I think we’re more or less on the same page. Conservatives might, for example, reject the whole idea of sexual identity. And that’s unscientific and/or anti-science. But… whether or not a woman wants to be in the same bathroom with someone who is biologically male is a matter of persona/cultural choice, not scientific fact.
The idea that there is a “scientific answer” to when or if Congress approves a SCOTUS appointment is, however, laughable on the face of it.
Science can tell us when, during pregnancy, the brain begins to function, but it can’t tell us when a fetus becomes human. That is going to depend on how we define what a human is in the first place.
“Forcing people to use a specific bathroom” is what we have been doing forever, aka Men’s/Women’s bathroom; so it’s not like it out of the blue. Second, stupid people attacking a minority of trans people (themselves a tiny minority) in bathrooms is dealt with punishing those stupid people. However, thinking that it is 100% a non-issue, black-and-white solution is false.
I know it’s not likely to happen and more of a strawman than reality but, seeing that we have sex-specific bathroom, what of a person who looks like a stereotypical lumberjack going to the women’s bathroom and saying “it’s ok because that person identifies as a woman”?
Are most abortion economy-based? Maybe. So, what? Would you favor 100% abortin restriciton with a economic compensation?
Bodily autonomy? Sure. The fetus is a different body, so the “auto” part of autonomy doesn’t pan out.
No brains? The neura plate, itself the foundation of the brain, is present two weeks.
No pain? Is that a requierement for humanity?
If the did feel pain, would you oppose abortion past the “pain threshold?”.
No evidence? How long has it been going?
If it were shown to cause real, observable social problems, would you oppose it?
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If someon hate the president for being black, they’re stupid.
“Institutionmal racism” is a scare-word if it has no clear facts. Is learning about Shakespeare “institutional racism” if not blanced with an equal ammount of leaning about non-white writers?
Most of your “facts” a beliefs and, more importantly, I imagine you’d still have the same beliefs if the facts were different.
I agree. I think we should attempt to see the good in people and not demonize them. It’s too easy to always see the bad motives in our political opponents. I tend to lean towards Trump in his election. I think it very easy to see the complete corruption of the Clinton camp; their violence, vote rigging and identity politics. However, I think it beneficial to also believe that the Clinton camp do wish to see a better America. That many of their motives are noble, and that the Trump camp/Republicans also engage in political corruption.
The democrats were the conservatives then. Talk about forgetting history…
To this day I will wonder why it was that the party of Lincoln decided that those types of conservative were ok to accept into the tent after Eisenhower.
What I accept is that people deserve to be villainized for stupid, anti-science opinions. If I do that, I hope that someone would villainize me because I need to be snapped back out of my stupidity. I would totally deserve it.
And there is nothing wrong with trying to silence opinions, just because you have both an opinion and an asshole doesn’t mean I need to be exposed to either. If they are objectively wrong opinions, then silence them through public pressure, mocking them, ignoring them, or telling them to fuck off.
Your statement is also the traditional excuse for engaging a strawman.
I have every legal right to yell, mock, ignore, or tell you to fuck off for your opinion. Every legal right. And that is enshrined in our Constitution. It takes a giant leap over a mountain of straw to assume that automatically means I’m depriving anyone of rights.
Of course the ironic thing is that people who are anti-science know they can’t get their shit heard in any other way except through suppression of speech that crosses the line into violation of rights. Red states are the ones passing laws making it illegal to discuss climate change. They subpoena emails between climate scientists to look for out-of-context discussion to use against them. They mandate that organizations under their control cannot do research on gun violence.
Liberals, in general, would never do that. We will mock you. Tell you you’re stupid to your face. Laugh at you. Ignore idiotic anti-science laws. Pass pro-science ones despite your objections. Or simply tell you to take your fucking snowball out of the Senate floor.
One of the above is actual suppression and taking away rights. The other is not
Thanks for the link. It was very underwhelming though. It doesn’t appear to be “illegal” to discuss it. It doesn’t appear that any “law” was passed by the Florida legislature on the subject.
Why wouldn’t it be ok? What if that lumberjack person is a woman? What gives you the right to insist that she’s not? Who made you the bathroom police?
Again, my point is conservatives are making decisions for non-factual reasons. Conservatives can’t provide any evidence that allowing transpeople to use whatever bathroom they causes harm.
Therefore, conservatives are wrong to insist that it is a matter of public health and safety to keep transpeople out of the bathroom.
My point was that conservatives are being irrational in ignoring economic means to reduce pregnancy, like for example, the way conservatives oppose free birth control, reality-based sex education, and better family leave policies. Those are things that have been shown to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies which in turn reduces the number of abortions.
Conservatives oppose rational, factual, ways to reduce abortion in favor of faith-based methods which are less effective. Hence, conservatives are on the wrong side of this issue.
