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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9266 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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Is this culture war? I'm not entirely sure anymore. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not, not really, just wearied of it all.

So... list of recommendations of new SF/Fantasy popped up on a social media site (okay, it's Tumblr) and it's a mix of some continuing series (that I've never read but have at least heard of, e.g. Murderbot and the Ann Leckie Radch universe) and new novels. Much what you'd expect, except this one stuck in my attention like a splinter:

We Dance Upon Demons, Vaishnavi Patel (12 May). A reproductive health care worker fights both human attacks on her clinic and supernatural attacks after she develops mysterious powers.

My immediate reaction was "that means abortion provider". And whaddya know?

In We Dance Upon Demons, depressed twenty-something Nisha is the volunteer coordinator at an understaffed and beleaguered abortion clinic. After a strange encounter with an Indian statue in the museum, Nisha is plunged into a strange world of demons and monsters–but in the end, the supernatural may not be as dangerous as the very human threats to her clinic…

So where's the culture war? Well, apart from the pro-life protestors being portrayed as screaming bigots and (of course!) the obligatory raped twelve year old*, it's just that I'm tired. There's not even the honesty of calling this what it is: abortion. No, it's "reproductive health care". That is the new shibboleth, I understand that, it's just... okay, the battle has been lost. Abortion is now enshrined as a fundamental human right, like food and water. We've long moved on from "sadly necessary, safe legal and rare" to "of course you're going to kill the baby, but it's not a baby, it's not a life well technically okay but not a real life, it's not a person, what do you mean murder, now please sign my petition about shrimp and AI are conscious entities that we should give legal rights so they can't be enslaved".

Yeah. I'm tired and I don't know where we're going from here on in, but if AI does turn us all into paperclips, we have no bloody leg to stand on in opposition.

*You think I'm joking?

While the individual scenes are brutal, like a raped twelve-year -old being called a murderer by protesters as she tries to get into the clinic, it’s the sheer relentlessness of it all that stood out to me. Every day, Nisha’s job is to escort patients trying to access basic health care through a mob screaming abuse, and it never stops.

Based on the review you linked, it sounds like the book was written by someone who used to volunteer for Planned Parenthood, and it draws on her experiences from that time (even if she adds supernatural elements.) While it is still probably crap (since 90% of everything is crap), that at least feels like a book that could have some interesting roman à clef-style presentations of real experiences the author had, if it was in the hands of a competent writer.

There's not even the honesty of calling this what it is: abortion. No, it's "reproductive health care". That is the new shibboleth, I understand that, it's just... okay, the battle has been lost. Abortion is now enshrined as a fundamental human right, like food and water.

There definitely seems to be a one reality, two screens effect here.

Pro-life people like you get to claim that the battle is lost, and abortion is now enshrined as a fundamental human right. While pro-choice people can point to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe v Wade four years ago, and a patchwork of state laws that look like this and claim that the battle is lost, and women's rights are a dead letter in much of the United States.

I tend to be a federalist on a meta-level, and so I tend to think kicking a controversial issue to the state level to let the voters decide is probably the better choice. Especially since I assume a federal ban, or a return to federal permissiveness will probably continue to have a corrosive effect on American politics.

We've long moved on from "sadly necessary, safe legal and rare" to "of course you're going to kill the baby, but it's not a baby, it's not a life well technically okay but not a real life, it's not a person, what do you mean murder, now please sign my petition about shrimp and AI are conscious entities that we should give legal rights so they can't be enslaved".

While I'm sure much of the grey tribe are more "blue" when it comes to the abortion debate, I actually don't think that the combination of positions you outlined here is a very common one overall.

I tend to think kicking a controversial issue to the state level to let the voters decide is probably the better choice.

I've never understood how, if Alice in Austin is pregnant and does not want to be, Bob in Big Spring compelling her to remain pregnant is less of an imposition than Carol in Cambridge telling Bob to mind his own.

For me it, it is more about pragmatism. Most court-mandated expansions of civil rights in the United States started underwater with the public, and got more popular over time. Roe v Wade did not, and instead it created a wedge issue that made the quality and tenor of American politics worse over the affected period. I actually think politics (narrowly considered) has gotten slightly better since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, because the abortion debate has cooled down as a national issue, and become a state-level one.

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