse vaccination must be respected even at the risk that lives will be lost as a result. Because that's equally a matter of autonomy over one's own body.
So logic might predict a political divide with the libertarian side standing up for individual choice against an authoritarian side which wants to compel people to do the right thing (and believes that that which saves the lives of others is the right thing).
But real-life politics doesn't seem to line up that way.
Funny, that.
Seems to me that you've made some massive assumptions about what a "life" is.
You snuff out thousands of lives every time you so much as brush your teeth.
EDIT: I had not seen that Russ is no longer eligible to post here.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text.
No, the right to privacy was famously argued for in a law journal article by Louis Brandeis around the end of the nineteenth century. The article was very influential and is often cited as an example of a non-judicial "precident" that changed the law of the land. It was used in a variety of legal decisions before Roe v Wade, notably Griswold v Connecticut in the 1960s, which claimed that the right to privacy was clearly established through the "penumbra" of the Constitution. Roe v Wade invoked that long history, but it did not create the right in US legal history. FWIW
Thanks! I only vaguely remembered something about Roe maybe being a bit shaky because the right to privacy is not spelled out in so many words in the Constitution -- now I know what to read.
They're not interested in the practical outcome. They're interested in the morality
In and of itself, I don't think that's a bad thing. If, for example, it could be argued that making murder legal would actually reduce the number of people being killed I would still argue that murder should be illegal. Because I think murder is wrong and should not be allowed under any circumstances ever, and it's important for the law to be sending that message.
The problem, as with so many things discussed on this board, is that moralities differ. And morality isn't one of those things where the ends justify the means.
I had to go back to orfeo's original post, to see that within morality he includes the desire to punish women, over illicit sex. I suppose the contemporary language for this is policing female sexuality. Very moral!
They're not interested in the practical outcome. They're interested in the morality
In and of itself, I don't think that's a bad thing. If, for example, it could be argued that making murder legal would actually reduce the number of people being killed I would still argue that murder should be illegal. Because I think murder is wrong and should not be allowed under any circumstances ever, and it's important for the law to be sending that message.
The problem, as with so many things discussed on this board, is that moralities differ. And morality isn't one of those things where the ends justify the means.
So you're theoretically okay with more people being murdered and more abortions taking place? When the whole point of the so-called "morality" is that those things are wrong?
Why is it important for the law to send a message rather than to let more people live? What is the message being sent? Is sending a message more important than whether that message is received and what is heard?
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text. @Nick Tamen, am I anywhere near the base?
It seems to me that the thing to do is to pass federal legislation that writes into law the right to abort a fetus prior to viability, and also make it a right to abort a viable fetus if the mother's life or health is in danger.
Yes, you’re quite right about reading a right to privacy into the Constitution that isn’t in the text. The concern was that made Roe a big target as a wrong decision.
This is one of those bullshit things that everyone "knows" but can't quite explain. It's always 'I read somewhere . . . ' or 'a friend of a friend once told me . . . ' or some other legal equivalent of an urban legend. First off, it's very tendentious to claim that there was no Constitutional standard preventing government interference with family life (a.k.a. the "right to privacy" as it is understood in Roe) prior to 1973. An explainer from Vox:
It’s not true that Roe isn’t rooted in well-established constitutional principles Roe is “a poorly reasoned mess,” asserted McArdle, adding that “it’s all ‘emanations and penumbras’ and similarly float-y language.” This line of argument has been echoed by other nominally pro-choice and anti-Roe pundits. “Roe has had a deep legitimacy problem, stemming from its weakness as a legal opinion,” according to Wittes.
Opponents of Roe writing for general audiences routinely invoke the “penumbras” phrase, from Justice William O. Douglas’s opinion striking down a ban on the use or distribution of contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut, as if doing so self-evidently renders the opinion absurd. Douglas had used that phrase to defend the idea that the Constitution includes an implicit right to privacy, in at least some matters of marriage and family, and the Roe majority cited it to extend that idea to the realm of abortion.
But Justice Douglas’s observation that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance” describes a perfectly banal concept: The enumeration of rights, individually or collectively, implies the existence of other rights. As Douglas himself pointed out, in Griswold, the Supreme Court has enforced a “right of association” although that phrase is not found in the Constitution, because guarantees of the right to free speech and to petition the government would mean little without the right to form political associations.
<snip>
But it’s even more problematic when applied to Roe because the holding in that case does not rely on Douglas’s argument that the right to privacy is implicit in the “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights” (that is, the penumbras). The right to privacy, according to Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion for the Court in Roe, should be located in “the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action.” This doctrine, generally called “substantive due process,” is that some rights are so fundamental that abrogating them is by definition a violation of the “due process of law.”
