I think that would affect a lot of people.. they might be shy to speak out, but if suddenly it's not available they might vote.

I do wonder if those trends actually deliver more turnout or less. I suspect less actually, as non-results are actually pretty demotivating in altering behavior.

I’m not a historian but hopefully someone here is, and is able to make an educated guess of what the actual trends are.

Russia didn’t really regress, did it? It experimented with 8 years of democracy after a thousand years of authoritarianism and went back to its comfort zone. Poland and Hungary as part of that soviet bloc once is affected by those old soviet ghosts still driving some of the culture. The US doesn’t have that long authoritarian past and is still pretty rebellious

India…well it’s an enigma anyway with such ancient traditions and culture, it’s going to be an outlier anyway.

But then again, I’m not a historian. So this is just some guys on the internet’s interpretation.

My fear is with the recent increase in wealth inequality democracy in America may no longer be the stable phase

Sadly, in the US, we have a terrible system where schools are locally funded, and poor people get poor schools. Under this system, socioeconomic class self-perpetuates.

I think you've just described racism.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism

My point is that the resulting behaviors and discrimination can still be racist, even if they don't have their ultimate roots in racism itself.

From your link:

> also : behavior or attitudes that reflect and foster this belief : racial discrimination or prejudice

> : the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another

Edit: Anyway, I do recognize that the distinction you're pointing out does have implications for the best way to address the problems.

I hope our discrimination problems fall more along class lines, because that's much easier to solve by implementing economic policies to reduce economic inequalities. Government programs won't change people's races (well, non-terrifying government programs, at least), but policies can change people's economic class.

It's also entirely possible that different areas of the country have different mixes of classism and racism. My wife is of a different race, and our son is mixed race, and my wife and I both went to top-tier schools, so my social group is almost certainly less racist and more classist than the US median. It's very difficult and dangerous to extrapolate my lived truth to the whole nation.

Every class tranche uses fashion to differentiate themselves from the tranche just below, while imitating the tranches above. The upper class used to wear fancy clothes to differentiate themselves from the middle class; the middle class started wearing the clothes of the upper class to try and join them; boom, ghetto chic becomes popular among ivy-leaguers. (They don't have to worry about being mistaken for actual lower-class people; the cultural differences are big enough that that isn't a concern).

This helps maintain in-group selection with all the wonderful effects it has.

But that’s not what I’m interested in though. False analogs and convenient distinctions are easy to come by. What I’m looking for is a historical trend of voting behavior during a democratic regression.

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/15/1857976/--The-Only-...

US democracy, at least from an European POV, is completely and fundamentally broken, to the point that it will need a civil war to reset it to at least somewhat sane levels:

- The GOP as a party is so far gone off the rails, so many actual Conservatives have left that there is barely any intra-party resistance left to the Tea Party, Trump and QAnon ideologues.

- A large enough part of the GOP voter base is similarly radicalized after decades of brainwashing. Seriously, the kind of stuff that Fox "News" airs daily is scary. They will keep preventing reasonable politicians to challenge people like MTG.

- The Democrat Party, which is center-right in its actual political doings from an European POV, has other issues: gerontocratic people like Feinstein or Biden who have long ago lost touch with the 99%, corruption, incompetence, and most importantly the lack of backbone. There have been many chances to codify access to abortions, everyone knew how thin the ice was, and the Democrats let many chances pass to permanently close that risk - only because they were scared of losing one of their major selling points.

- Wealth disparity. The US is just plain shocking - you have people like Musk and Bezos worth hundreds of billions of dollars, money they can't ever truly spend even if they have a dozen children... and at the same time people die because they have to stretch out their expensive insulin or can't afford an epi-pen. Or they freeze to death because even while employed they cannot afford a home.

- Climate change, assuming that the US will be able / willing to do anything past November, will need an awful lot of investments to handle. The Republicans won't grant any money (either because of "financial stability" or because "electric cars are for woke softies"), and the young people see the clock ticking. Some of them will radicalize, up to and including terrorism - why else were there snipers on the Supreme Court?

Add on top of that the aftermath of covid - which still isn't over! - and the costs of the Ukraine war... and there's a perfect storm scenario of enormously destructive potential.

It is difficult combining low population areas with high population areas when they got completely different culture, wealth, and natural resources. Mistrust, suspicions, polarization, alienation and otherism abound.

The trend is however not impossible to break, and there is scientific understanding of those forces if people were willing to take them in. A key finding is to not shove culture symbols into peoples face, a proposition that scarce few want to agree in the name of cooperation. When people feel that their culture is threatened the natural repose seems to be the opposite and display as much of cultural symbols as possible.

Oh I do. And I know the reason behind that headline - the fact is we absolutely need gas infrastructure to allow diversifying from Russia in the short term while preventing dozens of millions of people from freezing in winter or to allow gas peaker plants to assist solar and wind so we can shut down coal and the decades-old nuclear clunkers.

Si vis pacem para bellum, and there will be war. I honestly am unable to think of a scenario that will prevent a collapse of at least the US democracy, if not the rest of the world with it (because let's face it, the US picked up the tab to ensure the freedom of democracies while us Europeans stood aside). The only thing capable of stopping the spiral towards death is if the Democrats win a solid majority in November... but that is completely unrealistic.

I used to be a pro-American when I was a child blinded by US propaganda and television. Americans are heroes are what I always thought.!

Then the Iraq, Afghanistan wars, the coups in Libya and the Syrian War - encouraged via Obama's so-called 'moderate rapist rebels' completely changed my mind. What CNN said was completely different from what my Libyan and Syrian colleagues said. So Much Lying. It was around that time I did extensive reading of American history and realised I was a moron.

> US picked up the tab to ensure the freedom of democracies while us Europeans stood aside

Cite! The US does anything it wants to keep corporate power corporate. We topple lots of democracies. US is squarely imperialist.

See my comment about Smedley Butler from earlier, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31469671

Sure, the US was somewhat imperialist a century ago, but that's long gone.

I have less than zero sympathy.

I mean, specifically there has been no national law mandating Covid vaccine use. There were some restrictions applied differently to vaccinated and unvaccinated people.

2. https://law.stanford.edu/2022/01/20/a-look-at-the-supreme-co....

