Roe v Wade is on deck

[lpetrich]

Continuing with 538,

These findings line up with decades of research suggesting that views of abortion are intimately linked to how people think about motherhood, sex and women’s social roles. In the 1980s, the sociologist Kristin Luker argued that abortion is such an intractable issue because the people on either side of the debate have fundamentally different ideas about women’s autonomy. According to her, abortion-rights supporters saw women’s ability to make decisions about their bodies as fundamental to women’s equality, while anti-abortion advocates believed this focus on autonomy undermines the importance of women’s roles as mothers.

That analysis can feel a little stuck in the Reagan era, particularly since support for women working outside the home has grown significantly since the 1980s.

noting
PROFILING ACTIVISTS FOR AND AGAINST ABORTION - The New York Times - July 21, 1984

Though for years they have been in legislative and judicial combat over the right of women to have abortions, the differences between the ''prochoice'' and ''prolife'' movements, as they call themselves, form a chasm that is broader and deeper than the abortion issue itself.

This is the premise of a report titled ''The War Between the Women'' by Kristin Luker in the current issue of Family Planning Perspectives, the bimonthly journal of the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The article was adapted from sections of Dr. Luker's recent book, ''Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood,'' published by the University of California Press.

''Even if the abortion issue had not mobilized them on opposite sides of the barricades, they would have been opponents on a wide variety of issues,'' wrote Dr. Luker, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Not only are the two groups of women different from one another, but women themselves are also relative newcomers to the debate. As Dr. Luker pointed out, it is only in recent years that abortion has become a women's issue. Historically, it was the province of male professionals - physicians, lawyers and theologians.

It's a testament to how far we have come as a society where those with a direct stake in abortion are now having their say about the issue.

KL had a curious difficulty. ''I could not find any prochoice activists who put in more than 5 hours, while some of the prolife people spent as much as 40 hours a week on the issue.'' Why the discrepancy? ''The prochoice side won a victory with the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973.'' Of her 200 interviews, 125 were on the anti side and 75 on the pro side.

She composed a composite portrait of activists on each side.

In her report, Dr. Luker drew a profile of each type of woman. The typical antiabortion activist, she said, is a 44-year-old who was married at age 17 and has three or more children. Her father graduated from high school only, although there is a better than even chance that she went to college (60 percent of the antiabortion sample had bachelors' degrees). She does not work outside the home (only three did, and they held jobs traditional for women: social worker, nurse and teacher). Her husband is a small-business man or lower-income white-collar employee, and the family income is less than $30,000 a year. She attends church at least once a week, and is most likely a Catholic.

Her counterpart on the prochoice side is also married and 44. She was married at 22 or older and has one or two children. Her father is a college graduate, and she is likely to be one too. She is employed and is married to a professional man. Their combined income is $50,000 or more. She rarely attends church.

She also notes how they view the sexes in society.

''Prolife activists see the world divided into two spheres - public and private life - and each sex has an appropriate, natural and satisfying place in his or her own sphere,'' Dr. Luker wrote. For a woman, that sphere is the home, where she is to have and rear as many children as are born to her. Married couples, Dr. Luker found, are expected to accept happily whatever children are born.

Prochoice women believe, Dr. Luker wrote, that men and women are fundamentally equal, by which they mean substantially similar, at least in their rights and responsibilities. ''They and their husbands share many social resources - status outside of the home, a paycheck and peers and friends located in the work world rather than in the family world.'' In addition, they resist values that suggest that motherhood is a natural, primary or inevitable role for a woman. Though they value children enormously, sex is valuable in itself and ought not be confined to procreation. However, prochoice advocates were troubled by the use of abortion as fertility control.

KL does not expect either side to be able to accommodate the other, because it would be too much of a sacrifice to do so. ''Their feelings on abortion are embedded in a larger world view,'so for them to question their beliefs about abortion would be to challenge an interrelated set of values about the roles of motherhood, the sexes, of morality, of religion and of human rights.''

