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Abortion

We all have different ideas on what we individually consider as a life-form or human being. What can be done about the differences of views? ... the approach would be to simply give advice, just as it is with preaching the Gospel, for those who are willing to listen. The obvious pre-emptive approach through advice would be something like "prevention is better than cure" .
For someone who clearly likes to think of himself as kind, pleasant, and decent, you don’t half espouse some truly vile and evil ideas.

I don’t think you’re even capable of noticing this fact.
Pot, kettle, black.

What can be done about the differences of views? Well, butting ... out of other people’s business might be a good starting point. Other people have their own views, and when those views relate to how they choose to use their own bodies, your dissenting view is utterly worthless and irrelevant, and your insistence in having any say whatsoever is vile and evil. Keep your opinions to yourself.
Learner has his own views, and when those views relate to how he chooses to use the typing fingers of his own body, your dissenting view is utterly worthless and irrelevant, and your insistence in having any say whatsoever is vile and evil. Keep your opinions to yourself.
I refer you to the paradox of tolerance.

Intolerance is the one thing that cannot be tolerated, if we are to enjoy a free society.
 
... your dissenting view is utterly worthless and irrelevant, and your insistence in having any say whatsoever is vile and evil. Keep your opinions to yourself.[/B]

Charming. You have your opinion too at least Somewhat passionate, but fair enough, as you see it..
Don't mind bilby. He lives in Australia, and Australia as everyone knows is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having double standards, one for themselves and one for other people, and people in Australia are used to taking for granted that there are no rights and "free speech" means not getting charged when they listen to some politician yammering.
“… iocaine comes from Australia, as everyone knows. And Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.”
 
Oh, come off it. The world is overflowing with left wing religio-fascists who equally want something to be done about differing views.

No, I don’t recall any leftyreligiowhatevers trying to revoke the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of half the population, at least with any threat of success.
Half?!? Abortion is half the population's right; free speech is the whole population's right. If you don't recall any attempt to revoke it, that's either because you have your head in the sand or else because you are on board with the assault. For example, a government university fired a professor for saying everyone's life matters.

 
No, I don’t recall any leftyreligiowhatevers trying to revoke the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of half the population, at least with any threat of success.
Half?!? Abortion is half the population's right; free speech is the whole population's right. If you don't recall any attempt to revoke it, that's either because you have your head in the sand or else because you are on board with the assault. For example, a government university fired a professor for saying everyone's life matters.


The right to abortion does not rest on abortion alone, it is a matter of bodily autonomy, which all of us have.

It is not an issue for half he population, it is an issue for the entire population if the argument that your body’s organs can be used for the benefit of another against your will becomes law.
 
Oh, come off it. The world is overflowing with left wing religio-fascists who equally want something to be done about differing views.

No, I don’t recall any leftyreligiowhatevers trying to revoke the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of half the population, at least with any threat of success.
Half?!? Abortion is half the population's right; free speech is the whole population's right. If you don't recall any attempt to revoke it, that's either because you have your head in the sand or else because you are on board with the assault. For example, a government university fired a professor for saying everyone's life matters.

as as usual, the 'aha!' moment of a right winger is completely defeated by the fact that the "counter example" is a steaming pile of horse shit.

free speech means the government won't arrest you for speech, or pass laws punishing you for speech.
it doesn't mean you're totally free from any consequence of your speech, even if you're an employee of an organization in part or fully funded by a state agency.

banning abortion directly violates several constitutional amendments.
firing some jackass from a prominent position at a school for being a jackass in public violates... oh that's right, zero constitutional amendments.

also, MA is an at-will employment state, so that person could be fired for literally any reason.
i thought you people supported the at-will concept, and the right to fire anyone for any reason?
 
For example, a government university fired a professor for saying everyone's life matters.
as as usual, the 'aha!' moment of a right winger is completely defeated by the fact that the "counter example" is a steaming pile of <expletive deleted>.
Being a lot further right than you does not make a person a "right winger"; it makes him a "99 percenter".

free speech means the government won't arrest you for speech, or pass laws punishing you for speech.
... or do a variety of other things beyond a 3rd-grade understanding of civics.

it doesn't mean you're totally free from any consequence of your speech, even if you're an employee of an organization in part or fully funded by a state agency.

banning abortion directly violates several constitutional amendments.
firing some jackass from a prominent position at a school for being a jackass in public violates... oh that's right, zero constitutional amendments.
Um, can you point out where an amendment says the state can't ban abortion? Banning abortion has been held to violate constitutional amendments. Well, dude, that cuts both ways: the academic freedom of college professors has been held to be protected by the First Amendment. Constitutional jurisprudence, like most jurisprudence, lives primarily in case-law. Your feeling that free speech shouldn't mean people can get away with blasphemy against the progressive stack is not a superior legal argument to Tigers!' feeling that unenumerated rights shouldn't include privacy.

also, MA is an at-will employment state, so that person could be fired for literally any reason.
i thought you people supported the at-will concept, and the right to fire anyone for any reason?
Who you calling "you people"? In any event, even if I were the 19th-century laissez-faire absolutist you fantasize those to your right are, a public university is not a capitalist enterprise so at-will does not apply. The state has an obligation of "viewpoint neutrality".
 
“… iocaine comes from Australia, as everyone knows. And Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.”
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
 
For example, a government university fired a professor for saying everyone's life matters.
as as usual, the 'aha!' moment of a right winger is completely defeated by the fact that the "counter example" is a steaming pile of <expletive deleted>.
Being a lot further right than you does not make a person a "right winger"; it makes him a "99 percenter".
well basically everyone on this forum is right of me so that's a metric that is effectively meaningless if you're comparing to me personally.

but regardless, your posting history on this forum classifies you easily and distinctly as a far right ideologue, at least as far as US culture and politics is concerned.
if you don't like that fact, stop being a right winger.
free speech means the government won't arrest you for speech, or pass laws punishing you for speech.
... or do a variety of other things beyond a 3rd-grade understanding of civics.
none of which include 'stop you from being fired for being a dipshit'
it doesn't mean you're totally free from any consequence of your speech, even if you're an employee of an organization in part or fully funded by a state agency.

banning abortion directly violates several constitutional amendments.
firing some jackass from a prominent position at a school for being a jackass in public violates... oh that's right, zero constitutional amendments.
Um, can you point out where an amendment says the state can't ban abortion?
yes, i can.
Well, dude, that cuts both ways: the academic freedom of college professors has been held to be protected by the First Amendment.
no it hasn't, not in this context.

it's been held that academic freedom applies in a professional context excepting when their expression substantially impairs the rights of others or, in the case of faculty members, those views demonstrate that they are professionally ignorant, incompetent, or dishonest with regard to their discipline or fields of expertise.

case law refers to issues of conduct within the university, but is incredibly nebulous when it comes to issues of "a professor said/did something stupid and the university responded with a change to their employment status"

i've been pouring over any website i can find with references to academic freedom case law and i can't find a single compelling example of a court case which would imply that "a dipshit saying something incredibly stupid can't be fired, because of the 1st amendment"

edit to add:
oh ALSO she wasn't fired - she was removed as dean, and offered another position on the faculty, which she declined to take.
there is absolutely nothing in academic freedom, or the 1st amendment, prohibiting you from being removed from a given position.
Constitutional jurisprudence, like most jurisprudence, lives primarily in case-law. Your feeling that free speech shouldn't mean people can get away with blasphemy against the progressive stack is not a superior legal argument to Tigers!' feeling that unenumerated rights shouldn't include privacy.
and the delusion that any time anyone who bloviates about some right wing nuttery and gets called out for it constitutes a violation of the 1st amendment doesn't have any relevance to either my take or tiger's.

also, MA is an at-will employment state, so that person could be fired for literally any reason.
i thought you people supported the at-will concept, and the right to fire anyone for any reason?
Who you calling "you people"? In any event, even if I were the 19th-century laissez-faire absolutist you fantasize those to your right are, a public university is not a capitalist enterprise so at-will does not apply. The state has an obligation of "viewpoint neutrality".
i spent some time searching and can find no evidence whatsoever that state universities in MA are excepted from the at-will employment policy, obviously except in the case of tenure.
if you can show that at-will employment law doesn't apply to state employees i'd be truly interested in seeing that.
 
An awful lot of the folks who call themselves "pro-choice" seem think they have a constitutionally guaranteed right to have the taxpayers buy them an abortion. That's imposing their views upon everyone else.
That’s not an accurate statement.
The accurate statement is:

An awful lot of the folks who call themselves "pro-choice" seem think they have a constitutionally guaranteed right to not have religious views cherry pick what health care they are able to access.
Puh-tay-toe, puh-tot-oh.

And that means if medical care is being funded for needy people by taxpayers (via Medicaid, for instance) then they demand that ALL reasonable,non-experimental medical care is covered.
I.e., they think the constitution guarantees them the right to stop the public from buying itself a social safety net unless it agrees to buy them an abortion. That's imposing their views upon everyone else. If the fans of private schools claimed vouchers were a constitutional right, but then clarified that they were only saying they had the constitutional right to ban the government from establishing public schools unless it also gave them vouchers, you would have no difficulty recognizing that they were trying to impose their views upon everyone else.

Recall that when abortions were being provided by Planned Parenthood in these states, they were not requiring federal dollars.
Of course they weren't -- that would be illegal under the Hyde Amendment. The point is, an awful lot of "pro-choice" folks want that law repealed. The asymmetry Elixir is asserting is mostly illusory.

And for the cold hard pragmatists, paying for an abortion is ... CHEAPER than paying for a pregnancy and delivery, which medicaid does often cover, so one would assume that the Libertarians would be 100% for taxpayer funded abortions so that no one has to pay extra for a delivery that no one wanted in the first place.
True; but libertarianism is a goofy religious ideology so why should we care what they would be 100% for?

As for cold hard pragmatist liberal me, telling a person "You don't like abortion, don't have one." comes off as adding insult to injury when you're making him pay for other people's abortions. And adding insult to injury is how you rile somebody up from couch-potato to activist. If we could get peaceful coexistence from the anti-abortionists for just the delta between the cost of pregnancy and delivery and the cost of abortion, that would be a bargain-basement price.

But actually there's no need to pay that in real money when we could forestall the injury and the insult for free, by creative accounting. You know that box you can check off on your tax form to direct some money to pay for presidential elections? Seems to me that's a meme that could use some exponential growth. The IRS could add an optional form to the 1040 that just has a list of controversial federal expenditures, and any taxpayer who feels the urge can check off up to N of the items, and the feds will guarantee that none of that person's tax money will be spent on the checked items. Federal elections, abortions, aircraft carriers, farm price supports, foreign aid, etc. The longer the list of taxpayer-optional expenditures, the better the scheme works, provided N grows sublinearly. Computers could be programmed to shift funds around to keep the promise without actually affecting government priorities, for a trivial cost in data-structure storage. (Of course stuff that everybody hates like servicing the national debt and paying Congressthings' salaries would have to be left off the list. :devil: )
 
I think it should be made clear here that abortion is the whole population's right.

It's just that half the population is not in a position to exercise their rights. Yet.
 
An awful lot of the folks who call themselves "pro-choice" seem think they have a constitutionally guaranteed right to have the taxpayers buy them an abortion. That's imposing their views upon everyone else.
That’s not an accurate statement.
The accurate statement is:

An awful lot of the folks who call themselves "pro-choice" seem think they have a constitutionally guaranteed right to not have religious views cherry pick what health care they are able to access.
Puh-tay-toe, puh-tot-oh.
No. It is specifically different because the pro-choice issue is first and foremost access. It is separate from taxpayer funding altogether and strikes at the unconstitutional efforts to prevent people from getting abortions even if they pay cash.

That is not puh-tay-toe, puh-tot-oh. Your statement is not correct.
And that means if medical care is being funded for needy people by taxpayers (via Medicaid, for instance) then they demand that ALL reasonable,non-experimental medical care is covered.
I.e., they think the constitution guarantees them the right to stop the public from buying itself a social safety net unless it agrees to buy them an abortion. That's imposing their views upon everyone else. If the fans of private schools claimed vouchers were a constitutional right, but then clarified that they were only saying they had the constitutional right to ban the government from establishing public schools unless it also gave them vouchers, you would have no difficulty recognizing that they were trying to impose their views upon everyone else.

