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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30124 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Texas tries to put Planned Parenthood out of business again(and might succeed this time)

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/15/texas-abortion-planned-parenthood-lawsuit/

Last year, the state filed a federal lawsuit claiming Planned Parenthood improperly billed Medicaid for $10 million in payments during the period when the state was trying to remove the organization from the program.

Texas is seeking more than $1.8 billion in reimbursement, penalties and fees.

So Texas wants to lawfare Planned Parenthood out of being able to operate. This isn't new. What is new is this part:

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a conservative who previously worked on anti-abortion cases as a religious liberty lawyer, will hear arguments from both sides today in Amarillo.

"A conservative who previously worked on anti-abortion cases as a religious liberty lawyer" is a technically accurate description of Matthew Kacsmaryk. It is, however, leaving out the context that was the judge who suspended FDA approval for mifepristone, had only previously worked for conservative activist groups, and also got handpicked by the plaintiffs. There is a 0.0% chance he will rule in favor of Planned Parenthood under any circumstances.

So what's the practical effect?

The 2022 lawsuit, filed by Paxton before he was impeached this year, argues that Planned Parenthood erred by not appealing the initial termination through administrative channels and instead pursuing the case through the courts.

Though they’re seeking to claw back $10 million in payments, they’ve asked the judge to order Planned Parenthood to pay an additional two times that value, plus civil penalties and interest from the day the payment was billed as well as expenses, costs and attorneys fees.

The estimated $1.8 billion payment would likely bankrupt Texas’ three Planned Parenthood affiliates several times over at a moment the organization argues they are needed more than ever.

So basically similar to what New York tried with the NRA. It should go without saying that while I find Planned Parenthood an unsympathetic defendant, this would not be happening to a less politically charged organization and 180 times the overbilling amount is just absurd. Also the legal interpretation seems dubious and probably would've been dismissed by a less biased judge.

I do want to point out some incredible naivety:

“Our organization knows we always have to be making decisions that are the most ethical and the most compliant with any rule or regulation out there, so it just felt like a great injustice,” she said. “I had hoped that if you play by the rules and do the right thing, it will turn out right, but that’s not the case.”

PP is, uh, not going to get left alone in the culture wars, and that's their fault for constantly making themselves a target in every way they can come up with. It's fair to point to people who don't have access to whatever healthcare services they provide(do they actually provide mammograms? The claim seems debunked but the people who did the debunking are not fans of PP) but trying to paint Planned Parenthood as an innocent victim of broadsides unleashed for no reason, even if it's playing pretty hardball, is not totally in contact with reality. Planned Parenthood is not in any universe apolitical and their side did after all start the trend of trying to punish the opposition.

It really is so wonderfully charming how devoted Texas Republicans are to ensuring poor and underclass women are forced into having more babies than they currently do. This certainly won’t lead to problems down the road, because impoverished single mothers famously raise the most well-adjusted sons who commit crime at well-below-average rates.

Hopefully SCOTUS eventually limits this specific form of depressing ridiculousness.

It really is so wonderfully charming how devoted Texas Republicans are to ensuring poor and underclass women are forced into having more babies than they currently do.

Are you sure you aren't letting the mask slip just a bit? The "Uncharitable Strawman" of Secular progressives and jews amongst American conservatives is that these are people who are very much anti-life. That they are misanthropes first and foremost, and that all the rhetoric about QUALYs and "Dignity" and "a right to die" (see medically assisted suicide) is done with the explicit goal of devaluing human life.

Your comment here isn't exactly disabusing anyone of that notion, just the opposite in fact.

Isn't pushing a policy against your political interests pretty much the surest sign of an actual principle? The things you take Ls for are the things you do all the other politicking for. I'm not pro life, but I really do appreciate a movement that is so adamant in their conviction that they'd trade everything to stop what they see, with genuinely hard to fight reasons for believing, as a mass murder. They don't have a monopoly on this mantle but, taken with all their other flaws, they do seem to be the type of people who would not have walked along with hitler's plans.

Thanks for acknowledging we prolifers are not racists or classists!

I don't think the solution to the problems of the poor is "kill the poor". But it's a classic pro-abortion talking point, isn't it? "Oh you guys don't care once the baby is born, you'll leave all the problems of abuse and poverty in place! Meanwhile we're the compassionate, caring ones!"

Where compassion and caring means "kill that spawn because it's inferior".

Where compassion and caring means "kill that spawn because it's inferior".

Bingo, it's almost as if the so-called compassion is front and the real goal is something a bit more demonic.

Thanks for acknowledging we prolifers are not racists or classists!

From my position, the hypocrisy of the regime shows that racist and classist are meaningless, empty slurs. You are a racist and a classist when you get called such by your betters.

Has anyone wno matters in the blue tribe- say, Obama, ever strongly castigated other blue tribers from shitting on working lower and middle classes who vote in ways they don't like ?

And as to racism, the baizuo (white liberal, chinese term) are very racist against the outgroup, whites who don't think like they do.