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Now, you can certainly argue that that's a bad law and nurses shouldn't get to opt out and anybody who isn't up for every procedure should have thought of that when she decided to become a nurse, and maybe you can even make a solid case for that position. But if that's you're attitude, then you are no more pro-choice than the murderer of an abortion doctor is pro-life.

Today on Abuse of Juxtaposition, we discuss the juxtaposition of murderers with people that believe in a woman's right to self-autonomy. We will discuss why some have this need to make such drastic comparisons in order to try to "make a point", but in the end, are just handwaved away as overly simplistic hyperbole which is both invalid philosophically and impotent in the power of persuasion.

And later, we discuss "That is what Nazis would do".

 

[ZiprHead]

Seen elsewhere:

Republican governor: "Ooops, we went to far".

from: CNN
Arkansas' near-total abortion ban should be "revisited" to provide exceptions for instances of rape or incest should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the state's Republican governor (Asa Hutchinson) said...Signed in March 2021 by Hutchinson, Arkansas' abortion ban would go into effect if Roe is reversed. The law would ban providers from performing abortions "except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency" and makes no exceptions for instances of rape, incest or fetal anomalies.

This is a sad reminder about just how much republicans are scumbags. I had a tiny bit of sympathy for Hutchinson because he seen as an anti-Trumper. But here is proof that even when a republican disavows Trump, they cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

I have absolutely no respect of sympathy for Hutchinson here. I suspect his sympathy for rape/incest victims is false, and he is really only interested in trying to appear less extreme for political purposes. Hutchinson was under no real pressure to sign the bill as presented... he could have vetoed it and challenged the legislature to come back with a bill that contains the exceptions he claims to favor. And there was no rush to get the law passed.... it was a trigger law (i.e. wouldn't have come into effect immediately anyways) so they had time to get it "right". But he signed it, and now fears political backlash.

I hope he is reminded ever time he campaigns about how he signed a law that forces rape victims to carry the fetus to term.

 

[lpetrich]

Back to 538.

... people who oppose abortion aren’t “necessarily [coming] from a place where women belong in only one sphere, which is motherhood.” But views about power and control are still crucially important, she said. In contrast with a focus on women’s ability to make decisions about their own bodies, anti-abortion advocates see that choice within a broader context where other people have views that matter too. “We hear about women and their spouses, what’s the father’s role,” she said. “The idea is that this is not a decision that women should make in isolation.

The divide between people who support traditional gender roles — especially those who think modern society is upsetting the balance of those roles by giving women too much power — and people who disagree with that position is spawning other culture wars. It’s partly why former President Donald Trump’s hypermasculine persona worked so well for him politically, and why Republican politicians continue to focus on the idea that men face discrimination, fueled by a backlash to the #MeToo movement and by declining rates of higher education and rising rates of loneliness among men.

These arguments don’t appeal to all men, of course, and they do appeal to some women.

...
This also helps explain why there are usually bigger political divides among men and women than between them. For example, studies find that men who adhere to more stringent notions of masculine identity, which is used as a proxy for supporting traditional gender roles, look very different on political issues than men who identify as less masculine, as we wrote in 2020.

There is a big split between the two main political parties. D = Dem, R = Rep, M = men, W = women

• Agree with “American society today has become too soft and feminine”: DM 25%, DW 20%, RM 78%, RW 65%
• Agree with “White men are too often blamed for problems in American society”: DM 26%, DW 20%, RM 75%, RW 60%

Politics, Sex, and Sexuality: The Growing Gender Divide in American Life - The Survey Center on American Life
Why So Many Men Stuck With Trump In 2020 | FiveThirtyEight

The article ended with

“Abortion is becoming personal for people who see it as a proxy for men, largely white men, taking away power from women,” Undem told us. “It’s not about a procedure. It’s about women’s place in the world.”

