That seems like it could backfire in a big way. Republican electeds/candidates have to be on board if asked about it, but the electorate in November is made up of a lot more people than the Republican base. How many more is hard to say, though -- loads of women are registering to vote in red states, but who knows if they'll actually vote. New voters are hard to predict.
When over half the new voters are women who registered after the Dodd decision, it is not all that hard to predict.
Lyndsey Graham just finished nailing the coffin shut for the Senate to switch to Red. IMHO.
@Gramps49 It's truly possible, but general media predictions keep showing Dems getting more voters than they actually do.
Part of the problem is that using polls to predict elections is "backward looking": using data from past elections to decide who is a "likely voter" and then extrapolating from recent polls how a "likely voter" electorate will most likely cast their votes. This technique runs into difficulties if the electorate behaves differently than it has in the past, particularly if some disruptive event changes public opinions and/or behavior, such as who is likely to vote and how they'll vote. It's been argued that the Dobbs decision is that kind of disruption. I guess we'll find out in November.
@Gramps49 It's truly possible, but general media predictions keep showing Dems getting more voters than they actually do.
Part of the problem is that using polls to predict elections is "backward looking": using data from past elections to decide who is a "likely voter" and then extrapolating from recent polls how a "likely voter" electorate will most likely cast their votes. This technique runs into difficulties if the electorate behaves differently than it has in the past, particularly if some disruptive event changes public opinions and/or behavior, such as who is likely to vote and how they'll vote. It's been argued that the Dobbs decision is that kind of disruption. I guess we'll find out in November.
And it may well be. I hope but I don't dare believe yet.
Let's say Lindsey Graham's nincompoopery and the new anti-Dobbs voters give the Democrats a big push and they gain Senate seats -- they are still likely to lose the House. Which means two years of harassing investigations and impeachments for the Biden administration, in addition to the usual slate of getting nothing done in Congress when that body is split between the parties. The federal government will not be able to protect those affected by the state-level abortion bans, and the Benghazi investigation will look like a cakewalk in comparison to what the House Republicans will do starting January 2023.
And then there are the state and county elections where the maga folks are running election deniers and vote suppressers. Will the new voters make it that far down the ballot?
It's important that Democrats win the Senate, because it means judges. But it's not the whole ballgame.
@Gramps49 It's truly possible, but general media predictions keep showing Dems getting more voters than they actually do.
If I remember right, the vote for Biden in 2020 was higher than polls were predicting.
Maybe somewhere. Generally across the nation Trump was much closer than polls thought he would be. Took Texas for instance, etc
I guess it depends on what you mean by "much closer". My interpretation of such a term would be "performed outside the polling margin of error". Some of the confusion comes from interpreting the polls as predicting a candidate will receive X% of the vote, but what the poll is really predicting is that a candidate will receive X% ± Y% of the vote.
So, did Trump outperform the mean polling prediction in the popular vote in 2020? Yes, by about a percentage point, depending on which poll aggregator you use as a reference.
Did Trump outperform the polling margin of error (generally ±3%)? No, not even close.'
538 thought Biden would get 48% of the vote in Texas. (You will have to click to popular vote in that link to see their predictions for the Texas popular vote.) Instead, Biden got 38%. 538 is absolutely reputable though not a pollster. Trump significantly outperformed their predictions.
538 thought Biden would get 48% of the vote in Texas. (You will have to click to popular vote in that link to see their predictions for the Texas popular vote.) Instead, Biden got 38%. 538 is absolutely reputable though not a pollster. Trump significantly outperformed their predictions.
538 predicted that Biden would get 45.6%-52.0% of the popular vote in Texas (using an 80% confidence interval), with a mean prediction of 48.8%. Biden actually got 46.5% of the 2020 popular vote in Texas. This doesn't seem like the significant overperformance you claim. Please don't cite false vote tallies.
@Crœsos You're right. I can't find whatever site told me that he got 38% of Texas votes, but it clearly wasn't the popular vote.
538 predicted that Biden had a 38% chance of winning Texas (i.e. receiving a plurality of the Texas popular vote). Maybe that number got misfiled in your memory.
There were a number of abortion-related referendums during the recent mid-term elections. On every single one the voters supported the pro-choice position.
California Proposition 1: This was a referendum on explicitly adding the right to abortion to the California state constitution. It passed 65/35.
Kentucky Amendment 2: This was a referendum on explicitly specifying that there is right to abortion implicit in the Kentucky state constitution. If failed 48/52.