And I suspect mildly racist against themselves, because if you are willing to overpromote totems of your religious faith over competent fellows of your own politics and race, you are engaging in what is de-facto racist bigotry, are you not ?

Where compassion and caring means "kill that spawn because it's inferior".

@covfefeAnon calls this "The woke are more correct than the mainstream"[1]* . In this case it'd be people like @HlynkaCG who have a mental block that disallows them to understand that the dice are loaded from the very start and classical liberalism is just a slightly roundabout way for the 5% of natural masters to exploit the to exploit the 95% of natural slaves without even the responsibility of having to care for them*. Woke liberalism is a less efficient, more baroque yet still essentially similar system, except here the modern 'liberals' are using the fight against exploitation as a patronage program for themselves and their clients.

[1]:twitter link. Having a lurker account logged in costs you 3 minutes of time. If you don't want a problem, DO NOT ENGAGE, twitter is addictive!

people like @HlynkaCG who have a mental block that disallows them to understand that the dice are loaded from the very start and classical liberalism is just a slightly roundabout way for the 5% of natural masters to exploit the to exploit the 95% of natural slaves without even the responsibility of having to care for them*

In my defense or perhaps to my detriment, its not a "mental block" so much as i was never particularly "liberal" to begin with except in the loosest sense of the term as it might have been used 300 years ago. IE being a sincere republican rather than an absolute monarchist.

What if slavery taints the soul of the slaver just as much if not more than it taints the soul of the slave?

What if contra Locke, Rousseau, Mills, Rawls, and our own Scott Alexander, there is nothing "rational" about believing in "self interest" or civilization, nor that these ideals are somehow "the default"? What if niceness community and civilization are a conscious choice that each individual must make on their own?

I don't think the solution to the problems of the poor is "kill the poor". But it's a classic pro-abortion talking point, isn't it?

I mean, that's the least charitable interpretation of: allow people to answer the widely debated philosophical question of the moral worth of a fetus for themselves, all while providing society with a list of known benefits. The implied eugenics (initially a progressive cornerstone) is just a bonus imo.

allow people to answer the widely debated philosophical question of the moral worth of a fetus for themselves

It's the widely debated philosophical question of who is a person and has the right to life. This is not a question that should be resolved on an individual level.

This literally begs the entire argument.

At one nanosecond after fertilization, has a person formed? Is the affirmative obvious and/or rational? If not, what about 2 nanoseconds? Should murder charges apply for disposed IVF embryos? Why don't we have funerals for every lost embryo? Should the State be able to enforce veganism? Etc, etc.

The State shouldn't be able to force behavior in accordance with unfalsifiable beliefs without broad consent/consensus from the governed - which is lacking with abortion. It's exactly the kind of thing that should be left to people's own mind.

9 months after fertilization, has a person formed? If so, how about 8 months? Is the affirmative obvious and/or rational? Should murder charges apply to 9 month old fetuses? If not, how about to newborns of the same age? Why do we name babies before they're sapient? Should the state be able to enforce infanticide? Etc., etc.

The State shouldn't be able to force behavior in accordance with unfalsifiable beliefs without broad consent/consensus from the governed - which is lacking with abortion. It's exactly the kind of thing that should be left to people's own mind.

What an excellently crafted sentence. I'm truly impressed how many rhetorical tricks and misleading turns of phrase you managed to fit into it.

The State shouldn't be able to

It should be able to do whatever the people have given it the power to do. Nothing else matters for determining ideal state capabilities.

force behavior

Preventing behavior is not the same as forcing it.

in accordance with unfalsifiable beliefs

It doesn't matter what beliefs the state's actions are "in accordance" with. People have many different beliefs, all of which are irrelevant. Policies (and their legal justification) stand on their own two feet, regardless of what beliefs they happen to be in accordance with.

without broad consent/consensus from the governed

Again, what matters is whether the system has consensus support from the governed. The consensus on individual policies is irrelevant.

which is lacking with abortion.

There is broad consensus to ban abortion after the first trimester. Even broader to ban it after the second. It's dishonest to say America lacks a consensus on abortion, when really we only lack consensus regarding some details of the timing of abortion.

Should the state be able to enforce infanticide?

I think you meant ban infanticide, but otherwise all excellent points! Which is why your initial comments just begs all the questions.

rhetorical tricks and misleading turns of phrase

Unless you point out examples, this critique is just misleading rhetoric. AFAIKT, we merely disagree about how powerful a government should be, when, and why. That sort of thing.

It should be able to do whatever the people have given it the power to do.

I totally agree in theory/practice. I aspire to a government limited by its founding ideologies, but I concede that it could later vote in a communist dictatorship, bans on meat eating, renewed bans on abortion, freeing slaves, whatever. Things change.

we only lack consensus regarding some details of the timing of abortion.