In short, Roe did not invent some novel Constitutional notion that marriage and family life should be relatively free from government regulation, it was based on Fourteenth Amendment concepts of substantive due process, though the right to privacy in family matters is a Constitutional doctrine of long standing. (As an aside, American conservatives have been trying to read the Reconstruction Amendments out of the Constitution pretty much since the day they were ratified.)
They were also concerned that Roe short circuited, as it were, movements in legislatures that could have led to state and federal laws like you describe in your second paragraph. They believed that in the long run, laws of that kind would be more secure, and they thought that Roe polarized the debate, and centered in on control of the Court, in a way that movement in legislatures might not have. I’m not so sure about that, but that was their feeling.
And yet no one seems to have that complaint about Obergefell v. Hodges, or Brown v. Board for that matter. No one is willing to argue that a patchwork of state laws which will undo and then rejoin marriages whenever someone crosses over a state border is better for people in the long run, and the folks who put up those "Impeach Earl Warren" signs after Brown didn't suddenly turn around and say "oh, well that's okay then" when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Because no one cares about process, only results.
I think this could be a whole new thread bringing in other issues where people have moved from 'sending messages' through laws to looking at using public health approaches to get better results. I could kick one off to keep this thread from being derailed.
Edited to add that I've done this and made a new thread which people interested in these issues could decamp to.
As I've discovered, when you point out to people who "oppose abortion" that banning abortion has repeatedly been shown to increase the number of abortions,
Is this actually true? What's the mechanism? Can you link me to a piece of scholarship where it has been shown?
It seems to me that you have a massive confounding variable here: places that ban abortion also tend to have a restrictive approach to contraception and sex education, and there's a clear and obvious mechanism for restricting the availability of these latter two to cause more women to seek abortions.
My understanding of the statistics with regard to Ireland is that when Ireland legalized abortion, the number of women who had abortions changed very little (perhaps it went up a small amount, but not significantly so) - it's just that all those women had abortions in Ireland, rather than traveling to the UK or the Netherlands.
I've read, and of course I have no memory of where, that the problem with Roe is that the decision created a right to privacy, or found a right to privacy, or read into the Constitution a right to privacy, that just isn't there in the text. @Nick Tamen, am I anywhere near the base?
It seems to me that the thing to do is to pass federal legislation that writes into law the right to abort a fetus prior to viability, and also make it a right to abort a viable fetus if the mother's life or health is in danger.
Yes, you’re quite right about reading a right to privacy into the Constitution that isn’t in the text. The concern was that made Roe a big target as a wrong decision.
This is one of those bullshit things that everyone "knows" but can't quite explain. It's always 'I read somewhere . . . ' or 'a friend of a friend once told me . . . ' or some other legal equivalent of an urban legend.
Oh good grief. I don’t think it’s too much to expect the minimal courtesy of accepting that when I say “I’ve known quite a few liberal/progressive lawyers and law professors over the last 30+ years” I don’t mean “ I read somewhere . . .” or “a friend of a friend once told me . . . “ or “some other legal equivalent of an urban legend.” Whether it fits with your expectations or not, I’m actually speaking based on discussions I listened to and participated in in law school classes, conversations with colleagues and speakers I have personally heard speak on the topic. And nowhere did I say those discussions were limited to Roe, without reference to earlier cases.
I’m sorry if my post didn’t discuss the tangent in enough detail, with inclusion of Obergefell. No, wait, I’m not sorry, because it was a tangent, an aside, as indicated by introducing my post with “FWIW.” Not every post or aside needs or warrants detailed discussion or multiple hyperlinks.
As I've discovered, when you point out to people who "oppose abortion" that banning abortion has repeatedly been shown to increase the number of abortions,
Is this actually true? What's the mechanism? Can you link me to a piece of scholarship where it has been shown?
It seems to me that you have a massive confounding variable here: places that ban abortion also tend to have a restrictive approach to contraception and sex education, and there's a clear and obvious mechanism for restricting the availability of these latter two to cause more women to seek abortions.
My understanding of the statistics with regard to Ireland is that when Ireland legalized abortion, the number of women who had abortions changed very little (perhaps it went up a small amount, but not significantly so) - it's just that all those women had abortions in Ireland, rather than traveling to the UK or the Netherlands.
Well, that's the problem. Laws prohibiting abortion come out of the same culture that insists that sex should be a handled as entirely private, which ends up passively empowering men over women, because in traditional "family values" patriarchy, daddy calls the shots, even when he's drunk. And to borrow a line from To Kill a Mockingbird, you can see the wreckage all over the place.