Again, no.
It is saying that if a procedure is medically useful, approved and wanted, no laws should be carving out of public programs things that one person just doesn’t like to make it inaccessible to those using medical care. If the procedure is legal, and needed, it is covered like any other procedure that is legal, needed, and covered.

We cannot have Jehovah’s Witnesses saying that blood transfusions must not be covered by public funds because they object to having people’s souls defiled, nor racists saying that birth and delivery will not be covered for interracial pregnancies.

This is utterly unlike school vouchers, since every one of those voucher-supporting parents has access to everything that the public school parents has access to. Private schools seek to both add and subtract subjects that matter to them. But no one is carving out and eliminating certain classes from public school unless they are constutionally prohibited from public funding - like religion. (Not religious history, mind you, but religious indoctrination)

Not at all puh-tay-toe, puh-tot-oh.

My kids went to both private (elementary) and public (secondary) schools. The private schools sought to add to the curriculum in ways that they thought improved education. Incidentally, these parents and these private school administrators support these same things in public schools, but these things are achieved by successfully throwing money at it, and many people claim, “you can’t solve issues by throwing money at it!” despite private schools doing exactly that and succeeding. But that’s another debate for another thread.


The medical care issue revolves around people who are unrelated wanting to get in between you and your doctor and decide your care. They want to delete things from the medical practice availability on their whim, not on any constitutional grounds.



Recall that when abortions were being provided by Planned Parenthood in these states, they were not requiring federal dollars.
Of course they weren't -- that would be illegal under the Hyde Amendment. The point is, an awful lot of "pro-choice" folks want that law repealed. The asymmetry Elixir is asserting is mostly illusory.
Yes they (we, I) want that law repealed because there is no constitutional reason to carve out those procedures from the rest of publicly covered medicine.

But that is not saying “we want abortions to be paid by taxpayers” any more than “we want births to be paid by taxpayers”. In other words, it is not a special add-on, it is part of the whole medical practice. So what makes your statement inaccurate is that it tries to portray the intent of removing the ban on one kind of normal medicine as some sort of special request.

It is not a special request. It is an intent to remove a special request by those opposed to this medical procedure on their own personal grounds.

And for the cold hard pragmatists, paying for an abortion is ... CHEAPER than paying for a pregnancy and delivery, which medicaid does often cover, so one would assume that the Libertarians would be 100% for taxpayer funded abortions so that no one has to pay extra for a delivery that no one wanted in the first place.
True; but libertarianism is a goofy religious ideology so why should we care what they would be 100% for?
Good point. Only to the extent that if they are informed enough to vote for their actual platform, they could help get these things in place, and that makes them part of the constituency that actually supports having abortion care be part of regular medicine and included in any funding that regular medicine receives.

As for cold hard pragmatist liberal me, telling a person "You don't like abortion, don't have one." comes off as adding insult to injury when you're making him pay for other people's abortions.
I don’t understand how you can make sense of carving one specific medical procedure out from all other medical procedures that you pay for and then get insulted about it. You don’t even know the reason for the abortion that you’re refusing to pay for. You don’t know if it’s to save someone from death.

Honestly, "You don't like abortion, don't have one," is truly not intended as an insult. So it is interesting that it comes across as one. Pro-choice people think that’s actually an incredibly important statement - no one is in favor of forcing abortions on anyone - we want to make that clear.. Crystal clear. Precedent clear.

Are you also insulted if someone says, “if you don’t like novocaine at the dentist, don’t use it.” Are you also insulted if someone says, “if you don’t like blood transfusions, don’t have them.” ?

Can you suggest a way to convey that

the intent is to use the public safety net of medicaid for procedures that are needed by needy people, and no one will force you to have one that you don’t want, and we get that some of you oppose the social safety net altogether and want people to individually negotiate whether they can afford to have their broken leg set, but as long as we DO have a social safety net of Medicaid, it must be applied without prejudice to one particular religious or ideological group’s feelings​

Without having it insult you?

