# Abortion should be decided state-by-state because democracy is more important **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 17, 2026, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738 "2026-02-17T07:00:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/141 "2026-03-02T05:16:29Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I’m not there. At least not yet. But your argument is that a state government _should_ be allowed to be exactly that. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/142 "2026-03-02T05:31:21Z")
If legitimacy just means successful domination, then you’ve emptied it of any _normative_ force. It’s no different from brute power, and “authority” becomes just a euphemism for winning. Big Strong Boss, eh? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/143 "2026-03-02T05:35:23Z")
It is sometimes difficult to debate you because you speak in absolutes. “Democracy” does not mean bigots torturing and killing people with the backing of government. There are democracies where that happened, it’s just not part of the definition of “democracy.” A country that does not provide women with the right to abortion access, nationwide, does not necessarily exist solely, primarily, or “simply” as “a tool of sadism.” The government does a lot of other stuff. Now if you were talking to me in the American South, c. early 1900s, I might agree with you, what with the KKK’s capture of the State machine. But denying a right to abortion care, bad as it is, is just not on that level. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/144 "2026-03-02T05:36:20Z")
I don’t think political legitimacy has normative force. > [@Max\_S](#): > > Moral obligation to the law arises via social contract. > Participation in the social compact entails reciprocal moral entitlements and obligations. > Withdrawal from the social compact forfeits reciprocal moral claims beyond basic human decency. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/145 "2026-03-02T06:46:49Z")
Yes, I get that. Once you concede that legitimacy has no normative force, you’ve reduced political authority to organized coercion. Might as well have just typed _Might Makes Right_ in every post rather than legalistic justifications for it. Or _Your Body, My Rules_, in this case. “democracy is more important” is just a smokescreen, IOW. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/146 "2026-03-02T08:49:20Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > The unfortunate reality is that on its own, it only prohibits Congress from doing stuff. Yeah, and SCotUS fixed that stupid hangover from the Articles of Confederation, > **AI Overview** > The First Amendment was incorporated against state governments via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, beginning in 1925. This “selective incorporation” meant that while the Amendment originally only restricted Congress, the Supreme Court gradually applied its protections—including free speech, religion, and assembly—to state and local governments. > > Key Incorporation Cases: > Speech: Gitlow v. New York (1925) – First to apply speech protections to states. > Press: Near v. Minnesota (1931). > Assembly: De Jonge v. Oregon (1937). > Free Exercise of Religion: Hamilton v. Regents of U.C. (1934). > Establishment Clause: Everson v. Board of Ed. (1947). > Petition: Hague v. CIO (1939). > [@Max\_S](#): > > The right to abortion care is not such a liberty. It’s not the right to abortion care, it’s the right bodily autonomy and the privacy right to make medical decisions. What if instead of abortion it was about banning amputation because you can’t be resurrected if your body is not whole? Would that limitation on bodily autonomy and medical privacy be acceptable? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/147 "2026-03-02T12:35:23Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > What if instead of abortion it was about banning amputation because you can’t be resurrected if your body is not whole? Given that the motive is bigotry and cruelty, a better analogy would be the state ordering the amputation of all black people’s hands, under the justification of “black people are innately murderers and thieves and must be restrained from acting on it”. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/148 "2026-03-02T12:52:01Z")
Ultimately, I think you’re letting religion cloud your reasoning. You’re holding out abortion as special and saying that should be some kind of democratic process (I’m sure you’re opposed to Republican efforts to override state initiatives that allow abortion), but other kinds of bodily autonomy questions are too important to be left to the democratic process. For example, forced kidney (and other non-lethal-to-the-donor) donations would help people who everyone considers to be persons worthy of protection. Certainly, post-mortem donations could be required without hurting the donor at all, and would be a godsend for people needing transplants, but no state is willing to violate the bodily autonomy even of dead people. Saying abortion is protected because of bodily autonomy, but saying it’s OK to ban abortion care really is like saying freedom of the press is a core value, but it’s OK to ban printing presses (back when that’s how you got the word out). The ban makes having the right moot, if there’s no way to exercise the right. And, there’s another thread about when a fetus should be considered a person, so we shouldn’t revisit that here. However, the term “unborn child” is clearly a religious position and certainly shouldn’t be applied to early abortions, when nearly all abortions happen. A cluster of cells without a brain is not in any non-religious sense a child, so the state shouldn’t have any interest at all in its fate. So, I’m asking you to take a step back and think about why abortion and why not other issues? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/149 "2026-03-02T15:15:34Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > If all that matters is the willingness to kill, then democracy is beside the point That’s only true if democracy means nothing but people’s sentiment or choice, helpless impotent wishing that means nothing if the armed power of the State has no reason to listen to it.. At least as conceived of by the Framers democracy meant a democracy of the _ **armed** _, and willing if necessary to kill. In other words the idea is that that whole _kratos_ thing is distributed among the populace as a whole. By the theories expounded by the Founders, the State wasn’t supposed to have the autonomous power to impose dictates upon the population via an omnipotent police and military apparatus. If the government legitimately represented the consent of the population as a whole it wouldn’t need and shouldn’t have despotic power. If push came to shove, against either foreign conquerors or a lawless minority, an armed populace would be willing to step up to the plate to help enforce the laws that they broadly consented to. Hence all that stuff about militia, the Second Amendment, etc. The Framers in effect said that yes _kratos_, the willingness to kill, IS the foundation of all government. Therefore, to have a democracy of government you need a democracy of _kratos_. Now of course none of that is going to make sense to people whose viewpoint is essentially Hobbesian, who view the populace as chaotically selfish savages who can only be made to live together in civilization by the iron fist of power. Hobbes wouldn’t have credited democracy at all, and his “Leviathan” would supposedly rule benignly by a sort of Confuscian sense of duty. So if you don’t trust the populace as a whole, and the government turns out to be a selfish giant caring only about its own dominion rather than the stand-in for a benevolent God you were hoping for, where does that leave you? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/150 "2026-03-02T15:29:54Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > That’s only true if democracy means nothing but people’s sentiment or choice, helpless impotent wishing that means nothing if the armed power of the State has no reason to listen to it.. At least as conceived of by the Framers democracy meant a democracy of the _ **armed** _, and willing if necessary to kill. In other words the idea is that that whole _kratos_ thing is distributed among the populace as a whole. Which in real life doesn’t work. You can arm everyone to the teeth and an actual army will just massacre any of them that try anything. And I don’t really care about the political theories of a collection of genocidal slaveholders. Who treated women like domestic animals and certainly wouldn’t have supported any sort of rights for them anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/151 "2026-03-02T15:36:41Z")
Well then as I said, what are you left with? Cursing the government for not being kind and fair? How do you propose that anyone **make** it be kind and fair? I mean, if the People are savages and government is nothing but the apparatus for the most successful savages to tyrannize the “losers” (everyone else), then what do you actually expect could ever be different? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/152 "2026-03-02T15:39:20Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Well then as I said, what are you left with? Cursing the government for not being kind and fair? How do you propose that anyone **make** it be kind and fair? Civil rights. Rule of law. Not letting the worst people run wild and enslave everyone else in the name of “democracy”. Giving people other options than terrorism to protect themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/153 "2026-03-02T16:11:38Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Civil rights. Rule of law. Not letting the worst people run wild and enslave everyone else How do you “not let” them? Scolding? Protest marches? Petitions? Harsh editorials? What does any of that matter to bullies with steel truncheons and machine guns, who just don’t _give a s\*\*t_ what you think about anything? How do thoughts in peoples’ heads have any effect on the physical world except by some mechanism of force and power? _Kratos_ in other words? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/154 "2026-03-02T16:16:29Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > How do thoughts in peoples’ heads have any effect on the physical world except by some mechanism of force and power? Persuasion. If the government is as uniformly evil as you describe then nothing _can_ be done. Mobs lose to armies. Governments lose when the army changes its mind. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/155 "2026-03-02T16:24:57Z")
“Persuasion”. As in you can somehow hypnotize people by chanting the right magic words. And I thought it was your position that the government is uniformly evil. If it isn’t, how do the non-evil people resist the power of those who are, except by implicitly or explicitly being able to lock them in steel cages or shoot them if they resist arrest? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/156 "2026-03-02T16:28:34Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > “Persuasion”. As in you can somehow hypnotize people by chanting the right magic words Do you think people are robots that _need_ magic words to convince them? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/157 "2026-03-02T16:30:11Z")
I’m saying that persuasion may happen to work, but its not guaranteed. Force is guaranteed. Again, the gap between our thoughts and physical reality. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/158 "2026-03-02T20:40:18Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Force is guaranteed. Force is _never_ guaranteed to work. The vast majority of armed rebellions fail, and fail bloody. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/159 "2026-03-03T00:43:01Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Might as well have just typed _Might Makes Right_ Hmm. But I _don’t_ think might makes right. Might makes, just not necessarily right. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2026, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738/160 "2026-03-03T01:48:49Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Ultimately, I think you’re letting religion cloud your reasoning. … So, I’m asking you to take a step back and think about why abortion and why not other issues? I don’t consider myself religious, and I do have views on other issues. It’s not clear to me if you want a point-by-point rebuttal, I’d be glad to do one, but I don’t think abortion is “special”. I don’t think bodily autonomy includes access to medical care as a general proposition. I suspect we both agree bodily autonomy is a human right, but we fundamentally disagree on what it means. I see it as a negative right, not a positive right. You have the right to refuse treatment. You have the right not to be assaulted. You do not have the right to demand treatment from others. Same goes for the right to privacy, the right to freedom of expression, and well, every natural right, in my opinion. I _might_ make an exception for infants and classify the positive right to nourishment as a natural right, rather than a social right, on account of their natural and universal radical dependency. Human children are not equipped to survive on their own until age 6 or so. But it’s not an absolute; no natural rights are. Basic human decency only goes so far. ~Max [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abortion-should-be-decided-state-by-state-because-democracy-is-more-important/1027738.md?page=9)