A human right for bodily autonomy would include the right to decide what and what not to wear on their own bodies.

it's a slippery slope and out of scope of what government should be regulating if one views bodily autonomy as important.

There are a number of technical reasons why the mRNA vaccines should be safer than existing vaccines. In any case, there were non mRNA alternatives. I believe that most life-scientists are just curious and trying to do good work. I don't really trust corporate big (whatever), but pharma in this case. I do trust the individual scientists I know to be caring and empathetic people and to do their best to save lives.

This is the exact argument the conservatives have against abortion.

Non-Contagious Things that that kill people = bodily autonomy.

Sounds arbitrary.

My body my choice right?

It only seems arbitrary to me if I look at it from a narcissistic perspective.

Killing a baby is an effect on someone around(technically inside) a person.

So while it's not contagious, the effect of killing someone is the same.

And therefore no bodily autonomy should be allowed in this case.

It's the exact same logic used for covid restrictions.

You don't have bodily autonomy in cases where you can hurt others.

That said, the fundamental disagreement w.r.t abortion is whether or when a fetus is a person with the same legal protections as a born child, and to what extent to weigh this question, or these potential rights against the rights of the mother.

Abortion necessarily involves the killing of an organism. Anyone arguing otherwise is not basing their argument in reality. However, many commonly accepted and legal actions almost inevitably involve the killing of organisms: walking, driving, excavation, building. Our legal systems typically even allows for the killing of complex, almost-surely sentient creatures for food, and other purposes. This extends as far as the killing of humans under certain very limited circumstances. The essential disagreement on abortion is whether and when the killing that is an inescapable part of abortion is permissible, justified, lawful, and generally not murder.

The bill has however an explicit exception for abortions, saying that regardless if a fetuses are a person, it doesn't mean abortions should be illegal.

fetuses aren't citizens but they are considered people... in some states.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: we've had to ask you about this multiple times already. We ban accounts that keep doing it, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31873367

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31872895

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31871515

Well know if I'm right in November.

I live in europe and US dems are pretty much in line with our right leaning parties. Except for a handful of extremes.

The US republicans are very unique to US in that their opinions are very close knitted to US specific laws. So I cant really think of a similar party anywhere else.

But yea. A swedish left and US dems are very very far from achother politically.

Democrats are a right party with authoritarian tendencies. Not left at all.

Maybe your views have been distorted by right wing news calling Biden “far left” which is an objective falsehood.

I’ve seen over half the nations on earth and I stand behind the OP assessment of the US Dem party as center right. Do investigate a bit before knee jerk responding from a position of falsehood

The primary constituency of both parties is corporate America, whom they rely on for donations.

As far as I understand it, the fundamental and (seemingly) globally agreed upon divide is that Far Left = The State is in [presumably benevolent] control, and Far Right = The State is in [presumably malicious] control, while regular Left = The State knows what's best for The People (because it is derived from pure democracy) while regular Right = The People know what's best for themselves (and choose representatives for situations where multiple individuals are involved).

How far off am I, from a global perspective?

All of those are things that even the far right in Europe wouldn't dare suggest, yet the leftmost party in the US stands behind them, or is at least willing to accept them.

Voter ID is a non controversial issue in many countries. In the US I've seen arguments against it from both sides. Disparate impact concerns from the left, privacy and freedom from the feds on the right.

The Left does not criticize voter ID per se, the Left criticizes that many people are effectively locked out from voting because obtaining ID cards can be an utter pain in the ass.

I think this view of right/left as an axis of government optimizing for freedom/control is only very prevalent in particularly right-wing commonwealth discourse.

The law and construction of social systems in the common-law English tradition stem from a position that one can do anything unless barred by law, including in situations where it hurts others. The law of equity, largely derived from religious canon law, existed as a separate system layered upon the common law court system of 'hard rules' to fix situations wherein the application of common-law would lead to morally suspect outcomes. The situation in civilian countries, by contrast, generally define a sphere of acceptable behavior which explicitly excludes abusive and intentionally harmful behavior - the restrictions on behavior are baked in. Civilian-derived systems are far more common than those from the commonwealth, and accordingly the types of discussions had in each are very different on this point.

The result is it's very rare to conceive of left and right in terms of freedom, because most other nations derive from systems in which freedom is already viewed as one element to be balanced against other considerations rather than the unmitigated chief virtue upon which all analysis is founded.

Even in the commonwealth, progressive discourse is not driven in terms of de-jure freedoms, it's driven by de-facto freedoms, largely economic and social freedoms. The government only needs to be restrained when it restricts social rights or maintain economic systems that strip dignity from individuals. Generally, however, these aren't discussed in terms of the degree of freedoms afforded, but rather in terms of rights and equality before the law.

What?

I lived in America for over a decade before I could say that I begun to understand it. I have seen people like you who visit my home country and claim to understand it. All they do is project their faulty models onto our values and culture.

I literally spent most of my rhetorical time abroad trying to convince folks that there was any difference at all between our two main parties.

You can scoff at me, but you will encounter this conclusion over and over again. The world sees our two parties as beholden to corporate interests, as are centrist parties all over the globe. Money apparently makes the world go around

You sound like you didn't even go outside Europe.

There are two scales, nationalism-globalism, and capitalism-intervention.

Most countries have very little difference between their capitalism-intervention side, because there's only one country where someone who supports free markets and capitalism could move to, this results in the right wing of all the countries becoming purely nationalist supporting govt intervention facing globalist left wing supporting their kind of govt intervention.

For example my dad in my home country has very little opinion on capitalism/intervention scale. But on the nationalism/globalism scale he has a strong opinion. If I were to describe the economic policies of the Democratic party, he wouldn't truly form an opinion, but the moment I will start describing the social policies he would immediately understand it and call it 'the leftist party'.

From the perspective of a country that is to the left of the Democrats, yes, they appear centre-right.

I'm not sure you've can offer a truly global perspective from which to accurately determine whether the US Gov is left or right leaning, but if I had to predict such an answer I'd say it would tip right.

