Roe v Wade is on deck

[Bomb#20]

But as for this specific... Very very very very few women (you provide the stats/source, if there are any: I didn't get anything significant in a brief try) I mean, like one in a million or millions of women, a abort healthy fetus in the third trimester just for the hell of it.

There are at least three painfully obvious reasons a healthy woman might quite rationally seek to abort a healthy fetus late-term. (1) Seven months into a much-wanted pregnancy, she lost her medical insurance. (2) Seven months into a much-wanted pregnancy, the baby's father walked out on her, or went to prison, or died. (3) Seven months into a much-unwanted pregnancy, she was finally able to lay her hands on enough money to pay for an abortion and/or for travel to a state where it's still legal.

Also, maybe an alien came to her in a dream and told her to get an abortion.
Maybe she ate some bad vindaloo and started hallucinating that the fetus was in fact the same alien that came to her in the dream.
Sure, all kinds of likely things come up to counter the dreaded canard.

What motivated you to compose such an idiotic comparison?

Good thing our legislators are fine upstanding people who rightfully have domain over such persistent problems.

Seriously - I’m back to considering how many fetuses/fetae are worth one woman’s life - or even her suffering.

But that’s the reverse of the dynamic in play, wherein our trusted representatives decide how many women should be sacrificed to save one fetus.

Seriously B20, do you have any means to quantify the pressing problems we have each identified?

Seriously, Elixir, why are you unable to mentally distinguish the issue of whether your opinion of abortion policy is correct from the issue of whether your "third trimester just for the hell of it" rhetoric about women is ***> truthful? <*** Please stop misrepresenting other people.

I offered an opinion about your false dilemma fallacy; I offered no opinion about our legislators' rightful domain, or about how many fetuses are worth one woman’s life, or about the quantity of women seeking late-term abortions because of financial catastrophes in their lives. Those aren't relevant to the points I was making about the Dem Post Mortem I posted them to, and it's unfortunate that your inability to mentally distinguish issues contributed to the whole discussion being dragged here to the depths of the Roe-v-Wade thread.

Democrats like you keep acting to turn the Democratic Party from big-tent to small-tent, with your unrelenting personal attacks and misrepresentations against Democrats like Emily and with your triumphalist insistence on making the party adopt policy positions popular with left-wing Democrats and unpopular with moderate Democrats. You are helping make moderate Democrats lose the motivation to turn out to vote for your candidates, who come off as representing only left-wing Democrats. That helps Trump win. The extremization of the Democrats allows the Republicans to get away with extremizing too, and vice versa.

 

[Elixir]

What motivated you to compose such an idiotic comparison?

Drugs! It’s ALWAYS the drugs!!
(It’s called reductio ad absurdum.)

Please stop misrepresenting other people.

Be specific; who have I misrepresented and how?
I represented that Emily’s position leaves/left the door open for exactly what we’ve seen happen. Just recently she opined that “there should have been a federal ban” against restricting abortion access “but there wasn’t”. So I guess we are very much in agreement.
Counter the argument instead of attacking some imagined “misrepresentation”.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The question here is, to reiterate, not "should such abortions be permitted in some cases?", as it seems that everyone agrees that the answer to that is "Yes".

I predict that Ems will re-phrase the question and pretend it still needs to be resolved.

Sheesh - all this AGAIN, just because Ems refused to acknowledge the hypocrisy in which she has indulged, and demanded an example.

If a woman goes into the hospital with a near ruptured appendix, no one in the hospital needs to fill out paperwork for the Government, call the police, call the Department of Health. The professionals do their stuff and provide the woman the health care she requires.

If a woman goes in the hospital with an unviable third term fetus, and some version of third terms are illegal, the hospital won't just go to work. There will be bureaucracy involved. In fact, it is the only thing that seems to have bureaucracy involved, oddly enough only impacts women. She doesn't appreciate that her insistence on the life of a baby will provide a number of hurdles to save a woman's life. Hurdles that are grossly unethical. All so that a law can exist to protect babies that weren't getting aborted in the first place.

Please provide some modicum of supporting evidence for all of the delays and bureaucracy that occurred under Roe v Wade.

Roe v Wade? You beez out of datez.

I'll take your "some modicum of supporting evidence" and raise it to "where the fuck have you been?!"

The high court rejected the lower court’s temporary restraining order, saying Cox did not qualify for an abortion under the medical exception to the law. The justices said Karsan, Cox’s OB/GYN, did not assert that, in her reasonable medical judgment, Cox is facing a life-threatening physical condition, as the law requires. “No one disputes that Ms. Cox’s pregnancy has been extremely complicated. Any parents would be devastated to learn of their unborn child’s trisomy 18 diagnosis,” the justices wrote. “Some difficulties in pregnancy, however, even serious ones, do not pose the heightened risks to the mother the exception encompasses.”

Or do women in Texas not count?

FFS, I'm being burned at the fucking stake for literally wanting to reinstitute exactly the same approach that was in place for my whole goddamned life!

How's that going? You do realize that in not supporting some people (and supporting a number of other not good people), it has been going backwards for the last 30 years and threatens to really get fucked up in the next 4 years with these Old School Catholic demagogues coming out.

You and Elixir and others keep trotting out these horror stories of what you imagine might happen under a version of law that you've added your own bullshit to, for no other reason that to make it sound like it's somehow abhorrent to hold the view that the overwhelming majority of women support, and which is exactly how it worked for essentially all of our lives!

Disclaimer... call out of "bullshit" is in itself, actually bullshit... as shown in Texas case back 26 months ago.

This is insanity. Like seriously, this is craziness from you guys.

I want Roe v Wade reinstated exactly as it was.

What you want doesn't matter because you do such an awful job at trying to get what you want, that it becomes counterproductive.

I suppose my daughter won't likely need to worry about men with testicles in the girls room... but birth control will be illegal, I mean, you got half of what you wanted, right?

 

[Elixir]

You and Elixir and others keep trotting out these horror stories of what you imagine might happen under a version of law that you've added your own bullshit to

Uh, please, Emily. What “might happen” is not the problem. It has ALREADY happened, because of what happened before it (Roe).
Your argument should be that if there had been a Constitutional right to abortion without some exceptions a la RvW, the backlash would be even worse than what we have now. Which may have been the case IMHO. But how much worse can it/will it get?
The camel’s nose got under the tent with Roe, and now the whole camel is in the tent. Nothing is out of bounds now, with a corrupt conservative billionaires’ Court.

 

[Jarhyn]

You and Elixir and others keep trotting out these horror stories of what you imagine might happen under a version of law that you've added your own bullshit to

Uh, please, Emily. What “might happen” is not the problem. It has ALREADY happened, because of what happened before it (Roe).
Your argument should be that if there had been a Constitutional right to abortion without some exceptions a la RvW, the backlash would be even worse than what we have now. Which may have been the case IMHO. But how much worse can it/will it get?
The camel’s nose got under the tent with Roe, and now the whole camel is in the tent. Nothing is out of bounds now, with a corrupt conservative billionaires’ Court.

And we all said this was where it was going to go.

Funny that, when people scream 'think of the children', adults always die.

The minute someone says that, they should be looking in the mirror and asking full of doubt whether that's really true and then look at the long history of panics.

I have to be careful myself; I think that for children's sake, children should not be allowed to access the Internet from a device that will represent with an "adult" IP address. I just... Don't think adults should have any sort of likely access to a child online.

I don't think teens should be accessing Reddit.

I don't think teens should be accessing these forums.

I don't think teens should be anywhere near adult spaces online. It should be solved at the ISP level, and a cellphone with a SIM or IP for grownups should be treated like a car or bottle of alcohol with respect to a child.

The best part about this is that it creates a clear differentiation between kids and adults that is as enforceable as normal societal kid/adult restrictions, and doesn't require any further identifier beyond what IP pool you access from, no ID required.

This would also be a great way to push IPv6, and IPv6 has the address pool range to spare. I'm pretty sure the IPv6 address pool is deeper than the mac address pool, anyway.

I look at that and wonder if that is "too far", when it's nowhere near as far as people have taken it in Florida, carding people and tracking adult preferences and whatnot. Ew.

But that's my one "think of the children" and it's more "thinking of how to guarantee that exactly zero people I encounter on the Internet are children".

Literally every other version, from ROE to Video Games to gays, every other thing has been more about useful idiots.

Every time, we say "oh, it's another call for 'useful idiots' to join some cause." Every time they hop to the same causes championed by the same old white shit heels that are shooting down child marriage bans and keeping child beauty pageants going. Every time, they find a way to support these men.

People are so tired of such men that many young folks who have more spine than a jellyfish are just choosing to reject "man" as a thing they identify as being, despite being entirely comfortable with their hormones. And look at who it is demanding that these people be "men", and identified as such, who won't let people make any action to organize behind rejecting it.

It is newspeak to do this thing, exactly as 1984, and not the false image of it that the Nazis would have posted, where truth is lies, and it is the use of nuanced speech to communicate complex topics that is newspeak, and anything to resist 1984 being today is "1984".