The fetus (as we skip lightly past the embryonic stage) is also welcome to live its life autonomously. That means the fetus is not allowed to parasitically infest another autonomous person and burrow its way into that other autonomous person’s blood stream, hijack their hormonal system, and leech nutrients from another persons’ body.
Conservatives who prioritize the rights of a non-person to leech off the body of someone else are misunderstanding both autonomy and personhood.
[quote=“Aji_de_Gallina, post:82, topic:769286”]
No brains? The neura plate, itself the foundation of the brain, is present two weeks.
No pain? Is that a requierement for humanity?
If the did feel pain, would you oppose abortion past the “pain threshold?”.
[quote=“Aji_de_Gallina, post:82, topic:769286”]
The neura plate alone is not sufficient for brain function. It is not a complete brain, it’s just the building block.
Having a functioning brain is the difference between an autonomous human person and an inert collection of body parts. That’s why organ donation and death are based off of brain function, not heartbeats or the mere presence of this or that part.
The developing of the fetal brain and nervous system is a process that occurs throughout the entirity of the pregnancy.
My point here is that personhood can’t exist without a fully functioning brain. We recognize this easily in adults. There is no fact-based reason for attributing person hood to a fetus without a fully functioning brain.
This is why conservatives are wrong on this aspect of abortion. They have no factual reason for assigning personhood to a growing lump of body parts without a fully developed brain.
2. I mention pain because anti-abortionist use emotionally manipulative arguments, for example in the film, “the Silent Scream” to suggest that abortion is painful for the fetus. In reality, the fetus in that film is 12-weeks old. It does not have a brain capacity for feeling fear or pain. Furthermore, the images are filmed in a misleading way.
My point is that conservatives are on the wrong side of the abortion issue because they are using phony and misleading emotional arguments that misrepresent medical science.
Past the pain threshold - in fetal development terms, this is during the last trimester. Last trimester abortions are already banned in the US (I can’t speak for other countries) unless the health of the mother is at risk. Actually, the laws in the US are mostly based around viability (the exact law varies by locale). Post-viability abortions are for health of the mother or because of a late-developing birth defect.
There are only four doctors in the country who will even perform third trimester abortions. They do about 100 a year.
Since you ask, personally, I’m fine with that. Pregnancy can be a life-threatening problem. As long mothers are free to protect their own health, I don’t have an objection.
But my point in bringing it up is that conservatives are being irrational, afactual and disingenuous to push anti-abortion legislation on the basis of this handful of late-term medical situations. This puts conservatives on the wrong side of this aspect of the abortion issue.
(Re gay marriage)
There’s been gay marriage for years now. And yes, if some real, observable, social problem was proven because of the existence of gay marriage, I might oppose it - because I and other liberals are not opposed to a reality-based worldview.
But the only result of gay marriage is a giant boost of cash to marriage-related industries so until some actual evidence of problems shows up, conservatives and their handwringing are wrong on this subject.
It’s not “someone”, it’s conservatives. Conservatives in America have lost their damn minds and are behaving irrationally in trying to delegitimize Obama.
I know that conservatives will insist that they’re not racist in objecting to Obama but their behavior the last eight years speaks for itself.
Conservatives are wrong in their racist reaction to a Black president.
Conservatives pretending that racism isn’t real and accusing liberals of being the real racists is just the most obvious and tiresome way that conservatives are on the wrong side of history.
I specifically said that it was conservatives who were wrong on slavery because the Democrat/Republicans in 1860 lined up differently than they do today. Yes, it was the Democrats who supported slavery in 1860. Then, in the civil rights era, all the racist conservative Democrats fled to the Republican party because of Nixon’s Southern Strategy appealed to them.
I know that today’s conservatives think that they are clever in trying to link today’s liberal democrats with the racist conservatives from 155 years ago, but it’s just one of the many things that today’s conservatives are wrong about.
Those aren’t exactly scientific questions, but Republicans have raised objections to at least some of them that have been scientifically disproven. Gay marriage, for example, was argued against on the grounds (among others) that gays are unfit parents, or are more apt to molest children, or that gay parents will turn their children gay. All of which are questions that have been settled through scientifically rigorous study, but which continue to parroted by many political leaders on the right. I think you can make similar arguments about some pro-life arguments (abortion causes breast cancer was a drum they were beating for a while, which IIRC was debunked) and a lot of the arguments around letting trans people use the bathroom is rooted in ignorance of the science around gender dysphoria, what causes it, and how best to treat it.
I suppose you could likewise say that a knowledge of history would show how unprecedented holding up Merrick Garland’s nomination is, and that many of the arguments used by Republicans to justify it don’t pass historical muster. That’s not really “science,” but it’s still an educated versus ignorant opinion.