A culture that has a strict no-exceptions-allowed ban on abortion that is simultaneously permissive about contraception and honest about public sexual education is a politically inconsistent fantasy.
Arguably, the control of women, bound up in the control of sex, has always been the uniting thing for the conservative movement. It's "how the world was" for much of recorded history, I think, certainly in all of the major empires. And I think that goes back to classical history.
A culture that has a strict no-exceptions-allowed ban on abortion that is simultaneously permissive about contraception and honest about public sexual education is a politically inconsistent fantasy.
Fantasy perhaps, but I don't see that it's necessarily inconsistent. Perhaps you could elaborate?
I've been reluctant to post on this thread. It's neither my country nor my state. So have I legitimately any right to say anything? Also, I don't really like abortion. Whatever one's view about when or up to how many weeks it should be allowed, it's always going to be a sad concession to the way we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, rather than a right.
Nevertheless, whatever one's view on abortion, it's a deplorable notion that it should ever be morally acceptable, or even anything other than very wicked, to sue someone just so as to collect a bounty off them. Enforcement of the law is the state's business, not something to be dished out to people who randomly select themselves. Nobody likes an informer, a delator or a sneak.
The fact that something is made lawful does not suddenly make what was wicked, right. The fact that it's possible to make money out of something does not oblige anyone to do so. This is a dirty way to make money. The money a person makes that way is dirty money. Doubtless those that do pursue these claims would doubtless maintain that they are doing good, but claiming something is virtuous doesn't make it so if it isn't.
There is a small but important thing that ordinary citizens can do about this, if they get the chance. That is to name, shame, ostracise and boycott anybody who has anything to do with making or pursuing any of these legal actions, the claimants and those who help them bring them.
As I've discovered, when you point out to people who "oppose abortion" that banning abortion has repeatedly been shown to increase the number of abortions,
Is this actually true? What's the mechanism? Can you link me to a piece of scholarship where it has been shown?
It seems to me that you have a massive confounding variable here: places that ban abortion also tend to have a restrictive approach to contraception and sex education, and there's a clear and obvious mechanism for restricting the availability of these latter two to cause more women to seek abortions.
My understanding of the statistics with regard to Ireland is that when Ireland legalized abortion, the number of women who had abortions changed very little (perhaps it went up a small amount, but not significantly so) - it's just that all those women had abortions in Ireland, rather than traveling to the UK or the Netherlands.
No, I can't link you to a piece of scholarship off the top of my head, because by now it's at least a couple of years since I read about it.
And yes, it's perfectly possible that you have a massive confounding variable, and I might be talking about correlation rather than causation. Nevertheless, even if it's correlation the same basic thing holds true: banning abortion fails utterly to achieve a result of there being fewer abortions.
And while I will take any further discussion of this point to the new thread that has been set up, it's really mystifying to me that people don't care about whether the policies and laws they advocate for will actually achieve a result. To me it's basic policy failure.
A culture that has a strict no-exceptions-allowed ban on abortion that is simultaneously permissive about contraception and honest about public sexual education is a politically inconsistent fantasy.
Fantasy perhaps, but I don't see that it's necessarily inconsistent. Perhaps you could elaborate?
Because the politicians who supported this also supported a ban on the sale of sex toys in Texas? Let's face it, a ban on abortion is always going to be a primarily religious stance. The religious people who would support that are also overwhelmingly not permissive about contraception and in favour of comprehensive sex education.
I've been reluctant to post on this thread. It's neither my country nor my state. So have I legitimately any right to say anything? Also, I don't really like abortion. Whatever one's view about when or up to how many weeks it should be allowed, it's always going to be a sad concession to the way we don't live in the best of all possible worlds, rather than a right.
Nevertheless, whatever one's view on abortion, it's a deplorable notion that it should ever be morally acceptable, or even anything other than very wicked, to sue someone just so as to collect a bounty off them. Enforcement of the law is the state's business, not something to be dished out to people who randomly select themselves. Nobody likes an informer, a delator or a sneak.
Lots of non-Texans and non-USians have commented. Abortion rights are important to everyone who could get pregnant - it has personal importance to those of us who could get pregnant who aren't in Texas or the US. Surely the fact that you cannot get pregnant is the more important factor when it comes to opinions on ending pregnancy? Personally, that abortion can be done safely and with the minimum of discomfort is a reason to celebrate the advances of medical science. I guess it shows that life isn't perfect in the sense that unwanted pregnancy happens, but not any more than someone getting cataracts does when they can be easily fixed by simple routine surgery. I don't think many people would think of cataract surgery as a sad concession. Abortion doesn't even have to involve any surgery.