Edit: okay, did some hunting and found this: https://archive.ph/PjNEF

Check the bubble chart. The Dems are in fact globally left-leaning, according to the Manifesto Project described in the article. But check the relative positions from e.g. a British perspective (since that happens to be shown in the chart). The Dems are to the right of the UK's left-wing Labour Party, while the Republicans are right of the right-wing Conservatives. The overall British perspective of the US would be of a right-leaning country.

I've not looked at other perspectives since I'm in mobile and I've not going to deep-dive the Manifesto Project just now. But I wonder which are the nations which have an "overall" perspective of the US as left-leaning?

Meanwhile, the US reaches as far right as the EU does, but in the other direction, it barely reaches the middle of the EU (i.e. total) spectrum.

So it's not that Democrats are adjacent to the far right. It's just that they're more right wing than left wing. They're obviously still much closer to the centre-left than they are to the far-right, but they are also further from the left extreme than they are from the right extreme

The most sensible minimal extension (to 2d) that I know of is to distinguish between how much you value personal freedom on one axis and economic freedom on the other. That still leaves out a lot, but is the best indicator of which side you'll likely to end up on regarding most political contentions, given the simplicity of the model.

There are actually two popular models of that kind, the Nolan Chart (example quiz [1], your spectrum is the vertical axis) and the Political Compass (example quiz [2], your spectrum is the secondary diagonal).

[1] https://www.theadvocates.org/quiz/

[2] https://www.politicalcompass.org/

Also, btw, the fascist movement recruited much of it's ideological and political concepts and initial core activist base from syndicalist/corporatist socialist circles and was strongly anti-capitalist/pro-socialist and anti-conservative. Benito Mussolini was for a time chief editor of the Italian Socialist Party's newspaper "Avanti!" and member of the party's National Directorate.

In Europe there is a plethora of parties all throughout the political spectrum.

How are they beholden to people if they can disenfranchise people via gerrymandering? The primary check against arbitrary action of an elected official is to vote them out, but gerrymandering allows them to significantly lower the responsiveness of voting to their benefit.

You can't argue that you should support gerrymandering on the basis of democratic representation given that gerrymandering DIRECTLY MITIGATES the effectiveness of democratic representation.

Redistricting also ENFRANCHISES people by putting heavily democratic counties together into voting blocks and conservatives into their voting blocks. YOU DONT WANT 50/50 splits, you want 90/10 splits. That’s maximizing enfranchisement.

But this democratic lever is an impediment to power to the left. So the result is endless propaganda when the right is using it to contain the influence of the cities from suburban and rural areas.

The msm and leftist governments use redistricting (gerrymandering) to their advantage ALL THE TIME. When the left does it is called sex (redistricting). When the right does it is called rape (gerrymandering).

The leftist media is perfectly happy to celebrate any gain by the left to disenfranchise any conservative county by moving its boundaries into a city voting block.

The writers of the constitution new this. That’s why they built the resistricting laws right into the constitution.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/03/...

You're claiming gerrymandering is used to create the situation in option 1. I haven't seen any indication that this is the case from any reputable source. Most mathematical analysis of gerrymandering shows that option 3 is what's occurring, which does NOT enfranchise people.

Almost every piece mathematically quantifying gerrymandering efforts in the states has indicated that it substantially favors the GOP. Here's one example centered on the 2016 election:

https://apnews.com/article/elections-race-and-ethnicity-voti...

Some of the discussion is regarding how much of the bias is intentional (due to intentionally gerrymandered districts) vs. unintentional (due to the geographic clustering of democratic voters in urban areas), but I haven't ever seen an analysis that attributes an overall advantage to democrats as a result of districting at the state or national level.

Of course they are going to report that gerrymandering hurts democracy and conservatives are to blame.

Why don’t you ask Russia Today about whether Russia is a strong and prosperous country that’s good for the world?

Same tier of propaganda.

You should diversify and be more inclusive of your news sources.

Here's an article about gerrymandering in NC in the journal of Statistics and Public Policy: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2330443X.2020.1...

The NC2012 and NC2016 plots in comparison with the neutral districting is almost cartoonish in how much packing was performed.

As an aside, I don't understand why you're claiming that the AP, of all news sources, is a propaganda outlet (let alone one favoring democrats?). Do you have some reason to believe that their take regarding district policy is suspect? Or do you just have an nebulous distrust of news media in general?

You're more than welcome to post a reputable source that provides an analysis claiming that gerrymandering enfranchises people so that we'd have some subject matter disagreement to dig into.

There’s no way to take this as a good faith statement, it’s just a lie.

> mRNA vaccine […] which is causing more damage than Covid19 itself

Seek help!

Same blind eye to crime is happening in New York and Chicago.

Same for same sex marriage, there is just not enough moderate political people against it. Repealing it won’t have the legs.

Pro life support spanned the political spectrum, I think you can even fairly argue that despite her rhetoric to the contrary, Speaker Pelosi’s deliberate inaction may have been due to her faith and passive action against something she wanted to publicly appear to be “for” for wholly political reasons.

And yet, here we are.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/less-than-half-of-us-evan...

The same political party then proceeded to rely on a court case about a physician’s privacy to practice medicine as a substitute for women’s body rights instead of creating legislation that could have at least guaranteed access to abortion in the first trimester, which would have received enough bi-partisan support to make Roe v. Wade a non-issue and relied on the 10th amendment and states to expand abortion access beyond the minimum guarantee.

But instead, they did nothing but talk, and here we are…

Huge asterisk on this. Can you point to any moment when doing what you suggest would have been politicially viable? Especially considering the fervor with which GOP are racing to pass bans that don’t include exceptions for rape and incest.

Say what you will about Roe but auto until Thursday it did strike a balance that worked for a vast majority of the country (60%). There were limits, there were restrictions. Why do you presume there were none?

Yeah, you hear consternation about the availability of late term abortions, but if you explain those happen in fewer than 1% of cases and often are medically necessary this concern often is ameliorated.

But now that’s all been blown up. Now there will be two Americas: safe haven America where women are free, and Gilead where women are forced to give birth to their rapists babies.

