It’s a surface level protection. Forcing someone to bring an unwanted child into this world is not enlightened. There’s a reason why women and couples opt for abortion. They’re often not ready for that responsibility, and it’s the kid who suffers most.

Life for the sake of life feels like virtue signaling, especially since those who espouse it have no interest in providing social programs to help these mothers and couples raise the kid they were forced to have. That’s pretty barbaric.

Congratulations. You saved a life you almost immediately stop giving a shit about.

One could argue that every living human — all of us — are a product of generations of rape and unwanted children whose lives no one cared about, who survived to have their own. Civilized humans who enjoyed enforced women’s rights are a laughably short segment of all human history.

If anything, reflecting on the stress and violence of our collective ancestors should only further strengthen the desire to do better by supporting things like "enforced women’s rights". Was that your point?

The only point I have is that I’m incredibly happy to exist.

We're also the product of generations of people dying prematurely of diseases like polio; our lives would be quite a bit different if infant/child mortality had been 0% for the last 100k years.

Should we not wipe out polio because our ancestors couldn't?

> Forcing someone to bring an unwanted child into this world is not enlightened. > They’re often not ready for that responsibility

So they could have used condoms, the man could have avoided ejaculating where it could cause pregnancy, or they could also just not have sex or the woman could take pills or an IUD. Unless it was rape, nobody forced them to have a child.

I do agree that there should be programs that help the parents more.

Clarence Thomas said we should reconsider contraception as a right, which according to your logic essentially means we should reconsider sex except for having a child as a right. You can't advocate for personal responsibility and then take away all mechanisms to conduct it.

I don't even know who Clarence Thomas is. It sounds like he is religious to me which as far as I know allows sex for procreation only, not for pleasure. Maybe I am wrong tho. Whoever he is, I can agree with some of his views while disagreeing with others.

He sits on the U.S. Supreme Court and is one of those responsible for this ruling.

How do you feel about rape victims who are unable to prove they were raped in court and are forced to co-parent the rest of their life with their rapist?

Or what about rape cases which take longer than 9 months to reach a conviction?

Rape is hard to prove and it doesn't necessarily mean co-parenting with the rapist, I think it's even more likely that he avoids responsibility and escapes than become a parent.

And the second issue seems to be an issue of bureaucracy and it's slowness.

Those cases are both valid where I think most people would argue it's not as clear cut but I think they are mostly the exception, not the rule.

So are you saying it doesn’t matter if innocent people are tortured by a law, as long as it’s “rare”?

Like… your opinion is that corner cases don’t matter in law?

There are absolutely children born to parents who do not want a child.

They're just waiting for their real parents to come, it's all part of god's plan, innit

Unwanted by their parents does not mean they are unwanted by humanity.

I'll sign you up to take care of those kids, then. Just feel free to email me your full legal name and address (see my profile), and I'll hire a lawyer to figure out how to make that happen. I might even offer to pay for the costs for the child you adopt doing this for the first year if you act fast!

Narrator: He never emailed.

Who should bear the responsibility (financial, effort, legal) of matchmaking?

Unless it's young life that's already living and happens to be impregnated via rape? Then fuck her, right? Force her to give birth?

And exactly how does banning an abortion when the pregnancy is not viable for any number of reasons (molar pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy, anencephaly) help anyone? Why are we forcing women to carry dead fetus's around in their bodies?

Because that's what a total ban on abortion does. It also makes IVF illegal if "life begins at conception".

The notion that the only abortions happening are happy couples who find out they're pregnant, tell their friends and family, plan parties, and then in some sinister plot months later wake up and casually decide "you know what, let's just kill it" is absurd.

Not all life is equal, and not all human life is equal. If you were driving down the street and two buildings were on fire, a IVF clinic with viable implanted eggs, and a preschool full of living children, you would 100% of the time try and rescue the preschoolers if you only had time for one. The idea that all human life down to a recently implanted egg has the same value as an 11 year old girl who's been raped and wants an abortion is an untenable position.