A culture that has a strict no-exceptions-allowed ban on abortion that is simultaneously permissive about contraception and honest about public sexual education is a politically inconsistent fantasy.
Fantasy perhaps, but I don't see that it's necessarily inconsistent. Perhaps you could elaborate?
Might be American of me, but in the political climate that has existed for my entire about 40 years of life this has been the political alignment. The faction that's pro life is the same faction that has resisted birth control and sex ed. They call the movement "family values," which as an adult I realize is just a euphemism for "patriarchy." People who hate the idea of social welfare because "you should depend on a biological father for that."
And reading back, it has been that way since before I was born.
I can cognitively imagine a worldview where the two could go together, but realistically, people like that seem to be rarer than hen's teeth. For good or for ill, there aren't enough of them to pretend that this is a viable political movement.
I guess it shows that life isn't perfect in the sense that unwanted pregnancy happens, but not any more than someone getting cataracts does when they can be easily fixed by simple routine surgery.
Good lord, you make it sound like pregnancy is something that just randomly happens regardless of anything one might have done.
Maybe our sex education should be pointing out that if you have sex then becoming a parent is a possible outcome, and if you're not at all willing to risk that outcome then maybe you shouldn't be having sex? I mean, it's not like getting laid is a human right or anything.
Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-choice. But I think abortion should be legal, easily obtained, and rare. Some of the talk on this thread seems to be treating it as just another form of contraception, and that doesn't feel right to me.
"Let no one who is without possession of ovaries instruct anyone in any way who therefore possesses them." Fallopians 5:12.
There are many versions and entries for the Book of Fallopians.
Re "abortion as contraception", that's nonsense. No-one thinks, "hey, skip the condom, can always get an abortion". Nor is the "you could become a parent" scare talk going to stop people from having sex. Nor does "you'll go blind" stop people from masturbating.
Maybe our sex education should be pointing out that if you have sex then becoming a parent is a possible outcome, and if you're not at all willing to risk that outcome then maybe you shouldn't be having sex?
You know that having sex isn't always voluntary, right?
A culture that has a strict no-exceptions-allowed ban on abortion that is simultaneously permissive about contraception and honest about public sexual education is a politically inconsistent fantasy.
It's perfectly politically consistent. It's a culture that is actually "pro-life". It is a culture that both thinks that a foetus is a human life, and values it accordingly, and one that thinks that women are actually people, and is pro-life, including when those lives are the lives of poor women who enjoy sex.
I also agree with you that there aren't very many people who ascribe to this set of views, but I think it's a perfectly consistent position to hold - it's just one that differs markedly from the virginity-cult patriarchal bullshit that imbues most actual anti-abortion politics.
I guess it shows that life isn't perfect in the sense that unwanted pregnancy happens, but not any more than someone getting cataracts does when they can be easily fixed by simple routine surgery. I don't think many people would think of cataract surgery as a sad concession. Abortion doesn't even have to involve any surgery.
No, but nobody thinks of cataracts as people, or as potential people, either. You are, of course, free to view a foetus as of no more importance than a cataract, but I think you'd have to accept that your view is not universally held even among people who support at-will abortion.
A culture that has a strict no-exceptions-allowed ban on abortion that is simultaneously permissive about contraception and honest about public sexual education is a politically inconsistent fantasy.
It's perfectly politically consistent. It's a culture that is actually "pro-life". It is a culture that both thinks that a foetus is a human life, and values it accordingly, and one that thinks that women are actually people, and is pro-life, including when those lives are the lives of poor women who enjoy sex.
I also agree with you that there aren't very many people who ascribe to this set of views, but I think it's a perfectly consistent position to hold - it's just one that differs markedly from the virginity-cult patriarchal bullshit that imbues most actual anti-abortion politics.
Agreed. The trouble is I don't feel like women have the luxury of putting hopes in abstract political coalitions that only exist a priori. So my concern in this argument is politically pragmatic.
@Pomona when I saw your comment likening abortion to having a cataract done, I was going to respond, but @Marvin the Martian and @Leorning Cniht have already done so. It does though strike me that there are aspects of your position that are as dogmatic in one direction as that classically taken by the Roman Catholic Church has been in the other.
I guess it shows that life isn't perfect in the sense that unwanted pregnancy happens, but not any more than someone getting cataracts does when they can be easily fixed by simple routine surgery.
Good lord, you make it sound like pregnancy is something that just randomly happens regardless of anything one might have done.