At multiple points in the last 50 years we have been in a place where our executive branch and congress has been controlled by the Democratic Party, and after presidential elections that were pretty solidly decided. At those points federal legislation could have been introduced that if crafted in a bi-partisan way—limited to first trimester, avoiding tax payer funding, limits on fetal tissue use, etc… the Democrats could have passed legislation with some basic bi-partisan support that could have provided access to abortion at a minimal level federally that would account for about 90% of the performed abortions out there. However, because the democrats either chose to die on that remaining 10% hill, or intentionally didn’t fight at all they lost the whole battle. People seem to believe that they were fighting all this time, in reality, they enabled yesterday to happen. I would argue, intentionally, because the only other explanation is that for 50 years the Democratic Party has been incompetent.

Roe never really struck a balance of anything, it was always weak and was always going to fall. It managed to simply pause the illegality question for a time, during which our congress could have and should have acted to affirm the rights.

Even RBG felt it was the wrong case for abortion rights because it didn’t focus on women’s rights, but rather physician privacy. If the most arguably liberal justice in the last 50 years is warning you that Roe is bad and going to fall, you might want to believe them.

> Now there will be two Americas: safe haven America where women are free, and Gilead where women are forced to give birth to their rapists babies.

Actually there will be 50 Americas—-which is really no different today than it was yesterday.

Hard to fault Democrats in the 105th for what Republicans wouldn’t do.

That leaves one congress in 50 years’ time with even a shot. Could they have done it, maybe, but we saw how even when Democrats bent over backwards to accommodate Republican ideas into the ACA (inviting and incorporating over 100 amendments, basing it off of a heritage foundation plan implemented by Republican Mitt Romney in MA), they still got 0 Republican support.

Do you think a partisan abortion law would have solved anything? Do you think that wouldn’t have been appealed immediately after the 115th Congress? They failed to repeal the ACA by 1 vote. I can’t imagine how they could have failed repealing an abortion law.

And btw, impeaching Trump in 2021 for orchestrating an insurrection and coup was absolutely necessary. Unfortunately Republicans refused to convict, because as we now know, many of them were complicit in the coup and sought pardons for their roles (read: crimes). Had they convicted him, he would have been barred from holding future office and a huge problem would have been solved for the country. It was worth a shot. Unfortunately, now a man who sought to overthrow the US government is running for President again, and might win.

even when Democrats bent over backwards to accommodate Republican ideas into the ACA

That's what I mean, the Democrats keep trying to appeal to the middle by saying 'look how bipartisan we are' and getting kicked int he gut. As a party, they want to appeal to the moral authority of a teacher or moderate voters' consciences, and so they continually aspire to good stewardship. The reality is that while that does appeal to some, American people in general don't respect weakness and reflexively distance themselves from losers. Culturally speaking, winning is more important than being right to many Americans, and even people who believe it ought to be otherwise have to balance their idealism with the logic of survival.

The GOP has been shifting toward a win-at-all-costs mentality since 1994 when Gingrich took Congress (after a long, long period of Democratic dominance) with the 'contract with America.' Despite many of these 'contractual' provisions not being serious (eg the commitment to balanced budgets has only ever been a talking/negotiating point for the GOP, when holding power they max out on debt), they provided a unifying agenda for conservatives whose object is power for its own sake, and such conservatives now dominate the GOP.

Democrats worry that whenever they drift too far 'left' the GOP will attack them mercilessly, and so they tend to huddle in the middle, where the GOP attack them mercilessly anyway. Centrist Democrats literally lose seats and console themselves that if they had put up more of a fight their margin of defeat would have been even more painful.

> Do you think a partisan abortion law would have solved anything?

I never said “partisan”, I said bi-partisan and yes I do. Polling within the electorate showed support across parties for first trimester access.

In any event, you seem to have missed the point of my post, which was that we can't assume that things like contraception, gay marriage, and interracial marriage are safe from being overturned just because a plurality support them. You said banning contraception is a "scratch issue" with evangelicals, and I'm pointing out, so is banning abortion, and yet, here we are.

Yes, I am definitely blaming them. Judge Ginsburg warned them, told them it was not going to survive certain challenges. The dems did nothing. If the smartest legal mind on your side (and she was not the only one BTW) is warning you that something you hold claim to hold sacred is in danger and you choose to do nothing to protect it, that is a dumb shit move. However, I’d argue that it may have been intentional—that to the democratic leadership abortion rights were not sacred, but only valuable to them for the political division it caused.

>You said banning contraception is a "scratch issue" with evangelicals

Contraception is simply different. There isn’t the “innocent third party without a voice” factor there that will motivate the activism and financial investment in that activism the same way. Same sex marriage is kind of the same, there is no third party component to it to protect.

I'm sure it's satisfying but I don't think it adds a lot to the conversation. Maybe the Ds don't play hard enough (blocking nominees, lying under oath, etc) but you shouldn't have to cheat to protect a popular long-standing precedent.

> Contraception [and same sex marriage] is simply different.

The belief that there's an "innocent third party" involved in abortion is a religious belief; I don't see why the court would enforce that but not other religious beliefs, like women submitting to their husbands and so forth. Your stance that D's were dupes for believing R's about Roe v Wade would appear to suggest that we shouldn't believe you about this either.

The theocrats on the court are young, they probably have 30+ years ahead of them, and the only sensible prediction is to assume that anything disliked by Fundamentalist Christians is in danger. That means not just contraception and gay marriage, but Obamacare, social security, trans rights, owning sex toys, gay adoption, domestic violence laws, spousal protective orders, womens' rights generally, Miranda and anything else predicated on Due Process, any gun restriction, and I'm not feeling super confident about the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, or interracial marriage.

Surely your "what a bunch of dumbshits, why didn't they see this coming" applies to those too?

That is mostly false. If a pregnant mother get harmed to the degree that it harms the unborn or kills it, the legal system (and "popular opinion" in my view) see it as being more than just harming the mother. In feticide, there is an third party involved. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 is very explicit about that and it also gives an explicit exception for abortions.

If we view child in utero as similar to a cancer growth off the womans body then feticide does not exist. There would be physical assault, but not homicide, because no Homo sapiens would be killed. That view point conflict with how a lot of people feel in those situations.

Edit: also, if you're going to wade in to an ongoing discussion, it's nice to respond to the thing we're generally arguing about; don't just pluck one sentence fragment out and start a new discussion over it. When someone says, "I think X, therefore Y", they're arguing that X is true enough in this context to support a belief in Y, not that X is always true in all contexts, which is a much larger (and therefore, easier to argue against) claim.

