# Why are you pro choice or pro life? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 1, 2021, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904 "2021-09-01T14:48:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/221 "2021-09-08T22:13:35Z")
On the contrary, Roe is the expression of that right. And in fact, as I cited above, the assignment of fetal rights expressed in Roe is what the majority of Americans agree with. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/222 "2021-09-08T22:14:31Z")
Nine old men is our “expression” of society? In 1972? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/223 "2021-09-08T22:17:20Z")
All our society’s assignments of rights are formally and officially expressed in the words of old men; in some cases, long-dead old men, and only recently including a few old women and non-white men. So what? Especially if, as I pointed out above, the general scheme of assignment of fetal rights articulated in Roe in 1972 is what a solid majority of Americans agree with today? I mean, I get that you’re clumsily trying to argue that the nature of the Roe decision is somehow illegitimate and the only proper way to decide the question of abortion is to leave it up to state legislatures. But like your belief about unborn rights beginning at the moment of fertilization, that belief makes a persuasive argument only for those who already believe it. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/224 "2021-09-08T22:20:59Z")
Most of the time these old white men cited good cases and English common law so we could accept that “Yes, this is right” Roe did none of that. Even Lawrence Tribe, quoted in another thread criticizes it. There is no basis for it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/225 "2021-09-08T22:26:15Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Most of the time these old white men cited good cases and English common law so we could accept that “Yes, this is right” Roe did none of that. Whether and how Roe should be criticized on purely jurisprudential grounds is another matter. I’m willing to listen to and discuss objections about the Roe ruling (with the caveat that IANAL) from people who have genuine and rationally argued concerns that it “did something wrong” juridically speaking. But if you’re trying to argue that the Roe decision is dictatorially imposing a view of fetal rights that the American public doesn’t want, as I said, that’s bullshit. The Roe justices were heavily influenced by American popular opinion when articulating their assignment of fetal rights, and as I cited above, the assignment of fetal rights they came up with is one that most Americans today are just fine with. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/226 "2021-09-08T22:32:33Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > I, and a hell of a lot of other people, don’t believe that allowing the woman to decree death is the right balance. And why it has destroyed our politics for 50 years. It’s really weird (and telling) that you think the “destruction of politics” is going to cease when _Roe_ is overturned. Why is it going to end? Do you think women will be too busy to protest the state of affairs once they’re forced back into compulsory childbirth? ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/227 "2021-09-08T22:43:48Z")
The first step is that they can say fuck TX and move to NM. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/228 "2021-09-08T22:47:01Z")
That protest is not destructive to democracy, _it is_ democracy. Convince your fellow citizens that you should be able to destroy a potential life in your womb. We can argue against it. That is healthy. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/229 "2021-09-08T23:13:04Z")
How about you convince me that people _shouldn’t_ have that right? Who made you the philosopher-king that everyone else has to persuade? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/230 "2021-09-08T23:26:14Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Convince your fellow citizens that you should be able to destroy a potential life in your womb. As I keep pointing out to the accompaniment of crickets, most of our fellow citizens are already convinced that you should be able to do that if you want to, at least in the first trimester of pregnancy. You really are way out of line here in your repeated attempts to paint the pro-choice viewpoint as some kind of radical outlier that its advocates are responsible for “convincing” you about. Most of America is already in favor of the pro-choice viewpoint. [Even in Texas, only a bare half of all voters—49%—support the post-6-weeks abortion ban](https://www.kxan.com/news/political-news/nearly-half-of-all-texans-support-abortion-ban-after-6-weeks-new-poll-finds/) that is getting so much attention right now. Draconian anti-abortion positions are something that’s being imposed on large numbers of Americans who don’t agree with them, by an energized minority using an inconsistent jumble of emotional arguments and legislative sneaky tricks. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/231 "2021-09-08T23:34:01Z")
The baseline is that the people rule and you can only take away that judgment if YOU (general you) show it is a Constitutional right. Roe never did that. > [@Kimstu](#): > > As I keep pointing out to the accompaniment of crickets, most of our fellow citizens are already convinced that you should be able to do that if you want to, at least in the first trimester of pregnancy. It is the beauty of our federal system that we don’t live under nationwide law. You are in CA or MD? Kill unborn babies. In WV and SC and AL we can chart a different course. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/232 "2021-09-08T23:37:41Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > You didn’t force me to get a dog. You do seem to want to force people to get a child. > [@UltraVires](#): > > I bought it of my own choice. But because you don’t want me to shoot it, why should you have to support taxpayer funded animal shelters to be consistent? I Because if you’re unable, for whatever reason, to continue keeping the dog; and I’m unwilling to let you shoot it, there needs to be something else that can be done with it. I’m also unwilling to have you turn it out on the street to fend for itself; partly because that would be unkind to the dog, and partly because it would be unsafe for everyone else in the neighborhood. Both of which can also be true of human children who aren’t properly cared for. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > And none of us would be here typing if Dad had climaxed a few seconds earlier or later, and a different sperm cell had won the race to the egg. 