 

[prideandfall]

Seen elsewhere:

Republican governor: "Ooops, we went to far".

from: CNN
Arkansas' near-total abortion ban should be "revisited" to provide exceptions for instances of rape or incest should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the state's Republican governor (Asa Hutchinson) said...Signed in March 2021 by Hutchinson, Arkansas' abortion ban would go into effect if Roe is reversed. The law would ban providers from performing abortions "except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency" and makes no exceptions for instances of rape, incest or fetal anomalies.

This is a sad reminder about just how much republicans are scumbags. I had a tiny bit of sympathy for Hutchinson because he seen as an anti-Trumper. But here is proof that even when a republican disavows Trump, they cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

I have absolutely no respect of sympathy for Hutchinson here. I suspect his sympathy for rape/incest victims is false, and he is really only interested in trying to appear less extreme for political purposes. Hutchinson was under no real pressure to sign the bill as presented... he could have vetoed it and challenged the legislature to come back with a bill that contains the exceptions he claims to favor. And there was no rush to get the law passed.... it was a trigger law (i.e. wouldn't have come into effect immediately anyways) so they had time to get it "right". But he signed it, and now fears political backlash.

I hope he is reminded ever time he campaigns about how he signed a law that forces rape victims to carry the fetus to term.

sad, seeing these people chicken-shit out of their convictions for political expediency.
every time i see a hubub about 'exceptions for rape/incest' i can't help but be saddened over how shallow and stupid discourse has become in this country.

if you genuinely believe that innocent human life begins at conception and that it must be protected, it's absurd to suggest that the father being an asshole mitigates that belief to the point where child murder becomes acceptable.

 

[Jarhyn]

Seen elsewhere:

Republican governor: "Ooops, we went to far".

from: CNN
Arkansas' near-total abortion ban should be "revisited" to provide exceptions for instances of rape or incest should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the state's Republican governor (Asa Hutchinson) said...Signed in March 2021 by Hutchinson, Arkansas' abortion ban would go into effect if Roe is reversed. The law would ban providers from performing abortions "except to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency" and makes no exceptions for instances of rape, incest or fetal anomalies.

This is a sad reminder about just how much republicans are scumbags. I had a tiny bit of sympathy for Hutchinson because he seen as an anti-Trumper. But here is proof that even when a republican disavows Trump, they cannot be trusted to do the right thing.

I have absolutely no respect of sympathy for Hutchinson here. I suspect his sympathy for rape/incest victims is false, and he is really only interested in trying to appear less extreme for political purposes. Hutchinson was under no real pressure to sign the bill as presented... he could have vetoed it and challenged the legislature to come back with a bill that contains the exceptions he claims to favor. And there was no rush to get the law passed.... it was a trigger law (i.e. wouldn't have come into effect immediately anyways) so they had time to get it "right". But he signed it, and now fears political backlash.

I hope he is reminded ever time he campaigns about how he signed a law that forces rape victims to carry the fetus to term.

sad, seeing these people chicken-shit out of their convictions for political expediency.
every time i see a hubub about 'exceptions for rape/incest' i can't help but be saddened over how shallow and stupid discourse has become in this country.

if you genuinely believe that innocent human life begins at conception and that it must be protected, it's absurd to suggest that the father being an asshole mitigates that belief to the point where child murder becomes acceptable.

Back that up.

If you genuinely believe that someone in the womb has all the qualities that obligate consideration of it as a moral entity, it is still not murder to let it die on account of being disconnected from the creature it is parasitizing.

It FIRST has an obligation to not be a parasite to get any right at all to continue existing.

If some psychotic asshole with god powers snapped their fingers and suddenly I was connected to you umbilically, if I cut the cord you would die and I wouldn't and I am the only being in the universe who can do this for you because the psychotic god power dude snapped his fingers again and fucked off...

It is the psychotic god dude who murdered you and put your existence on my mercy.

It is not murder for me to disconnect you, a whole person. It is simply letting you die as I deny you parasitic use of my body.

I could have mercy on you, but it is not murder to deny this.

Abortion is the same situation but with an arguably less ethically important agent in place of you.

 

[prideandfall]

Back that up.

If you genuinely believe that someone in the womb has all the qualities that obligate consideration of it as a moral entity, it is still not murder to let it die on account of being disconnected from the creature it is parasitizing.

It FIRST has an obligation to not be a parasite to get any right at all to continue existing.

that argument doesn't track with forced-birthers, because by their logic it isn't a parasite, and the act of getting pregnant *does* obligate one to be an incubator.

Abortion is the same situation but with an arguably less ethically important agent in place of you.

except, again, by their logic that doesn't track since their belief is that the accumulation of sin over a lifetime by definition makes one less important the older one gets.

mind you, i don't believe any of this horseshit, i'm just saying that by the argument they are presenting the logical extension is to determine that the circumstances of conception is irrelevant to whether or not the thing is sacrosanct.
allowing exceptions because of X or Y are morally inconsistent with the argument that life is inherently valuable.

 

[lpetrich]

Oklahoma governor signs the nation's strictest abortion ban : NPR

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Wednesday signed into law the nation's strictest abortion ban, making the state the first in the nation to effectively end availability of the procedure.

State lawmakers approved the ban enforced by civil lawsuits rather than criminal prosecution, similar to a Texas law that was passed last year. The law takes effect immediately upon Stitt's signature and prohibits all abortions with few exceptions. Abortion providers have said they will stop performing the procedure as soon as the bill is signed.

"I promised Oklahomans that as governor I would sign every piece of pro-life legislation that came across my desk and I am proud to keep that promise today," the first-term Republican said in a statement. "From the moment life begins at conception is when we have a responsibility as human beings to do everything we can to protect that baby's life and the life of the mother. That is what I believe and that is what the majority of Oklahomans believe."

...
The only exceptions in the Oklahoma law are to save the life of a pregnant woman or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest that has been reported to law enforcement.

The bill specifically authorizes doctors to remove a "dead unborn child caused by spontaneous abortion," or miscarriage, or to remove an ectopic pregnancy, a potentially life-threatening emergency that occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, often in a fallopian tube and early in pregnancy.

The law also does not apply to the use of morning-after pills such as Plan B or any type of contraception.

...
Idaho's governor signed the first copycat measure in March, although it has been temporarily blocked by the state's Supreme Court

The third Oklahoma bill is to take effect this summer and would make it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. That bill contains no exceptions for rape or incest.

Which states are next?

 

[lpetrich]

Poland's Abortion Ban Offers Glimpse Of Future Without Roe : Consider This from NPR : NPR

"NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on an underground network of reproductive rights activists who risk prison time to help abortion patients."

The Looming End to Abortion Rights Gives Liberal Democrats a Spark - The New York Times

Around the country — from South Texas to Chicago, Pittsburgh to New York — the looming loss of abortion rights has re-energized the Democratic Party’s left flank, which had absorbed a series of legislative and political blows and appeared to be divided and flagging. It has also dramatized the generational and ideological divide in the Democratic Party, between a nearly extinct older wing that opposes abortion rights and younger progressives who support them.

...
The growing intensity behind the issue has put some conservative-leaning Democrats on the defensive. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, the only House Democrat to vote against legislation to ensure abortion rights nationwide, insisted in an ad before his May 24 runoff with Jessica Cisneros, a progressive candidate, that he “opposes a ban on abortion.”

Candidates on the left say the potential demise of Roe shows that it’s time for Democrats to fight back.

...
But the youthful candidates of the left will have a challenge exciting voters who feel as demoralized by the Democrats’ failure to protect abortion rights as they are angry at Republicans who engineered the gutting of Roe v. Wade.

...
And while Republican consultants in Washington are telling their candidates to lay low on the issue, some of the candidates have different ideas. Three contenders for attorney general in Michigan suggested at a forum that the right to contraception established by the Supreme Court in 1965 should be decided on a state-by-state basis, assertions that Dana Nessel, Michigan’s Democratic attorney general, latched onto in her re-election bid.

Yadira Caraveo, a pediatrician and Democratic state lawmaker in Colorado running for an open House seat, is already being attacked by a would-be Republican challenger, Lori Saine, who is proclaiming herself as “strongly pro-life” and seeking to “confront and expose these radical pro-abortion Democrats.”

“They’ve already shown they can’t keep away from these issues,” Ms. Caraveo said, adding, “I want to focus on the issues that matter to people, like access to medical care and costs that are rising for families every day.”

How Democrats Want to Put Republicans on the Defensive on Abortion - The New York Times - "While conservatives control the courts and key states, the public tends to lean in favor of abortion rights. Democratic leaders are trying to translate that sentiment into victories for the party."

 

[prideandfall]

How Democrats Want to Put Republicans on the Defensive on Abortion - The New York Times - "While conservatives control the courts and key states, the public tends to lean in favor of abortion rights. Democratic leaders are trying to translate that sentiment into victories for the party."

well hey they've been saying that for 40 years and then utterly failing to do that for 40 years so maybe this time they'll totally do it.

yeah i'm sure that'll happen, and charlie will kick the footballs, and the coyote will get that bird.

 

[lpetrich]

The 17th-Century English Judge Behind Abortion and Rape Rulings Today - The New York Times - "Both in India and in the Roe v. Wade draft ruling roiling the United States, Lord Matthew Hale — an English judge who wrote that women were contractually obligated to husbands — still looms large."

As a commenter noted, if one wants to go full 17th century, one would conclude that abortion is only murder after quickening, when the fetus starts to move around in the womb, and that is what Matthew Hale apparently believed.

Roe Inspired Activists Worldwide, Who May Be Rethinking Strategy - The New York Times

So the opinion also raises a question relevant to activists everywhere: Is seeking protection for abortion rights through courts, rather than building the kind of mass movement that can power legislative victories, a riskier strategy than it once seemed?

...
But just as Roe’s passage and ability to withstand opposition seemed to map out a path to abortion protection, its likely fall now highlights a potential weakness of judicial protection: It is inherently dependent on the makeup of the courts. And over time, that can change.

In the United States, Republican voters’ opposition to abortion helped fuel a decades-long effort to appoint and elect conservative judges at all levels of the judicial system. Today, the result is a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court that not only looks set to overturn Roe, but that has also swung sharply to the right on other issues, including voting rights.

In Poland, when the far-right nationalist government failed to get a restrictive abortion law through Parliament, it turned instead to the constitutional tribunal, which was stacked with justices friendly to the governing Law and Justice party. In October 2020, the tribunal effectively enshrined the failed legislation into constitutional law.

Sometimes litigation simply fizzles. In 2010, many thought that a challenge to Irish abortion restrictions in the European Court of Human Rights might become a Roe for Europe. But the court issued only a narrow procedural decision instead.

In the end, it may come down to activism after all. And around the world, a pattern has emerged: successful campaigns treat abortion as part of broader questions of national identity, and rest on sustained organizing by experienced activists.

 

[lpetrich]

In the US, left-wing activists have not made a high priority out of abortion because it seems to have been settled by Roe vs. Wade.

Centrist organizations and Democratic politicians, by contrast, have often framed abortion as a matter of unfortunate but necessary health care services that should be “safe, legal and rare,” and focused activism on issues of access. That was often vital for women in rural areas or states whose burdensome regulations had made abortion essentially unavailable in practice, but it did not generate the kind of mass, identity-based appeal that has been effective in countries like Ireland.

Like a lot of centrist Democratic positions, that does not look very inspiring. It seems like the common centrist-Democrat practice of preemptive compromising, and it must be noted that it is not very successful preemptive compromising. It is also not very good negotiating. It almost seems like they are apologizing to the Republican Party.

 

[lpetrich]

What Happens if Roe v. Wade Is Overturned? - The New York Times

The United States would join a very small group of countries that has tightened abortion laws in recent years, as opposed to loosening them. Three countries have done so since 1994: Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua. In that period, 59 countries have expanded access, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Under Roe, the United States is unusual in allowing abortion for any reason until around 23 weeks. Yet in many countries with earlier cutoffs, abortion is allowed for a wide variety of reasons, according to the center.