As a non-American, non-Christian, I find the entire fiasco quite weird. Like a lot of cases in the US, why don't they address the core issue? If rape is so common, how about punish the rapists like other advanced countries do? Yes, including the death penalty for serial rapists or repeat offenders.

Because that's a reactive punishment that does absolutely nothing to help out the woman who might be carrying a fetus post rape, not to mention the fact that rape is already illegal and a rapist isn't exactly going to be deterred by the fact that there's illegality involved. The issue of abortion also touches upon things like ectopic pregnancies where the woman can/will die if an abortion is not performed.

> rapist isn't exactly going to be deterred by the fact that there's illegality involved

Controversial opinion, prisons aren't a deterrent, corporal punishment would leave a more lasting impression and instill fear into would be offenders. It would also be more cost effective and efficient.

Rapists will be deterred when the punishments are actually applied.

Rape is illegal already. Rapists go to prison. The death penalty has never been an effective deterrent and is abhorrent.

The death penalty does work, and it's not abhorrent when applied correctly. What's abhorrent is what we're witnessing today.

Care to cite your evidence that the death penalty deters crime?

You're straw manning. Not all crimes should have the death penalty. But severe abhorrent ones like killing, spreading of chaos (i.e. "terrorism"), or some other abhorrent obvious ones. We see that in countries that do apply the death penalty for such crimes, they have much lower of those crimes compared to those that don't. And they've done it for over 1000 years.

Asking for evidence of your claims is not a strawman. Care to cite any evidence showing any of that to be true?

What country do you live in where rape is uncommon?

Or is it common in your country, but the justice system nails the rapist every time?

It's very uncommon where I am. Rape is severely punished. There are many countries like this, we're not "liberal" countries so they don't align with the Western media agenda.

I can understand this argument, however in this specific case we are forcing children onto parents who are in bad positions to raise them (or most wouldn't consider abortion), and our state does a terrible job at providing support to kids throughout their lives (healthcare, education, welfare programs are all notorious in the US) in the case where parents aren't reliable.

As a pro-choice person, I could be convinced against abortion _if_ there was a guarantee that every child would have the full resources of the government to help them achieve a successful life. We all know that isn't going to happen.

So without the appropriate follow-through, this is actually less enlightened and hurting both parents and children more.

> I could be convinced against abortion _if_ there was a guarantee that every child would have the full resources of the government to help them achieve a successful life. We all know that isn't going to happen.

Kids brought up with bad parents will be somewhat similarly disadvantaged. Why should potentially bad parents (eg. heavy drug addicts) not be banned from having kids? Both of them would be "forcing children onto parents who are in bad positions to raise them".

Isn't this essentially what CPS does today? The difference being that it's reactive instead of being proactive.

CPS can take kids from parents who are bad parents (drug addicts) just as they can take kids from parents who don't want the kids (and presumably would have aborted the kid if they could have).

I would have no problem with this line of argument if it was honest and genuine, but it's not - it's a pretence.

If prolife movement actually cared about protecting life, they would not support policies that leave children to die of terrible diseases if their family can't afford healthcare.

To quote Carlin - “if you’re pre-born you are fine; if you are pre-school you are fucked!”

Abortion restrictions do not reduce abortion rates. They only reduce safe abortions. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/21/health/abortion-restricti...

The direction they're going includes removing the right for contraception and same-sex marriage.

That's not an enlightened or moral direction.

I am not arguing here.

But there are some stages in the life of a human fetus that is less sentient than a monkey, a horse, a dog, a fly, an ant, etc.

Do you think abortion should be illegal at all stages?

And, do you think that abortion should be illegal even if the woman faces life threatning risks?

The legal question here is whether the federal government of the United States, absent legislation, is able to compel the states to allow abortions up to a certain time window of pregnancy.

The ruling today says that the federal government does not have that power, absent legislation. But by the same token, it also could not BAN abortion absent federal legislation.

Others have commented on the weakness of the original "penumbral reasoning" of Roe v. Wade decision establishing the government's ability to do this, and that this criticism is recognized by judges commonly perceived to be on either side of the political spectrum.

