This is not true. There is enormous moral panic [Camry's edit - Mumsnet] there about trans men and their bodies, disguised under rhetoric about concern for women - because they view trans men as confused women. That trans women (not 'transwomen') bear the brunt of it doesn't mean that trans people assigned female at birth (not 'biological women' because trans men aren't women) aren't also targeted, even if that targeting comes in a more apparently benign form.
Whether their views are correct is irrelevant. What is relevant is what their views they are based on, and whether this could lead them to opposing abortion rights.
Mumsnet is a very big site with many discussions, and it's undoubtedly true that some discussions would provide evidence for the views you assert about the site. But in my view it's really very clear that their overwhelming concern is about rights for biological women (to use their own term). It's a view based on a straightforward application of minority rights. They consider that they are an oppressed minority group (I daresay in terms of power rather than numbers, but that's the way it goes). Reproductive rights are absolutely and straightforwardly within this and flow directly from it. Their reaction to the apparent disapproving of Roe v Wade is a simple mixture of fury and fear. It is not at all based on any notion of family values and I think anyone trying to push such an idea there would be deluged with references to Margaret Atwood and the 1950s and made extremely unwelcome.
The TERFs of Prosecco Stormfront have already got into bed with the right-wing evangelicals both here and also with US imports, to the extent that they are suing a rape crisis centre because one of them thought there was a trans woman in group therapy with them (they do not actually know that the woman was trans). If you're suing a rape crisis centre to satisfy your hatred of trans women, clearly the safety and rights of any woman is not a priority for you. It was never about protecting women, it's about policing women.
I think this supports my point as outlined above.
Anti-abortion tickets are enormous vote-winners in the US. Many white evangelicals - including women - vote solely on this issue. For many it is seen as THE priority issue.
I doubt there are that many white evangelicals (or any evangelicals) on Mumsnet (although I am interested in Louise's comment I note that she says it would dereail the thread).
In fact I wonder if ultimately this will be the death knell of conservatives in the US. I understand that despite the divide, abortion is generally supported there. My question to US shipmates is this: now that Roe v Wade has been gutted and access to abortion is a straightforward legislative issue, isn't it possible that attempting to restrict abortion rights legislatively could turn out to be a massive vote-loser in state legislatures?
US shipmate here. To give my background - although I was raised politically and religiously liberal myself, I've mostly lived in conservative-Christian states (North Carolina and Kentucky).
I think abortion is one of those issues, like guns, where rational analysis simply doesn't apply in American politics. In my experience, people who are strongly against legal abortion have cognitive dissonance about it. They don't see any reason it should be legal because a decent person would never need an abortion - and if they do need an abortion themselves, it isn't an "abortion" but some kind of emergency exception to the rules. I have tried telling people who are strongly anti-abortion about my friend who almost died of a hemorrhaged ectopic pregnancy, and their response to the surgery that saved her life was "but that's not an abortion". Under the law that's exactly what it is!
As far as the legal situation, non-US shipmates may not know that our federal electoral system massively privileges the votes of White Christian conservatives, so it only takes a small number of them to overrule all the rest of us at the federal level. Also abortion access is heavily dependent on the rulings of our Supreme Court, which has been engineered by (ugh) my Senator Mitch McConnell to be extremely conservative.
On the state level, the Republican Party (white conservatives) has been running rings around the Democratic Party for decades in terms of organization, voter mobilization and access to the polls. I just learned the other day that there are actually a couple thousand more registered Democrats than Republicans here in Kentucky, but you'd never know it. Due to our state Republican Party being vastly better mobilized, and voter suppression in Black neighborhoods, our results regularly come out 70/30 Republican or more.
So a majority of Americans favoring legal abortion really doesn't matter - it's not up to a popular vote, but the opinion of the Supreme Court, and our political system as it exists now is massively weighted to favor the White upper classes and put conservatives on the judicial bench.
@CamryOfTheApocalypse you have literally quoted my points saying that British trans-exclusionary feminists are already proving themselves willing to align themselves with conservative US evangelicals. Even if they're not evangelicals themselves, they clearly have some view that there are shared goals to be worked towards. If they're taking money from the Family Research Council, they clearly are OK with a group funding anti-choice legislation.
You can't coherently argue against Gillick competence for trans people (as in the Bell case) but for it for people who need abortions - not least because many trans people will need access to abortion. The issues are linked for a reason - it's fundamentally about medical consent and having the right to withdraw (or give) it being respected legally.
You can't coherently argue against Gillick competence for trans people (as in the Bell case) but for it for people who need abortions - not least because many trans people will need access to abortion. The issues are linked for a reason - it's fundamentally about medical consent and having the right to withdraw (or give) it being respected legally.
The logic behind Gillick competence isn't binary - it very much contains the idea that children grow in capability and competence over time, and so it's reasonable to give them control over an increasing range of choices as they grow.
