Roe vs Wade overturned

[tones]

Dangerous line that last one. Does it not lead to "everyone, without exception, must be 'Christian' so that we are indeed a 'Christian' nation under God" ?

The interesting thing is that "Christian" definition. It was noted that, when Mitt Romney was a presidential candidate, he was endorsed by Billy Graham. The comment on the Graham association website to the effect that Mormonism is a non-Christian cult disappeared and, to the best of my knowledge, never reappeared. Are Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses, hitherto regarded as cults, therefore also "Christian"? (Seventh-Day Adventism has somewhat come in from the cold). And, for that matter, what about Roman Catholics? They were regarded for a long time as non-Christian and beyond the pale by the WASP ascendancy in the USA, yet we now have a Supreme Court in which six of the nine are RCs. And that appears to be OK. It is, perhaps, a reaction against the increasing secularisation of the USA. I suspect that this is Canute trying to hold back the tide - RC Church doctrine completely prohibits any kind of contraception, but the vast majority of RCs in the USA ignore that completely.

At the foot of it all is the fact that this is a political movement in religious drag, not a genuinely religious movement. And it will eventually be found wanting. How much damage it will cause before that happens remains to be seen.

 

[Paul R]

Any fool can see that I was not talking about termination at birth. That’s a particularly sick twisting of words coming from someone who once said that babies of left wingers should be aborted on the NHS!

You need to be precise. You are in bed with people who do believe in termination right up until birth is completed. And mixing this extreme view of bodily autonomy with a reasonable view of abortion rights is a slippery slope that interferes with reasonable compromise.

And talking of fools, perhaps you should just stop making stuff up.

 

[Paul R]

It seems so sensible to set a reasonable time limit. Yet once this is established, the right wing in this country have demonstrated that they will continue to whittle away away at the cut-off age (no pun intended) until it becomes a de facto ban. e.g. the Texas 6-week limit.

But the limits and the rights have been pulled out of the air by judges in one transformative leap, rather than agreed by legislators and their electors in conjunction with medical science. The last 50 years of conflict in the US seem to be a consequence of that.

Let the woman determine when it's reasonable. She's more qualified than a legislature full of old white men. With no limit in effect, so few women seek late-term abortions (for purposes of birth control) that it's a non-issue. For most of the past fifty years there have been only one or two doctors at a time who would even do it.

It's a very appealing argument. Until you want to offer foetuses some protection in law then you have to define the right to abortion and time matters as a consequence.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

I haven’t seen any advocacy for abortion rights up to the point of birth. Maybe I’ve not been paying attention, but that’s as extreme a view as the never-abortion faction, and I don’t think being pro a woman’s right to choose puts anybody in bed with that extreme viewpoint.

 

[ks.234]

You need to be precise. You are in bed with people who do believe in termination right up until birth is completed. And mixing this extreme view of bodily autonomy with a reasonable view of abortion rights is a slippery slope that interferes with reasonable compromise.

And talking of fools, perhaps you should just stop making stuff up.

Hell fire, and you talk of other people making things up

 

[Yank]

You need to be precise. You are in bed with people who do believe in termination right up until birth is completed. And mixing this extreme view of bodily autonomy with a reasonable view of abortion rights is a slippery slope that interferes with reasonable compromise.

Reasonable compromise is not possible with the GOP when, as I stated before, it's been demonstrated that they will continue to hack away at that "reasonable limit" until it becomes a de facto ban.

 

[gavreid]

Abortion in the 19th-century US was widely accepted as a means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy. The idea of banning or punishing it came later

by Tamara Dean

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ieved-when-abortion-was-safer-than-childbirth

 

[sean99]

I think SNL nailed the Republican mindset. Stuck in the 13th century.

 

[Paul R]

Hell fire, and you talk of other people making things up

You did make something up. You lied.

Pick at the pro-abortion view and see what you find. It's a logical consequence of 'control over my body'. Do some research. For example the UK campaign group 'Abortion Rights' calls for 'full decriminalisation of abortion' in the UK. Is that your view?

 

[Paul R]

Reasonable compromise is not possible with the GOP when, as I stated before, it's been demonstrated that they will continue to hack away at that "reasonable limit" until it becomes a de facto ban.

I'm not interested in the fruitloops on either side. But if you don't have a limit after which abortion isn't available 'at will' then you don't have legal protection of developed foetuses. Say some business creates a product or service that is risky for pregnant women, or a physical assault results in a miscarriage, I think most people would want the loss of the pregnancy to be factored into the severity of the crime. So now you have some foetuses protected and some not. Which I think is a constitutional issue again.