My guess is that for popular belief, if a unborn dies because of violence to the woman then people emotionally see it as murder of an other human being. If the woman choose to abort then for social reason many/most people do not view it as a human being that died. This is however a conflict of views which has nothing to do with religion.

With contraception, even if it was done through force, no one outside of religious belief would see it as killing a human. How would even The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 be applied? Should each sperm count as a half human?

Similar with same-sex there isn't any direct situations where non-religious people suddenly would be in favor of outlawing it.

As for the exception written in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004, what is say is that the legality of abortion is not effected by the definition of the that law. Nothing more, nothing less. We can have laws allowing abortion for social reasons regardless if we view the bunch of cells as being more than just a bunch of cells.

I think you missed my point on this, i was speaking in terms of things that drive they activist attitudes, not any specific legal distinction.

as belorn said in their comment to you, in certain legal cases we consider the unborn child as a person. You don’t have this sort of strange legal dichotomy with a innocent third party with contraception or gay marriage

edit to add: and most of the bible verses they quote to support that view also condemn divorce and sex outside of wedlock, so forgive us for not knowing what is and isn't in danger. You make a persuasive argument that we should be more concerned than we think we should.

Sure, but taking a position to prevent something from becoming legally recognized requires far less effort and commitment than taking something presently legal and making it illegal. Abortion was an outlier because there was a tangible victim to rally around in the pro-life activist’s eyes.

There simply isn’t a tangible victim they can point to for gay marriage and contraception. Those issues center around behavior they might regard as sinful, but in their eyes the sinner is the only one to suffer.

People may not approve…but will they care enough to work against them? I don’t think so. I know a lot of folks who are loudly pro-life, but I can only think of perhaps one that might actively work against gay marriage, and none that would have a strong opinion at all regarding contraception

As for the "victim," the most effective way we know of to reduce the number of abortions is giving young people easy access to contraception, and AFAICT very few pro-lifers are in favor of that. I think it's a mistake to think this is only or even primarily about the fetus.

I didn’t dispute that. I said specifically that it’s easier to work against something that is currently not legal becoming legal.

> It certainly seems to have died down since then

Because…it’s now legal.

> is giving young people easy access to contraception, and AFAICT very few pro-lifers are in favor of that

They may not be in favor of it, but it’s legal for young people to use contraceptives, and has been for a long time and there is no where near the passion against it as there was for abortion. However, when you say “easy access” do you mean “free and government supplied”? That is wholly a different argument that has a more “taxpayer support of discretionary human behavior” driver against it.

I don't think you've internalized the thing that started this conversation. This is not a victory for the pro-life movement! The pro-life movement has never been less popular, even among evangelicals. In the battle to convince Americans of their cause, they have lost by any measure.

Roe was overturned not by "passion" but by a handful of ethically flexible judges. If they can do that with one unpopular thing, they can do it with a second and a third.

> However, when you say “easy access” do you mean “free and government supplied”?

Yes, but not as an ideological matter, just because that's the most straightforward way to implement policies. In general, "I support policy X" means "I want tax money to be spent on X". That's how governments do things, by spending money.

If you don't want to be involved I'm sure we can fund it privately, it's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. But it's not clear why would you be against spending tax money to prevent abortions, but okay with spending money to jail the women who've had them. If this were actually about preventing abortions and not punishing sin, it wouldn't matter.

You are applying utilitarian considerations of outcomes to religious dogmatists. Such consider sexual immorality (as defined by them) to be a corrupting influence on everyone peripherally connected to it, and an affront to God.

Hence the current moral panic of denouncing all LGBT people as 'groomers' and insinuating or openly accusing people who disagree as pedophiles, which is considered sufficient reason to kill in some peoples' eyes. Now while this moral panic is by no means universal among religious Christians, if you're not aware of it then you just aren't paying attention.

I find it kind of strange that you are conflating marriage equality and concerns over sexualizing young children together. I don’t see people using this sexualization of children as an argument against gay marriage, I see it pretty hyper-focused on the sexualization of young children.

I am wondering why you are tying them together if the folks doing it don’t seem to be.

Among religious persons and societies, doctrinal considerations outweigh all others. If you are under the impression that the abortion issue is different because large numbers of non-religious folk are sufficiently motivated by the ethical issue to engage in activism and donate funding, I think you're quite mistaken.

Birth control might be a big deal to some devout Catholics and some primitive/fundamentalist Baptists, but virtually every other denomination and congregation is literally not going to care.

[1]: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/14/5891765/millennials-incoherent...

[2]: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/8/5878293/lets-stop-using-the-wor...

Guess other researchers think differently. Vox isn't extremely left.

And surprise surprise, this was founded by an ex-GOP consultant. There’s no need to consume fascist propaganda as part of a balanced media diet. Most of the outlets on the far right don’t qualify as news, and CNN isn’t hard left no matter how much it makes Republicans shriek.

This is like a food chart and on the left we see fruits and veggies and on the right we see various animals droppings.

Try joining a conservative discussion board and you’ll notice that they call Democrats Fascists/Totalitarian!

I would recommend looking up American history, in the 70s, 50s, 20s, 1800s etc. Today is a milder form of the political polarization that is endemic to America, and ironically America’s strength.

If there was a betting market on a theocracy, I would bet the house in the opposite direction, but frankly so would everyone.

Relax and enjoy the weekend, America is going to remain America for a long, long time.

Not a great look for the US by any means, but the whole chapter is a joke compared to past election turmoil, especially during reconstruction era post Civil War. In those years, you often had large armed militias battling it out with occupying federal troops over which election results.

Since you were kind enough to provide references to your other statements of fact, would you mind doing the same for this one? Because I've been seeing that exact sentiment repeated ad nauseum for a long while now and yet every attempt I've made to figure out where it came from, so far, has been from the claimant imputing intent upon a nebulous Other, with all such claims assuming the most malicious version of a strawman possible... and we all know that's against the rules, here. The sole argument I've seen sourced, in this specific case, hinges upon a very uneducated misinterpretation of a (relatively unimportant) concurrent opinion by Justice Thomas in which the hyperbolic clearly don't understand the concepts of "substantive due process" and are mixing it up with something else entirely.

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/6/4/1411/pdf#:~:text=Abstract....

very uneducated misinterpretation of a (relatively unimportant) concurrent opinion by Justice Thomas in which the hyperbolic clearly don't understand

Dude, when you're trying to shoehorn 5 dismissals into one sentence it's not conducive to discussion.

Time will tell who will be left standing, the theocrats or the reactionaries.

There are many exposés, books, articles, etc. Here are two of the more recent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_Chains

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_money

Your argument is foolish.

What measure of proof do you require?

Democracy in Chains' primary source are a cache of documents from economist James Buchanan's think tank, architects of the reactionary movement's strategy. By their own words and actions, they intend to end democracy and protect the rich. Disagree with the author's analysis, fine. But the thesis is not circumstantial, inferred, or speculated.

Whereas Dark Money is a standard whodunnit. Investigative journalism, following the money, ferret out the criminal conspiracy. If you have a different interpretation of the evidence, please share.

In his concurrence with today's Dobbs ruling, Justice Thomas wrote: '[...] in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.'

(For non legal nerds, those cases are concerned with birth control, sexual privacy, and gay marriage respectively.)

You're surely also aware of legislative and electoral pitches to substantially restrict birth control. I don't think I'm being hyperbolic by simply mentioning the existence of ultra-conservatives and observing that they have some political influence. When one of the nine Supreme Court justices indicates a willingness to revisit multiple landmark cases only a foolish person would ignore the possibility.

Mind, I also thing the Democrats are at fault for not erecting a legislative framework to put privacy and other rights on a more solid footing when they've had the legislative initiative.

If that is the case there needs to be some motivated and deep pockets out there to craft up a law that is designed to challenge those norms, then it needs to get passed in some legislative body and signed into law within a state. The law will need to read in such a way that would motivate an aggressive attack from a party with deep pockets and get it all the way up to the SCOTUS where it might get picked up or might not.

I honestly think that those issues simply do not have the same levels of passion behind them that abortion did. The general populace just doesn’t care enough to make them worth the effort. Abortion beyond the first trimester of pregnancy had significant opposition across the political spectrum and that opposition grew week over week beyond that first trimester. Birth control, gay marriage, sexual privacy…they simply do not evoke the same levels of passion beyond a few fringe ultra religious right-wing groups.

Consider for example the recent wave of prophylactic legislation forbidding the teaching of 'critical race theory' in k-12 schools, although CRT as such is a kind of structural analysis that has gained adherents among legal sociologists, mostly at the post-grad level. The anti-CRT laws are mostly an attempt to shape school curriculums that mention race by legislative fiat, and provide a cause of action to fire teachers who indoctrinate students with (or perhaps merely expose them to) opinions that are out of step with the popular consensus.

Certainly, this is no overnight process. But a few years ago, people who said Roe was likely to be overturned were dismissed as alarmist. Fringe positions become mainstream by degrees, and those who don't pay attention to them often underestimate the intensity and speed of such changes.

Consider Mark Burns, an ultra-conservative pastor and regular candidate in South Carolina who recently came in second in the Congressional House primary, with 11,000 votes (about 25% of the total). He holds some rather extreme views, and while he lost this time he might continue to improve his electoral standings in future.

https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/6/14/pro-trump-sc-candida...

It’s not a hyperbolic comparison. I’m simply observing that other highly educated people (like the folks who thought I was about to be dragged to an internment camp) have built up conservatives as such a boogeyman, they don’t have a solid grasp on what’s within the realm of political reality and what isn’t. I detected the same hyperbole in your post.

The abrogation of Roe makes the Constitutional law of the US the same as Italy and still more liberal than Germany. Even if some states ban abortion, that just makes them like Ireland until a few years ago, or Poland now. The EU has some very religious places with extremely restricted abortion rights, and others with more liberal rights, and most in a mushy middle. Why isn’t that situation workable in the US?

Some of the other privacy cases might be on the chopping block too. You don’t have to be an “ultra conservative” to think substantive due process is a bunch of malarkey. That was my first reaction when I learned about it in law school a decade ago.

But say Griswold goes away. So what? Most European countries don’t have a similar right to contraception, yet contraception is legal there. 90% of Republicans support legalized contraception. Obergefell and Bostock are on firmer footing. But even then half of Republicans support same-sex marriage. Almost 80% support employment rights for LGBT people. The politics isn’t the same for those other issues.

Abortion is different because Roe was both legally infirm, and drew the Constitutional line in the wrong place. I’m not aware of any country that recognizes a right to abort an 20 week fetus without a medical reason, even if some countries like Canada allow it. Roe drew the line 10 weeks past where most civilized nations draw the line, and that made it a political target in the way contraception isn’t. Almost 30% of Republicans disagree with their party that abortion should be generally illegal at all stages. But even among most of those people it’s difficult to muster up a defense of Roe.

Just 15 months ago, you wrote 'Of course, overturning Roe isn’t really in the cards. There are just 3 votes for it.' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311034

I don't know whether your analytic powers are less good than you imagine them to be, or you're being strategic; but given that you now write as if such an outcome had been obvious and inevitable all along, I'm not inclined to rely on your estimates.

And that justice comes from a different generation than the other 5 who voted to overturn, so there's even less reason to assume the others share his views.

Also, as an aside, we have internment camp like settings for brown asylum seekers and have mistakenly deported American citizens to them on multiple occasions, but this is an ongoing issue that Trump did not fix, rather than one caused by Trump.

I think it's worth keeping in mind that either you were disingenuous years ago, or you yourself have moved to the right over time as well, as not only do you badly mispredict the court (and even mispredict how extreme Thomas would be [5]!), assuming it would have a stronger respect for precedent than it did, but also you yourself seem to have changed from a supporter of roe[4] to, well, whatever you are now which seems to be someone who is willing to quote contradictory statistics in order to claim that Roe's 24 week line has less support than it does (per [6] and [7], both sources you've quoted to claim that most Americans want more restrictions than Roe show that >60% overall and 30% of conservatives support the line Roe defines).