A lens with which to view this decision through is the correction of technical debt, and it's really not that remarkable from a legal perspective.

It's very remarkable from a social perspective, considering many of us have grown up in a Roe v. Wade world.

But this returns the burden to states. In my state, today's ruling changes nothing, as abortion is protected by our state constitution. In other states, there's some political work to do assuming the citizenry in those states agrees that things should be different.

If there's actually a consensus opinion on abortion in the US across enough states, federal legislation could be created some day. By design, federal legislation is a slow process - it's designed to be inefficient. One of the biggest liberal criticisms of Roe v. Wade is that it stopped the process cold, and we've lost decades of time to have that conversation about legislation in trade for a decision on very weak legal footing, which many have argued was long overdue for correction.

From my vantage point, the questions you raise are immaterial to the legal issue decided in the SCOTUS. This decision was one about the structural relationship between the states and the federal government. The questions you raise are relevant to the state politics that need to take place going forward, for sure. But it comes back to this question - if the majority of people in a state believe that abortion past some point in time (1w, 14w, 24w, pick one) constitutes murder, should they not be allowed to have their state law reflect that? We believe other nations have that power for diverse views on the matter - France, I believe, doesn't allow abortions after 14w (it was merely 10 up until 2000). When evaluating law in the US, a key premise is the idea that the US is a collection of states that outsources certain functions to a central government, not a singular government with separate census areas.

Except that states banning abortions after X weeks was already a thing under Roe.

And this decision was not about any "state rights" bullshit. The court previously found an unenumerated right to an abortion, and now they completely reversed themselves. Women do not have complete body autonomy and must support another life no matter the impact on their own.

I think there is huge question of right of mother as well. Lets take hypothetical situation where someone forcibly mates two humans together in such a way that removing other would kill that other. Per anti-abortion people they would have to live together forever. Which seems bit sick...

Come on. Nobody that supported this ruling except the deluded give a damn about life or whatever they were preaching. The Republicans only care about getting the votes they need to maintain their stranglehold over red states, cut taxes and environmental protections for the benefit of their patrons. The fundamental Christians only care about seeing the rights of women being repelled, there are zero concerns about the life of children, otherwise they would be pushing for free childcare, support for mothers, parental leave, ....

It's all a matter of punishing women for their own desire to be emancipated, it's a punishment for those women who have sinned by thinking they could act like a man and have sex whenever they wanted. If they truly cared about the unborn, they would

1. care about the already born, first, and 2. push for the widespread availability of contraception.

Given that contraception is bad for them, too, it's clear this is not an ethical question, but a moral one: sex outside of marriage, or for pleasure really, should not be allowed, and it must always carry consequences, no matter if it vastly more impacts women than it does men. You know, a man can always run from their responsibilities, while a woman cannot run away from her womb.

> The Republicans only care about getting the votes they need to maintain their stranglehold over red states, cut taxes and environmental protections for the benefit of their patrons.

As has been pointed out elsewhere in this discussion, we don't vote for Supreme Court justices. There's no leverage to impose electoral or party pressure on a justice who has already been appointed, unless it is by impeachment. Your assessment of their motivations doesn't hold up.

Are you naive or what? Republicans have lists of candidates for justices that they have deemed so anti roe-vs-wade that they deemed safe to propose for justices. Someone like Thomas is not going to change his mind once he is appointed...

Why not, if he's now free to act as he pleases? The assertion is that he doesn't believe he's acting rightly, but does so under electoral pressure. If I'm naive, please explain: what's to stop him doing as he thinks is right, now that he's appointed?

Your naïveté lies in the fact that you don’t realize that Supreme Court justices are elected by proxy of voting for the president that nominated them and the senators that confirm them.

It stands to reason that on average, if you elect conservative presidents and senators, you will get conservative justices, and vice-versa.

