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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31033 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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The latest abortion kerfuffle is decently well in the past now, and we've had a number of good threads on it in various places. I think it's a reasonable time to ask here:

Have you changed your personal opinion or political position on abortion access at all over the course of the last year or so? If so, to what, and based on what?

My take concerning the ethical issues is very similar to yours.

I have gained a greater appreciation of just how difficult it is to write a sane law banning abortion. ... However, laws should be written to give the maximum benefit of doubt to the doctor and mother. There should be a medical emergency exception. To prosecute an abortion as not being medically necessary the state should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the doctor was, not just wrong, but actively acting in bad faith.

I have come to conclusion that the difficulties are not about the law as written, but the societal and cultural stuff it is supposed to reflect. Namely, there is nothing to reflect. You can not write a law and have it obeyed if it doesn't "fit" the society.

(Draconian authoritarian enforcement may help, but that option comes with a risk that the draconian authoritarian enforcers will take bribes to look the other way because they don't agree with law either. Part of the risk in a police state is that it won't be the ideal Spartan "tough but just" police state but the draconian police state where widespread corruption and disrespect of the law is a norm, which is worse.)

If people have a commonly shared moral framework broadly accepted by mostly everyone, you can write a law "abortion is generally banned except in medical emergencies" and have outcomes you expect. Without the such shared moral framework, you either get "no medical emergency is serious enough, women suffer / die of complications" or "having an unwanted baby would cause some unwanted mental distress, which qualifies as a medical reason".

Thus, my opinion is that any serious [1] legal solution is downstream of values. Why people no longer want kids? Why they are viewed as a burden? If we'd solve that, and there is a possibility for long-term effective change.

[1] There is a possibility there are legal changes that could go together with a successful values reappraisal, or some marginal tweak will improve individual outcomes. But in big picture, it won't move the overall statistic / sentiment.

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