If the conservative majority on the court is willing to overturn a ruling supported by 60-65% of the population, what's to say they won't revert a much weaker precedent with only 70% popular support? You seem to be highly content to be a boiled frog.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24525637

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12994309

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26311034

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5801204

[5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30980056

[6]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/13/about-six-i...

[7]: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-...

In the 9 year old post you cite, I said Roe was wrongly decided, but I didn’t think it was necessary to overturn it. Nothing I said today is inconsistent with that.

As to your point about Thomas, you cite a comment correcting a misreading of Thomas’s concurrence in the Kim Davis case. I said nothing about how “extreme” he is or wasn’t. Also, that has no bearing on Roe. Anyone could have told you Thomas would vote to overturn Roe.

You say I’m wrong about support for second trimester abortions, but neither of your sources actually asks about second trimester abortions.

In this poll, only 34% support elective abortions in the second trimester: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/06/24/how-ame...

Same thing in this poll, 65% oppose in second trimester: https://apnews.com/article/only-on-ap-us-supreme-court-abort...

Same in this poll, only 28% support in second trimester: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/where-americans-stand-o...

You can’t rely on polling of “Roe” because most people don’t know the precise contours of the precedent.

Most recently you said there were three votes (acb, Thomas, alito), and before that you said kav was "probably" not going to overturn. I don't think it's wrong to hold you to that. Either you were downplaying compared to what you really thought, or you're creating a justification now. I'm really just asking that you take a minute to reflect on that.

From the npr link:

> Allows abortions, but only up to the time there is viability outside the womb, at about 24 weeks

Has support from 30% of republicans and 40% of democrats. The remaining Democrats generally want less restrictions. That's consistent with 60%+ support for second trimester abortions.

Your Forbes link also mentions 47% support (and only ~40 percent against) elective abortion until viability, which may be well into the third trimester!

And I have a difficult time believing that "all or most of the time" doesn't include the second trimester.

I'm not relying on polling of roe. I'm relying on your polls! I agree that there's inconsistency here, but it's not cut and dry like you claim.

> As to your point about Thomas, you cite a comment correcting a misreading of Thomas’s concurrence in the Kim Davis case. I said nothing about how “extreme” he is or wasn’t. Also, that has no bearing on Roe. Anyone could have told you Thomas would vote to overturn Roe

My mistake, I thought that thread was about the draft opinion. But I'm not talking about roe, but revisiting Obgerfell, which between Thomas, alito, barret, and one of the others probably does get cert! And I can see Roberts ruling against it now since dobbs splits the precedent (I'm not saying thats likely, I'm just saying it's believable).

> In my opinion that was a tactical error.

For whom? Like it's obviously harmful, but it's correct jurisprudence and supports the federalist strategy of dismantling as much federal civil rights law as possible. Like I have a very hard time finding the consistent values you work from, since apparently this was an error despite you agreeing with the ruling in a technical sense and in a meta-political sense (in that whatever your opinion on abortion, you believe abortion law being defederalized is good for the social fabric). And it's obviously what Republicans, if not conservatives, want. Who is it a tactical error for, and why?

For what it's worth (mostly in response to other comments), I don't think he's being disingenuous here, I think there's just a deep disagreement about values. In another thread, he says:

> As a foreigner, what I admire most about Americans is their ability to dispassionately accept the results of legal procedures. I truly think that’s what is responsible for the success of America and England before it. We have people who have high minded principles and notions of justice in Bangladesh. That’s not special. What we lack is a populace that will accept even monumental decisions contrary to what they wanted and move on. And that’s what I fear is being eroded.

Charitably, I think, this is "Americans are willing to accept the rule of law", which is perhaps true. Uncharitably, it's something like "Americans are privileged and/or apathetic enough that even as the law wildly vacillates, they don't care to act when their rights are impugned."

I also don't think it's true, given the long history of protest and sometimes violence in response to legal proceedings (Shay's Rebellion, the Civil War, anti-Abortion violence and murders in the '90s and today, etc.). But even taking it as true, I think there's a requirement that to respect the (appellate) judiciary we need to respect that the system is at least somewhat apolitical. I don't mean that judges aren't conservative or liberal, they obviously will be, but the actions of the Federalist Society, which preaches and advocates for a very particular judicial philosophy is, to many, a violation of the social contract that allows us to respect the court.

I think it's easy for someone who is a lawyer, especially an appellate lawyer to have "the institution" go to their head, to an extent. And I think that's what I'm seeing here: what the court is doing must be justified not in particular because rayiner agrees with it (though he does), but because the court cannot be questioned. He takes it as a given that the institution must be respected by virtue of what it is. I don't buy that, I think the institution needs to earn its legitimacy, and when you have justices doing what is charitably described as misleading Congress and the American people, and uncharitably described as perjury, well, it's difficult to see why the office remains deserving of respect.

Yes, that’s what I mean.

> I also don't think it's true, given the long history of protest and sometimes violence in response to legal proceedings (Shay's Rebellion, the Civil War, anti-Abortion violence and murders in the '90s and today, etc.).

It’s relative. Americans are incredibly orderly compared to say Bangladeshis, where there are violent protests after every election.

> I don't mean that judges aren't conservative or liberal, they obviously will be, but the actions of the Federalist Society, which preaches and advocates for a very particular judicial philosophy is, to many, a violation of the social contract that allows us to respect the court.

How is it a violation of the social contract to advocate for reading the Constitution the same way we read any other written document?

How is that worse than say law schools, which vigorously advocate reading the Constitution as loose guidelines to guide elite lawyers in dispensing Justice according to their own world views. That’s exactly what Roe was, seven highly educated white men overturning the will of the people based not on law, but on their personal notions of justice.

> I think it's easy for someone who is a lawyer, especially an appellate lawyer to have "the institution" go to their head, to an extent.

I respect the institution because I’m a foreigner who comes from a country where respect for institutions is conditional. I have a deep veneration for societies where people reflexively trust institution even when they’re in the losing end of a decision. A court could order a British person to jump off a bridge and they’d do it!

And I’m terrified of what I’m seeing in the US. There’s always been unruly mobs, but now elites are egging them on. Your accusations of “perjury” are exactly the problem I’m highlighting. Nobody perjured themselves. They said Roe was precedent, which it is. Precedent can be overruled—and there are clear guidelines for when to do so and Roe fit the bill on a lot of the factors. To say otherwise is to rely on the ignorance of the general public in an effort to delegitimize the institution in their eyes, and that’s irresponsible.

