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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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