Here too I totally agree. For the last several decades, only around 50% think abortion should be legal in most or all cases, which is not an overwhelming consensus, and I'm leaving out a lot of important details. Eyeballing things, I'd guess 10-20M Americans no longer have the freedom to see their beliefs about abortion enacted (ie from your gallup source, the 69% deciding it should be legal to abort in the first trimester X how many people live where this is illegal). More good data below. I don't see anything like a consensus either way, which is why I don't think the government should intervene in principle.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

I think you meant ban infanticide, but otherwise all excellent points! Which is why your initial comments just begs all the questions.

To me it is obvious that 9 month abortion should be illegal. It follows that the government should take some position on abortion even though it is controversial. If you disagree, we could talk about infants and infanticide, which are controversial to some. There is no such thing as the government not taking a position on who has human rights. If they "take no position" really they are taking the maximally extreme position that none of the people in question are people, and therefore they have no rights and do not need to be protected. I don't see how my initial comment begs the question at all.

Unless you point out examples, this critique is just misleading rhetoric. AFAIKT, we merely disagree about how powerful a government should be, when, and why. That sort of thing.

Well that's what I attempted to do with all the comments on specific turns of phrase. Things like "force behavior" are not necessarily 100% incorrect, but IMO they skew the discussion with rhetorically powerful imagery and are more inaccurate than not.

I'm a fan of Scott's libertarian archipelago. People should self-govern at a relatively low level and have the freedom to travel between whichever of these loose governments will accept them. This allows for both strong communities and personal autonomy. I'd personally like to live in a conservative government of that sort (socially and very economically) but with the understanding that anybody can leave without hassle--though getting back in might be harder.

In other words, I don't want to enforce my beliefs on people who don't share them, but I do want to enforce them on people who do share them but are bad at following through. I'm fine with people doing hard drugs, but I want to keep them away from the lower-functioning people who choose to live in my own community. They can still choose to do them, but now that choice is a much bigger one (made appropriately large, I think) and requires more intent behind it.

I totally agree in theory/practice. I aspire to a government limited by its founding ideologies, but I concede that it could later vote in a communist dictatorship, bans on meat eating, renewed bans on abortion, freeing slaves, whatever. Things change.

Yeah, honestly talking too much about the theory is a waste of time anyways. The governments we do have work more by practical principles of power than by any ethical/theoretical justification. I wouldn't want any existing government to vote in a dictatorship, but my point was just the rather nitpicky one that I would like governments to in theory be capable of doing such a thing if that's what the people want.

I don't see anything like a consensus either way, which is why I don't think the government should intervene in principle.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/06/americas-abortion-quandary/

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

These studies still have a consensus though! In the first, 78% think abortion should either always be illegal, or should be illegal if it's late enough in the pregnancy. In the second, 70-85% think it should be illegal in the third trimester.

A lack of consensus doesn't instantly mean the government should side with the most extreme people on your side, especially when it's about something which can't necessarily be described as individual rights.

allow people to answer the widely debated philosophical question of the moral worth of a fetus for themselves,

just a hat tip, to pro-lifers there is no debate, murder is murder; that is what everyone else always get wrong about them.

Why is it hard to believe that pro-lifers really, honestly think that abortion is murder? If they believe that it really is murder, the level of restraint they've shown in sticking to lawfare and eventually succeeding in some limited fashion is a pretty remarkable story. I disagree with their starting point, but that's hardly the point when it comes to their actions.

I still have no idea how anyone can honestly believe that the Supreme Court has any meaningful role to play in this at all. I suppose penumbral emanations are powerful things, but it seems pretty obvious to me that there simply no Constitution-based policy to be had.

Why is it hard to believe that pro-lifers really, honestly think that abortion is murder?

The fact that a lot of pro-lifers are reluctant to call for criminal penalties for the woman getting the abortion and instead place all liability on the doctor does make me think they don't really think it's equivalent to murder. That's certainly not how we would handle a woman who hired a doctor to euthanize her 3 month old baby. We would charge them both.

I do think they actually believe it's immoral and I don't expect the eugenic style arguments to convince any but the most confused pro lifers (ie people who are only defending the pro life side because it's the republican position who never really personally thought it through) but i think only a minority are consistent in their belief that it's 'murder'

As pro-choice activists are fond of pointing out, It's not all that long ago (only 20 - 25 years) that gunning down abortion doctors in the street and burning their clinics to the ground was something that was, if not inside, not that far outside the Overton Window.

Many of the "elder statesmen/thought-leaders" of the current pro-life movement came of age during that time and they remember the lessons. Specifically that being "pro-life" means being PRO-LIFE. If you shoot a motherfucker in the head, you are a fucking hypocrite. It doesn't matter how much they might have deserved it. Desserts (just, sweet, or otherwise) have got nothing to do with it.

I don’t think fentanyl should be legal. I think people using fentanyl are very clearly in the wrong. I’m also not sure that sending addicts to jail is the best way to get them to stop. Are my beliefs consistent? I have no idea, but I also don’t particularly care. I just want people to not use, and especially so in public.

Is abortion murder? It’s at least vaguely murdery. On the flip side, no one is arguing for no fault third trimester abortions under the theory of “my body my choice” which is the logical conclusion of elevating bodily autonomy to sacrosanctity. Does my “body my choice” apply to vaccine mandates, mask mandates, assisted suicide, recreational drug use, medical drug use, the age of consent or the drinking age? Are prochoicers consistent?