Michigan Proposal 3: This was a referendum on adding the right to reproductive freedom, including abortion and all decisions relating to pregnancy, to the Michigan state constitution. It passed 57/43.
Montana Legislative Referendum 131: This referendum required medical care for all infants born alive, including due to abortion. This requirement would likely have complicated or forbidden abortions performed in emergency situations. It failed 47/53.
Vermont Proposal 5: This was a referendum on explicitly adding the right to "personal reproductive autonomy" to the Vermont state constitution. It passed 77/23.
I'd like to think that opponents of legal abortion going 0 for 5 when their positions are put before the public, even in conservative places like Kentucky and Montana, would make them reconsider their belief that they represent an overwhelming "silent majority" of Americans, but I doubt it will.
Interesting that Michigan actually had lower numbers than Kansas, for its pro-choice victory. Probably falling back on cultural stereotypes a bit, but I woulda assumed that more urbanized Michigan was more liberal than Kansas.
Then again, I'm guessing that Michigan has more Catholics and African Americans, two groups with more conservative attitudes toward abortion, which might have balanced out the generic liberal vote.
I'd like to think that opponents of legal abortion going 0 for 5 when their positions are put before the public, even in conservative places like Kentucky and Montana, would make them reconsider their belief that they represent an overwhelming "silent majority" of Americans, but I doubt it will.
I suspect we will soon be seeing the beginning of the process to make anti-abortionists persona non grata in the conservative coalition, especially if it becomes proven that abortion referenda are increasing the turnout of Democratic-leaning pro-choicers for congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential votes.
I think a good tactic right now for "pro-lifers" would be to choose an uber-conservative bible-belt state that allows citizen-initiated ballots, and hold a referendum there, on a softball question designed to produce a result that can plausibly be spun as anti-abortion, eg. "The state constitution shall not be interpreted in such a way as to allow post-natal infanticide." Then, when they win, they can say to Republican bigwigs "See? It's not a total loser issue for us!" The grandees would probably see through it, but some might use it as an excuse to continue the electoral pandering for a little while longer.
Point of information @stetson. Only 26 states allow for initiative/referendum voting. None of the Deep Bible States allow for the process. Most of the states are west of the Mississippi, primarily because those state constitutions were written at a time when the populist movement was going strong.
Arkansas and Oklahoma are both in the Bible Belt and both allow for ballot initiatives. In other Bible Belt states, the question could be placed on the ballot by the legislature, as was done in Kentucky (also in the Bible Belt) with pretty much the softball @stetson suggests. As noted, it didn’t work out for the anti-abortion side.
Thanks for the round of mild yank snark, guys! I will say I did learn things from it.
In Canada, under the last right-wing government, backbenchers would sometimes try to promote softball abortion resolutions like "The House Of Commons Deplores The Practice Of Sex-Selective Abortion". But even mindless truisms like that got the immediate kibosh from P.M. Harper, a member of the conservative Christian And Missionary Alliance flock.
Arkansas and Oklahoma are both in the Bible Belt and both allow for ballot initiatives. In other Bible Belt states, the question could be placed on the ballot by the legislature, as was done in Kentucky (also in the Bible Belt) with pretty much the softball @stetson suggests. As noted, it didn’t work out for the anti-abortion side.
I forgot, which side of the Mississippi are Arkansas and Oklahoma on?
There are a few states east of the Mississippi that also allow for initiatives. Kentucky is one. I really do not see Kentucky as a Deep Bible State.
Maybe it is just me, but I always thought the Deep Bible States were Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee. Now, why would these states be dead set against the people having a direct say about their laws?
Okay, okay. Deep Bible Belt or not, I think we can all agree that if eg. Arkansas(ie. the state that has thrice elected a Huckabee governor), were to hold an abortion referendum with a question like "Do you support amending the state constitution to allow for the prohibition of sex-selective abortions?", the "pro-life" vote might be significantly higher than it was in this recent Vermont abortion-ballot.
And tbh with the Sun Belt (mostly) turning blue and the intensification of blue cities in Southern states like Austin and Atlanta, I think the focus will eventually be on the Mountain West and Lower Midwest plus Alabama and Mississippi - NC is likely to turn blue soon and Virginia is basically a DC suburb. Meanwhile Indiana is conservative and religious as hell, and particularly rich in conservative Catholics around Notre Dame and the EWTN headquarters. Like surely Utah is a more heavily religious state than eg Virginia or the Carolinas?