That's not an authoritarian stance, it's a rational, observant one.

This is the wrong question. The constitution doesn't matter. It's deeply flawed (whatever your opinion on the second amendment, that what exactly it means is so deeply up for debate, and has been for 100+ years, goes to show that the document is flawed as a legal instrument!), but not going to change without bloodshed.

People respect the rule of law, have faith in their institutions, because they feel represented and respected and empowered. But the reasons for that faith is eroding as we see that so many of our institutions are biased towards conservatives or conservative demographics. It is increasingly difficult to have faith in a democratic institution that doesn't provide equal representation.

Respect for an institution is conditional! It must be! We should not respect a president who does illegal things just because they are the president, we should impeach them! The same is true of a court, it is not reasonable to to respect it if it fails to act consistently and, to many, the courts rulings are inconsistent. Perhaps they make sense to you, a constitutional lawyer who has two or three degrees and decade of ~indoctrination~ education on this particular subject, but to those normal people out here, a group of 9 (or well 6) of the most elite of the elites (lifetime appointments!) sit in their ivory tower and say "you need private guns to deal with unelected tyrants" (to quote a tweet I saw earlier), while rolling back life-saving policies and threatening others.

On the left, you have to do a huge amount of work to get people to vote, not because they don't care, but because they're so disillusioned by their vote mattering, and that sentiment grows truer and truer!

So why is it a violation of the social contract? Because the social contract is a fair and representative government. It is democracy with checks and balances. The less the government does that, the less people are going to want it. And the problem is that the SC is, or was, in a pretty crappy position: the constitution is flawed and encourages this inequality, but no one's going to change it because people (and here I'll absolutely call you out as an example!) venerate it far too much. And the next amendment will be written in blood. So the court can either let constitutional interpretation live and follow the will of the people, and make them feel represented, or it can not make any attempt to represent the people and only represent the law, and there's some merit in that too, but it's going to foment unrest. So the issue you're facing is that the way you want the court to work fails to respect the people, and so they fail to respect it.

It can be really difficult to pin down a consistent Gish galloper, but you did great!

If you legally obtained permission to reside here, nobody except for the KKK has qualms with you.

Are you sure it's just propaganda? https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1540852015693037568

The ugly truth here is that the democrats own this defeat. All talk and ZERO action. They were content to let this be a flashpoint issue and did not take advantage of federal legislative opportunities to create some legislation to fix the issue. There has probably been enough bi-partisan support and the right political mix in at least 6 congresses over the last 50 years for a federal law to be introduced that would have reaffirmed the base intent of Roe v. Wade (basically allowing access to legal abortion in the first trimester) and would have invalidated the court case entirely as the definition of the issue. Blue states could have create state law to expand beyond the first trimester if desired. It would be a non issue, but instead…we get this. Shame.

>It’s a decision that enshrines as a right elective second trimester abortions

>State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy. [0]

>This means, on the other hand, that, for the period of pregnancy prior to this "compelling" point, the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, without regulation by the State, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy should be terminated. If that decision is reached, the judgment may be effectuated by an abortion free of interference by the State. [1]

>something that’s illegal in nearly every other developed nation

>second trimester starts at week 13

france allows abortions for the first 14 weeks (into the second trimester) and allows for medical exceptions even later same with spain

>Current Norwegian legislation and public health policy provides for abortion on request in the first 12 weeks of gestation, by application up to the 18th week, and thereafter only under special circumstances until the fetus is viable

sweden allows abortions through 18 weeks and allows for medical exceptions even later

denmark allows abortions after 12 weeks due to various conditions including poor socioeconomic status of the mother

>In Great Britain, abortion is generally allowed for socio-economic reasons during the first twenty-four weeks of the pregnancy germany seems the most severe of the large EU countries which allows for abortions in the first trimester and only after that in cases of unlawful sexual acts.

the US state of Ohio, for example, made abortions illegal at ~6 weeks today, so I feel your comparison to "other developed nations" leads the uninformed to believe that the US states are enacting similar laws to other developed nations, which is not the case.

also the overwhelming majority (>90%) of abortions in the US are during the first trimester

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113 [1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/

As to the country laws, you’re ignoring my qualifier about “elective” abortions. Abortions based on health exceptions aren’t elective abortions. Roe requires elective abortions up to viability. Thus, the laws in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden wouldn’t be upheld under Roe. Also, you’re misleadingly suggesting that Denmark has some sort of permissive loophole for “socioeconomic conditions.” It’s actually a pretty standard that requires unanimous approval from a local abortion committee. Many applications are rejected: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2024321/. The rate of second trimester abortions in Denmark is much lower than the US.

You’re also being imprecise about the definition of trimester. A pregnancy is actually 40 weeks long, and depending on source the first trimester is 12 or 13 weeks long: https://www.ucsfhealth.org/conditions/pregnancy/trimesters. Regardless, “first trimester” is a developmental milestone. It’s the point at which a fetus has all its internal organs and looks lot like a baby: https://3dultrasoundatlas.com/13-weeks.

All but 3 European countries draw the line at 12-14 weeks: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268439/legal-abortion-t.... They’re all aiming at this “end of first trimester” milestone. Note that the Mississippi law at issue in this case was even longer 15 weeks.

Also, your second to last paragraph misrepresents my point completely. I didn’t say that US states are passing laws similar to European countries. I said that Roe, which requires elective abortion until viability, bans the roughly first trimester line that most of the first world has drawn. The only EU abortion laws that would be acceptable under Roe would be the UK’s and the Netherlands’.

Put differently, you’re correct that there’s a big gap between Ohio or Texas at 6 weeks, and the 12-14 weeks in France or Germany. But it’s also true that there’s a big difference between those countries, and the 22-24 weeks mandated by Roe. Roe draw the line at a place that makes even the French and Norwegians uncomfortable.

The point about “90% of abortions being in the first trimester” doesn’t carry the water you think it does. That’s over 60,000 abortions annually at a stage of development that most developed countries have decided is advanced enough that the fetus should be protected.