The mainstream prolife narrative is that abortive women are mostly pushed into it by shitty boyfriends, counselors, etc, and are as much a victim as a perpetrator.

I know, and my contention is that this is not a narrative they would cling to if they truly truly believed it was 1 for 1 equivalent to murdering your own child. Look at how people respond to women who kill their own children, for example, casey anthony. People, women in particular, hated her. No one was making excuses for her. The fact that women who get abortions don't receive this same level of hate is indicative that it is seen as lesser than murder.

The fact that a lot of pro-lifers are reluctant to call for criminal penalties for the woman getting the abortion

And here we go again! Another time this one is trotted out!

Pro-abortion: If you lot really thought it was murder, you'd put the woman in jail! You don't really mean what you say, the real reason is that you hate women and want to punish them for being sexually active!

Someone suggests doing just that.

Pearls are clutched all over the Usual Spaces by the Usual Faces: We said it ! We told you! The monsters hate women and want to punish them for being sexually active! Vote for us or they'll throw you in jail for having a miscarriage!!!!

Remember what they said about Trump on this? So thank you for your very kind invitation, but I think I won't stick my foot into the bear trap, if it's all the same with you:

Donald Trump said women who undergo abortions should be punished if the procedure is made illegal. In an interview for a town hall meeting to air on MSNBC Wednesday night, Trump said "there has to be some form of punishment" for women.

While most Republican officeholders and candidates oppose abortion rights, few have publicly stated positions on whether there should be legal penalties for women who have abortions. Most believe it is the physicians who perform them who should be prosecuted.

...Still, Trump's remarks managed to inflame both sides of the abortion issue.

The abortion rights advocacy organization NARAL Pro-Choice America called Trump's comments "a new low." The group's president, Ilyse Hogue, said, "Not only is this an unhinged position far from where the American people are, but it's sure to endanger women were he to become president."

...The presidential campaigns were also quick to criticize Trump. Ted Cruz tweeted:

And Cruz's campaign chairman, Chad Sweet, said on CNN that Cruz "shares the views of the pro-life movement, which for years has focused on punishing those who perform the abortions, not the women who get them." John Kasich responded that he would "absolutely not" agree with punishing women for having an abortion. "It's a difficult enough situation, to try to punish somebody."

In tweets, Democrat Hillary Clinton called Trump's comment "horrific and telling," while Bernie Sanders called it "shameful."

Pro-abortion: If you lot really thought it was murder, you'd put the woman in jail!

Yes. Unironically, yes.

You don't really mean what you say, the real reason is that you hate women and want to punish them for being sexually active!

I think pro-lifers mean what they say as far as being opposed to abortion, but I almost never meet a pro-lifer who claims to believe abortion is literally murdering a baby who wants to literally charge a woman who has an abortion with the same crime that a woman who literally murders her baby would be charged with.

Yes, you are correct that it's a bear trap of a question. It is tactically sound for pro-lifers to avoid it. But it's a bear trap because of what it reveals. Either you don't literally believe abortion is the same as murdering a baby (you might believe it's very bad, you might believe it's kind of like murdering a baby, you might believe an innocent baby died, but you don't believe the woman having an abortion has the full moral culpability of a woman who intentionally murders her baby) or you have to explain why it shouldn't be treated the same criminally. I've only ever met a handful of pro-lifers who will bite that bullet and say "Yes, she's a murderer." Everyone else has answers that sound like either cognitive dissonance or disingenuousness.

Trump's answer "horrified both sides" because he was being too honest and saying the quiet part out loud. Yes, if it's illegal, it makes no sense to say "Oh, but we don't mean punish the mother - she's in such a difficult situation." Or else you are, at the very least, admitting that it is some lesser crime than murder.

The reason it's a bear trap is that there are very few people like OP above who is happy to come out and say they support abortion because it weeds out the underclass. Most of it is all bleeding-hearts about compassion and empathy and being nice morally superior people who love everyone unconditionally.

I'd bite that bullet. Once may be a terrible choice and an unexpected event. You're on your third abortion? If you haven't figured out How Babies Are Made by now, jail time. But of course, the howling about "no pity! no compassion! monster monster monster!" will drown out everything.

It is entirely possible to hold both views: that this is killing, and yet the mother too deserves compassion. But if you do that, then you're in the bear trap. Admit the mother should be treated kindly, it's "you don't believe it's murder". Say you believe it's murder, and "you want to force women to give birth just like broodstock".

If I can extend some amount of understanding and empathy to a murderer because of mental illness or terrible situation, then I can do that here as well. But you'll get no thanks for it. The pro-abortion side yammer on about "compromise", where "compromise" means "you give in to all our demands, we give you nothing in return". That's why I think the rape/incest/physical threat to the life of the mother exceptions are bad tactics, because it's treated as "well you've already given in on abortion for this reason, so you've lost the right to say it's killing because if you really thought it was killing you'd never give in on that; therefore you must give in on abortion for the other reasons we want it".

The trolley problem people suddenly get all "but you can't sacrifice the woman here!" when it's "sacrifice one to save many".

I can buy a position that is something like "Abortion is murder but we should consider mitigating circumstances when sentencing a woman for murdering her child," but I don't buy the position "Abortion is murder but we should only punish the doctor, not the woman having the abortion." Which is still the mainstream pro-life party line. I suspect some of them are just plain disingenuous (they actually do want to convict women for murder, they just know that's not something they can say right now), but others seem to have genuinely wrestled themselves into an ideological position where abortion is kinda sorta murder for rhetorical purposes but not really.

"Oh, but we don't mean punish the mother - she's in such a difficult situation."

How about this variant? "Oh, but we don't mean punish the mother - she's been fooled by a billion dollar industry and a corrupt culture into believing it’s not murder, it’s her right and freedom as a woman and also her only way out of poverty."

It’s a scenario which has one equivalent, which is conveniently its culture war inverse: "Oh, but we don't mean punish the soldier - he's been fooled by a trillion dollar industry and a corrupt culture into believing it’s not murder, it’s his patriotic honor and duty as a man and also his only way out of poverty."

I don't think the equivalence to soldiers is convincing. Even anti-war activists generally do not hold soldiers responsible for being sent to fight by their country - but they can be held responsible for specific war crimes.

"Women have been fooled by a billion-dollar industry into believing that murdering babies is okay" - okay, but once you cripple that industry and make it illegal, why wouldn't you prosecute them? How is this different from saying gang bangers saw no other way out of their environment and therefore shouldn't be prosecuted, we should only go after, say, the cartels?

Your answers are typical, and they all boil down to not holding women responsible in the same way you'd hold them responsible for strangling a baby in its crib.

Even anti-war activists generally do not hold soldiers responsible for being sent to fight by their country - but they can be held responsible for specific war crimes.

Soldiers are not blamed for killing specific enemy soldiers.

Being held not responsible for "specific war crimes" would be like not being held responsible for abortions that are morally repugnant for additional reasons than normal.

once you cripple that industry and make it illegal, why wouldn't you prosecute them?

At that point, I’d consider it, because at that point, it’s legally considered murder with conspiracy to murder, and they’d know it without excuse. I’d gladly go after PP for RICO today and the abortion providers for conspiracy to murder right now, with impeachment for any legislator voting down a single-issue “born-alive” bill.

I’ve met two women who murdered their child in the womb far past the “kid has an active brain” stage, one a wife on reddit for economic reasons and one a single IRL for emotional reasons (her ex was revealed to be a jerk and she wasn’t ready for single motherhood). Neither considered the child a real person yet. Would I treat them like baby stranglers at worst or concentration camp guards at Nuremberg at best? The first, yes, the second, no. The cognitive dissonance would be too shattering for her and send her to suicide.

If it were possible to end abortion by jailing the mothers, I would do that. If it were possible to end abortion by letting the mothers free, I would do that. And if it were possible to end abortion by jailing some mothers and letting others free, I would do that. The practice itself is abhorrent, and abolishing it is far more important than book-keeping of charges for individuals who've engaged in a practice our society has sanctioned.

More realistically, I endorse legalized infanticide, and point out that the actual model our society appears to have settled on is that whether its a baby or a fetus is a determination the mother herself gets to make, with the fetus/child as her sole property that she may demand protection for or disposal of on her personal whim. Shades of the ancient Greek family law, as I understand it. The world is full of many evils, and will remain so no matter what happens with regard to abortion.

You think abortion is abhorrent but you support legalized infanticide? I guess I see your point in abolishing artificial distinctions (even pro-choicers often have a problem with "It's only murder the moment the baby exits the birth canal") but I honestly can't tell whether answering "The world is full of evils" with "Therefore we should legalize evil" is meant to be ironic. At what age would you make it actually illegal to kill a child?

"Endorse" might be the wrong word. If people are going to do what they're definately going to do, infanticide would be a more honest, legible way of doing it, and would incur no additional moral debt.

As to age limits, the point is that whether it's a child or not is the Mother's decision. Again, I point to the ancient Greek custom, which is where we appear to have arrived: the coexistence of legal abortion till birth (and in some cases, infanticide laws no one seems interested in enforcing) with laws that add serious extra penalties to harm caused to the unborn by third-parties might be considered schizophrenic, but in fact it makes perfect sense if one presumes that the personhood of the child is in fact determined by the mother. I mean, every possible objection to this that I can see is what we already have, so why would I object to simply being honest about it? And if we're willing to kill them when they're completely innocent, why not be willing to kill them when they grow into assholes like the rest of us?

Bonus points for restoring exposure as the method of killing, so someone else can actually come and rescue the kid and raise them as their own, which tends to drag in the point that abortion is actually a whole lot more about closure than most pro-choice people are willing to admit.