Pedant alert: “Deep Bible State” is an unknown term to me. The term I’m familiar with is “Bible Belt,” supposedly coined by H. L. Mencken. The Bible Belt, as I understand use of the term, generally includes Virginia, West Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, northern Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana (except the area around New Orleans), Oklahoma, most of Texas, and fringe areas of some other states bordering these states.
A few places have been referred to as the “buckle of the Bible Belt”—Nashville in particular, but Tulsa, Oklahoma (home of Oral Roberts University, among other things) as well.
/pedant alert
@stetson referred to “an uber-conservative bible-belt state.” Oklahoma and Arkansas fit that description. Kentucky, despite having a Democratic governor, likely does as well.
North Carolina is a mixed bag. Since the 1970s, when conservative Democrats moved to the GOP (yes, the history of the Democratic Party is relevant here), NC has mainly voted red for president and US senator. But NC has had only 3 Republican governors since Reconstruction—one in the 1970s, one in the 1980s and one in the 2010s. Democrats controlled at least one chamber and, for all but a handful of years, both chambers of the General Assembly from the end of Reconstruction until 2010. Republican control of the General Assembly since then has been helped by how districts have been drawn. Ditto NC’s congressional delegation. The delegation elected this week under a court-drawn plan is 7-7.
Meanwhile Indiana is conservative and religious as hell, and particularly rich in conservative Catholics around Notre Dame and the EWTN headquarters.
EWTN headquarters is in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, not in Indiana.
Like surely Utah is a more heavily religious state than eg Virginia or the Carolinas?
Not necessarily, especially South Carolina. Utah is different because the religious influence is related to just one church, to which a solid majority of the population belongs.
And demographics in Virginia and the Carolinas, particularly North Carolina, are changing, especially in urban areas. But get into more rural areas and Virginia and the Carolinas are just as religious as Utah. Remember that while Virginia has the DC suburbs, it also has Liberty University. The south and southwest of Virginia are very different from northern Virginia.
@stetson referred to “an uber-conservative bible-belt state.” Oklahoma and Arkansas fit that description. Kentucky, despite having a Democratic governor, likely does as well.
Nick T probably knows it already, but for those Shipmates who live further away, there is a lot of context to add around the fact that Kentucky currently has a Democratic governor. We barely elected him in 2019, under a unique combination of circumstances.
Bevin, the Republican incumbent, absolutely wrecked himself in early spring of 2019 by trying to cut teachers' pensions - there were days and days of protest at the state capitol even before the campaign season was in full swing. The teachers' union was upset, of course, but the general public hated it too and it was all over the news.
Beshear, the then Democratic candidate (now governor) had name recognition as the son of a popular former governor. His dad was well liked on both sides of the aisle.
Even with the circumstances boosting Beshear, and the Trump presidency pushing Democrats' turnout higher in general, he only defeated Bevin by about 5,000 votes. And thank Christ for every one of them, because Bevin was a Tea Party nightmare and I'm sure we would have had thousands more Covid deaths if he'd been in power when the pandemic struck. As it is, our heavily Republican state legislature is still trying to strip powers from the governor's office, because they're so mad about the minimal Covid precautions he and the state Board of Education were able to impose on us.
Utah is different because the religious influence is related to just one church, to which a solid majority of the population belongs.
And Salt Lake City, despite its iconic architecture, is majority non-Mormon, and actually elected a social democratic mayor, Rocky Anderson, twice in the 2000s.
And, yes, it was Mencken who coined "Bible Belt". I think it's popularly believed that he came up with the phrase while covering the Scopes Trial, but apparently it's from a year prior.
But, what about Arkansas and Oklahoma? Why do their constitutions allow for initiatives of the people and referendums by the people. Well, Arkansas' constitution was written in 1879 and Oklahoma's constitution was ratified in 1909, the bookends of the populist movement of the late 1800s.
Here is a list of states that allow voter initiatives or referendums. Note that Mississippi's referendum process is currently suspended for a very interesting reason.
In 2021, the Mississippi Supreme Court struck down a medical marijuana initiative and voided, for the time being, the state’s initiative process because the constitution requires initiative sponsors to gather signatures from five congressional districts and the state has only had four districts since the 2000 census.
Wyoming is also notorious for making the referendum process as onerous as possible.
So checking in on how the post-Dobbs legal landscape treats American women. It's not good.
For the first time since Roe was decided in 1973, a pregnant adult is asking a court to step in so she can have an abortion.
In late November, Kate Cox received the confirmation she’d been dreading: her fetus likely wasn’t going to survive. Cox, who lives in Texas, is 20 weeks pregnant. Doctors told her continuing the pregnancy could threaten her life.
