That was the case before Roe vs Wade; women of means could often find a qualified doctor who’d diagnose her with some condition the treatment of which had the unfortunate side effect of terminating her pregnancy, Vera Drake demonstrates how this worked in England. An upper class woman is date raped, uses her connections to find a psychiatrist who helpfully prompts her to threaten suicide if she has to carry the pregnancy to term, then she get’s to go a private clinic in the countryside to have a therapeutic abortion. Meanwhile working class women go to back ally abortionist with no formal training.
It was a real question, but yes, it has turned into a hijack. OK, no more on this.
See, this is the problem. You seem to suggest that it is proper and fitting for religious organizations to have political positions, i.e., that it is ok for them to be involved in the political sphere. Most of the rest of us take the contrary position, that the mere act of becoming political actors should, per se, invalidate their religious charter.
It was a real question, but yes, it has turned into a hijack. OK, no more on this.
Again, churches are absolutely prohibited from participating in any political campaign activity.
At the risk of starting another hijack, I have to question this. There was a semi-hidden argument behind prohibition; it was aimed at the people who drank alcohol as much as it was at the alcohol itself. And the problem of these alcohol drinkers was clearly tied into nativist arguments. So when prohibitionists were talking about the problem of whiskey, it was a dog whistle for the problem of Irish immigrants. And beer and wine were used as dog whistles for German and Italian immigrants.
So anyone who listened to prohibition arguments was going to hear about the threat of beer and wine. There’s no reason why anyone would think they wouldn’t be prohibited once the 18th Amendment was enacted.
Personhood of a fetus is going to be all kinds of bad. It is going to take choice away from parents and medical personnel in deciding how aggressively to pursue treatment for very premature fetuses (and I’m sorry, but that’s what they are when they are born in the second trimester). Society is going to have to be ready for the fall-out from this as there will be increases in cerebral palsy, AD(H)D, visual impairments, language disorders, and other disabilities that are more common in very premature babies who survive.
If we don’t set up some kind of structure to help parents, we’re going to see an increase in child abuse. I read a study in a print magazine from the Czech Republic, which happened to be something my mother translated for a social workers’ journal in the US, regarding unwanted pregnancies and child abuse.
In the former Czechoslovakia, where all medical care was free, but required approval, you could get an abortion, but a hospital committee had to approve it.
Someone did a longitudinal study on women who had applied for abortions, been denied them, and kept the children to raise themselves. They were matched socially, religiously, economically, and by marital status, to a group of women who had been unintentionally pregnant within the same time period, but had not sought an abortion. I do not remember the methodology for gathering the control group, but it was extensive.
The upshot was that child abuse, and intervention by the Czechoslovak version of CPS was extraordinarily high within the abortion-denied group, but low in the control group. The study went on for several years, and a double digit percentage of mothers lost custody, at least temporarily, or their children, even if just for one night, and there were a few instances of women losing them altogether. In the control group, there was a single instance of someone losing a child temporarily, and no one losing it permanently.
Additionally, a number of children in the abortion-denied group ended up living with another family member, such as a grandparent, even though the mother was still around, but this never happened in the control group, other than in situations where the mother had passed away.
And, in case you weren’t way ahead of me on this one, a huge number of children in the abortion-denied group had at least one hospital visit for what was suspected to be a parent-inflicted injury, while only about 1% of the control group did, and some of those could be dismissed as accidents. It was harder to dismiss the stories of the other group of parents.
I wish I could remember it better. It was a very long article-- 25 pages, or so, with a lot of detail, and the study had followed the women through pregnancy to the children’s 10th birthday, IIRC.
It was very difficult not to conclude that children women are forced to have by being denied abortions, are in danger. And this was a country with a lot of support for new mothers.
I don’t question that. What I do question is whether or not that is actually enforced.
