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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   19610 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Just heavily imply it was a spontaneous miscarriage. Nobody is going to pry much deeper

Since they were already oversharers in the first place, I see it as a good thing, to the extent them being transparent about yeeting their Downed fetus nudges such an action further within the Overton window and encourages others to do the same.

It is preferrable not to lie

Society prefers polite fictions about abortion, miscarriages and SIDS over the alternative

What is the scoop on SIDS? I heard some echoes from conspiritard circles that it's a euphemism for women killing their babies (by accident or not), but I don't have a high degree of faith in the source here, and I'm not an expert on baby health.

I'm friends with an EMT, this is correct. It's most commonly things like tired new parents co-sleeping with newborns and accidentally smothering them, etc. Newborn babies are super fragile, and it's not always prosecution-level negligence that kills them. As burkeboi mentions below, it's especially common amongst certain demographics you would expect.

I was reading the book Expecting Better from Oster since I'm having a kid soon, and she gave a stat where something like 80% or so of SIDS deaths come from smoking households in the UK. Those households are like 10-15% of the total households. That's not to say smoking is the big killer, although it is pretty bad for fetuses and new babies, but a family that is likely to smoke around their kid is likely to ignore other best practices as well.

From that, and other things I've read, it seems that SIDS is highly correlated with parents who do tons of things wrong, rather than just one thing or another. The "conspiracy" take is that a lot of public health messaging, to make the underclass and/or specific minorities look less bad, overemphasizes that 'this could happen to anyone' rather than pointing to most SIDS happening from parents being really negligent on many axes rather than Sally the Secretary having a drink every now and then.

That's an accurate description. Doesn't mean it's the right choice.

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