Cox is now asking a judge to grant a temporary restraining order to halt the enforcement of Texas’ near total ban so she can terminate her pregnancy. “Kate Cox needs an abortion,” reads the first line of Cox’ petition, “and she needs it now.”
Cox is represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights. The organization is currently arguing in the Texas Supreme Court that pregnant people with medical complications have not been receiving proper care in the state. As I have previously reported, that case is about situations like the one Cox is experiencing right now in which vague exceptions to abortion bans undermine clarity of care:
[Texas’] law calls for “reasonable medical judgment” and permits abortion if the patient could die or if they’re at “serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” The lawsuit argues this language is too vague and dangerous for pregnant people and providers.
<snip>
In the last month, according to the petition, Cox has been to three different emergency rooms after suffering from extreme cramping and other complications. After multiple appointments and tests, her medical team confirmed that her wanted pregnancy was causing imminent danger to her health. At an appointment on November 28, Cox found out that her fetus was diagnosed with full trisomy 18, a chromosomal disorder that causes fetuses to die before or soon after birth. “Their baby was likely to pass in utero,” the petition says, “be stillborn, or only live for a week at most.”
With each day that passes, Cox’s doctors explained, her life is more at risk. Cox and her husband, who is also listed on the petition along with her provider, have two other children who were both delivered through cesarean surgeries. Continuing the pregnancy until the fetus passes, or until birth, “puts her at high risk for severe complications threatening her life and future fertility, including uterine rupture and hysterectomy,” the petition notes. Her providers said their “hands are tied” due to Texas’ abortion ban.
So a woman is expected to risk her life and health to carry a non-viable pregnancy to term, pretty much exactly the scenario advocates of reproductive rights warned would happen when Roe was overturned. The typical argument offered by opponents of legal abortion in cases like this is to claim that doctors or hospital lawyers are interpreting whatever exemptions the law provides for the life and health of the mother much too narrowly. In this case, however, the Attorney General of Texas says the law is working exactly as intended.
When Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble handed down the temporary restraining order Thursday, Kate Cox, 31, of Dallas burst into tears. Cox and her husband desperately wanted to have this baby, but her doctors said continuing the nonviable pregnancy posed a risk to her health and future fertility, according to a historic lawsuit filed Tuesday.
“The idea that Ms. Cox wants desperately to be a parent, and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” Gamble said.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded Thursday afternoon in a letter addressed to three hospitals — Houston Methodist Hospital, The Women's Hospital of Texas in Houston, and Texans Children's Hospital in Houston — saying the temporary order would "not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws."
For those who are interested you can read Paxton's letter to the hospital here. It's both snippy and belligerent Sorry, but I couldn't find it in a format other than X-Twitter.
So I'd like to ask the opponents of legal abortion on the Ship why this is preferable to the Roe v. Wade status quo? Because this kind of legislating always ends up here, with women suffering and sometimes dying for someone else's ideological commitments, not in whatever utopian fantasy you might have about what an abortion-free world would look like.
An update on my last post, which I think will serve to illustrate some useful points about the "exceptions" usually included in bans on abortion. As expected Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed the restraining order on the enforcement of Texas' abortion ban in this particular case and the Texas Supreme Court put a stay on that order, allowing enforcement. Eventually they ruled on the merits of the case [PDF] in an opinion that was both cruelly obtuse and obtusely cruel. For example:
A woman who meets the medical-necessity exception need not seek a court order to obtain an abortion. Under the law, it is a doctor who must decide that a woman is suffering from a life-threatening condition during a pregnancy, raising the necessity for an abortion to save her life or to prevent impairment of a major bodily function. The law leaves to physicians — not judges — both the discretion and the responsibility to exercise their reasonable medical judgment, given the unique facts and circumstances of each patient.
Not mentioned is the fact that a physician's "reasonable medical judgment" can (and will) later be second-guessed by police and prosecutors, with penalties ranging from loss of medical license to life in prison if prosecutors don't think the physician's medical judgment is reasonable.
There was also a long discussion of how a doctor recommending a medical procdure as necessary based on their "good faith belief" is not the same as "reasonable medical judgment", a distinction they did not bother to explain despite going on at length about the matter. As a non-lawyer I certainly wasn't illuminated by their semantic parsing, and I suspect it won't clear up anything for practicing physicians either.