But actually there's no need to pay that in real money when we could forestall the injury and the insult for free, by creative accounting. You know that box you can check off on your tax form to direct some money to pay for presidential elections? Seems to me that's a meme that could use some exponential growth. The IRS could add an optional form to the 1040 that just has a list of controversial federal expenditures, and any taxpayer who feels the urge can check off up to N of the items, and the feds will guarantee that none of that person's tax money will be spent on the checked items. Federal elections, abortions, aircraft carriers, farm price supports, foreign aid, etc. The longer the list of taxpayer-optional expenditures, the better the scheme works, provided N grows sublinearly. Computers could be programmed to shift funds around to keep the promise without actually affecting government priorities, for a trivial cost in data-structure storage. (Of course stuff that everybody hates like servicing the national debt and paying Congressthings' salaries would have to be left off the list. :devil: )

These are the same people who cut off funding for Planned Parenthood to give cervical exams for cancer because it freed up PP to spend their private money for abortions. “Money is fungible!” Stop the publicly funded cervical exams because abortions happen in the same building!

You think that would fly? I don’t.

And no, I do not this this plan is in any way reasonable or workable even if the money is fungible crowd would agree. You turn constitutionally guaranteed rights into a circus that can be starved. Imagine if we did this with women’s rights to vote. People who are “insulted” by the constitution’s guarantees can undermine it.

Nope. Not a fan. 0/10 would not recommend.
 
Oh, come off it. The world is overflowing with left wing religio-fascists who equally want something to be done about differing views.
Oh, come off it. The world is overflowing with left wing religio-fascists who equally want something to be done about differing views.

No, I don’t recall any leftyreligiowhatevers trying to revoke the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of half the population, at least with any threat of success.
Half?!? Abortion is half the population's right; free speech is the whole population's right. If you don't recall any attempt to revoke it, that's either because you have your head in the sand or else because you are on board with the assault. For example, a government university fired a professor for saying everyone's life matters.


WTF? You want to equate the firing of one individual woman with the revocation of Constitutionally codified rights of all women?
If her firing was truly unconstitutional she could sue, win and live happily ever after. To no consequence. Her "views" are not under attack from the left, one phrase seems to have been.
You're scraping the bottom of the "both sides" barrel, dude.
 
As for cold hard pragmatist liberal me, telling a person "You don't like abortion, don't have one." comes off as adding insult to injury when you're making him pay for other people's abortions.
Doesn't the military pay for abortions?
And adding insult to injury is how you rile somebody up from couch-potato to activist.
Not really. The reaction to Roe v Wade wasn't particularly substantial. The movement has grown because it has been used as a wedge issue over time. As we've seen with the "Pro-life" movement, it has little to do with life. The anti-abortion legislation is never passed with supportive funding or even consideration of support for women, it is just a ban.
If we could get peaceful coexistence from the anti-abortionists for just the delta between the cost of pregnancy and delivery and the cost of abortion, that would be a bargain-basement price.
Yes, as long we just pretend this is a money issue, we can "solve" the problem via money.
 
As for cold hard pragmatist liberal me, telling a person "You don't like abortion, don't have one." comes off as adding insult to injury when you're making him pay for other people's abortions.
Doesn't the military pay for abortions?
Only in cases of rape, incest, or saving the woman's life, same as federal law for civilians. It's a serious problem for a lot of servicewomen who are stationed places where having to go off base for an abortion is difficult.

And adding insult to injury is how you rile somebody up from couch-potato to activist.
Not really. The reaction to Roe v Wade wasn't particularly substantial. The movement has grown because it has been used as a wedge issue over time. As we've seen with the "Pro-life" movement, it has little to do with life...
Part of the reason it wasn't particularly substantial is because we lost the federal funding fight. Congress fought that one out pretty intensely over the course of the 70s and 80s.