Maybe our sex education should be pointing out that if you have sex then becoming a parent is a possible outcome, and if you're not at all willing to risk that outcome then maybe you shouldn't be having sex? I mean, it's not like getting laid is a human right or anything.
Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-choice. But I think abortion should be legal, easily obtained, and rare. Some of the talk on this thread seems to be treating it as just another form of contraception, and that doesn't feel right to me.
Contraception can fail and rape happens. Pregnancy can and does just happen, even without PIV penetrative sex. Some AFAB (assigned female at birth) people are naturally more fertile than others, and good luck persuading any doctor to sterilise a woman without kids. Even trans men often encounter enormous pressure to retain our fertility from gender clinicians, because the presumption is that if you have a vagina that you want to have kids. If you want abortion to be rare, campaign for childfree (that is, intentionally childless) women to be able to access sterilisation.
The issue is not about consenting to parenthood but consenting to pregnancy and birth - they are not the same thing. There is also no good reason as to why abortion should be rare, or why consent to sex is automatically consent to giving birth (which is what taking away abortion as an option results in). There is also the issue of forced pregnancy being an extremely common form of domestic abuse.
Do you have an actual reason as to why abortion shouldn't, in theory, be used as contraception? A medical abortion (as opposed to surgical) just means taking abortifacient medication, often at home, and having what is basically a heavy period. Why should such a simple and harmless medical procedure need to be rare? It smacks of viewing an unwanted pregnancy as an appropriate punishment for daring to have sex, rather than a medical issue that can be safely and quickly resolved.
@Pomona when I saw your comment likening abortion to having a cataract done, I was going to respond, but @Marvin the Martian and @Leorning Cniht have already done so. It does though strike me that there are aspects of your position that are as dogmatic in one direction as that classically taken by the Roman Catholic Church has been in the other.
Must be one of those irregular verbs:
I have principles.
You have positions.
She has dogma.
Comments
There was considerable business opposition to reciprocity in 1911, vs in 1984.
As well, in the late 19th and early 20th Century it was often Liberals who were among the most vocal advocates of Prohibition. While this did cut across party lines, as a general rule teetotaller were more likely to be found amongst the Liberals given a higher degree of religious non-conformity and the frequent yoking of temperance with women's suffrage.
All of which is to say that how a party feels about a particular issue is mutable over time.
Not saying they’re right, just that it’s not only conservatives who have some issues with Roe.
It seems to me that the thing to do is to pass federal legislation that writes into law the right to abort a fetus prior to viability, and also make it a right to abort a viable fetus if the mother's life or health is in danger.
That was the thought in the back of my mind - I'd heard the claim before that Roe v Wade was a bit of a reach, and equal marriage seems clearer cut in terms of equal protection, but IA most definitely NAL so what do I know?
Yes. I was refering to Conservative parties, federal and provincial, from the 1980s onward.
Though I will also say that there isn't as much of a contradiction as one might think between old-school pro-British Toryism and pro-American Mulroneyism, because the Conservatives have always represented the intetests of certain sections of the business community, who were protectionist in the late 19th to mid-20th Century, but by the 1980s saw their fortunes as tied to continentalism.
And the old-school Tories were just as socially conservative as any Ted Cruz-wannabe in the modern CPC: Diefenbaker criminalized female homosexuality, and voted against Trudeau's abolition of the sodomy laws, just for example.
Harper was an interesting case, as while his foreign-policy was generally pro-American, he also promoted British aesthetics on the home front, with his War Of 1812 commemorations and putting the "royal" back in a few of the military thingamabobs.
And Pierre Trudeau, while reticent about actually abolishing the monarchy, pretty much did everything in his power to make Canada aesthetically republican.
They were also concerned that Roe short circuited, as it were, movements in legislatures that could have led to state and federal laws like you describe in your second paragraph. They believed that in the long run, laws of that kind would be more secure, and they thought that Roe polarized the debate, and centered in on control of the Court, in a way that movement in legislatures might not have. I’m not so sure about that, but that was their feeling.
Seems to me that the pro-choice position is that a woman's right to autonomy over her own body is such an inalienable right that it must be respected even if a life is lost as a direct result.
And that anyone holding such a view would necessarily agree that a person's right to refuse vaccination must be respected even at the risk that lives will be lost as a result. Because that's equally a matter of autonomy over one's own body.
So logic might predict a political divide with the libertarian side standing up for individual choice against an authoritarian side which wants to compel people to do the right thing (and believes that that which saves the lives of others is the right thing).
But real-life politics doesn't seem to line up that way.
Funny, that.
