site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   30434 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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

But Texas’ new abortion ban had just gone into effect. It required physicians to confirm the absence of a fetal heartbeat before intervening unless there was a “medical emergency,” which the law did not define.

If you check the Texas code on abortion, Chapter 171, you find

Sec. 171.002. DEFINITIONS. In this chapter: [...] (3) "Medical emergency" means a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that, as certified by a physician, places the woman in danger of death or a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless an abortion is performed.

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.

At least from reading the supreme court opinion, that is not the impression I got. Of course, most doctors won't read the opinion. Instead, they'll get their information from rags like ProPublica so you might well be right.

But... assuming that doctors do read the SCOTX opinion, the rule is that as long as any reasonable doctor agrees that an abortion complies with the restrictions of the law, the doctors are in the clear. That sounds like a pretty lax standard to me? As in, as long as the defendants are able to produce any medical authority in good standing that agrees with them, they're in the clear.

The specific situations in the lawsuit back this up. The women in the lawsuit were not in any danger of impairment/death (beyond the usual pregnancy risks). A late-term miscarriage carries some probability of infection and it's not even clear this is a high probability (thoughts from actual doctors?). It does seem like an unnecessary risk (and imposition) to the mother imo but that's where my comments on the heartbeat law come into play. The guidelines for doctors at least seem to be clear.

Of course, most doctors won't read the opinion. Instead, they'll get their information from rags like ProPublica so you might well be right.

No. They'll get their information from their insurers and from the legal departments at the hospitals where they're employed, and I guarantee you that the attorneys involved aren't basing their advice on Pro Publica articles. The doctor in the Cox case wanted to perform an abortion, but was told by the hospital administration that they would only allow it if there was a court order. The doctors are directly consulting with sophisticated parties who can't tell them what the law is, exactly, and they're asking the courts to grant permission ahead of time to avoid potential criminal liability.

But... assuming that doctors do read the SCOTX opinion, the rule is that as long as any reasonable doctor agrees that an abortion complies with the restrictions of the law, the doctors are in the clear. That sounds like a pretty lax standard to me? As in, as long as the defendants are able to produce any medical authority in good standing that agrees with them, they're in the clear.

That is explicitly not what the opinion says. To wit:

Though the statute affords physicians discretion, it requires more than a doctor’s mere subjective belief. By requiring the doctor to exercise “reasonable medical judgment,” the Legislature determined that the medical judgment involved must meet an objective standard. Dr. Karsan asserted that she has a “good faith belief” that Ms. Cox meets the exception’s requirements. Certainly, a doctor cannot exercise “reasonable medical judgment” if she does not hold her judgment in good faith. But the statute requires that judgment be a “reasonable medical” judgment...

The standard is objective and not subjective. We don't make a determination that the doctor herself is "reasonable" and then defer to her judgment. We don't ask the doctor to point to some outside authority supporting her decision and back off so long as she can provide one. The bojective standard requires the jury to place themselves in the shoes of a hypothetical "reasonable doctor" and determine if the defendant's actions were in line with what this fictional doctor would do. When the court continues the quote above to say that

Dr. Karsan has not asserted that her “good faith belief” about Ms. Cox’s condition meets that standard

They are simply stating that Dr. Karsan did not use the appropriate test. They are not saying that Dr. Karsan's actions would have met the test. What this effectively means is that the legal reality of whether an abortion falls within an exception is something that can only be determined by a court, after the fact. Doctors can make educated guesses about edge cases, but simply stating that they believed the abortion was necessary, or believed their actions were reasonable, or believed the exception applied, or can support their conclusions with 500 citations to the medical literature is ultimately irrelevant, because these subjective beliefs do not, in and of themselves, make the doctor's actions objectively reasonable.

No. They'll get their information from their insurers and from the legal departments at the hospitals where they're employed, and I guarantee you that the attorneys involved aren't basing their advice on Pro Publica articles.

Fair enough.

The court addressed this specifically in IV.A. Specifically, on page 22, they state:

The Center argues that such a standard means that doctors are susceptible to a battle of the experts when not every doctor might reach the same medical judgment in each case. We rejected such an interpretation in In re State. “Reasonable medical judgment,” we held, “does not mean that every doctor would reach the same conclusion.” Rather, in an enforcement action under the Human Life Protection Act, the burden is the State’s to prove that no reasonable physician would have concluded that the mother had a life-threatening physical condition that placed her at risk of death or of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion was performed.

(Footnotes elided.)

The opinion has more exposition on this (and I assume the case they refer to has even more). It does not seem to be as unreasonable a standard as you seem to imply.

At least from reading the supreme court opinion, that is not the impression I got. Of course, most doctors won't read the opinion. Instead, they'll get their information from rags like ProPublica so you might well be right.

The doctors in this case got their information from the Texas attorney general, who publicly threatened to prosecute them if the lower-court order allowing them to perform the abortion didn't hold up on appeal (as, in the end, it didn't).

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats