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Notes -
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/
So Texas wants to lawfare Planned Parenthood out of being able to operate. This isn't new. What is new is this part:
"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?
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:
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.
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".
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 ?
@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!
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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.
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.
What an excellently crafted sentence. I'm truly impressed how many rhetorical tricks and misleading turns of phrase you managed to fit into it.
It should be able to do whatever the people have given it the power to do. Nothing else matters for determining ideal state capabilities.
Preventing behavior is not the same as forcing it.
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.
Again, what matters is whether the system has consensus support from the governed. The consensus on individual policies is irrelevant.
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.
I think you meant ban infanticide, but otherwise all excellent points! Which is why your initial comments just begs all the questions.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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just a hat tip, to pro-lifers there is no debate, murder is murder; that is what everyone else always get wrong about them.
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