I like a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but is it really so hard to believe that people could object to abortion on religious grounds? I agree that anyone rich would have little problem flying to a state where abortion is legal though.

The time period in the article is too short. However, when I grew up, abortion wasn't an issue for Protestants, which was the dominant religion where I lived. They considered it a Catholic issue. Abortion became an issue after Republicans began to implement their southern strategy, raising it as an issue to bring evangelists and fundamentalists into their religious right coalition. They created pamphlets, movies, meetings, etc. to make abortion a religious issue. As their propaganda campaign developed, you could watch abortion spread as an issue in Protestant churches through the 1980s and finally become an issue for the majority of white evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant by the early 1990s.

> However, when I grew up, abortion wasn't an issue for Protestants, which was the dominant religion where I lived. They considered it a Catholic issue. Abortion became an issue after Republicans began to implement their southern strategy, raising it as an issue to bring evangelists and fundamentalists into their religious right coalition.

I really doubt that the pro-life movement was deliberately orchestrated by a Republican-party conspiracy, as you seem to imply. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans identified a developing organic movement as political opportunity, which they then seized upon.

It totally was. I watched it all play out. The cynicism was breathtaking to behold.

But it was not a conspiracy. It was just a plan. Conspiracy is collusion to commit a crime. Cynical politics is not a crime.

That has no bearing on what just transpired.

Religious Republicans (and many religious Democrats) very much do care about abortion. Republicans in general just use it as a wedge issue to wall off the base, just like Democrats in general who also use it as one of their top 3 wedge issues. Our current President pushed for a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe.

and hillary clinton ran with an anti-abortion mate

"Does anyone think Republicans / conservatives actually give a shit about unborn babies? I don't."

That begs the question. Beware of trying to fit and squeeze every phenomenon in the world into your own prejudices.

My experience with the pro-life crowd is that they really consider abortion on par with murder and that is what motivates them to fight on. Even in a country like mine, where abortion is widely accepted and pro-life positions won't help you electorally or socially at all.

They also are against gun control, and generally favor allowing police to murder freely, provided the victims have brown-enough skin..

So, no: their politics are very, very far from consistent.

Everyone's is. Politics is tribal, not logical. Take every single political tribe in the history of humanity, starting with Ancient Greek city polities and ending with modern democracies, Russia and the Islamic state, and examine their beliefs. Contradictions are rife.

For me, the lesson is that if you value your integrity, you shouldn't join a political tribe. ANY of them. Green, red, blue, yellow, these are all a loyalty-first, thought-maybe-later groups.

> Does anyone think Republicans / conservatives actually give a shit about unborn babies? I don't. What I think they do like is having plenty of workers available who have no choice but to accept bad working conditions, low pay, multiple temp jobs without insurance, etc.

Yes, definitely. Do you a very homogeneous social group or something? The alternative would be that all pro-lifers are conniving bad faith actors. I shouldn’t have to say more for that to seem very suspicious and certainly incorrect.

Pro-choice and pro-life positions are both quite logically consistent, internally. Try and reckon with that.

It seems like you think you and those that share your positions are not the only one that wants what's best for the world. I assure you that's incorrect.

I'm pro-choice, but this side of the debate is easily tempted to oversimplify and assume pro-lifers are evil idiots.

How am I over simplifying? There is simple, material, demonstrable harm to women from banning healthcare. No one was going around terminating 36 week fetuses for the fun of it.

Harming another living person purely for your assumptions (religious beliefs) qualifies as evil intent. This is a highly complex topic that is between highly educated doctors who would know what the consequences are and the women to those consequences are happening.

> How am I over simplifying?

You are framing the issue with the pre-supposition that you are correct, and the arguments of the other side do not exist and they are just acting out of pure malice.

> No one was going around terminating 36 week fetuses for the fun of it.

I've personally witnessed calls to "celebrate your abortion". While I understand that it may be a rhetorical device, to a person for whom "fetus" is a little human being, there's not much daylight between that and "for the fun of it".

> Harming another living person purely for your assumptions (religious beliefs) qualifies as evil intent

Again, you are arguing as if other side's argument does not exist. That what "over simplifying" is - you assume the other side has no argument and just are pure evil, and then make a conclusion that they have no argument and just are pure evil. Easy victory, but a hollow one.

> This is a highly complex topic

And yet, you declare that on a highly complex topic having position different from yours is "evil" and has no argument worth considering. Maybe it's more complex than you think?

> that is between highly educated doctors

Nope, we can't have political and moral question be decided by a narrow class of credentialed ivory tower dwellers. At least not while having a democracy, that's just not how a democracy can function. You can have a monarchy or oligarchy work this way, but that's not what we have in the US, and anyway, why do you think the God Emperor (or the High Council of Benevolent Oligarchs) would necessarily belong to your tribe? What is built by power, would be destroyed by power. The only way to avoid it is to build consensus. But you can't build consensus if you don't recognize the other side exists.

> How am I over simplifying?

You seem to be assuming that your perspective on the issue is the only correct one, and therefore no one can legitimately think differently. In cases like this, that's only tenable by straw-manning or totally ignoring alternate perspectives.

Someone can start with different basic assumptions, and proceed to arrive at a totally different yet self-consistent perspective than yours. With the abortion debate, one important different assumption is if fetuses humanized or dehumanized.

I think I pretty frequently see errors in understanding that result from people taking their side's assumptions, and then trying to derive the other side's positions from that false starting point.

I know what the other side’s assumptions are, I even mentioned as such in my comment. They can keep their assumptions to themselves, and use them to make decisions about their life.

But I do not see why I should care. If someone’s assumptions lead to harm for my non fetus daughter, wife, sister, or any woman, then that is all that is needed to for me to write off their point of view.

> I know what the other side’s assumptions are, I even mentioned as such in my comment. They can keep their assumptions to themselves, and use them to make decisions about their life.

You also denied that they were self-consistent, which is what I (and possibly the others) were responding to. And even if you know what their different assumptions are, you don't seem to actually be doing anything with that information, which isn't that different from not knowing in the first place.

Are you really unaware that pro-life people consider the unborn baby/fetus a "living person"?

I am perfectly aware. It does not change my opinion that sacrificing the life or quality of life of a woman for the fetus is not an acceptable position.

It just seems like you're not even registering what the other side thinks. Like, a total non-awareness or non-acknowledgement of what the disagreement even is.

You're simply assuming the conclusion - that the fetus/baby isn't a child in the normal sense the way a born baby is a child.

The rest of your arguments flow from the notion of how ridiculous it is to make a woman sacrifice to save a non-child fetus. And from your premises, you are correct.

But that's missing the point entirely.

Pro-lifers don't think it's a non-child fetus. They think it's a child. For them, it's the same as sacrificing to save the life of a born baby.

That’s fine, but you’re a using a bad faith interpretation. You just admitted as much.

The point isn’t that you’re wrong. It’s that they aren’t thinking what you’re projecting them to think.

This is a tantalizing conspiracy theory. However, the event dates do not match up. The conservatives have been trying to overturn Roe for much longer than this year, and Amy Coney Barrett who started serving in late 2020. She was clearly appointed by the conservatives to help overturn Roe. The current unionization push started to really push steam in 2021, which occurred afterwards.