Sixty-six countries — home to about a quarter of women of reproductive age — prohibit abortion or allow it only if a woman’s life is in danger. Without Roe, certain states would align with these countries.

How U.S. Abortion Law Compares With Other Nations - The New York Times - "Many rich democracies have earlier cutoffs for abortion — but allow it later for a variety of reasons. And around the world, it has been much more common to expand access than restrict it."

For countries with gestational limits, a 12-week limit is the most common. Many countries with time-based limits have exceptions for health or other reasons later in pregnancy. Details of permissible health and socioeconomic reasons for abortion vary widely; in some countries, such as Britain, they are essentially a formality. Gestational limits vary by state in Australia, but most states have limits that are later than 15 weeks. Mexico City and three other Mexican states broadly allow abortions on request.

“Under the status quo, abortion access is still out of reach for many in the United States,” said Risa Kaufman, director of U.S. human rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “That is in contrast to many countries, including in Western Europe, that provide access to subsidized, fully funded abortion services, universal health care, contraception and broader social supports.”

Countries that have recently liberalized abortion laws include Ireland, which had mostly banned abortion but made it legal on request until 12 weeks in 2018, and South Korea, which decriminalized it.

“The U.S. trend is very much the minority trend,” said Joanna Mishtal, an anthropologist at the University of Central Florida who studies reproductive rights policies in Europe. She said Poland is the only European nation “that is consistently restricting both policies and real access to services that are still lawful.”

Sixty-six countries, home to just over a quarter of women of reproductive age, either prohibit abortion or allow it only if a woman’s life is danger, according to the center’s data on national laws that have been formally adopted.

Sixty-one countries, representing about 35 percent of women of reproductive age, allow abortion for various reasons, including protection of a woman’s physical or mental health or consideration of her social or economic circumstances.

Some countries in this group are more permissive than others. In Britain, women must have two doctors approve their abortion, but requests are routinely granted up to 24 weeks — and beyond that for severe health reasons. (The National Health Service website says: “The decision to have an abortion is yours alone.”) In Bolivia, however, a woman must show a grave health risk from her pregnancy, or show it was a result of rape or incest.

Seventy-six countries, home to four in 10 women, allow abortion for any reason for a certain number of weeks. The most common threshold is 12 weeks. A dozen or so countries besides the United States allow abortion without any restrictions or conditions after 15 weeks, the cutoff in question in the Mississippi case. They include North Korea, China, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and Vietnam. In February, France increased the threshold to 16 weeks from 14.

Defenders of that state's law compare it to those countries' laws, but there are some big differences. Those countries don't have access-obstruction TRAP laws.

Some of these countries, however, allow abortion after the cutoff if the woman has a valid reason, and law scholars say that in some of them, abortion until fetal viability is as accessible as it is in the United States under Roe.

In Germany, for example, abortion is permitted on request until 12 weeks, and until 22 weeks if, in the woman’s view, it is necessary for her physical or mental health or for present or future living conditions. In Denmark, which also has a 12-week cutoff, abortion is allowed after that time for factors including health; the person’s age, income or housing; or her interests or occupation.

Other countries also allow exceptions after 12 weeks, but they are less broad. In Ireland, for instance, the exceptions are to prevent serious health issues or death, or if the fetus has a severe, incurable illness.

Even then, many women travel to higher-limit countries to get abortions: Gestational age limits for abortion and cross‐border reproductive care in Europe: a mixed‐methods study - De Zordo - 2021 - BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology - Wiley Online Library

 

[Bomb#20]

Now, you can certainly argue that that's a bad law and nurses shouldn't get to opt out and anybody who isn't up for every procedure should have thought of that when she decided to become a nurse, and maybe you can even make a solid case for that position. But if that's you're attitude, then you are no more pro-choice than the murderer of an abortion doctor is pro-life.