You can of course invert your 'reasonable compromise isn't possible' statement. Which is the crux. A majority of the US population regardless of voting intention broadly agrees, along with the rest of the Western world, yet the argument rages and the positions become more entrenched.

 

[Yank]

I'm not interested in the fruitloops on either side. But if you don't have a limit after which abortion isn't available 'at will' then you don't have legal protection of developed foetuses. Say some business creates a product or service that is risky for pregnant women, or a physical assault results in a miscarriage, I think most people would want the loss of the pregnancy to be factored into the severity of the crime. So now you have some foetuses protected and some not. Which I think is a constitutional issue again.

You can of course invert your 'reasonable compromise isn't possible' statement. Which is the crux. A majority of the US population regardless of voting intention broadly agrees, along with the rest of the Western world, yet the argument rages and the positions become more entrenched.

What you continually ignore is that your suggestion of reasonable limits has been tried before. And used as a lever to impose increasingly unreasonable limits. In practice the marketplace determines the limit, let the law stay out of the way.

 

[Hook]

Over the past few days, the US news has featured the tragic story of a 10-year old girl who was raped and became pregnant. She crossed state lines from Ohio to Indiana for an abortion.

Prominent Republicans like Jim Jordan and, of course, the idiots on Fox News, have been calling the story fake. Well, the rapist has now been arrested and the claims of false news have evaporated. Predictably, Jordan has deleted his grotesque tweets, and is avoiding questions. Even more predictably, the Indiana AG has now announced he will "investigate" the doctor who provided the service.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/13/indiana-doctor-10-year-old-rape-victim-00045764

For the record, abortion in Indiana is banned only after 22 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions for medical emergencies. This "investigation" is a political witch hunt.

I feel terribly guilty saying this because we are still talking about a child who was raped. But this is exactly the sort of overreach I was expecting. It now has Republican political pundits very worried.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/15/republicans-fear-abortion-backlash-00046005

 

[MartinC]

Let's hope that the November mid-terms may give Democrats additional seats, however with the current state of inflation and the stock market I am sure that republicans will be driving home that they are the party to turn around the economy.

It's about time that people woke up and stopped old white men from imposing their christofascist views in the rest of us. I really cannot believe that even in Indiana people would condone the politicization of this extremely sad situation.

 

[sean99]

Let's hope that the November mid-terms may give Democrats additional seats, however with the current state of inflation and the stock market I am sure that republicans will be driving home that they are the party to turn around the economy.

It's about time that people woke up and stopped old white men from imposing their christofascist views in the rest of us. I really cannot believe that even in Indiana people would condone the politicization of this extremely sad situation.

Even more depressing is that many of those who vote republican purely out of financial self interest will get financially screwed by republican policies and would be much better off financially, and in terms of life stability, if they were to live in one of the "socialist" European economies that they love to hate.

 

[Yank]

Even more depressing is that many of those who vote republican purely out of financial self interest will get financially screwed by republican policies and would be much better off financially, and in terms of life stability, if they were to live in one of the "socialist" European economies that they love to hate.

If you're not a member of the financial elite, voting Republican is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

That's why the GOP has latched onto all these divisive social and religious issues, it distracts voters and cons them into voting against their own financial self interest.

 

[gavreid]

The Trouble is the Democrats represent the financial elite too...

 

[Le Baron]

The Trouble is the Democrats represent the financial elite too...

Especially the bloke in the White House. The conduit between Delaware's banking tricksters and government for decades.

 

[Yank]

The Trouble is the Democrats represent the financial elite too...

Especially the bloke in the White House. The conduit between Delaware's banking tricksters and government for decades.

This borders on False Equivalency. Elites will prosper regardless.

There's no comparison between Democrat and Republican public policies.

 

[Le Baron]

This borders on False Equivalency. Elites will prosper regardless.

There's no comparison between Democrat and Republican public policies.

There's a wealth of comparison between their federal macroecon policy. Can't get a postcard between them. Being friendly to minorities and not a raging religious lunatic is something else.

 

[sean99]

There's a wealth of comparison between their federal macroecon policy. Can't get a postcard between them. Being friendly to minorities and not a raging religious lunatic is something else.

Small differences in economic policy can make a profound difference to the lives of the majority of Americans. The ACA is a good example - it's a sorry excuse for universal healthcare, but it has still had a profoundly positive impact on healthcare in the US - just not enough. Republicans have actively tried to kill it - a death sentence (or at least bankruptcy) for tens of thousands of Americans.

I would love to have a more progressive economic option, but for now the Democrats are, by far, the lesser of two evils, and frequent false equivalences are very tiring, especially when they come from people with absolutely no experience of living in the US.