The point of the world being full of evils is a reminder, to myself as much as anyone, that none of this actually solves anything long-term. Forcing people to not kill their babies will not actually make the people on either side of that interaction less evil. When talking about morals-driven policy, it's easy to lose sight of that fact.

More comments

I can see some logic in the position of lightly punishing women and harshly punishing doctors.

Women who seek abortions have grown up among propaganda that tells them abortions are never wrong, killing a 38 week fetus is not the same as killing a baby, etc.

If there were a successful propaganda effort to convince women that euthanizing infants was really no big deal, I could imagine a similar punishment regime. The doctor has a responsibility to know the law and knows damn well what they’re doing. The woman may have the moral culpability of a brainwashed cultist.

I think that's usually either out of political expedience, or compassion for the mother who may be in a tough spot.

That said, yeah, people definitely wouldn't be fine with legalizing mothers killing their babies shortly after they're born, regardless of how tough the mother's situation is, so yeah, to the extent that it's due to compassion, it seems inconsistent.

I struggle with abortion. There does seem a time when the fetus isn’t a human (eg minutes after implantation). There does seem a time clearly when the fetus is a human (eg minutes prior to coming out of the birth canal). So there is a bit of a sorties paradox going on here that creates hard line drawing.

I also don’t really buy the arguments of bodily integrity. The woman (outside of rape) created the situation that creates the conflict of rights — indeed this is a unique situation where there is a conflict of rights and one party took zero action to create the conflict. So to me this is purely a line drawing exercise.

I imagine many Americans feel somewhat similar (at some point it is perfectly fine, at some point it is murder, and drawing where that crosses over is difficult).

I think abortion is one of those Necker cube, two ways of seeing the world things. If you can't see the two sides then you haven't really tried very hard or have some systemic condition such as black or white thinking.

Murder is the wrong word of course but we get the idea, someone is ending a potential human life.

But having the state force someone to carry through an event they're not in favour of and that has very real risks to health and even life is morally wrong if you believe in the sovereignty of the individual. It's not equivalent, or a real life scenario, but a thought experiment of forcing someone to take a vaccine with serious potential health impacts and a 9 month side-effect profile in order to save someones life wouldn't presumably get the same republican buy-in.

So at the least it is weighing up these morals. My take is that a liberal society can't force someone to do carry to term- it would be fine in a theocracy but we don't live in a theocracy. Frankly that's some cold-assed shit to put on someone who is at most 50% to blame.

At the same time I think culture needs to shift back the other way. There should be shame associated with abortion, the morning after pill is not contraception, a fetus is a potential human being, not just a bunch of cells.

Gotta look at cost of replacement, resources.

Aborted baby can be replaced in under a year.

Murdered teenager is a decade and a half of care and a decade of memories and experiences gone.

I think the really interesting thing about abortion is how sui generis it is.

The vaccine example doesn’t really work. First, the vaccine may save a third party. Second, any life snuffed out by a party that isn’t vaccinated was snuffed out because the dying person choose to create the potential interaction. That is, A and B both have to choose to be in the same vicinity. A could solve the impasse by taking a vaccine (assuming the vaccine worked perfectly). B could solve the impasse by taking the vaccine or not being there.

It is thus hard to say B has a right to force A to take a vaccine. With abortion, the B (ie the fetus) can make no choice to prevent the conflict of rights.

Third, there is a difference morally between spreading unwittingly a virus and actively choosing to kill someone.

I think perhaps a better thought excitement is that you are doing a fun activity that you know will have a reasonably chance of causing a third party (who has zero control) to die unless you under take a 9 month uncomfortable period of physical stress and a slight up tick in risk that you’ll die. Phrased that way, I think even most Democrats would say yeah you are morally obligated to take the physical stress and slight uptick in death. How they get out of the implication is by saying the third party isn’t really a human (which is probably true at conception; less so the longer in the pregnancy).

Yes, the example wasn't very real and a bit half-baked but as a thought experiment youre obliged to take it as it is. The point is there's a compulsion element from the state on the individual in banning abortion. This kind of thing normally raises the hackles of an average republican but doesn't seem to register in this case. Murder is also a misframing because the cost of not committing murder is zero.

Compulsion is one way of seeing it. Another way is merely preventing someone from killing someone.

More comments

I think this is a tired drumbeat from your side, wishing over and over for pro-lifers to not actually be prolife. I get that it's inconvenient that the religious right is not up to your snuff. It's counterpart is Kulak's old saw that if prolifers really believed it, they'd be more terrorists.

I want to point out, something else though:

forced into having more babies

This is a tremendously biased frame. It's a sister of the constant misinterpretation from pro-choicers that prolifers think people having unprotected sex should 'suffer the consequences', when it's nothing like that at all.

Forced into having babies has implications that are simply not true. Except on a negligable and understandably hotly debated margin (i.e., rape) nobody is 'forcing' babies on them, and even then it's not the same person as the pro-lifer.

At most, they're being 'forced' not to kill babies they already made. Your frame begs the question too much.

I get you can make arguments all day long about the non-existent impulse control of the population, but that still doesn't causally or morally get you all the way to arguing that Republicans are forcing them to have more babies any more than me not giving you money for drugs, 'forces' the drug user to steal.