😁 > > (No, I’m not rebutting anything here, just digressing for my own amusement.) Yup. I think I included something similar in an earlier post. The argument that you or I wouldn’t have been here if our parents had aborted the pregnancy that led to us isn’t a good argument; partly because there are billions of other things that could have happened that would have led to us not being here; and partly because at least one of those things happened to billions of other potential people – and what happened to some of them was us. > [@UltraVires](#): > > The fetus is not a full human, but it isn’t nothing, not an ant or a snake. I don’t know that a zygote or blastocyst is more than an ant or a snake. I’m not at all sure that a fetus always is; especially if it’s a non-viable fetus and an endangered-species snake. And that’s to humans. I really, really doubt that the universe as a whole thinks so. > [@UltraVires](#): > > So we say, yeah, a woman might not want to have this child for various reasons. That human value does not equal a right to kill the child. It’s too much. The woman is a full human. But to say that she gets an unappealable right to say death to this potential life is too much. That’s a long leap from saying it isn’t nothing – in fact you’ve leapt all the way to saying a zygote, blastocyst, or fetus is a child. You say we don’t have that right. I say we do have that right. I also say that unless we have that right we’re not being treated as full humans. > [@UltraVires](#): > > And for years, many people have held this opinion And for years many people haven’t. And I suspect that not as many people have had it for as many years as you might think. > **[The 'biblical view' that's younger than the Happy Meal](https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/)** > > In 1979, McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal. Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception. Ask any > [@UltraVires](#): > > a woman’s convenience or preference “Convenience.” “Convenience.” “Convenience.” Don’t give me your “convenience.” Realizing you’re out of bread (when there’s other stuff to eat) is an inconvenience. Having to wash the sheets because the cat puked on them is an inconvenience. Having to wear a mask in the store is an inconvenience. A full term pregnancy is not an inconvenience; whether or not one raises the child it is a life changing experience (and occasionally a life ending one, sometimes unexpectedly). It may be a great joy. It may be an utter disaster. It may be both of those things at once. It is not a god damn ‘inconvenience’. > [@UltraVires](#): > > That protest is not destructive to democracy, _it is_ democracy. Convince your fellow citizens that you should be able to destroy a potential life in your womb. We can argue against it. That is healthy. Nobody’s saying you can’t argue against it. We’re arguing against your claim that you should be able to enforce your side of the argument on everybody else. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/233 "2021-09-08T23:38:54Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Nobody’s saying you can’t argue against it. We’re arguing against your claim that you should be able to enforce your side of the argument on everybody else. Every law does this. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/234 "2021-09-08T23:44:20Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Every law does this. But laws aren’t allowed to do this if they’re infringing a constitutional right. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/235 "2021-09-08T23:45:30Z")
That’s the tussle. It isn’t and shouldn’t be that way and Roe never justified in even in a fleeting way. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/236 "2021-09-08T23:48:35Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > No, I don’t think so. How? I still don’t see where your specific point of disagreement with me is. All I see is words that make no attempt to argue with my reasoning, but still come out to a different conclusion. I mean, it’s a pretty concise argument, from “There is NO argument…” to “…value fetal life barely at all as well.” That’s the core of it. Two short paragraphs, three sentences, six lines of text. You ought to be able to point out _where_ you disagree, rather than rambling on in another direction entirely. “To say that she gets an unappealable right to say death to this potential life is too much.” What does that have to do with, how does it rebut, anything I’ve said? It does not. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2021, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/237 "2021-09-08T23:50:26Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > It isn’t and shouldn’t be that way Why not? Do you believe that there are no rights except for the ones the Constitution explicitly states? ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/238 "2021-09-09T00:00:25Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > The baseline is that the people rule and you can only take away that judgment if YOU (general you) show it is a Constitutional right. Roe never did that. In your opinion. Because you disagree with abortion, you declare that a court holding that’s held up for 50 years is inadequate and wrongly judged. Because you disagree with abortion, you imagine it must meet a higher procedural hurdle than numerous other Constitutional rights that are similarly decided. There’s no legal principle here, just a procedural shell game, and nobody’s buying it. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/239 "2021-09-09T00:03:41Z")
> [@HMS\_Irruncible](#): > > There’s no legal principle here, just a procedural shell game, and nobody’s buying it. Would you be willing to defend Roe as a letter matter? Lawrence Tribe doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2021, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904/240 "2021-09-09T00:17:05Z")
I mean, it’ll be interesting to see what this cavalier attitude about SC recognition of rights produces in terms of side effects. The interpretation that the Second Amendment provides an unrestricted right to individual gun ownership, for example, [also seems somewhat debatable](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/politics-changed-the-reading-of-the-second-amendmentand-can-change-it-again): > [@](#): > > Generations of Supreme Court and academic opinion held that the amendment did not confer on individuals a right “to keep and bear Arms” but, rather, referred only to the privileges belonging to state militias. This was not a controversial view. The late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said, in 1991, that the idea that the Second Amendment conferred a right for individuals to bear arms was “a fraud on the American public.” […] > > But the lesson of the fight over gun rights—like that over the protection of same-sex marriage—is that the Constitution remains a political document that is subject to the ideological forces of the time. No victory, or defeat, is permanent. The Court changed the Second Amendment, and the Court can change it back again, in its original direction. Similarly, recognition of a woman’s right to choose an abortion may eventually re-emerge in the Supreme Court even if they overturn Roe in the near future, through a combination of public opinion, legislative decisions, and re-framing of the rights issues involved. It’s possible that fifty years from now, abortion-rights opponents will be lamenting how much harder it is to restrict abortion rights under the new interpretation of them than it was during the Roe years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-you-pro-choice-or-pro-life/949904.md?page=13)