The argument in the Bell case was over puberty-blocking drugs, which are pretty much reversible. (There is, I understand, some debate about the extent to which this is true in terms of secondary effects: you could ask the identical twin question. Take a pair of identical twins, give one puberty blockers for a few years, and then stop them. Now wait a few more years. What differences can you observe between the twins? To assert that puberty blockers are fully reversible is to assert that you wouldn't be able to tell which of the twins had been taking them in the past.)
The Gillick standard requires the minor child to fully understand the scope and consequences of the proposed treatment in order to be deemed competent to consent to it. It's entirely coherent to consider a child Gillick competent for simple short-term treatment A, but not for more complex long-term treatment B.
(Reminder for non-Brits: The Gillick standard is the standard by which minors are deemed competent to give consent to medical treatment without their parents (and more generally to the rights of minor children - it's actually quite broad in concept). Gillick was in fact a campaigner against the practice of doctors prescribing contraception to minors without informing their parents. The ruling in this case was that once the minor is fully able to understand the scope and consequences of some action, it becomes the minor's choice rather than their parents'.)
I wasn't suggesting that Gillick competence was binary, I was pointing out that it's a factor for both minors needing abortions as well as trans minors. I was explaining why the issues are linked, not saying that they are identical in scope. They're both still issues of medical consent.
If it does indeed cover IUDs, or make using one a potential source of law enforcement harassment, then this would be something else that degrades gynaecological care - IUDs are used for more than contraception. They are also for example used for endometrial cancer prevention.
If it does indeed cover IUDs, or make using one a potential source of law enforcement harassment, then this would be something else that degrades gynaecological care - IUDs are used for more than contraception. They are also for example used for endometrial cancer prevention.
I would have thought that you'd have to prove that on a given occasion a fertilised ovum failed to implant solely because of the IUD, and that ovulation itself wasn't prevented, in order to show that an event that under this law could be prosecuted had even occurred, so I think as it stands that particular repercussion may be a dead duck. However, it's likely to kill IVF stone dead and make fertility drugs very risky as reducing a multiple pregnancy would presumably be outlawed.
@KarlLB I think you have assume that these laws are not being made in good faith, and will not be implemented in good faith. Folk are likely to end up in a prove yourself innocent situation rather than the other way around.
This is why people are so worried about the criminalisation of miscarriage and also that such legislation will be differentially enforced against marginalised communities.
The net result being options closed down as too legally risky.
@KarlLB I think you have assume that these laws are not being made in good faith, and will not be implemented in good faith. Folk are likely to end up in a prove yourself innocent situation rather than the other way around.
This is why people are so worried about the criminalisation of miscarriage and also that such legislation will be differentially enforced against marginalised communities.
The net result being options closed down as too legally risky.
Quite. Cases like these will probably never come to court; emergency contraception, IUDs, IVF, fertility treatment - they'll just become unavailable.
I don't understand American conservatives, they bellyache all the time about 'liberty this' and 'freedom that', but they don't seem to understand freedom of choice when it comes to people in making decisions about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Bloody hell, it's like reading about a fascist state, controlling women's bodies. How far will it go?
Can I introduce you to the author Margaret Atwood? Her work has been made into a TV series as well for easy access.
Yeah, I know, but with the widespread legislative attacks on trans people, are LGBT people as a whole for the chopping block?
Oh they're definitely going after Obergefell as well as Griswold. Wouldn't surprise me if some states went after Loving too - there are still plenty of US fundies who oppose interracial marriage.
I don't understand American conservatives, they bellyache all the time about 'liberty this' and 'freedom that', but they don't seem to understand freedom of choice when it comes to people in making decisions about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
I don't understand American conservatives, they bellyache all the time about 'liberty this' and 'freedom that', but they don't seem to understand freedom of choice when it comes to people in making decisions about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
American conservatives have given up on democracy (for example, the January 6 insurrection), so to them there are "real Americans" (themselves) who deserve liberty and freedom and the authority to rule, and there are "fake Americans" who possess "no rights which [ real Americans are ] bound to respect". The idea that things like "liberty this" or "freedom that" are universally applicable to everyone is alien to American conservatism as it exists today.
I don't understand American conservatives, they bellyache all the time about 'liberty this' and 'freedom that', but they don't seem to understand freedom of choice when it comes to people in making decisions about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Is that only a function of Americans, or conservatives, though?
Even Europe's secular liberal democracies have some sort of limits on when and how abortions may take place.
I don't understand American conservatives, they bellyache all the time about 'liberty this' and 'freedom that', but they don't seem to understand freedom of choice when it comes to people in making decisions about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Is that only a function of Americans, or conservatives, though?
Even Europe's secular liberal democracies have some sort of limits on when and how abortions may take place.
True. And I believe that right now(with R v W still in place), Mississipi has a later cut-off point for legal abortion than does Ireland.
Still, though, one does get the impression that many American conservatives would outlaw all abortion if given the chance, whereas most Europeans are content to go along with the status quo.