You seem to assert that there are wolves hiding in sheeps’ clothing, waiting until they are confirmed to show their true colors to save the country. I counter that reality is more boring than that, and that these people can be taken at face value by virtue of what they’ve said and done for decades.

Furthermore, I think yours is an apologist/denialist stance people use so they can get someone in the courts they truly approve of, while hiding behind the “hope” that they won’t be as bad as everyone else knows they will.

The only part of what you wrote that addresses my point is this:

> You seem to assert that there are wolves hiding in sheeps’ clothing, waiting until they are confirmed to show their true colors to save the country

Against this characterization I would oppose John Roberts, who was appointed by a Republican president, but has been reluctant to create any non-trivial precedent on topics that figure in the Republican platform. There's a lot of anger among Republican voters over that, but what can they do? They can't vote him out, he is not beholden to the Republican party, and he's done nothing impeachable.

I understand how this can be difficult to perceive from outside, especially if you happen to be in a bubble that perceives Republicans as uniformly deplorable. But I assure you that Roberts is viewed that way. (I view them from another direction entirely.)

As far as my stance being apologist or denialist, you have no idea what I think or want.

you: “we don't vote for Supreme Court justices… There's no…electoral…pressure on a justice[‘s] motivations…”

zzleeper: “Are you naive…? Republicans have lists of candidates for justices…they have deemed…anti roe-vs-wade”

you: “If I'm naive, please explain”

This is where you lost the point, and where I explained your naïveté, an explanation you ignored in your response to me.

Your last two paragraphs consist of speculative ad hominem (judging by your profile, we have similar life circumstances, and I have many conservatives in my “bubble” ie family members) followed by a hypocritical self defense. We don’t know anything about each other outside of what we’ve said here. I’m simply calling it like I see it:

you: “Why [wouldn’t Thomas change his mind once he is appointed], if he's now free to act as he pleases?…what's to stop him doing as he thinks is right…?”

The obvious answer is that he was appointed precisely because it was expected he would act the way he has, because what he believes is right is fully aligned with who appointed him, as are the three most recent appointees. You want to point out exceptions like Roberts, but those merely prove the rule from my original explanation.

Pointed out by you. Maybe you should stop writing it; surely once is enough.

Sorry, I learn by repetition

> Nobody that supported this ruling except the deluded give a damn about life or whatever they were preaching.

This is just straw manning the other side's position to the extreme.

> If they truly cared about the unborn, they would

Neither of those are logical implications of being against late-stage abortion, and you don't get to tell others what they should care about.

The parent isn't wrong. Republicans don't do shit to support "the born" who are ill or live in crushing poverty, they don't give a shit about people, they give a shit about power and this is a lever they've been yanking on to get it for years.

On one hand, you are correct in that the right is more reluctant to use governmental power to improve society. That's in part because they put more emphasis on personal responsibility, and in part because they are skeptical of the government's competence.

On the hand, I think the right has done more than they usually get credit for. Median real wages rose significantly under Trump. [1] Nixon created the EPA. [2] At an individual level, conservatives donate significantly more to charities, and give blood more often. [3]

[1]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_...

[3]: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/conservatives-are-more-...

It seems like if they want to emphasize personal responsibility, they could stop trying to influence laws that prevent people from getting abortions or using contraception.

> stop trying to influence laws that prevent people from getting abortions

I'm not sure if I follow. That seems to me like having more empathy with irresponsible people, possibly at the cost of innocent fetuses.

While I won't try to argue with you because abortion is the thing we won't see eye to eye on, what bout the 'or' on contraception, or do you think that responsible people only think that sex is for making babies?

On another thought, you think the best thing to do is give people you judge as irresponsible a child? Also, doesn’t original sin mean the fetus not innocent? Is innocence really the important measure? Because lots of things are innocent we don’t care about.

> what bout the 'or' on contraception

I don't have any particular problems with contraception. Some right-wingers do, they should speak for themselves. (I'm also not against early-stage abortions)

> On another thought, you think the best thing to do is give people you judge as irresponsible a child?

