This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Following up on a past comment on abortion by @naraburns: https://www.themotte.org/comment/250966?context=3#context.
ProPublica really found a fertile topic with this one and my liberal friends (i.e. all of them, I live in a major city) keep bringing them up. Most of the articles were about as bad as the one described in the above comment but they did lead me to Zurawski v. State of Texas: https://www.txcourts.gov/media/1458610/230629.pdf.
As expected, the lawyers on both sides need to deal with a judge instead of newspaper readers so the arguments are considerably more reasonable. The court ruled in favor of the state but some of the suggested changes to the law sound pretty reasonable to me? The one big change was to the heartbeat law: there are occasionally pregnancies which are "clearly" terminal but the fetus' heart is still beating. The example brought up in the case was a late-term miscarriage. There doesn't seem to be much of a point to delaying abortion in that case. Any comments from the more medically inclined members of this forum on how common and obvious such situations are?
Aside: this felt like an argument against judicial independence to me. Extreme cases of fetal demise can be complicated (right?). Ideally, the legal regime around them would be flexible and account for the individual nuances of every case. How could this be implemented in practice? Easy: by appointing a reliable third party to examine individual cases and make a reasoned determination. I.e. a judge! And we do this all the time! So, why did the Texas state legislature feel the need to enshrine such a restrictive standard (no fetal heartbeat) into the law? Obviously "politics" but the politics needs to come from somewhere and the source here i think is activist judges. Because judicial independence is just a nice way of saying that judges are out-of-control and cannot be disciplined in practice (as the ninth circuit loves to remind us). The only means of control left are occasional reversals by superior courts (which themselves aren't under legislative control) and extremely precise laws. In a hypothetical tyranny, judges could be subject to fine-grained discipline and therefore trusted with far more responsibility.
It was easy for ProPublica to find a fertile topic here since they were willing to fertilize it with bullshit themselves. Which is to say, they skirted the truth in ways which I think are properly characterized "lies", even if someone might be able to say "well, technically...". One of the clearest cases is
If you check the Texas code on abortion, Chapter 171, you find
So how can ProPublica say the law did not define "medical emergency"? Well, "the law" in that case was Subchapter H, Section 171.201 et seq. The definition of "Medical emergency" was pre-existing in Section 171.002. Same chapter, and you can see above the definition explicitly applies to the whole chapter (including the new law). So as close to a lie as you can get without technically being an untruth.
The biggest problem with the medical exceptions is that there is no confidence among the medical community that any medical abortion won't be investigated and prosecuted. Ken Paxton has already demonstrated that he's willing to challenge a TRO and threaten hospitals with prosecution and other penalties if he doesn't think a particular abortion is covered by the exception. If option A means potential prosecution and option B means a possible hike in malpractice insurance premiums, option B wins every time. You never want to put yourself in a position where the only thing standing between you and a lengthy prison term is whether you and a tribunal have the same understanding of "imminent" or whatever. The upshot is that the only time doctors and hospitals are comfortable using the medical exception is when the woman is on her deathbed, and you end up hearing stories about bad situations that are made worse by delayed action.
Definitely most of the time. But abortion seems a topic of generally much stronger opinions than euthanasia, and at least one doctor there (Kevorkian) was willing to go to jail for what he believed in. As far as I know, nobody is actually in jail for violating post-Dobbs abortion rules in the US, which I find surprising.
I'm honestly surprised nobody has challenged it yet. The trial would be a three ring circus akin to the Scopes trial, and Paxton would have to deal with the reality of it being difficult to get a conviction in the kind of urban county where the law is likely to be tested. I think the reason that hasn't been done yet is because testing the law is ultimately an exercise in futility. The defense is likely to rely more on the exceptions than call for full-throated jury nullification, and the response to any acquittal would be the legislature specifically barring an individual exception. Or they could just do nothing and make the prosecution itself a deterrent. Kevorkian was acquitted when he was using his suicide machine or whatever it was and there were legitimate legal arguments to be made that his actions weren't criminal. When he started injecting patients directly and relying on moral arguments instead of legal ones, he got convicted.
Finding a pro-life jury in Dallas or Travis county takes work, but it’s very doable, and while it would be controversial Texas doesn’t need to care- it’s not actually illegal to exclude jurors who are likely to nullify the law.
A pro-life jury wouldn't be enough in a case like this; you'd need a jury who is actively gunning for the doctor. I don't think you appreciate what it would actually take to secure a conviction. The only witnesses testifying for the prosecution would be whatever bureaucrat decided a crime had been committed based on a review of the paperwork and a medical expert who would testify that the life of the mother wasn't in danger. the defense has their own expert to counter the prosecution. They also have the mother, who will tearfully testify about how excited her and her husband were when they got pregnant and how sick she got at the hospital and how terminating the pregnancy was the hardest decision of her life and how the defendant is a hero, etc. The facts imply that the treating physician was of the opinion that the abortion was medically necessary.
I'm a litigator, and I deal in medical issues; juries are not going to sympathize with pencil pushers who never met the woman let alone examined her. What you're asking them to do is overrule the judgment of a treating physician over the objection of an expert. At this point, the best the prosecution can hope for is a hung jury. And this is all before you even have to worry about jury selection. If the prosecution directly asks prospective jurors about abortion then all they're doing is poisoning the jury pool by dredging up opinions on a sensitive topic. And for what? You aren't getting anyone booted for cause without disqualifying the entire jury pool, so you're just looking for places to waste your peremptories. The goal shouldn't be to get a pro-life jury, because you're not getting one. The goal in jury selection should be to use relevant proxies to weed out anyone who is rabidly pro-choice.
"They also have the mother, who will tearfully testify about how excited her and her husband were when they got pregnant and how sick she got at the hospital and how terminating the pregnancy was the hardest decision of her life and how the defendant is a hero, etc."
What if the judge is hostile and decides to disallow that testimony?
What grounds would the judge have for excluding the testimony? To answer your question, it would almost certainly mean the case gets overturned on appeal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link