Today on Abuse of Juxtaposition, we discuss the juxtaposition of murderers with people that believe in a woman's right to self-autonomy. We will discuss why some have this need to make such drastic comparisons in order to try to "make a point", but in the end, are just handwaved away as overly simplistic hyperbole which is both invalid philosophically and impotent in the power of persuasion.

I.e., you can come up with absolutely nothing substantive to say against my point and are reduced to whinging about my literary style.

JFK once told some Nobel Prize winners they were the most extraordinary assembly of talent and knowledge gathered at the White House since Thomas Jefferson dined alone. Can we take it as read, then, that it is literarily acceptable for people you like to be compared to Thomas Jefferson? An earlier poster implied that he considers himself pro-choice and that he disapproves of the Church Amendment. That's about as pro-choice as Thomas Jefferson was pro-liberty. If you intend to now misdirect our readers by "discussing the juxtaposition of a slave-owner with people who believe in a woman's right to self-autonomy", then by all means, please identify for us which infamous hypocrite it is acceptable to compare to the hypocrisy of a self-styled "pro-choice" person who would order a Catholic nurse to help perform an elective abortion.

 

[lpetrich]

Tracking Abortion Laws by State - The New York Times

• Anti: 20 states; 25.5 million women of reproductive age -- AL AR AZ FL GA . ID KY LA MO MS . ND OH OK SC SD . TN TX UT WV WY
• Maybe: 10 states; 12.1 million women of reproductive age -- IA IN KS MI MT . NC NE PA VA WI
• Pro: 20 states and D.C.; 26.5 million women of reproductive age -- AK CA CO CT DC . DE HI IL MA MD . ME MN NH NJ NM . NV NY OR RI VT . WA

The "Maybe" states: Dependent on new law or change in party control

Without Roe, Here’s Who Could Lose Access to Abortion in the U.S. - The New York Times

Has a map of abortion-clinic locations -- lots of them in populous, abortion-accepting states.

 

[lpetrich]

Abortion Activists Need to Win Back the Culture - "Make abortion normal again."

"Let’s face it: The legal strategy for saving abortion anywhere outside the bright blue states is over for now." After stating that pro-choice activists should continue their activism, author Judith Levine continued with

It means we must rejoin the culture wars. We’ll know we have won when abortion is normal again.

Legislation is a major weapon of the anti-abortion movement — of any movement. Still, the opponents of abortion have long recognized what feminists once knew: Legislation follows cultural change. Laws encode the zeitgeist, but they don’t create it, and they’re enforced only so long as the culture endorses them. Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade includes an appendix listing 51 abortion criminalization statutes, all but four dating to the mid-to-late 19th century and the latest passed in 1952 — approximately the end of history, as Alito sees it. But history — cultural change wrought by feminism — buried them all, even if they remained on the books. If they can now be disinterred and revivified, it is because the ground has been softened.

“If propaganda is as central to politics as I think, the opponents of legal abortion have been winning a psychological victory as important as their tangible goals,” wrote Ellen Willis in 1979, six years after the Roe v. Wade ruling. “Two years ago, abortion was almost always discussed in feminist terms—as a political issue affecting the condition of women,” she continued. Since then, increasingly, “the right-to-life movement has succeeded in getting the public and the media to see abortion as an abstract moral issue having solely to do with the rights of fetuses.”

Then noting that anti-abortion activists got started in the late 1960's, well before RvW and well before the right wing embraced opposition to abortion.

In 1973, with feminism in full flower, it felt as if the abortion wars were approaching an end, or at least a truce. But the religious right was mustering for more intense and wider combat, and when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, it set about reshaping the culture in the image of the white, fundamentalist Christian, patriarchal family. At the same time, influential voices in the male left were denigrating the culture wars as a right-wing ruse to distract the working classes from the “real” economic issues. Everyday life — sexuality, reproduction, the family — was a boutique, “women’s” issue.