Is that only a function of Americans, or conservatives, though? Even Europe's secular liberal democracies have some sort of limits on when and how abortions may take place.
But abortion is much more tightly regulated in France!
According to McArdle, the US has “one of the world’s most permissive abortion laws.” This point, related to the previous one, uses the somewhat more stringent term limits in most European countries as a “gotcha” against liberals. “France, like many European countries, takes a stricter line on abortion than does the United States,” wrote Kevin Williamson, of National Review (and, ever so briefly, the Atlantic).
Ross Douthat has similarly argued that the French system, which permits abortion for any reason within 12 weeks of conception, afterward requiring certification by two doctors that the continuation of a pregnancy would be threatening to a woman’s life or health, represents a plausible “middle ground” in the American abortion debate.
The comparison is misleading at best because it abstracts a single regulatory aspect from a complex health care system and applies it to a radically different political and geographic context. Making abortion law comparable in the US and France would require not merely changing the term limit but repealing the Hyde Amendment — which bans Medicaid funds from being used for abortions. (In France, in contrast, the state pays 80 percent to 100 percent of the cost of an abortion.) It would also mean subsidizing a bunch of rural public health clinics that offer women a full array of reproductive services, including abortion, and a repeal of most of the state laws that restrict the termination of a pregnancy.
Needless to say, this isn’t the deal American anti-abortion activists are offering. In fact, many American women would have much greater access to abortion if they lived under the French framework.
Now Alito and Coney Barratt seem to want to force pregnant people to put babies up for adoption to establish "a domestic supply" of infants for those wanting to adopt newborns. Truly sickening, like puppy mills for human babies (funnily enough, a lot of US puppy mills are run by fundies).
Otherwise known as the undeserving fertile being prevailed upon to provide babies to the deserving infertile, often with a hefty dose of moral blackmail thrown in.
I don't understand American conservatives, they bellyache all the time about 'liberty this' and 'freedom that', but they don't seem to understand freedom of choice when it comes to people in making decisions about whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term.
Harry Blackmun the Associate Justice of SCOTUS who wrote the decision for Roe v Wade, was a lifelong Republican. He was nominated to SCOTUS by Richard Nixon. He certainly believed in limited government and the freedom of choice.
Today, I believe 61-68% (depending on which poll you read) of all Americans believe Roe v Wade should continue to be the law of the land. The Democrat leadership of the Senate are planning on forcing a procedural vote to codify the freedom of choice, if they have not done so already. The Democrats are going to make this a mid term election issue. It will definitely be an interesting mid term election if they can pull it off.
Now Alito and Coney Barratt seem to want to force pregnant people to put babies up for adoption to establish "a domestic supply" of infants for those wanting to adopt newborns. Truly sickening, like puppy mills for human babies (funnily enough, a lot of US puppy mills are run by fundies).
Are there enough couples wanting to adopt to take all of the potential unwanted babies? Or would provision have to be made for the excess?
I'm just thinking back to the 1950s / 1960s, when the UK couldn't absorb its excess unwanted children and had emigration schemes to send them to Canada / Australia/ Zimbabwe. The sad history of these schemes is now well known.
Now Alito and Coney Barratt seem to want to force pregnant people to put babies up for adoption to establish "a domestic supply" of infants for those wanting to adopt newborns. Truly sickening, like puppy mills for human babies (funnily enough, a lot of US puppy mills are run by fundies).
Are there enough couples wanting to adopt to take all of the potential unwanted babies? Or would provision have to be made for the excess?
A very angry, very white woman approached a friend on escort duty at the local Planned Parenthood, held up an obviously Asian infant, and snarled “Because of people like you, I had to settle for *this*!”
That was allegedly thirty years ago, but I don't think the underlying dynamics have changed in a positive direction. There are approximately 400,000 children in foster care in the United States, but most of them are older than one year, non-white, have some kind of underlying medical condition, or are in some other way "deficient".
Anecdote (not from the internet) - a woman who went into a church run Mother and Baby Home to give birth and have her child adopted in the 1950s had to leave and take her child with her when it was born with a club foot and therefore not a baby the church could place for adoption.
(Well, I guess it's on the internet now, but I heard it from a friend of the woman concerned.)
Yep, similar stories here in Oz where mothers who gave birth to “ imperfect” children (who were deemed not to be adoption material) were prevailed upon to keep their babies.
I recall from my student days a 15 year old who had a caesarean section for a big ( 9 lb ) baby presenting as a breech ( bottom first). A good reason for a caesar now but back in 1977 it was argued that if the vaginal delivery went wrong and the baby had resulting brain damage that said baby would be un-adoptable.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his basic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his basic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
I’m getting killed at work right now, but I wanted to make a couple of quick points about the school desegregation cases currently before the Guardians of our Republic. Specifically, I want to riff off of this post by Scott Lemieux:
The problem is that it's almost impossible to justify striking down affirmative action programs in "originalist" terms . . . . And the reason for this is obvious: it is implausible in the extreme to argue that, at the time of the Reconstruction Congress, the equal protection clause was generally understood to prohibit all racial classifications. While it's not strictly accurate to say that you can't defend the Thomas/Scalia position on state racial classifications in “originalist” terms, you can do so only by defining constitutional principles at such a high level of abstraction that "originalism" is essentially devoid of content. If this is what originalism means, then . . . Roe v. Wade is perfectly defensible in originalist terms[.]