Don't believe the evidence of your eyes but the truth of the state. People are men and women at conception, and 2+2 is 5.

Just try not to mind the rats, and "may the Lord open".

 

[Bomb#20]

Before I can properly reply to this post, it would help if you can clarify your position on a certain point... In your view, is a late-term fetus a person or not?

<crickets>

Oh well, I gave you every chance. I'll just have to do without...

You referenced the benefited party

Party?
Parties are all well and good I guess.
When it comes to legislation though, I prefer that it benefit PEOPLE.

irrational advocacies for laws that hurt people and benefit nobody, but comport with religious edicts

Is 100% supported.
By contorting “fetus” into “the party” you are trying to sneak an unsupported assumption that fetuses are people,

No. We're talking about your condemnation of Emily over her wish to restore Roe-v-Wade. Roe-v-Wade treated late-term fetuses as people. You dropped the "late-term" qualifier. You are trying to sneak in the unsupported assumption that she and I are treating all fetuses as people. We have been treating fetuses as people only from the point of viability outside the womb. Moreover, you have insisted on treating them as non-people right up to birth and yet you had a cow when Emily implied you think a 38-week fetus isn't a person. That's an inconsistency on your part, regardless of whether you think a 26-week fetus is a person, so for you to make a stink about my unsupported assumption is pure quibbling. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the line should be at 26 weeks or 38 weeks or anywhere in between or even 22 weeks for that matter and it doesn't change the nature of your disagreement with Emily.

But "unsupported assumption" is a fair point. So here's support. A baby born prematurely at 26 weeks goes into a neonatal ICU incubator, not into a garbage dump. If you kill a 26-week preemie in an incubator you'll be charged with murder. To contend that a 26-week fetus is not a person is to contend either that the law is wrong to regard the preemie in the incubator as a person with rights, or else that personhood is a property not of the thing itself but of the environment it lives in. So if you object to my assumption that late-term fetuses are people, pick one. Is personhood environment, or is it okay to kill preemies?

and of equal value to that of the mother, into the discussion.

That's just an invention on your part. I didn't say a bloody thing about which people were of what value.

You are of course welcome to a belief that fetuses are people, but I disagree with that OPINION

No, you evidently don't disagree with that opinion when it's a 38-week fetus.

and find it self evident that elevating their rights above those of people, is harmful to people.

It's self-evident that you are relying on contradictory premises. Feel free to clarify for how many weeks after conception you think it should be legal to kill a preemie in an incubator. Alternately, feel free to explain how a changing an animal's environment affects whether the animal is a person. (I hope you don't find my contention that fetuses are animals too controversial.)

That at least some late-term fetuses are people became established as a shared premise for discussion the second you typed "Is an invention of your less-than-honest mind. ... If you can’t make your case without imputing ridiculousness, your intellectual bankruptcy is laid bare." at Emily. So "Prime example: her irrational advocacies for laws that hurt people and benefit nobody, but comport with religious edicts." is unsupported. She exhibited people the law she advocates benefits, and you stipulated that at least some of those she exhibited are people. Moreover, your "but comport with religious edicts" add-on was just a baseless personal attack. It was of a piece with your deletion of the "late-term" qualifier from your characterization of my assumption about fetuses. You were insinuating that she holds her view because of religious influence, rather than because she rationally judges late-term fetuses to be people. If you think that isn't a misrepresentation of her, then by all means, go ahead and tell us which religion issued this alleged edict ruling that fetuses start being people at the beginning of the third trimester.

 

[Elixir]

Oh well, I gave you every chance. I'll just have to do without...

Sorry I overlooked that - NO. I do NOT consider a fetus a person.

We're talking about your condemnation of Emily over her wish to restore Roe-v-Wade.

"Wishing to restore" is misleading re my reasons for getting on Emily's case. I "wish to restore" it too, improvement that it would be.

Emily IMO was holding up RvW as an ideal, and my difference, which I have defended almost without opposition, is that leaving litigation on reproductive medicine in place, is a camel's nose under the tent, and Emily was giving me the impression that she favored the nose under the tent. Just the nose, of course. I became frustrated with her reticence to acknowledge the downside of camel noses.
I have observed that abortion laws writ large hurt people and benefit nobody but lawyers. I'd now like to add a relative handful of late term viable fetuses that are probably aborted annually, even though I believe that laws against it would increase rather than decrease their incidence.
Anyhow -
Late in the conversation Emily came around to agreeing that a federal ban on interfering with abortion availability or care would be ideal but unattainable (as if RvW was attainable) and that IMO was a fair observation. I'm sorry if that nuance was lost on you, and hope this cleared it up for the 100th time.

your "but comport with religious edicts" add-on was just a baseless personal attack.