If the country stays under the thumb of the current Republicans and their evangelical allies that won’t be a problem for society - it will be the responsibility of the parents/families of those people to take care of them, to bankrupt themselves for medical care and therapy, and to be held responsible if those children cause sufficient disturbance to be arrested and/or shot dead in the street by police who aren’t taught how to deal with the autistic or deaf people who can’t hear them because that’s not the law and order “mission” of the police. The argument will be hey, if they couldn’t afford to raise their kids they shouldn’t have had them in the first place. And no, they won’t see the problem(s) with that statement and their laws.
No. I mentioned revisiting the tax-exempt status of churches.
That’s right … as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far.
See page six of the IRS PDF on 501(c)(3) status for churches. Look at “Substantial Lobbying Activity.”
This is how the LDS Church escaped peril after its direct participation in trying to get California’s prohibition of same-sex marriage – Proposition 8 – passed.
In effect, they said, “We’re a big church. This was just a rounding error on our balance sheet.”
“Substantial Lobbying Activity” could mean the same thing as saying that “Jeff Bezos doesn’t spend a substantial portion of his net worth on real estate.”
That ‘insubstantial part’ is a relative term that can equate to a whole crap-ton of money – maybe equivalent to the GDP of a small country.
Ditto a large church’s lobbying efforts.
[letting your numerous ad hominem arguments go]
ETA: @moderators … if this is OT, would you please split it off ?
I could fly to Sweden/Switzerland,wherever and get the services i need. In fact, I could take a week off and make a vacation out of it, but It will imprison poor women who can’t afford alternative choices. They will once again become the slaves of men just like the right wingers want it. After all, isn’t that part of “making America great again”?
Likely not nationwide, because even if SCOTUS upheld it (and overturned Roe), it would only apply in Georgia. Other states would have to enact their own fetal personhood laws to outlaw abortion.
OK, thanks! I tiny bit of hope, I guess.
For the third time. It was a real question, but yes, it has turned into a hijack. OK, no more on this.
You want to debate this- start another thread.
I have come to the opinion that to the majority of anti-abortion supporters, the direct effect on women’s liberty is an acceptable side effect, not the main reason. Not that at all except there stated reasons. I have come to accept the position put forth by the Slacktivist. There are two parts the the relegious rights opposition to abortion:
- White evangelical relegious leaders needing something to fund raise on after naked racism started to peter out decided on a confernence call to make oppositoin to abortion a new religious stance on a confrence call. Prior to this, white evangelicals considered abortion similar to sex, it was judged based on the circumstances.
- The majority of the rank and file do not actually believe abortion=murder. They claim it, but they do not act as if the actually believe. Instead it gives them opportunity to demonstrate how virtuous they are, without doing anything that takes effort or sacrifice. Fred from Slacktivst calls it the Satanic Baby Killer narrative. If abortion is truly child murder, then Real True Christians™ are surrounded by truely evil at all times and just by saying they are against it make them special and exalted. It lets them pretend they are fighting Satan’s minions just by voting for Trump. But they know it isn’t true. If they really believed they would have to truly withdraw to the hills and fight a devil war agains the rest us.
Both may be true - some states will liberalize their abortion position while others regress.
Could. But not if the next move by the Feds is to pass legislation that makes all abortion illegal everywhere. It’s only if the Fed’s leave the field open to the states that any could adopt less restrictive legislation.
Good point. While they might not be able to make it illegal in a particular state (barring some Supreme Court finding of personhood), they could put RU-486 on the list of schedule 1 drugs and make it much harder to get. They could make it illegal to cross state lines to obtain an abortion. They could make it illegal for doctors to cross state lines to perform one. There are probably other commerce-clausy things they could do as well.
They’d have to get it through both houses of congress which is unlikely at least in the near future. I am not sure what is required to get a drug declared schedule 1.
Nothing about RU-486 makes it remotely possible to designate it as Schedule 1. Easily googleable. One stop at Wikipedia.
If an unborn infant is declared to be a person, then ru-486 becomes a drug that is lethal to people.
If the only purpose it has is to do something that is illegal, no accepted medical use, then becoming schedule 1 seems pretty simple.
Maybe Schedule 1 is the wrong term, but it could just be banned by a politicized FDA.