It's not ideal, it's just better than normalizing taking innocent lives. Also, if someone really thinks they can't be a good parent, putting up the baby for adoption is always an option.

> Also, doesn’t original sin mean the fetus not innocent?(which of course doesn't really apply since it's not a person)

I'm not religious, so I don't really think about the issue in terms of sins in the religious sense.

Saying "innocent fetus" is like calling a horse with a top hat a gentleman.

Yeah, because we all know if you wait a little bit, the horse will develop into a fully-fledged human beings.

That is kind of a weird argument and I assume you don't understand the antiabortion position. People who are opposed to abortion think it is murder. If somebody supports personal responsibility that doesn't mean they think we shouldn't have murder laws.

You may disagree with the idea it is murder, but if it is in fact murder than it is completely consistent to support laws against it.

>People who are opposed to abortion think it is murder.

And people who are opposed to physics believe Earth is flat. Both views are the same in terms of rationality.

Biologically life begins at conception [1] [2]. A human fetus has been conceived. Therefore a human fetus is a human life. Unjustly and deliberately killing a human is murder.

You may disagree with some of the premises but they follow one another and have decent reasons to believe them. That is hardly irrational.

Something to keep in mind. If you want to actually convince somebody in the future, saying their views are as irrational as believing the Earth is flat isn't the best way.

[1] https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.ht...

[2] https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes.htm...

This argument is based on a logical fallacy equating "human" with "person". It's yet another example of an attempt to derail the discussion.

>You may disagree with some of the premises but they follow one another

You can say the exact same thing about antivaxers.

>If you want to actually convince somebody in the future, saying their views are as irrational as believing the Earth is flat isn't the best way.

Honestly, I don't think I can convince a flat-earther or pro-lifer. This kind of brainwashing appears to be unfixable. What can be done is limiting the spread.

How do you even define "life" biologically? Two "living" things combine to form a fetus, and just a few months down the line none of the physical matter of those living things still comprises the growing fetus. The thing that is being terminated isn't a human, it's the potential of a human, which is also the thing that is flushed down the toilet when a used condom is disposed of.

Forced birthers are crazy, full stop. A fertilized egg is not a human any more than a sperm is a human.

If you don't understand the difference between sperm cells and a fertilized egg then you are just being obtuse.

Yesterday you've decided that hydatidiform mole is a human.

And here you're making the same mistake again: you're assuming that if someone disagrees with your ideas about biology it means they don't understand it. In reality the reverse is true - pro-life myths might make sense to a high schooler, but not to someone who actually understands the topic.

I already provided links showing biologists agree that life starts at conception. It is not my fault you disagree with biologists.

Yet you missed the obvious fact that science doesn't even have a good definition for life, in fact it's a hard problem in the philosophy of science. You could say that the replicating mass of cells will in the future become a human being and that is not true of a sperm (unless it later goes on to fertilize an egg), but a sperm is just as "alive" as a fertilized egg.

If you have some sperm cells laying around they won't grow into a human. If you have a fertilized egg it will (assuming the process completes normally).

Again, this doesn't matter to the discussion. Even if they were fully grown humans this wouldn't "override" pregnant person's right to decide about their own body.

(Also, you're conflating 'being homo sapiens' with 'being a person'; you've already tried this method of derailing the discussion two days before.)

> Even if they were fully grown humans this wouldn't "override" pregnant person's right to decide about their own body.

Of course it would. Should you be able to murder your kids in your house because "your house, your choice"?

>Of course it would.

Does it mean a parent can be forced to donate an organ for transplant for their child?

>Should you be able to murder your kids in your house

Completely different situation; we are talking about bodily autonomy, not “housing autonomy”.

>Does it mean a parent can be forced to donate an organ for transplant for their child?

I am not who you were responding to, but since we were talking previously I will remind you what I said before. You are not obligated to provide what people need above the basic necessities. Organ donations go beyond that.

Christians do give a lot to charity, but a lot of those are christian charities that give aid on the condition that you eat a heaping mouthful of bullshit. It's really just a feel good way for them to try and proselytize.