Which I think illustrates why the exceptions usually put into abortion bans for the life or health of the mother are bullshit. They're vaguely phrased, usually using medically imprecise language. The purpose, as illustrated here, is to put up so many hurdles to clear and hoops to jump through that, as a practical, de facto matter, no one would ever qualify. They exist to make those supporting such laws feel less monstrous about the inevitable suffering they cause. Those empowered to make the decision about whether an abortion is medically justified are prosecutors who are usually elected on anti-abortion platforms. The chilling effect this has on doctors has to be deliberate.
As for Kate Cox, she left Texas to have the procedure the Texas Supreme Court ruled was not medically justified.
Which I think illustrates why the exceptions usually put into abortion bans for the life or health of the mother are bullshit. They're vaguely phrased, usually using medically imprecise language.
This is where I point out that technically, almost all abortions carried out in the UK are on the grounds of the mother's health.
Here's the Abortion Act:
Subject to the provisions of this section, a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion when a pregnancy is terminated by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith—
(a)that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family; or
(b)that the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman; or
(c)that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated; or
(d)that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.
That clause (a) - that before the 24th week, continuing the pregnancy involves a greater risk to the physical or mental health of the mother - is always true. Being pregnant carries more health risks than not being pregnant.
Prior to the Abortion Act 1967, abortion was not illegal in Scotland; it was legal provided it was carried out by a doctor on medically justifiable grounds. However, any abortion was challengeable, by anyone, and very few doctors were prepared to risk ending up in court, losing their career, their income etc etc.
The reality in Scotland was that leaving it to "reasonable medical judgement" made it virtually impossible to have a legal abortion in Scotland.
In 1937, Dr (later Prof Sir) Dugald Baird raised his head above the parapet. He carried out 200 abortions in the next decade, almost all amongst married women whose health had already been undermined by multiple pregnancies, and who were unlikely to survive another. And he kept statistics (he was a great believer in statistics!) which showed a clear drop in the number of women dying during pregnancy / childbirth.
Thereafter, anyone opposing this knew that their opposition would show a statistical increase in maternal death, and that fact seems to have had an impact.
The late Ian Donald likewise ( obstetrician extraordinaire @ Queen Mum’s Hospital in Glasgow and the father of obstetric ultrasound). Like all his confreres he understood the need for safe abortion after dealing with the hideous complications of unsafe “ illegal” abortion.
We had a lecture on abortion as part our law degree in 1983. I don't know which doctor delivered the lecture, but he had dealt with the aftermath of back street abortions and he was passionate.
Not a lecture I will ever forget.
I've given about a dozen talks on the history of maternity services in Aberdeen over the past year, to a variety of audiences, and I always describe the provision of safe abortion as a good thing. Each time I wonder if this will be the talk that gets an adverse reaction, but actually, the response is always positive and several times people have commented on the rolling back of Roe v Wade.
The logical issue is that the very questionable link between abortion and murder is accepted without question by the opponents of abortion. They believe they stand on high moral ground. It's another example of the belief that the consequences don't matter if the principle is pure. I am reminded of the deep insight of Ursula le Guin.
In "The Left Hand of Darkness" the Envoy defends his mission to the planet Bergen as transcending all other loyalties and relationships.. The Gethenian who he is talking to observed observes "If so, it is an immoral mission". That's always resonated with me as a cautionary restraint on self righteous certainty.
This is a bit of an odd one as the case which prompted this ruling was from a couple undergoing IVF. They do appear to have been rather used by malign elements within the Alabama Powers That Be.
This particularly stuck out to me:
Concurring with the majority opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote: "Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.
This is a bit of an odd one as the case which prompted this ruling was from a couple undergoing IVF. They do appear to have been rather used by malign elements within the Alabama Powers That Be.
This particularly stuck out to me:
Concurring with the majority opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote: "Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.
What happened to separate of church and state?
Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown Alabama.
I'm assuming that these judges were elected/appointed precisely because they will selectively interpret the first amendment.
This is a bit of an odd one as the case which prompted this ruling was from a couple undergoing IVF. They do appear to have been rather used by malign elements within the Alabama Powers That Be.
This particularly stuck out to me:
Concurring with the majority opinion, Chief Justice Tom Parker wrote: "Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.
What happened to separate of church and state?
Just wait until US Foreign Aid is contingent on alignment with US (anti-) abortion policy. Not a remote possibility at all.
Whilst the judge used a bunch of Christian rhetoric, it's not exactly obvious that the Alabama law about protection of unborn children shouldn't apply to embryos in a test tube in the same way as it applies to embryos in a woman.
Alabama has a law governing wrongful death of a minor that extends to unborn children - if you, for example, assault a woman, and cause the miscarriage of her pregnancy, then you can be prosecuted for causing the death of the unborn child under this law.