More an irrelevancy than a personal attack. I certainly didn't know if or what religious affiliation Emily claimed - I apologize.
You're correct - the fact that something is true doesn't make it worth saying.
But you're NOT correct in accusing me unjustly persecuting poor Emily (who obviously has a good brain and doesn't need defending).

AFAIK, Emily and I do understand each other on this.

A baby born prematurely at 26 weeks goes into a neonatal ICU incubator, not into a garbage dump.

You know better. The decisions are not made on the basis of weeks.

 

[Emily Lake]

In my opinion abortion should be legal, without any consent other than the woman's,
* during the first six or seven months of pregnancy, or
* when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or
* when the fetus is unviable or the woman's health is at risk.
Are we all in agreement so far? During the Roe-v-Wade days, what percentage of abortions fell into one of these three categories? Am I wrong that it was 99% or so? Is the sub-sub-debate specifically about some minuscule fraction of abortions? (I don't mind debates about minutia, just want to know if that's what 's going on here.)

I agree with your opinion on when abortion should be legal. Heck, my view might be arguably more permissive than yours - I support abortion when the fetus is viable but is also damaged to an extent that the baby would never live a full life and would subject the parents to a whole lot more than simply parenting. Congenital defects, indicators of severe cognitive impairment, genetic markers for very deleterious conditions, etc.

Elixir, on the other hand, seems to think that your opinion is horrible and only serves to control women and get them killed and is all motivated by religion.

 

[Emily Lake]

Roe v Wade? You beez out of datez.

Oh for fuck's sake. This is so far beyond absurd. You have an entire screed arguing against something I don't want and don't support.

What I want is the reinstallation of Roe v Wade. Do you have an objection to my position that actually addresses MY POSITION instead of arguing against something I don't support?

 

[Emily Lake]

And we all said this was where it was going to go.

I call bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. I don't believe for one second that "you all" were predicting this when RvW passed in 1973. Seriously, I think Elixir was maybe 7 or 8 at the time, and I'm fairly sure you weren't even fucking born yet.

 

[Elixir]

Am I wrong that it was 99% or so?

The CDC reports that only about 1% of abortions occur at or after 21 weeks gestation (generally considered the point of viability).
93% occur during the first trimester. According to Perplexity AI (sorry!) there is no clear distinction in national data between "optional" and "medically necessary" abortions. Late-term abortions are often performed for medical reasons, but some may be considered optional by certain criteria, so it's probably way less than 1%.
Again, I am singularly uninterested in "saving" that fraction of 1% of aborted fetuses at the expense of people with names and address, SS#s, friends, relatives, jobs, memories and lovers. Not that all that stuff makes you a "person", of course. It just hurts a whole hell of a lot more people to lose such a being, than if a woman kills an unwanted fetus, vile murderous act though aborting it may be.
And keeping abortion laws on the books encourages debacles like the ban-fest we see now.
Sure, I "favor return to Roe" because it hurts fewer PEOPLE than are being hurt now, QED.
But I favor the government getting their authoritarian ass out of the exam room more.

 

[Emily Lake]

AFAIK, Emily and I do understand each other on this.

We absolutely do NOT understand each other on this. As far as I can tell, you've been calling me names and attacking me relentlessly for holding an entirely reasonable and well-thought-out position on this topic.

 

[Emily Lake]

Again, I am singularly uninterested in "saving" that fraction of 1% of aborted fetuses at the expense of people with names and address, SS#s, friends, relatives, jobs, memories and lovers.

What if those people are not harmed by refusing to kill the fetus that's a month shy of delivery?

 

[Elixir]

AFAIK, Emily and I do understand each other on this.

We absolutely do NOT understand each other on this. As far as I can tell, you've been calling me names and attacking me relentlessly for holding an entirely reasonable and well-thought-out position on this topic.

I'm sorry you feel that my pointing out that your position is not as well thought out as you thought, is perceived as an attack.
I do think it's an inexcusable failing of someone of your mental faculty to fail to recognize the camel's nose under the tent as a threat, especially now that THE FUCKING CAMEL IS IN THE TENT, EMILY.
There will be no "restoring RvW" and we both know it.
So while we're fantasizing, I'm fantasizing about a federal ban on laws interfering with abortion access.
I won't bother citing your agreement the there "should have been such a ban, but there wasn't". Is there something about that, that I don't understand? Is there something you don't understand about my position?

What if those people are not harmed by refusing to kill the fetus that's a month shy of delivery?