> give aid on the condition that you eat a heaping mouthful of bullshit

I don't have any stats on that, but it's contrary to my personal experience. When I was a student, there was this Pentecostal group which used to give free food to everyone every Thursday. It was quite unconditional, not even means tested.

If evidence on their position was completely missing or neutral then I would agree with you. Sadly, this is far from a straw man because there is evidence that they do not care.

These are the same people who actively work against giving children school lunches, who protect racist gerrymandering, who want to defund planned parenthood, and so on.

If, in the same breath, we were talking about significantly revolutionizing support for children/families in poverty, then this would be a different discussion. Sadly, look at the polls, this is majority boomers who no longer have functioning ovaries & men whose egos demand control over women.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/393104/pro-choice-identificatio...

then why do these same people not do other things to protect life that's already being lived?

sorry, this is not enlightened.

I suspect people exist who are both pro-life and also pro-social safety net. You're falling into the trap created by the two political party system: binary thinking.

People exist who satisfy any imaginable criteria - one guy cut out his own appendix with a kitchen knife and lived. What does that prove, we should be our own surgeons?

The key questions is, how many of such peope exist.

I think Trump proved many so called "conservative" voters are actually pro religion populists not republicans.

The Republican party's concern for young life ends at the moment of birth. After that it's: "Fuck you, got mine".

It's worth considering that IVF fertility treatment often has discarded zygotes.

I am fine with this contrarian argument, but why does it stop at birth? There’s no support (universal healthcare for children, paid maternity/paternity leave, etc etc). Conservatives apply these arguments inconsistently.

Actively supporting/helping vs not killing/preventing others from killing are pretty significantly different moral arguments. This always comes across as "If you're against abortion then why don't you support insert political position that involves drastically raising taxes and giving way more power to the state?"

You’re just describing a trolly problem. If you believe a foetus has more right to autonomy than the person carrying it, but you don’t believe in making sure that all children have what they need to survive, you’re avoiding “killing” by direct action in favor of killing by neglecting to act.

As for paying for it… no taxes need to be raised. Just divert 1/1000th of the money going to the military.

>You’re just describing a trolly problem.

Except the child's death isn't guaranteed if we fail to implement universal healthcare/free school lunches/insert welfare program here, so it's not really a normal trolley problem. And that's before you get into potential adverse second order effects of such programs.

>Just divert 1/1000th of the money going to the military.

GP mentioned universal healthcare as one of the ways in which to support children after birth, I don't think $800 million is going to be enough to cover it.

There are cases where it will literally be a trolly problem. E.g. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrea-prudente-incomplete-misc...

I'm not sure how one can call a woman carrying a child something other than "actively supporting/helping" that child. So this amounts to a hypocrisy where it's OK for the state to have power to force a person to keep another person[1] alive for ~9 months, but somehow wrong for the state to contribute resources to this effort.

I'm also not sure how giving the power to pry into people's reproductive decisions is somehow less state power than administrative power to distribute resources.

[1] That's accepting the argument that a fetus is technically a person, which can also be debated.

The next sentence in his post explains what he meant by support.

I know that's what the post says. But that's not the actual equivalent. If we had free healthcare just for pregnant women, then it would be fair to say we should give free healthcare to children too, but we don't.

The fact that there is no free healthcare for pregnant women demonstrates that noone actually cares about the child's life.

It demonstates that you are willing to force a woman to carry the child of a rapist against her will (so it's not her choice) and then have her give birth without medical assitance if she can't afford hospital stay, potentially resulting in the death of the child and the mother.

it shows what the game is really about - control over women

in cases of rape too?

Yes. Because it's not about the mom. It's not about the dad. It's about the baby's life.

Pregnancy has nontrivial effects on women. There is risk of death, emotional and physical changes to the body, and you need to adapt your life around these things. In the case of rape there is also trauma. It seems incredibly unjust to rob the mom of the choice to decide what to do in that situation. Having a position that ignores the mom in favor of the baby is terrifying.