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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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