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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:
My immediate reaction was "that means abortion provider". And whaddya know?
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?
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 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.
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.
This isn't going to stick. In a world where abortions were minor surgeries and where travelling across state lines to have the surgery was (a) hard to conceal and (b) likely to be a long way because abortion policy would follow the red/blue divide, which is approximately sectional, rather than being an idiosyncratic feature of each state, this could stick. But in the world we live in, most abortions involve a small number of pills which can be posted from a legal clinic in a blue state, or in extremis illegally by a private citizen who obtained the pills with the tacit approval of her blue-state government. So either the federal government enforces laws* against mail-order abortion pills, or red state abortion laws are unenforceable. And enforcing those laws against the wishes of the (people and governments of) the blue states where the federal crimes are being committed is likely to become an ongoing ICE-in-Minneapolis level ugly political standoff.
Admittedly all this is an improvement because it takes federal abortion policy away from SCOTUS and puts it back into democratic territory.
* One relevant law is already on the books - the Comstock act prohibits sending abortifacients through the US mail. My understanding is that there is also a broad power for the FDA to restrict prescribing of drugs which are at risk of being illegally diverted without the need for new primary legislation.
IIRC current telehealth rules revolve around the locale of the patient, and traditionally doctors are licensed by the states and only have authority within those states. While blue states have allowed this (and I'm not even sure it bothers me too greatly), I wouldn't expect it to not get challenged in court WRT state extradition law and such, or for red states to find an equivalent axe to grind to upset blue state authorities on similar jurisdictional grounds.
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