What if your Aunt had a moustache? I don't see whatever point you're making. Nobody is directly harmed by not killing anyone or anything.
(Bad guy in movie killed before he can kill good guy maybe)
People are directly harmed - and killed - by delayed or denied care. It's not rocket surgery.

 

[Emily Lake]

AFAIK, Emily and I do understand each other on this.

We absolutely do NOT understand each other on this. As far as I can tell, you've been calling me names and attacking me relentlessly for holding an entirely reasonable and well-thought-out position on this topic.

I'm sorry you feel that my pointing out that your position is not as well thought out as you thought, is perceived as an attack.

I perceive you attacking me as an attack. You know, that thing you do where you misrepresent my views, and where you insinuate that I just want to let women die and bleed out in the parking lot and don't care about women, and where you repeatedly imply that my views are nothing more than far-right religiously motivated crap?

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that I perceive as attacks. So how about you stop doing that?

I do think it's an inexcusable failing of someone of your mental faculty to fail to recognize the camel's nose under the tent as a threat, especially now that THE FUCKING CAMEL IS IN THE TENT, EMILY.

If you think the only possible solution is to make it absolutely unfettered abortion on demand at any stage whatsoever with no reasonable guidelines at all... well, we're not going to come to an agreement on that. And that's fine, we don't have to agree. But don't insinuate that I'm a heartless wingnut who would be happy to let women bleed to death instead of getting necessary care, because that's an outright falsehood.

There will be no "restoring RvW" and we both know it.

No, we don't know it. I think there's a significantly higher likelihood of getting a federal law that enshrines RvW through congress than of getting your favored anytime-anywhere-anyreason abortion for all law passed EVER. The vast majority of women favor having some guidelines in the last couple/few months of pregnancy - the vast majority of women favored and supported Roe V Wade. Extremely few women actually support your unfettered approach.

So while we're fantasizing, I'm fantasizing about a federal ban on laws interfering with abortion access.
I won't bother citing your agreement the there "should have been such a ban, but there wasn't". Is there something about that, that I don't understand? Is there something you don't understand about my position?

What if those people are not harmed by refusing to kill the fetus that's a month shy of delivery?

What if your Aunt had a moustache? I don't see whatever point you're making. Nobody is directly harmed by not killing anyone or anything.

Who counts as "anyone"?

Does a fetus two weeks prior to delivery count as a person in your book? Or, as Bomb#20 asked, do you support killing premies? What makes one count as a person and the other not?

You said:

Late-term abortions are often performed for medical reasons, but some may be considered optional by certain criteria, so it's probably way less than 1%.
Again, I am singularly uninterested in "saving" that fraction of 1% of aborted fetuses at the expense of people with names and address, SS#s, friends, relatives, jobs, memories and lovers.

You've pretty much just plainly stated that you're perfectly happy to kill a healthy fetus that is two weeks away from delivery to a healthy mother.

(Bad guy in movie killed before he can kill good guy maybe)
People are directly harmed - and killed - by delayed or denied care. It's not rocket surgery.

And once more, since you seem incapable of getting this, I do not support delaying necessary care, nor denying necessary care.

In my view, your approach legalizes killing of some people without any good reason whatsoever.

 

[Elixir]

No, you evidently don't disagree with that opinion when it's a 38-week fetus.

Yes, yes I do.
The word viable in this context means to me “is not yet, but has a good chance to become”. If you want to take a cold rational view, a 38 week fetus can’t replace the mother who bled out, but the mother who bled out could have, in principle, replaced the fetus. That’s not why I would favor keeping the government out of the exam room; it’s more about people suffering and dying for care delayed or denied.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone here claim memories of “being” a fetus?

 

[Elixir]

I think there's a significantly higher likelihood of getting a federal law that enshrines RvW through congress than of getting your favored anytime-anywhere-anyreason abortion for all law passed EVER.

Why do you believe that?
I estimate both chances to be zero in the next two plus decades, based on where we are now and the direction this country is headed. Either you’re looking at a longer view*, or you’re hopelessly naive.

* assuming you’re quite a bit younger than I, that’s understandable.

 

[ZiprHead]

* assuming you’re quite a bit younger than I, that’s understandable.

I thought everyone was younger than you.

 

[Elixir]

* assuming you’re quite a bit younger than I, that’s understandable.

I thought everyone was younger than you.

Killjoy.
I was hoping Emily could provide rationale for thinking that restoring RvW was in any way a possibility. I could have used a pick-me-up, but alas. Emily is either out of ideas or is simply unwilling to share her treasure.

 

[Elixir]

We absolutely do NOT understand each other on this.

What don’t you understand?