...
Recapturing the reasonable does not entail speaking from the middle, however. Our propaganda, as as the poet Amanda Gorman puts it, must “fight fire with feminism.” It must be as emotionally powerful as the words and images that have brought us to where we are. Already there are good examples. We will need many more. The Democratic Socialists of America have adopted the no-bullshit second-wave slogan “Free abortion on demand without apology.” Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine calls the anti-abortion movement “the forced-birth movement.” Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, which organized a big rally in New York City, is promoting the slogan “Forced Pregnancy is Female Enslavement.”

Then going into some of the controversy over calling it slavery.

 

[lpetrich]

“Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare”: a history of the idea - Vox - "Democratic politicians used to say abortions should be rare. Here’s how that changed."

“I agree with Hillary Clinton on one thing,” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said at the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night. “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.”

Clinton used this language in her 2008 presidential campaign; Bill Clinton, meanwhile, had introduced it into Democratic politics back in 1992. The language was likely meant to appeal to people who supported the right to an abortion in principle but still felt morally conflicted about the procedure — a large group, according to some polling. But many abortion rights advocates argued that calling for the procedure to be “rare” placed stigma on people who seek it.

“There’s a fundamental notion of bodily autonomy that we’ve been fighting for as advocates and activists on this issue for years,” Destiny Lopez, co-director of the All* Above All Action Fund, a nonprofit that works to expand abortion access, told Vox. Saying abortion should be rare “completely negates all the work that we’ve done to really make this about the ability to decide what’s best for your body, for your family, for your community,” she said.

Over the years, Democrats have become more sympathetic to this view. By 2016, Hillary Clinton had changed her message, saying only that abortion should be “safe and legal.” It was part of a broader shift in the party toward more full-throated support of abortion rights.

"Safe, legal, and rare" seems like some Clintonite Democratic centrist sort of thing, some effort to make everybody happy. But Clintonism is gradually fading, as the Republicans become more and more militant and less and less willingness to compromise.

 

[Copernicus]

Clinton had a gift for sales rhetoric that most Democratic politicians lack. He just told people what they already believed in this case, and he did so in a way that did not vilify people who disagreed. In today's rough and tumble era, the language tends to focus on what shouldn't be the case--government vetoing choice--rather than a vision of what should--government making the choice safer and less likely to be burdensome. Sex education, health care, prophylactics, and support for family planning are better ways to cut down on abortions.

 

[Derec]

If you genuinely believe that someone in the womb has all the qualities that obligate consideration of it as a moral entity, it is still not murder to let it die on account of being disconnected from the creature it is parasitizing.

It FIRST has an obligation to not be a parasite to get any right at all to continue existing.

That is a genuinely horrible view of motherhood. No wonder pro-choices are losing the culture war if you guys are leading with this cheerful message. Sheesh!
Not to mention that under this moral view of pregnancy, your choices (among others) is what led to the situation in the first place.

If some psychotic asshole with god powers snapped their fingers and suddenly I was connected to you umbilically, if I cut the cord you would die and I wouldn't and I am the only being in the universe who can do this for you because the psychotic god power dude snapped his fingers again and fucked off...

But it is not some random psychotic asshole who made the choices that let to this situation, it is the person who is supposedly being parasitized.
If somebody snaps their fingers and you are now connected to them, and you would die if disconnected, they cannot morally disconnect you and pretend that this choice is fine because you are parasitizing them.

And I am saying this as a generally pro-choice kind of fellow. But this take is genuinely horrible.

 

[Derec]

Bullshit. Give some examples.

Really? What choices do the pro-choice people NOT believe in?

Many so-called pro-choices are against the ability of consenting adults to choose to engage in sex work either as provider or as a client.

And yes, I know you will scream "hobby horse", but the issues are quite related.
Until the 19th century, both abortion and sex work have generally been allowed. They fell prey, in the 19th century, to similar kinds of moral panics. Anthony Comstock, a very influential busybody of the day, railed against sex work, abortion as well as porn and contraception.

Unfortunately, many feminists of the 20th/21st centuries separated these choice issues and became quite Comstockian on vices they opposed.