In the case in question, a person destroyed the unborn children of some couples undergoing IVF, whilst trespassing places they shouldn't have been, and messing about with equipment they had no right to be touching. The fact that the unborn children in question were embryos that had not yet been implanted in a woman doesn't obviously make the damage caused to the couples any less.
Whilst the judge used a bunch of Christian rhetoric, it's not exactly obvious that the Alabama law about protection of unborn children shouldn't apply to embryos in a test tube in the same way as it applies to embryos in a woman.
Alabama has a law governing wrongful death of a minor that extends to unborn children - if you, for example, assault a woman, and cause the miscarriage of her pregnancy, then you can be prosecuted for causing the death of the unborn child under this law.
And as I understand it, there have been calls for years for the Alabama legislature to clarify the law in question.
Comments
When over half the new voters are women who registered after the Dodd decision, it is not all that hard to predict.
Lyndsey Graham just finished nailing the coffin shut for the Senate to switch to Red. IMHO.
If I remember right, the vote for Biden in 2020 was higher than polls were predicting.
Part of the problem is that using polls to predict elections is "backward looking": using data from past elections to decide who is a "likely voter" and then extrapolating from recent polls how a "likely voter" electorate will most likely cast their votes. This technique runs into difficulties if the electorate behaves differently than it has in the past, particularly if some disruptive event changes public opinions and/or behavior, such as who is likely to vote and how they'll vote. It's been argued that the Dobbs decision is that kind of disruption. I guess we'll find out in November.
Maybe somewhere. Generally across the nation Trump was much closer than polls thought he would be. Took Texas for instance, etc
And it may well be. I hope but I don't dare believe yet.
And then there are the state and county elections where the maga folks are running election deniers and vote suppressers. Will the new voters make it that far down the ballot?
It's important that Democrats win the Senate, because it means judges. But it's not the whole ballgame.
Did any reputable pollsters predict that Texas would go for Biden?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "much closer". My interpretation of such a term would be "performed outside the polling margin of error". Some of the confusion comes from interpreting the polls as predicting a candidate will receive X% of the vote, but what the poll is really predicting is that a candidate will receive X% ± Y% of the vote.
So, did Trump outperform the mean polling prediction in the popular vote in 2020? Yes, by about a percentage point, depending on which poll aggregator you use as a reference.
Did Trump outperform the polling margin of error (generally ±3%)? No, not even close.'
No.
538 predicted that Biden would get 45.6%-52.0% of the popular vote in Texas (using an 80% confidence interval), with a mean prediction of 48.8%. Biden actually got 46.5% of the 2020 popular vote in Texas. This doesn't seem like the significant overperformance you claim. Please don't cite false vote tallies.
538 predicted that Biden had a 38% chance of winning Texas (i.e. receiving a plurality of the Texas popular vote). Maybe that number got misfiled in your memory.
In other news, Marco Rubio has signed on as a co-sponsor of Graham's nationwide abortion ban bill. This is notable because unlike Graham Rubio is on the ballot this November.
California Proposition 1: This was a referendum on explicitly adding the right to abortion to the California state constitution. It passed 65/35.
Kentucky Amendment 2: This was a referendum on explicitly specifying that there is right to abortion implicit in the Kentucky state constitution. If failed 48/52.
Michigan Proposal 3: This was a referendum on adding the right to reproductive freedom, including abortion and all decisions relating to pregnancy, to the Michigan state constitution. It passed 57/43.
Montana Legislative Referendum 131: This referendum required medical care for all infants born alive, including due to abortion. This requirement would likely have complicated or forbidden abortions performed in emergency situations. It failed 47/53.
Vermont Proposal 5: This was a referendum on explicitly adding the right to "personal reproductive autonomy" to the Vermont state constitution. It passed 77/23.
I'd like to think that opponents of legal abortion going 0 for 5 when their positions are put before the public, even in conservative places like Kentucky and Montana, would make them reconsider their belief that they represent an overwhelming "silent majority" of Americans, but I doubt it will.
Yes, I did. I don't know how I missed that.
Interesting that Michigan actually had lower numbers than Kansas, for its pro-choice victory. Probably falling back on cultural stereotypes a bit, but I woulda assumed that more urbanized Michigan was more liberal than Kansas.
Then again, I'm guessing that Michigan has more Catholics and African Americans, two groups with more conservative attitudes toward abortion, which might have balanced out the generic liberal vote.