Here, here. Hear, hear. Originalism was a frequent topic of mine back when I started in 2004 (with Feddie often slapping me in the face with a virtual glove), but my law blogging has slacked off lately. But Lemieux correctly notes one of originalism’s most annoying tendencies when he talks about “levels of abstraction.” I call this “originalism’s ladder.” The idea is that originalism tends to analyze issues at different levels of generality depending on the context. In other words, it moves up and down the “ladder” strategically depending on the issue.
Take desegregation. Lemieux is of course right that it’s impossible to argue that the original understanding of the framers/ratifiers of the 14th Amendment was to eliminate all racial classifications (e.g., schools didn't integrate in 1868). Also, for similar reasons, I suspect few of them thought the new amendment banned affirmative action-type preferences that disadvantaged white people because respectable opinion in 1868 wouldn't have even conceived of such policies (outside of crazy "radical" Massachusetts anyway).
So, because the policy preference (no racial classifications) wasn’t specifically contemplated, up the ladder they go. And the original understanding of the 14th Amendment gets defined at progressively higher levels of abstraction until it can be read as prohibiting all racial classifications.
With abortion, however, things are different. At a very high abstract level, the 14th Amendment (or perhaps the 9th) is about individual freedom and could conceivably justify Barnett-style libertarianism. But, it’s pretty clear that neither the Bill of Rights nor the Second Bill of Rights (the Civil War Amendments) were understood to legalize abortion. So, down the ladder the originalists go. In the abortion context, they hug the ground tightly and point out that the specific policy in question was not contemplated.
The tl;dr version is that for rights that SCOTUS conservatives want to preserve they'll use a level of abstraction so expansive it could cover just about anything, but with rights they dislike they'll get very specific about whether that specific policy was ever explicitly endorsed in those exact terms in the text of the U.S. Constitution.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his basic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his basic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
The latest stupidity from the Right here is calling affirming school policies "grooming". Ahem - exactly who is interested in the contents of minors' underpants here?
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his bahttps://bostondirecthealth.com/primary-care-blog/at-what-age-can-i-start-gender-affirming-hormone-therapysic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
I beg to differ. My information says transgender you are typically allowed to start using puberty blockers around 11-12. Hormonal therapy usually starts around 16 (here) There is some discussion about allowing hormonal treatment at earlier ages, but there is no standard.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his bahttps://bostondirecthealth.com/primary-care-blog/at-what-age-can-i-start-gender-affirming-hormone-therapysic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
I beg to differ. My information says transgender you are typically allowed to start using puberty blockers around 11-12. Hormonal therapy usually starts around 16 (here) There is some discussion about allowing hormonal treatment at earlier ages, but there is no standard.
Yes and a 16yo isn't a minor. Regardless, many states are banning it anyway - Alabama has made it a felony to provide affirming healthcare with clinicians potentially given sentences of up to 10 years.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his bahttps://bostondirecthealth.com/primary-care-blog/at-what-age-can-i-start-gender-affirming-hormone-therapysic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
I beg to differ. My information says transgender you are typically allowed to start using puberty blockers around 11-12. Hormonal therapy usually starts around 16 (here) There is some discussion about allowing hormonal treatment at earlier ages, but there is no standard.
Yes and a 16yo isn't a minor.
Yes, they are—a 16-year-old is a minor in every state in the US.
Every state does carve out a limited number of things for which an unemancipated minor can give medical consent despite being a minor, and for which parental consent isn’t required. But otherwise, that teenager has to be 18 (most of the US) or 19 (Alabama and Nebraska) before they can give medical consent for themselves.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his bahttps://bostondirecthealth.com/primary-care-blog/at-what-age-can-i-start-gender-affirming-hormone-therapysic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
I beg to differ. My information says transgender you are typically allowed to start using puberty blockers around 11-12. Hormonal therapy usually starts around 16 (here) There is some discussion about allowing hormonal treatment at earlier ages, but there is no standard.
Yes and a 16yo isn't a minor.
Yes, they are—a 16-year-old is a minor in every state in the US.
Every state does carve out a limited number of things for which an unemancipated minor can give medical consent despite being a minor, and for which parental consent isn’t required. But otherwise, that teenager has to be 18 (most of the US) or 19 (Alabama and Nebraska) before they can give medical consent for themselves.
But surely the ability to give medical consent comes before the age of majority anyway, how else would minors be able to access things like birth control? In the UK you are no longer a minor at 16, but can give medical consent without parental consent at 14 I believe - it might be earlier. At least, you can legally be living independently (as in, not in foster care even if homeless or kicked out of your home) from the age of 16 which seems like not being a minor to me.