But then I’m betting you know that quite well but didn’t want to let it get in the way of the point you wanted to make about vaccinations.
Funny that.
Or tiresome.
So the constitution has primacy over state law, so if SCOTUS finds a right to an abortion buried somewhere in the text of the constitution, the states don't have any choice except to accept it (and then pull this kind of nonsense years down the line to try to get it reversed.) On what grounds are you suggesting that an ordinary Federal law can create a right to an abortion within each state? I don't see a sensible way to bring the commerce clause in to play, for example.
I think you (should) have the right to refuse vaccination - I just don't think you should have the right to refuse vaccination, and then go out in public spreading the virus. If you want to be an unvaccinated hermit not having contact with other people, I have no quarrel with you.
We're not dragging vaccine refusal or vaccine mandates into this thread. Please leave this tangent alone.
Thanks
Louise
Epiphanies Host
Hosting off
Isn't that the question, though - whether Congress has authority under the constitution to regulate whether an individual state may permit abortions within its borders? If you take Roe out of the picture, what's the mechanism for a federal law to force states to permit abortion? (Often, it seems, federal rules are imposed on the states via the wallet: the federal government says "if you want these federal funds, you've got to do A, B, and C.")
With regards to medical autonomy, once you frame giving birth as a risky medical procedure - and given US maternal death rates, it IS risky especially for women of colour - it becomes a lot harder to argue that someone should be forced to undergo such a procedure rather than safely and (more) comfortably having a medication-induced abortion at home. Even a surgical abortion is a lot safer than giving birth for US patients. It really demonstrates that the health and wellbeing of those seeking abortion is not important that this is so easily dismissed - they really would rather see women die in labour than have an abortion. I wonder when Texas and other states that will inevitably follow suit will have their Savita Halappanavar moment.
This is still why abortion is legal in England and Wales, right? Almost all abortions are carried out because of "the health of the mother" by which is meant that pregnancy is riskier than terminating a pregnancy.
AIUI, about half the time, the mother's mental health is cited as the reason, and even of one were able to make pregnancy so physically safe that it wasn't more physically dangerous than a termination, it's difficult to argue that forcing an unwilling person to carry a pregnancy to term could be anything other than worse for their mental health than permitting a termination.
Alan
Ship of Fools Admin
No, the right to privacy was famously argued for in a law journal article by Louis Brandeis around the end of the nineteenth century. The article was very influential and is often cited as an example of a non-judicial "precident" that changed the law of the land. It was used in a variety of legal decisions before Roe v Wade, notably Griswold v Connecticut in the 1960s, which claimed that the right to privacy was clearly established through the "penumbra" of the Constitution. Roe v Wade invoked that long history, but it did not create the right in US legal history. FWIW
With regards to medical autonomy, once you frame giving birth as a risky medical procedure - and given US maternal death rates, it IS risky especially for women of colour - it becomes a lot harder to argue that someone should be forced to undergo such a procedure rather than safely and (more) comfortably having a medication-induced abortion at home. Even a surgical abortion is a lot safer than giving birth for US patients. It really demonstrates that the health and wellbeing og
Abortion isn't legal in England and Wales except in certain circumstances. Risk to the health of the mother is one of those circumstances in which it is legalised. Northern Ireland now has far less restrictive abortion law than England and Wales as it is now decriminalised there rather than just legalised to a very limited extent. The difference is more important than people think - if abortion is still a crime except in xyz scenario, someone can still be prosecuted for seeking an abortion. It's unlikely to happen now, but it still legitimises the idea that abortion should be a crime and a legal issue rather than a medical one.
Have there been any calls for Texas to bring in free healthcare and paid maternity/parental leave given this new law? Ted Cruz defended criminalising the sale of sex toys in Texas, so maybe someone should remind him that more masturbation would result in fewer abortions.
Thanks! I only vaguely remembered something about Roe maybe being a bit shaky because the right to privacy is not spelled out in so many words in the Constitution -- now I know what to read.
This shows a spectacular lack of insight into how representative democracy works.
As does another comment you made after the one I've quoted.
As I've discovered, when you point out to people who "oppose abortion" that banning abortion has repeatedly been shown to increase the number of abortions, they're likely to just increase the level of outrage.
They're not interested in the practical outcome. They're interested in the morality, which is a mixture of the (unbiblical) belief that a human being is fully human at the moment of conception and an implicit desire to punish women who didn't have sex in the right circumstances.
Seems to me that you've made some massive assumptions about what a "life" is.
You snuff out thousands of lives every time you so much as brush your teeth.
EDIT: I had not seen that Russ is no longer eligible to post here.