If we could get peaceful coexistence from the anti-abortionists for just the delta between the cost of pregnancy and delivery and the cost of abortion, that would be a bargain-basement price.
Yes, as long we just pretend this is a money issue, we can "solve" the problem via money.
It isn't pretending -- for twenty or thirty years the country treated it as a money issue, and worked out a compromise that for the most part both sides could live with. From a 2022 perspective, those look like good times.
 
We are learning from the masters - Prochoice. With your unlimited demand for abortion at any time, in any circumstances.
And we see the mask slip. The "help" that Tigers was talking about is not offered because the Pro-life advocates feel a calling to serve humanity, but is a reaction to the idea that the Pro-choice people dare to counsel women that they have a choice when it comes to their own bodies, often served up with a generous helping of judgement and resentment on the side. The same judgement and resentment that comes through loud and clear in this post.
Thank you for your analysis of my (our) motives.
Is there another analysis you’d like to offer, or was that an acknowledgment that atrib is correct?
Your sarcasm meter does need a tune up.
 
We are learning from the masters - Prochoice. With your unlimited demand for abortion at any time, in any circumstances.
And we see the mask slip. The "help" that Tigers was talking about is not offered because the Pro-life advocates feel a calling to serve humanity, but is a reaction to the idea that the Pro-choice people dare to counsel women that they have a choice when it comes to their own bodies, often served up with a generous helping of judgement and resentment on the side. The same judgement and resentment that comes through loud and clear in this post.
*sarcasm*
*more sarcasm*
*SARCASM!!!*
Think we've got a circular sarcasm loop here.
 
As for cold hard pragmatist liberal me, telling a person "You don't like abortion, don't have one." comes off as adding insult to injury when you're making him pay for other people's abortions.
Doesn't the military pay for abortions?
Only in cases of rape, incest, or saving the woman's life, same as federal law for civilians. It's a serious problem for a lot of servicewomen who are stationed places where having to go off base for an abortion is difficult.

And adding insult to injury is how you rile somebody up from couch-potato to activist.
Not really. The reaction to Roe v Wade wasn't particularly substantial. The movement has grown because it has been used as a wedge issue over time. As we've seen with the "Pro-life" movement, it has little to do with life...
Part of the reason it wasn't particularly substantial is because we lost the federal funding fight. Congress fought that one out pretty intensely over the course of the 70s and 80s.

If we could get peaceful coexistence from the anti-abortionists for just the delta between the cost of pregnancy and delivery and the cost of abortion, that would be a bargain-basement price.
Yes, as long we just pretend this is a money issue, we can "solve" the problem via money.
It isn't pretending -- for twenty or thirty years the country treated it as a money issue, and worked out a compromise that for the most part both sides could live with. From a 2022 perspective, those look like good times.
I think you mean that the SCOTUS balance made it impossible to overturn. The right-wing tried.
  • Casey v Planned Parenthood was 1992, so that decision was less than 20 years after Roe. Casey was arguing about legislation passed in PA in 1982, which is 9 years after Roe.
  • City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health was ruled in 1982 regarding laws passed in the 70s.
... so, this 20 to 30 year period is a fictional era that never existed.
 
Not really. The reaction to Roe v Wade wasn't particularly substantial. The movement has grown because it has been used as a wedge issue over time. As we've seen with the "Pro-life" movement, it has little to do with life...
...
Yes, as long we just pretend this is a money issue, we can "solve" the problem via money.
It isn't pretending -- for twenty or thirty years the country treated it as a money issue, and worked out a compromise that for the most part both sides could live with. From a 2022 perspective, those look like good times.
I think you mean that the SCOTUS balance made it impossible to overturn. The right-wing tried.
  • Casey v Planned Parenthood was 1992, so that decision was less than 20 years after Roe. Casey was arguing about legislation passed in PA in 1982, which is 9 years after Roe.
  • City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health was ruled in 1982 regarding laws passed in the 70s.
... so, this 20 to 30 year period is a fictional era that never existed.
That makes your "Not really. The reaction to Roe v Wade wasn't particularly substantial." claim equally fictional. I think you're conflating the reaction of the hard-core activists with the reaction of the great mass of anti-abortion voters, who weren't voting single-issue on it until the activists figured out how to turn it into a wedge issue.
 
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