But surely the ability to give medical consent comes before the age of majority anyway, how else would minors be able to access things like birth control? In the UK you are no longer a minor at 16, but can give medical consent without parental consent at 14 I believe - it might be earlier. At least, you can legally be living independently (as in, not in foster care even if homeless or kicked out of your home) from the age of 16 which seems like not being a minor to me.
As far as I'm aware, no state in the US has anything like the Gillick standard. In general, compared to the UK, the US places more responsibility for children on their parents, and less on the state.
Many states have specific laws regarding contraception and STI treatments for minors.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his bahttps://bostondirecthealth.com/primary-care-blog/at-what-age-can-i-start-gender-affirming-hormone-therapysic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
I beg to differ. My information says transgender you are typically allowed to start using puberty blockers around 11-12. Hormonal therapy usually starts around 16 (here) There is some discussion about allowing hormonal treatment at earlier ages, but there is no standard.
Yes and a 16yo isn't a minor.
Yes, they are—a 16-year-old is a minor in every state in the US.
Every state does carve out a limited number of things for which an unemancipated minor can give medical consent despite being a minor, and for which parental consent isn’t required. But otherwise, that teenager has to be 18 (most of the US) or 19 (Alabama and Nebraska) before they can give medical consent for themselves.
But surely the ability to give medical consent comes before the age of majority anyway, how else would minors be able to access things like birth control? In the UK you are no longer a minor at 16, but can give medical consent without parental consent at 14 I believe - it might be earlier. At least, you can legally be living independently (as in, not in foster care even if homeless or kicked out of your home) from the age of 16 which seems like not being a minor to me.
In Canada, you can move out of the house and have sex(but not with a camera rolling) at 16, but can't vote until you're 18, which is also the same age that you no longer get the benefits of a "young offendor" in a criminal trial.
And things like drinking/drug laws vary from province to province, with supposedly ultra-enlightened Quebec stipulating 21 for marijuana use, ie. the same as the puritan USA's drinking-age.
So, AFAIAC, the concept of a "minor" is actually pretty meaningless right now. Given that it's 18 for voting and criminal respinsibility, I guess we can consider it to be 18(for Canada), but even that strikes me as somewhat arbitrary.
I read through the first part of Alito's draft. What concerns me is his bahttps://bostondirecthealth.com/primary-care-blog/at-what-age-can-i-start-gender-affirming-hormone-therapysic argument if the right or privilege is not listed in the constitution, the court should not address it. Abortion is not listed in the constitution, therefore the court should be involved. SCOTUS has ruled on a number of rights not enumerated in the constitution. Same Sex Marriage, for one. Some wonder if interracial marriage could also be on the chopping block. Then there are rights still being developed, like transgender care for minors. Do parents have the right to allow for transgender minor to undergo puberty blockers or hormonal treatments?
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
I beg to differ. My information says transgender you are typically allowed to start using puberty blockers around 11-12. Hormonal therapy usually starts around 16 (here) There is some discussion about allowing hormonal treatment at earlier ages, but there is no standard.
Yes and a 16yo isn't a minor.
Yes, they are—a 16-year-old is a minor in every state in the US.
Every state does carve out a limited number of things for which an unemancipated minor can give medical consent despite being a minor, and for which parental consent isn’t required. But otherwise, that teenager has to be 18 (most of the US) or 19 (Alabama and Nebraska) before they can give medical consent for themselves.
But surely the ability to give medical consent comes before the age of majority anyway, how else would minors be able to access things like birth control? In the UK you are no longer a minor at 16, but can give medical consent without parental consent at 14 I believe - it might be earlier.
I addressed that in my post:
Every state does carve out a limited number of things for which an unemancipated minor can give medical consent despite being a minor, and for which parental consent isn’t required. But otherwise, that teenager has to be 18 (most of the US) or 19 (Alabama and Nebraska) before they can give medical consent for themselves.
(Emphasis added.)
As @Leorning Cniht says, access to birth control generally falls within those carve outs, as does treatments for STIs. But those are explicit exceptions to the basic rule that a minor cannot give medical consent.
At least, you can legally be living independently (as in, not in foster care even if homeless or kicked out of your home) from the age of 16 which seems like not being a minor to me.
In most if not all US states, a minor can seek a court order of emancipation, which essentially allows them be treated as though they have reached the age of majority. But absent an order of emancipation, that person is still legally a minor.
So, AFAIAC, the concept of a "minor" is actually pretty meaningless right now. Given that it's 18 for voting and criminal respinsibility, I guess we can consider it to be 18(for Canada), but even that strikes me as somewhat arbitrary.
Actually, it’s more that the concept of minority and majority is distinct from things like voting age, age of consent (for sex), drinking age or some other age-triggered things, which collectively could be called ages of license to do those things. Minority/majority specifically refers to legal capacity to do things like enter into binding and enforceable contracts, give legally-recognizable consent, or sue or be sued on your own behalf, without a guardian.