It really is so wonderfully charming how devoted Texas Republicans are to ensuring poor and underclass women are forced into having more babies than they currently do. This certainly won’t lead to problems down the road, because impoverished single mothers famously raise the most well-adjusted sons who commit crime at well-below-average rates.

Probably because they believe in personal responsibility. Even if a boy is born in a drug-filled ghetto to a jobless single mother, his birth is a little miracle and his eventual death by fentanyl or cop or both is a consequence of his own decisions. Just like men should just stop raping, urban youths should just stop criming. And urban mothers should just stop having sex if they can't raise their sons.

I've gotten flack for making the argument that if pro-lifers really believed abortion is murdering babies, they'd actually act like babies are being murdered. But unlike you, I actually believe pro-lifers do, in the abstract, believe abortion is morally wrong. Which is why I find your argument kind of silly. It's also commonly presented even more strongly by HBDers: "Do you really want those people breeding more?" That's a good argument if you believe the progressive framing that pro-lifers don't actually care about babies at all and banning abortion is purely a way to punish women/own the libs. But if they really do believe abortion is wrong, then of course it's wrong even if it means more of "those people" are breeding, and arguing that they should be in favor because the kind of women who have abortions are mostly the kind of women you want to have abortions is missing the point.

Not to pile on to a totally unrelated thread as I do just that; but a conception that allows both views (and which I think is true in most cases) is anti-abortion as a cultural signifier.

Ie, most compelled-birthers (probably) have no real concept of what a fetus is and (probably )do not believe in their hearts that an embryo is alive (which we can observe from the prevalence of abortions among anti-abortionists being only marginally smaller than everyone else of their race and class).

It's not that they are doing it to own the libs, it's that they are doing it because they have to do it to be part of the club, style of thing.

  • -14

Please do elaborate on this:

which we can observe from the prevalence of abortions among anti-abortionists being only marginally smaller than everyone else of their race and class)

Abortions do not generally decrease in a given area or among a given population in correlation with their religious beliefs or political beliefs (not in all cases; eg. seventh day Adventists and JW's and orthodox jews have WAY less abortions.)

So, if you are a white woman who is firmly upper middle class, you are exactly as likely on a population level to have an abortion weather you are an evangelical republican or a satanic communist.

The only people who actually poll for this or collect the information are (naturally) pro choice NGOs and certain states (Guttmacher, state of Texas, and so on) but it is enough to be a revealed preference type of thing, imo. It is hard to collect and noisy data though.

I'd be willing to bet that's incorrect.

You can search out the data from some polling agencies; which generally agree with me (hence me believing it) or you can go off of anecdotes from workers at abortion clinics; but that is all there is and the data is such that if you gave me even one even Trafalgar survey saying otherwise I would return to neutral.

"Compelled birth". Ah, the amount of new horror scare terms being dredged up by the baby-killers (you don't mind that term, do you? sauce for the goose and all that) in order to sow fear and terror is wonderfully creative, in a twisted way.

Yes, the horrible forced-birthers are lurking around, jumping out to kidnap women, tie them down to a surgical bed, do IVF on them without their consent, implant embryos in them and then wait around for nine months until they can then force their victims to deliver the baby without any anaethesia or pain relief at all.

It'd make a great B-movie.

(Because of course it's not that two people voluntarily have sex and sex makes babies and oops they were too careless in the moment and now the natural result is happening).

The Orwellian march of language is something else. Ending a human life is healthcare. Asking for normal pregnancy is forced birth/compelled birth/slavery.

I mean, I only whipped out the phrase in question because people here keep calling pro-choice people baby killers, so I thought some nice harmless hyperbole would be fun.

And you can really argue with it either. The woman in question wishes to abort the fetus; anti abortionists wish she would not. She is a baby killer, they want to force her to give birth. It is what it is.

people here keep calling pro-choice people baby killers

That sounded wrong to me, so I searched it. All mentions of the phrase were negative towards it, i.e. using the phrase the same way you did.

There have been plenty of comments claiming that abortionists is actual murder, but none ever just outright say "Hey did you hear what the baby killers were up to this week?" and use that as the group designation. Doing so, or calling pro-lifers "forced birthers", is an instant claim that none of your opponents have principles and all are acting in bad faith. Surely they are not actually pro-life; they disagree with me, are therefore evil, and therefore want to compel innocent young women to give birth against their wills. Surely they're not actually pro-choice, they just want to murder babies.

Using those terms is a terrible norm. Nobody wants to keep arguing about whether pro-life people are actually pro-life or just hate women. Nobody wants to keep arguing about whether pro-choice people are actually pro-choice or just hate babies.

So long as you're happy to own the name, that's fine with me.

This comment is kinda borderline, it's gotten two reports and I might overlook it if you weren't already on thin ice for boo-outgroup and weakman responses. I'm not going to perma-ban you, or even tempban you this time, because I think maybe this comment looks like progress in the right direction? But I am warning you.

