Wait, you said:
I hardly think having a message that means the same thing, but is said in a different way, constitutes “running away” from one’s earlier message.
So intrinsic rights are not actually rights, but privileges granted by the majority.
Yeah, I’ll take a hard pass on that political philosophy.
Seems a pretty accurate description of the development of the law governing slavery in the US.
The concept of inherent rights did nothing to prevent slavery until super-majorities in Congress and the state houses passed an amendment banning slavery.
You can say you are taking a pass on it 'til the cows come home, but it’s not going to take a pass on you. People with guns will eventually say otherwise.
If only 28 percent support legal second trimester abortion, how is yours the self-evidently “sensible” standard? Even if it’s “the right thing”, it’s clearly not self-evident.
Given that 60%* support legal abortion in the “first three months” (Gallup uses this terminology instead of “trimester”, a wise choice IMO) but that drops to only 28% in the “second three months”, I think it’s a stretch to think you can hold a majority if you go more than a couple weeks into the second trimester. And this goes the other way as well. You talk about wanting to set the line somewhere “sensible”, but if only 28 percent agree that abortion should be legal “in the second three months”, a line drawn in the fifth or sixth month is not going to be considered sensible by the clear (arguably “overwhelming”) majority of voters.
You do make a good point about the “disruptive events” perhaps being just a correlation without causation.
*Take note that this number is on a clear downward trend over the past 16 years:
2003: 66
2011: 62
2012: 61
2018: 60
Given that, and the big dropoff to only 28 percent support for legal second trimester abortion, it’s a risky stance to do anything other than stand firm for first trimester only. That’s already where 90 percent of elective abortions occur: why push your luck? Reinforcing barricades around this position would be a formidable electoral fortress indeed for Democrats.
Debatable, but then that position is not the bill or law that is being discussed here.
Some evangelical leaders are aware that going after the first trimester was an overreach, that they had Democrats like Northam on the defensive due to what appeared to many to be a blue state overreach in the other direction. They are warning that their advantage is thrown away by this radical move–and they are right. But the right will figure it out eventually and go back to being on firmer political ground. If we’ve already got our fortress all locked down, alligator moats ringing it, it won’t save them.
I happen to support such a law on the merits, but I honestly think even if I were a more hardcore pro-choicer, I’d see the wisdom of retrenching a bit just for political and utilitarian purposes. 90 percent of elective abortions are already in the first trimester even without the reforms I propose. Are the other ten percent (which surely could be lowered) the hill to die on? What about the environment, the minimum wage, antipoverty programs, universal health care, immigration, etc.?
Instead, the strategy even among the strongest political operatives in the pro-choice lobby seems to be “let’s try to get the fewest restrictions on abortion that we can–if we fight really hard–eke out bare majorities for, at least some of the time.” That makes it an exciting electoral battle, but I’d prefer it be a little less exciting TBH.
It doesn’t matter whether you say “three months” or say “trimester”. A poll giving options only in three-month chunks is never going to find out whether people think differently about week 14 than about week 24.
So, about that “slow-rolling holocaust” rhetoric of yours: what was that about? Is that part of your “retrenching” strategy?
I think it speaks for itself, but since you don’t seem to get it for some reason: it’s an assemblyline of killing perfectly healthy growing unborn children, week after week, year after year. Of little, visibly human babies with recognizable faces. No uncanny valley, no monstrous affect as is seen at eight or ten weeks. The death toll piles up. That’s what I mean by “slow-rolling holocaust”.
:dubious: In other words, you think that the killing of a far, far greater number of equally “perfectly healthy growing unborn children” in first-trimester abortions doesn’t count as part of this alleged “slow-rolling holocaust” because they don’t have “recognizable faces”? A twelfth-week fetus is okay to abort because you think it still has “monstrous affect”, but a sixteenth-week fetus that’s five inches long and has no air sacs in its lungs is a tragic “holocaust” victim just because you happen to think it looks like a “little, visibly human baby”?
FFS. I understand the necessity for drawing an arbitrary line somewhere in the continuous process of fetal development for legal purposes, even if the exact placement of any such arbitrary line can’t really be defended on rational grounds. Legally speaking, we have to flip the switch somewhere between “legal” and “illegal”.
But the notion that moral perspectives need to work on a binary switch-flip system as well—that it’s reasonable not to care much about aborting “perfectly healthy growing” week-12 fetuses, while at the same time getting all outraged about the “assemblyline of killing perfectly healthy growing” week-16 fetuses, merely because they look more “visibly human” to you—is just dumbass sentimentality disconnected from any rational thought.
You’re still trying to play that whole boundary game, just expanding to four weeks instead of a few days. Why are we not comparing 8 and 20 week abortions?
And the moral intuition I have, that you sneer at, is quite obviously one shared by the vast majority of the U.S. population, including a very sizable chunk of Democrats.
You can if you like, but it’s still mere dumbass sentimentality to pretend that the former isn’t just as much “killing perfectly healthy growing unborn children” as the latter (assuming both of them are chosen for non-medical reasons).
You’re the one playing a “boundary game” here, where you flip a moral switch from apathy to outrage upon crossing some arbitrary chronological boundary, and expect other people not to call that out as irrational.
I think most Americans with nuanced views on abortion aren’t compartmentalizing their reactions into arbitrarily chosen chronological boxes in such an absurd way as you are. Though I must say that if your goal here is to illustrate how ridiculous it would be to interpret arbitrarily chosen chronological boundaries as equally arbitrary moral distinctions, you’re doing a splendid job.
People are choosing those boundaries for the same reasons I am: the difference between a sea horse and a baby.
Just to clarify regarding the 9-year-old girl who had the abortion:
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She was not excommunicated. Children cannot be excommunicated. Archbishop Jose Sobrinho excommunicated the girl’s mother and doctors.
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The excommunication was rescinded by Brazil’s National Council of Bishops, who also repudiated Sobrinho. The NCB recognized that the abortion was necessary to save the little girl’s life, as an 80-pound nine-year-old simply could not have carried twins to term and delivered them safely.
I have no idea what happened to the stepfather who raped her. I have no idea what happened to the poor little girl, who’d be 19 now.
Please note: I’m not defending the Catholic Church, just trying to give The Straight Dope on this disturbing case.
And you’re sure that same majority will support execution as a punishment, yeah?
Again, just because a majority support it does not make it right. A majority also prefers we didn’t teach Arabic numerals in school.
“All thinking people are with you, Governor Stevenson!”
“That’s not enough: I need a majority.”
ETA: Yes, I know it’s apocryphal.
I thought the new Trump paradigm was “FUCK your feelings.” Perhaps I was misinformed.
Your ‘assembly line’ starts with the unintended, undesired creation of fertilized eggs.
You and I seem to agree that the vast majority of instances of these eggs being fertilized could be prevented if pro-birthers got the hell out of the way of interfering with availability of affordable, effective birth control.
Seems like there’s your problem.
Thank you for the clarification.
Well, since it is now offered in such calm terms as “holocaust”, we should acknowledge how reasonable and conciliatory that is. However, this is not the Pit, so precise wording is not possible. Let me don my Caspar Milquetoast persona and say that is not exactly what we had in mind. A tad wide of the mark.