And btw, Puritans saw alcohol as a gift from God and drank regularly, children included. I’m not at all a fan of the age-21 drinking laws in the US, but they can’t be blamed on anything related to the Puritans.
In the UK you are a minor until you are 18. But you can marry, with parental permission*, consent to sex, enter into contracts, and (IIRC) be licensed to ride a moped in the public highway. (And in Scotland you can vote in certain elections.)
*This is due to change soon. You’ll. have to be 18.
In the UK you are a minor until you are 18. But you can marry, with parental permission*, consent to sex, enter into contracts, and (IIRC) be licensed to ride a moped in the public highway. (And in Scotland you can vote in certain elections.)
*This is due to change soon. You’ll. have to be 18.
You don't need parental consent to marry at 16 in Scotland, and are for most purposes considered an adult (voting is at 16 wherever Holyrood gets to decide, 18 where it's Westminster).
There are some counties in Appalachia that may still have no minimum age for marriage; I'd have to check again.
Marriage age—the age at which a person can marry without needing any consent or approval of others—is set by state law, not by counties or other local governments. (I can’t say it was always thus, but it is now.)
The marriage age is 18 in 48 of the states, 19 in Nebraska and 21 in Mississippi. In all but a handful of states, those younger than the marriage age can still marry with parental consent, judicial approval, if emancipated, or if select special circumstances apply (or perhaps some combination, like parental approval and judicial consent). Even then, most states have a minimum age below which one cannot marry even with parental consent or judicial approval. In a majority of states that age is 16 or 17, but is 14 in Alaska and 15 in Hawaii and Kansas. There is no minimum age in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Is it that there is no minimum, or rather that there is only one age, not two (one with permission and one without)?
A handful of states have only one age (18), and no one younger than that age can marry under any circumstances. In the states I referred to as having no minimum, the case is generally that there is the marriage age (18), a lower age at which a person can marry with parental consent (generally between 14 and 17), and then below that age (with no minimum age), a person can marry with combined parental consent and judicial approval. California omits that second step—people under 18 can marry with combined parental consent and judicial approval. I take it that in these states, the assumption is no court would approve the marriage of anyone younger than, say, 14, but the laws don’t explicitly prohibit it.
Is it that there is no minimum, or rather that there is only one age, not two (one with permission and one without)?
A handful of states have only one age (18), and no one younger than that age can marry under any circumstances. In the states I referred to as having no minimum, the case is generally that there is the marriage age (18), a lower age at which a person can marry with parental consent (generally between 14 and 17), and then below that age (with no minimum age), a person can marry with combined parental consent and judicial approval. California omits that second step—people under 18 can marry with combined parental consent and judicial approval. I take it that in these states, the assumption is no court would approve the marriage of anyone younger than, say, 14, but the laws don’t explicitly prohibit it.
Comments
Whether their views are correct is irrelevant. What is relevant is what their views they are based on, and whether this could lead them to opposing abortion rights.
Mumsnet is a very big site with many discussions, and it's undoubtedly true that some discussions would provide evidence for the views you assert about the site. But in my view it's really very clear that their overwhelming concern is about rights for biological women (to use their own term). It's a view based on a straightforward application of minority rights. They consider that they are an oppressed minority group (I daresay in terms of power rather than numbers, but that's the way it goes). Reproductive rights are absolutely and straightforwardly within this and flow directly from it. Their reaction to the apparent disapproving of Roe v Wade is a simple mixture of fury and fear. It is not at all based on any notion of family values and I think anyone trying to push such an idea there would be deluged with references to Margaret Atwood and the 1950s and made extremely unwelcome.
I think this supports my point as outlined above.
I doubt there are that many white evangelicals (or any evangelicals) on Mumsnet (although I am interested in Louise's comment I note that she says it would dereail the thread).
US shipmate here. To give my background - although I was raised politically and religiously liberal myself, I've mostly lived in conservative-Christian states (North Carolina and Kentucky).
I think abortion is one of those issues, like guns, where rational analysis simply doesn't apply in American politics. In my experience, people who are strongly against legal abortion have cognitive dissonance about it. They don't see any reason it should be legal because a decent person would never need an abortion - and if they do need an abortion themselves, it isn't an "abortion" but some kind of emergency exception to the rules. I have tried telling people who are strongly anti-abortion about my friend who almost died of a hemorrhaged ectopic pregnancy, and their response to the surgery that saved her life was "but that's not an abortion". Under the law that's exactly what it is!
As far as the legal situation, non-US shipmates may not know that our federal electoral system massively privileges the votes of White Christian conservatives, so it only takes a small number of them to overrule all the rest of us at the federal level. Also abortion access is heavily dependent on the rulings of our Supreme Court, which has been engineered by (ugh) my Senator Mitch McConnell to be extremely conservative.