I suspect we will soon be seeing the beginning of the process to make anti-abortionists persona non grata in the conservative coalition, especially if it becomes proven that abortion referenda are increasing the turnout of Democratic-leaning pro-choicers for congressional, gubernatorial, and presidential votes.
I think a good tactic right now for "pro-lifers" would be to choose an uber-conservative bible-belt state that allows citizen-initiated ballots, and hold a referendum there, on a softball question designed to produce a result that can plausibly be spun as anti-abortion, eg. "The state constitution shall not be interpreted in such a way as to allow post-natal infanticide." Then, when they win, they can say to Republican bigwigs "See? It's not a total loser issue for us!" The grandees would probably see through it, but some might use it as an excuse to continue the electoral pandering for a little while longer.
In Canada, under the last right-wing government, backbenchers would sometimes try to promote softball abortion resolutions like "The House Of Commons Deplores The Practice Of Sex-Selective Abortion". But even mindless truisms like that got the immediate kibosh from P.M. Harper, a member of the conservative Christian And Missionary Alliance flock.
I forgot, which side of the Mississippi are Arkansas and Oklahoma on?
There are a few states east of the Mississippi that also allow for initiatives. Kentucky is one. I really do not see Kentucky as a Deep Bible State.
Maybe it is just me, but I always thought the Deep Bible States were Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee. Now, why would these states be dead set against the people having a direct say about their laws?
A few places have been referred to as the “buckle of the Bible Belt”—Nashville in particular, but Tulsa, Oklahoma (home of Oral Roberts University, among other things) as well.
/pedant alert
@stetson referred to “an uber-conservative bible-belt state.” Oklahoma and Arkansas fit that description. Kentucky, despite having a Democratic governor, likely does as well.
North Carolina is a mixed bag. Since the 1970s, when conservative Democrats moved to the GOP (yes, the history of the Democratic Party is relevant here), NC has mainly voted red for president and US senator. But NC has had only 3 Republican governors since Reconstruction—one in the 1970s, one in the 1980s and one in the 2010s. Democrats controlled at least one chamber and, for all but a handful of years, both chambers of the General Assembly from the end of Reconstruction until 2010. Republican control of the General Assembly since then has been helped by how districts have been drawn. Ditto NC’s congressional delegation. The delegation elected this week under a court-drawn plan is 7-7.
EWTN headquarters is in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, not in Indiana.
Not necessarily, especially South Carolina. Utah is different because the religious influence is related to just one church, to which a solid majority of the population belongs.
And demographics in Virginia and the Carolinas, particularly North Carolina, are changing, especially in urban areas. But get into more rural areas and Virginia and the Carolinas are just as religious as Utah. Remember that while Virginia has the DC suburbs, it also has Liberty University. The south and southwest of Virginia are very different from northern Virginia.
But yeah, Alabama is not where one would expect, but it’s where Mother Angelica’s monastery is, and that’s where EWTN started.
Nick T probably knows it already, but for those Shipmates who live further away, there is a lot of context to add around the fact that Kentucky currently has a Democratic governor. We barely elected him in 2019, under a unique combination of circumstances.
Bevin, the Republican incumbent, absolutely wrecked himself in early spring of 2019 by trying to cut teachers' pensions - there were days and days of protest at the state capitol even before the campaign season was in full swing. The teachers' union was upset, of course, but the general public hated it too and it was all over the news.
Beshear, the then Democratic candidate (now governor) had name recognition as the son of a popular former governor. His dad was well liked on both sides of the aisle.
Even with the circumstances boosting Beshear, and the Trump presidency pushing Democrats' turnout higher in general, he only defeated Bevin by about 5,000 votes. And thank Christ for every one of them, because Bevin was a Tea Party nightmare and I'm sure we would have had thousands more Covid deaths if he'd been in power when the pandemic struck. As it is, our heavily Republican state legislature is still trying to strip powers from the governor's office, because they're so mad about the minimal Covid precautions he and the state Board of Education were able to impose on us.
And Salt Lake City, despite its iconic architecture, is majority non-Mormon, and actually elected a social democratic mayor, Rocky Anderson, twice in the 2000s.
And, yes, it was Mencken who coined "Bible Belt". I think it's popularly believed that he came up with the phrase while covering the Scopes Trial, but apparently it's from a year prior.
Wyoming is also notorious for making the referendum process as onerous as possible.
So a woman is expected to risk her life and health to carry a non-viable pregnancy to term, pretty much exactly the scenario advocates of reproductive rights warned would happen when Roe was overturned. The typical argument offered by opponents of legal abortion in cases like this is to claim that doctors or hospital lawyers are interpreting whatever exemptions the law provides for the life and health of the mother much too narrowly. In this case, however, the Attorney General of Texas says the law is working exactly as intended.