In case you find this confusing, notice that the substance of your argument is fine (pro-life arguments as a social signal is a perfectly defensible position, presumably the same is true for pro-choice arguments, and most run-of-the-mill arguments, really) but your presentation is not. In particular, "no real concept of what a fetus is" and "do not believe in their hearts that an embryo is alive" are weak men. As the rules note:

We want to engage with the best ideas on either side of any issue, not the worst.

I do think it's possible for sizable groups of people to be systematically mistaken about certain object-level facts, and to hold their positions on the basis of these mistaken claims. I also think it's possible for sizable groups of people to be systematically inaccurate about their own beliefs, both through wilful dishonesty and through unconscious error. I don't want to debate the validity of any particular example, but I do think that such things are at least possible, and therefore these are legitimate claims that people should be allowed to defend here.

Do the mods agree? If no, why not? If yes, what is the preferred mode of presentation for these sorts of claims? (If we need to work with a particular example, let's say that someone really does believe that pro-life advocates are systematically mistaken about certain biological facts about fetuses - what is the best way to present that claim in a way that doesn't violate the rules?)

I think there's an important distinction between "I think your beliefs are founded on faulty premises you haven't considered" and "you don't actually believe what you claim to believe." There are times when it is appropriate to call someone a liar to their face, but they demand a heck of a lot more work than DBDr put in. If you're going to accuse your opponents of being manipulative liars, you need to bring receipts.

I do think there is a more nuanced middle ground like you're hinting at, where large groups of people believe a comforting lie in order to protect their self images from their own selfishness or greed. And there is value in examining those situations, but you need to be really careful that you're not just building up strawmen to attack. Generally, I think extraordinary circumstances should be required before one breaks their charitable assumptions about others' beliefs.

what is the best way to present that claim in a way that doesn't violate the rules?

Effortfully, charitably, and with evidence. The way to not violate the rules is, tautologically, to not violate the rules.

To your specific question, if you can find a pro-lifer on Twitter who obviously "has no real concept of what a fetus is," that's likely insufficient. If you can find and link three or five examples of recognized and respected pro-life organizations repeating a specific factually-wrong claim you want to specifically challenge, that's much more interesting. Even a poll of pro-lifers demonstrating widespread acceptance of some clearly false claim might suffice, though it would need to be framed carefully and with epistemic humility (if "most people are stupid" is just as good an explanation of the evidence as "these particular people are stupid," then you might just be engaged in a kind of roundabout isolated demand for rigor).

I've seen articles explaining how conservatives underestimate COVID risks, or how progressives overestimate police brutality or gender wage gaps. Those kinds of trends in group thinking are interesting and worth discussing--but not when they are just stated, without evidence or argument, as a dig on one's outgroup.

It looks to me like nara is explicitly saying that you can make those claims, you just have to A) provide evidence, and B) frame it in a way that is less antagonistic, dismissive, and strawmanny.

You are aware that Planned Parenthood is not actually doing abortions in Texas, and hasn't been for two years? This is purely punishment for picking the wrong side in the culture wars too loudly.

The NRA doesn't supply firearms to anyone in New York either. You're correct that it's punishment for picking the wrong side in the culture wars too loudly, but I think your implication overstates the relevance of that with regard to how one expects the legal apparatus of politically captured states to behave.

NRA is the GOP of gun culture.

Serious gun people loathe them for being sellouts and grifters in recent decades.

The more effective and respected lobby is iirc Second Amendment Foundation.

Sure, just an analogy.

I like Gun Owners of America myself.

I had the impression, but never checked, that Planned Parenthood still refers (maybe officially, maybe not) patients to out of state abortions in states like Texas. My google-fu is not providing an answer one way or another on that, but, if true, that would provide a non-revenge motivation.

They’re probably willing to do so, but planned parenthood patients are really poor and low agency, and abortions are sufficiently inaccessible in Texas that only high agency people with some disposable income are able to get one from another state.

I'd be shocked if it didn't. Regardless, though, Texas is attempting to reverse the leftist strategy of enshrining and funding allied institutions. It looks a lot more blatant coming from the right, but is good long-term strategy even if those institutions are not currently acting as overt partisan agents.

Certainly, in this case it’s action taken in revenge before a friendly judge. The point is the same, the anti-abortionists would rather actively make society worse, more stupid and more violent for everyone than admit that free and easy abortion serves the public interest.

  • -11

I'd say the society without babies being routinely murdered is less violent.

than admit that free and easy abortion serves the public interest.

People believing that abortions and evil and murder are opposing it, more news at 11.

I mean the pro-life movement can plausibly claim to be descended from the anti-eugenics movement, so I'm not sure why it's surprising that they oppose eugenics. And in any case the revenge is for Planned Parenthood consistently siding against the Texas GOP(which is not the based white nationalist party that Democrats like to portray. Much more Orban-like standard conservative with nationalist posturing and lots of mildly corrupt business friendly populism and mild technocracy.) more than for doing abortions- other large abortion providers from before 2021 are getting mostly ignored.

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