On the state level, the Republican Party (white conservatives) has been running rings around the Democratic Party for decades in terms of organization, voter mobilization and access to the polls. I just learned the other day that there are actually a couple thousand more registered Democrats than Republicans here in Kentucky, but you'd never know it. Due to our state Republican Party being vastly better mobilized, and voter suppression in Black neighborhoods, our results regularly come out 70/30 Republican or more.
So a majority of Americans favoring legal abortion really doesn't matter - it's not up to a popular vote, but the opinion of the Supreme Court, and our political system as it exists now is massively weighted to favor the White upper classes and put conservatives on the judicial bench.
You can't coherently argue against Gillick competence for trans people (as in the Bell case) but for it for people who need abortions - not least because many trans people will need access to abortion. The issues are linked for a reason - it's fundamentally about medical consent and having the right to withdraw (or give) it being respected legally.
The logic behind Gillick competence isn't binary - it very much contains the idea that children grow in capability and competence over time, and so it's reasonable to give them control over an increasing range of choices as they grow.
The argument in the Bell case was over puberty-blocking drugs, which are pretty much reversible. (There is, I understand, some debate about the extent to which this is true in terms of secondary effects: you could ask the identical twin question. Take a pair of identical twins, give one puberty blockers for a few years, and then stop them. Now wait a few more years. What differences can you observe between the twins? To assert that puberty blockers are fully reversible is to assert that you wouldn't be able to tell which of the twins had been taking them in the past.)
The Gillick standard requires the minor child to fully understand the scope and consequences of the proposed treatment in order to be deemed competent to consent to it. It's entirely coherent to consider a child Gillick competent for simple short-term treatment A, but not for more complex long-term treatment B.
(Reminder for non-Brits: The Gillick standard is the standard by which minors are deemed competent to give consent to medical treatment without their parents (and more generally to the rights of minor children - it's actually quite broad in concept). Gillick was in fact a campaigner against the practice of doctors prescribing contraception to minors without informing their parents. The ruling in this case was that once the minor is fully able to understand the scope and consequences of some action, it becomes the minor's choice rather than their parents'.)
I would have thought that you'd have to prove that on a given occasion a fertilised ovum failed to implant solely because of the IUD, and that ovulation itself wasn't prevented, in order to show that an event that under this law could be prosecuted had even occurred, so I think as it stands that particular repercussion may be a dead duck. However, it's likely to kill IVF stone dead and make fertility drugs very risky as reducing a multiple pregnancy would presumably be outlawed.
This is why people are so worried about the criminalisation of miscarriage and also that such legislation will be differentially enforced against marginalised communities.
The net result being options closed down as too legally risky.
Quite. Cases like these will probably never come to court; emergency contraception, IUDs, IVF, fertility treatment - they'll just become unavailable.
As far as the GOP can push it. They have nothing else.
Can I introduce you to the author Margaret Atwood? Her work has been made into a TV series as well for easy access.
Yeah, I know, but with the widespread legislative attacks on trans people, are LGBT people as a whole for the chopping block?
Oh yes, I'm sure they are.
AFZ
*only if you are White, male, cis, heterosexual and wealthy.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Oh they're definitely going after Obergefell as well as Griswold. Wouldn't surprise me if some states went after Loving too - there are still plenty of US fundies who oppose interracial marriage.
Because they want the freedom to control others.
I point you to Wilhoit's maxim:
American conservatives have given up on democracy (for example, the January 6 insurrection), so to them there are "real Americans" (themselves) who deserve liberty and freedom and the authority to rule, and there are "fake Americans" who possess "no rights which [ real Americans are ] bound to respect". The idea that things like "liberty this" or "freedom that" are universally applicable to everyone is alien to American conservatism as it exists today.
Is that only a function of Americans, or conservatives, though?
Even Europe's secular liberal democracies have some sort of limits on when and how abortions may take place.
True. And I believe that right now(with R v W still in place), Mississipi has a later cut-off point for legal abortion than does Ireland.
Still, though, one does get the impression that many American conservatives would outlaw all abortion if given the chance, whereas most Europeans are content to go along with the status quo.
This kind of justification from conservatives is misleading at best an deliberately deceptive at worst.
Harry Blackmun the Associate Justice of SCOTUS who wrote the decision for Roe v Wade, was a lifelong Republican. He was nominated to SCOTUS by Richard Nixon. He certainly believed in limited government and the freedom of choice.
Today, I believe 61-68% (depending on which poll you read) of all Americans believe Roe v Wade should continue to be the law of the land. The Democrat leadership of the Senate are planning on forcing a procedural vote to codify the freedom of choice, if they have not done so already. The Democrats are going to make this a mid term election issue. It will definitely be an interesting mid term election if they can pull it off.
Are there enough couples wanting to adopt to take all of the potential unwanted babies? Or would provision have to be made for the excess?
I'm just thinking back to the 1950s / 1960s, when the UK couldn't absorb its excess unwanted children and had emigration schemes to send them to Canada / Australia/ Zimbabwe. The sad history of these schemes is now well known.