In and of itself, I don't think that's a bad thing. If, for example, it could be argued that making murder legal would actually reduce the number of people being killed I would still argue that murder should be illegal. Because I think murder is wrong and should not be allowed under any circumstances ever, and it's important for the law to be sending that message.
The problem, as with so many things discussed on this board, is that moralities differ. And morality isn't one of those things where the ends justify the means.
So you're theoretically okay with more people being murdered and more abortions taking place? When the whole point of the so-called "morality" is that those things are wrong?
Why is it important for the law to send a message rather than to let more people live? What is the message being sent? Is sending a message more important than whether that message is received and what is heard?
This is one of those bullshit things that everyone "knows" but can't quite explain. It's always 'I read somewhere . . . ' or 'a friend of a friend once told me . . . ' or some other legal equivalent of an urban legend. First off, it's very tendentious to claim that there was no Constitutional standard preventing government interference with family life (a.k.a. the "right to privacy" as it is understood in Roe) prior to 1973. An explainer from Vox:
In short, Roe did not invent some novel Constitutional notion that marriage and family life should be relatively free from government regulation, it was based on Fourteenth Amendment concepts of substantive due process, though the right to privacy in family matters is a Constitutional doctrine of long standing. (As an aside, American conservatives have been trying to read the Reconstruction Amendments out of the Constitution pretty much since the day they were ratified.)
And yet no one seems to have that complaint about Obergefell v. Hodges, or Brown v. Board for that matter. No one is willing to argue that a patchwork of state laws which will undo and then rejoin marriages whenever someone crosses over a state border is better for people in the long run, and the folks who put up those "Impeach Earl Warren" signs after Brown didn't suddenly turn around and say "oh, well that's okay then" when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Because no one cares about process, only results.
Edited to add that I've done this and made a new thread which people interested in these issues could decamp to.
Is this actually true? What's the mechanism? Can you link me to a piece of scholarship where it has been shown?
It seems to me that you have a massive confounding variable here: places that ban abortion also tend to have a restrictive approach to contraception and sex education, and there's a clear and obvious mechanism for restricting the availability of these latter two to cause more women to seek abortions.
My understanding of the statistics with regard to Ireland is that when Ireland legalized abortion, the number of women who had abortions changed very little (perhaps it went up a small amount, but not significantly so) - it's just that all those women had abortions in Ireland, rather than traveling to the UK or the Netherlands.
I’m sorry if my post didn’t discuss the tangent in enough detail, with inclusion of Obergefell. No, wait, I’m not sorry, because it was a tangent, an aside, as indicated by introducing my post with “FWIW.” Not every post or aside needs or warrants detailed discussion or multiple hyperlinks.
But whatever.
[ confused ] Wait, what?!?
Gwai
Epiphanies Host
Well, that's the problem. Laws prohibiting abortion come out of the same culture that insists that sex should be a handled as entirely private, which ends up passively empowering men over women, because in traditional "family values" patriarchy, daddy calls the shots, even when he's drunk. And to borrow a line from To Kill a Mockingbird, you can see the wreckage all over the place.
A culture that has a strict no-exceptions-allowed ban on abortion that is simultaneously permissive about contraception and honest about public sexual education is a politically inconsistent fantasy.
Arguably, the control of women, bound up in the control of sex, has always been the uniting thing for the conservative movement. It's "how the world was" for much of recorded history, I think, certainly in all of the major empires. And I think that goes back to classical history.
Fantasy perhaps, but I don't see that it's necessarily inconsistent. Perhaps you could elaborate?
Nevertheless, whatever one's view on abortion, it's a deplorable notion that it should ever be morally acceptable, or even anything other than very wicked, to sue someone just so as to collect a bounty off them. Enforcement of the law is the state's business, not something to be dished out to people who randomly select themselves. Nobody likes an informer, a delator or a sneak.
The fact that something is made lawful does not suddenly make what was wicked, right. The fact that it's possible to make money out of something does not oblige anyone to do so. This is a dirty way to make money. The money a person makes that way is dirty money. Doubtless those that do pursue these claims would doubtless maintain that they are doing good, but claiming something is virtuous doesn't make it so if it isn't.
There is a small but important thing that ordinary citizens can do about this, if they get the chance. That is to name, shame, ostracise and boycott anybody who has anything to do with making or pursuing any of these legal actions, the claimants and those who help them bring them.
You don't understand the US culture at all...
No, I can't link you to a piece of scholarship off the top of my head, because by now it's at least a couple of years since I read about it.