For those who are interested you can read Paxton's letter to the hospital here. It's both snippy and belligerent Sorry, but I couldn't find it in a format other than X-Twitter.
So I'd like to ask the opponents of legal abortion on the Ship why this is preferable to the Roe v. Wade status quo? Because this kind of legislating always ends up here, with women suffering and sometimes dying for someone else's ideological commitments, not in whatever utopian fantasy you might have about what an abortion-free world would look like.
Not mentioned is the fact that a physician's "reasonable medical judgment" can (and will) later be second-guessed by police and prosecutors, with penalties ranging from loss of medical license to life in prison if prosecutors don't think the physician's medical judgment is reasonable.
There was also a long discussion of how a doctor recommending a medical procdure as necessary based on their "good faith belief" is not the same as "reasonable medical judgment", a distinction they did not bother to explain despite going on at length about the matter. As a non-lawyer I certainly wasn't illuminated by their semantic parsing, and I suspect it won't clear up anything for practicing physicians either.
Which I think illustrates why the exceptions usually put into abortion bans for the life or health of the mother are bullshit. They're vaguely phrased, usually using medically imprecise language. The purpose, as illustrated here, is to put up so many hurdles to clear and hoops to jump through that, as a practical, de facto matter, no one would ever qualify. They exist to make those supporting such laws feel less monstrous about the inevitable suffering they cause. Those empowered to make the decision about whether an abortion is medically justified are prosecutors who are usually elected on anti-abortion platforms. The chilling effect this has on doctors has to be deliberate.
As for Kate Cox, she left Texas to have the procedure the Texas Supreme Court ruled was not medically justified.
This is where I point out that technically, almost all abortions carried out in the UK are on the grounds of the mother's health.
Here's the Abortion Act:
That clause (a) - that before the 24th week, continuing the pregnancy involves a greater risk to the physical or mental health of the mother - is always true. Being pregnant carries more health risks than not being pregnant.
Are there any?
The reality in Scotland was that leaving it to "reasonable medical judgement" made it virtually impossible to have a legal abortion in Scotland.
In 1937, Dr (later Prof Sir) Dugald Baird raised his head above the parapet. He carried out 200 abortions in the next decade, almost all amongst married women whose health had already been undermined by multiple pregnancies, and who were unlikely to survive another. And he kept statistics (he was a great believer in statistics!) which showed a clear drop in the number of women dying during pregnancy / childbirth.
Thereafter, anyone opposing this knew that their opposition would show a statistical increase in maternal death, and that fact seems to have had an impact.
Not a lecture I will ever forget.
I've given about a dozen talks on the history of maternity services in Aberdeen over the past year, to a variety of audiences, and I always describe the provision of safe abortion as a good thing. Each time I wonder if this will be the talk that gets an adverse reaction, but actually, the response is always positive and several times people have commented on the rolling back of Roe v Wade.
How the absolute fuck does anyone come to the conclusion that this is an appropriate use of the criminal law?
The key ingredient is crime misogyny.
In "The Left Hand of Darkness" the Envoy defends his mission to the planet Bergen as transcending all other loyalties and relationships.. The Gethenian who he is talking to observed observes "If so, it is an immoral mission". That's always resonated with me as a cautionary restraint on self righteous certainty.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68366337
This is a bit of an odd one as the case which prompted this ruling was from a couple undergoing IVF. They do appear to have been rather used by malign elements within the Alabama Powers That Be.
This particularly stuck out to me:
What happened to separate of church and state?
Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown Alabama.
I'm assuming that these judges were elected/appointed precisely because they will selectively interpret the first amendment.
Just wait until US Foreign Aid is contingent on alignment with US (anti-) abortion policy. Not a remote possibility at all.
Whilst the judge used a bunch of Christian rhetoric, it's not exactly obvious that the Alabama law about protection of unborn children shouldn't apply to embryos in a test tube in the same way as it applies to embryos in a woman.
Alabama has a law governing wrongful death of a minor that extends to unborn children - if you, for example, assault a woman, and cause the miscarriage of her pregnancy, then you can be prosecuted for causing the death of the unborn child under this law.
In the case in question, a person destroyed the unborn children of some couples undergoing IVF, whilst trespassing places they shouldn't have been, and messing about with equipment they had no right to be touching. The fact that the unborn children in question were embryos that had not yet been implanted in a woman doesn't obviously make the damage caused to the couples any less.