I guess it depends on what kind of unwanted babies. An anecdote from the internet (so caveat lector):
That was allegedly thirty years ago, but I don't think the underlying dynamics have changed in a positive direction. There are approximately 400,000 children in foster care in the United States, but most of them are older than one year, non-white, have some kind of underlying medical condition, or are in some other way "deficient".
(Well, I guess it's on the internet now, but I heard it from a friend of the woman concerned.)
I recall from my student days a 15 year old who had a caesarean section for a big ( 9 lb ) baby presenting as a breech ( bottom first). A good reason for a caesar now but back in 1977 it was argued that if the vaginal delivery went wrong and the baby had resulting brain damage that said baby would be un-adoptable.
There's no principle involved here. Judicial conservatives at the Supreme Court level simply find a level of abstraction that allows them to come up with their preferred answer.
The tl;dr version is that for rights that SCOTUS conservatives want to preserve they'll use a level of abstraction so expansive it could cover just about anything, but with rights they dislike they'll get very specific about whether that specific policy was ever explicitly endorsed in those exact terms in the text of the U.S. Constitution.
Just as a correction, trans minors don't receive hormone treatments or surgery - it's just blockers and social transition (ie changing clothes and name etc). And many states have quite famously recently determined that minors being allowed to transition counts as child abuse. The Florida bill proposes to ban even social transition.
The latest stupidity from the Right here is calling affirming school policies "grooming". Ahem - exactly who is interested in the contents of minors' underpants here?
I beg to differ. My information says transgender you are typically allowed to start using puberty blockers around 11-12. Hormonal therapy usually starts around 16 (here) There is some discussion about allowing hormonal treatment at earlier ages, but there is no standard.
Yes and a 16yo isn't a minor. Regardless, many states are banning it anyway - Alabama has made it a felony to provide affirming healthcare with clinicians potentially given sentences of up to 10 years.
Every state does carve out a limited number of things for which an unemancipated minor can give medical consent despite being a minor, and for which parental consent isn’t required. But otherwise, that teenager has to be 18 (most of the US) or 19 (Alabama and Nebraska) before they can give medical consent for themselves.
But surely the ability to give medical consent comes before the age of majority anyway, how else would minors be able to access things like birth control? In the UK you are no longer a minor at 16, but can give medical consent without parental consent at 14 I believe - it might be earlier. At least, you can legally be living independently (as in, not in foster care even if homeless or kicked out of your home) from the age of 16 which seems like not being a minor to me.
As far as I'm aware, no state in the US has anything like the Gillick standard. In general, compared to the UK, the US places more responsibility for children on their parents, and less on the state.
Many states have specific laws regarding contraception and STI treatments for minors.
In Canada, you can move out of the house and have sex(but not with a camera rolling) at 16, but can't vote until you're 18, which is also the same age that you no longer get the benefits of a "young offendor" in a criminal trial.
And things like drinking/drug laws vary from province to province, with supposedly ultra-enlightened Quebec stipulating 21 for marijuana use, ie. the same as the puritan USA's drinking-age.
So, AFAIAC, the concept of a "minor" is actually pretty meaningless right now. Given that it's 18 for voting and criminal respinsibility, I guess we can consider it to be 18(for Canada), but even that strikes me as somewhat arbitrary.
In most if not all US states, a minor can seek a court order of emancipation, which essentially allows them be treated as though they have reached the age of majority. But absent an order of emancipation, that person is still legally a minor.
Actually, it’s more that the concept of minority and majority is distinct from things like voting age, age of consent (for sex), drinking age or some other age-triggered things, which collectively could be called ages of license to do those things. Minority/majority specifically refers to legal capacity to do things like enter into binding and enforceable contracts, give legally-recognizable consent, or sue or be sued on your own behalf, without a guardian.
And btw, Puritans saw alcohol as a gift from God and drank regularly, children included. I’m not at all a fan of the age-21 drinking laws in the US, but they can’t be blamed on anything related to the Puritans.
*This is due to change soon. You’ll. have to be 18.
You don't need parental consent to marry at 16 in Scotland, and are for most purposes considered an adult (voting is at 16 wherever Holyrood gets to decide, 18 where it's Westminster).
The marriage age is 18 in 48 of the states, 19 in Nebraska and 21 in Mississippi. In all but a handful of states, those younger than the marriage age can still marry with parental consent, judicial approval, if emancipated, or if select special circumstances apply (or perhaps some combination, like parental approval and judicial consent). Even then, most states have a minimum age below which one cannot marry even with parental consent or judicial approval. In a majority of states that age is 16 or 17, but is 14 in Alaska and 15 in Hawaii and Kansas. There is no minimum age in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.
That might be the assumption, but the reality is different [CW: child sexual abuse]:
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/feb/06/it-put-an-end-to-my-childhood-the-hidden-scandal-of-us-child-marriage