And yes, it's perfectly possible that you have a massive confounding variable, and I might be talking about correlation rather than causation. Nevertheless, even if it's correlation the same basic thing holds true: banning abortion fails utterly to achieve a result of there being fewer abortions.
And while I will take any further discussion of this point to the new thread that has been set up, it's really mystifying to me that people don't care about whether the policies and laws they advocate for will actually achieve a result. To me it's basic policy failure.
Because the politicians who supported this also supported a ban on the sale of sex toys in Texas? Let's face it, a ban on abortion is always going to be a primarily religious stance. The religious people who would support that are also overwhelmingly not permissive about contraception and in favour of comprehensive sex education.
Lots of non-Texans and non-USians have commented. Abortion rights are important to everyone who could get pregnant - it has personal importance to those of us who could get pregnant who aren't in Texas or the US. Surely the fact that you cannot get pregnant is the more important factor when it comes to opinions on ending pregnancy? Personally, that abortion can be done safely and with the minimum of discomfort is a reason to celebrate the advances of medical science. I guess it shows that life isn't perfect in the sense that unwanted pregnancy happens, but not any more than someone getting cataracts does when they can be easily fixed by simple routine surgery. I don't think many people would think of cataract surgery as a sad concession. Abortion doesn't even have to involve any surgery.
Might be American of me, but in the political climate that has existed for my entire about 40 years of life this has been the political alignment. The faction that's pro life is the same faction that has resisted birth control and sex ed. They call the movement "family values," which as an adult I realize is just a euphemism for "patriarchy." People who hate the idea of social welfare because "you should depend on a biological father for that."
And reading back, it has been that way since before I was born.
I can cognitively imagine a worldview where the two could go together, but realistically, people like that seem to be rarer than hen's teeth. For good or for ill, there aren't enough of them to pretend that this is a viable political movement.
Good lord, you make it sound like pregnancy is something that just randomly happens regardless of anything one might have done.
Maybe our sex education should be pointing out that if you have sex then becoming a parent is a possible outcome, and if you're not at all willing to risk that outcome then maybe you shouldn't be having sex? I mean, it's not like getting laid is a human right or anything.
Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-choice. But I think abortion should be legal, easily obtained, and rare. Some of the talk on this thread seems to be treating it as just another form of contraception, and that doesn't feel right to me.
There are many versions and entries for the Book of Fallopians.
Re "abortion as contraception", that's nonsense. No-one thinks, "hey, skip the condom, can always get an abortion". Nor is the "you could become a parent" scare talk going to stop people from having sex. Nor does "you'll go blind" stop people from masturbating.
You know that having sex isn't always voluntary, right?
It's perfectly politically consistent. It's a culture that is actually "pro-life". It is a culture that both thinks that a foetus is a human life, and values it accordingly, and one that thinks that women are actually people, and is pro-life, including when those lives are the lives of poor women who enjoy sex.
I also agree with you that there aren't very many people who ascribe to this set of views, but I think it's a perfectly consistent position to hold - it's just one that differs markedly from the virginity-cult patriarchal bullshit that imbues most actual anti-abortion politics.
No, but nobody thinks of cataracts as people, or as potential people, either. You are, of course, free to view a foetus as of no more importance than a cataract, but I think you'd have to accept that your view is not universally held even among people who support at-will abortion.
Agreed. The trouble is I don't feel like women have the luxury of putting hopes in abstract political coalitions that only exist a priori. So my concern in this argument is politically pragmatic.
Contraception can fail and rape happens. Pregnancy can and does just happen, even without PIV penetrative sex. Some AFAB (assigned female at birth) people are naturally more fertile than others, and good luck persuading any doctor to sterilise a woman without kids. Even trans men often encounter enormous pressure to retain our fertility from gender clinicians, because the presumption is that if you have a vagina that you want to have kids. If you want abortion to be rare, campaign for childfree (that is, intentionally childless) women to be able to access sterilisation.
The issue is not about consenting to parenthood but consenting to pregnancy and birth - they are not the same thing. There is also no good reason as to why abortion should be rare, or why consent to sex is automatically consent to giving birth (which is what taking away abortion as an option results in). There is also the issue of forced pregnancy being an extremely common form of domestic abuse.
Do you have an actual reason as to why abortion shouldn't, in theory, be used as contraception? A medical abortion (as opposed to surgical) just means taking abortifacient medication, often at home, and having what is basically a heavy period. Why should such a simple and harmless medical procedure need to be rare? It smacks of viewing an unwanted pregnancy as an appropriate punishment for daring to have sex, rather than a medical issue that can be safely and quickly resolved.
Must be one of those irregular verbs:
I have principles.
You have positions.
She has dogma.