Alabama abortion ban: Republican state senate passes most restrictive law in US

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't think either of you could still take those harsh positions if you actually recognized the humanity of the fetus.

Very few states have Good Samaritan laws that impose a duty to aid or rescue.  To my knowledge, Georgia and Alabama don't.  That means if you are in Georgia and Alabama and saw a child dying on the road, you would have no legal obligation to help.  If the child was lying face down in a shallow pool of water and all you needed to do was nudge the child slightly with your foot but you walked on by, you'd be guilty of nothing.  Not even a finable offense.

So if there is no duty take 10 seconds to provide help to a dying child in the street, how could there possibly be a duty to aid a non-viable pre-child being in one's  body for 9 months?

A response is that while strangers have no duty to aid and rescue, parents do have a duty to their children.

But that gets to the point - the abortion debate has nothing to do about the sanctity of human life.  The same people in Georgia and Alabama who voted for these abominations of legislation are perfectly content to see immigrant kids die of neglect in federal custody and to cheer this administration on as it guts health coverage and savages environmental and safety regulations, despite the fact that living human beings will die as a result. These people don't give a crap about life.

The abortion debate is not about when life begins.  It is about when motherhood begins.  An adult person has no duty to the life of another unless or until they become a parent.  The abortion debate is about women saying that they get to choose whether to be a parent, and others saying they don't get that choice the moment some sperm fertilizes an egg. It is cultural fight about social control, nothing more.

[merithyn]

I love you, Minsky.

[FunkMonk]

While I fall on the "pro-choice" side and largely agree with Meri and Minsky, I don't agree that the other side is motivated mainly by the desire to exert control over women's bodies. If that were the case, we wouldn't have people bombing abortion clinics and sending death threats to doctors who perform abortions. There is something deeper there, more moral than logical, that truly motivates the other side. There are many people who are "pro-life" who devote much of their lives toward helping women, mothers, orphans, whoever, and do so peaceably and without contradiction.

Politically, the result may be the practical effect of denying a woman a choice in what happens to her body, but I think religious and moral precepts, ingrained in many people across many religions, largely motivates the other side of this fight. 

[garbon]

While I fall on the "pro-choice" side and largely agree with Meri and Minsky, I don't agree that the other side is motivated mainly by the desire to exert control over women's bodies. If that were the case, we wouldn't have people bombing abortion clinics and sending death threats to doctors who perform abortions. There is something deeper there, more moral than logical, that truly motivates the other side. There are many people who are "pro-life" who devote much of their lives toward helping women, mothers, orphans, whoever, and do so peaceably and without contradiction.

Politically, the result may be the practical effect of denying a woman a choice in what happens to her body, but I think religious and moral precepts, ingrained in many people across many religions, largely motivates the other side of this fight. 

Because there is no control of women and their bodies baked into religion?

[Josquius]

My dad grew up without a mother due to draconian 1950s British abortion laws (still existing in Northern Ireland).
Lets call the "pro-lifers" what they really are; women killers.

[dps]

If an unborn fetus is a human being, then IMO, abortion can never be justified, and the "my body my choice" rhetoric is crap, because then it's not just the woman's body.

Then that fetus is welcome to GTFO and survive on its own, because the woman is not obligated to offer her body to provide for its support.

So you think that the state has no business looking out for those who are incapable of taking care of themselves?  Do you apply that standard to orphans, the mentally ill, those with severe physical handicaps, etc.?   Are they less human to you to?  As a European, do you also feel that, say, Christians are "more human" than, say, Jews?

How about the women who have to risk their life for this fetus? Do they get no sympathy from you?

And you're fighting hard to help these women and their children, too, yes? Calling your reps to push for medical and monetary support?

This isn't about the baby no matter how much you want to claim it is.

Did you not even bother to read post #69 in this thread?  I posited that IF the unborn fetus is a human being, then abortion is wrong, and then went on to say that I don't know whether or not a fetus becomes human, and that IMO no one really does.  Most people seem to define the humanity or lack thereof of the fetus however it suits them to fit their own opinion on abortion.  That's assbackwards iMO, but since the answer to whether or not the fetus is a human being is probably unknowable, I suppose that's to be expected.

As for the state having a legitimate interest in looking out for the well-being of the fetus, the Supreme Court explicitly said in Roe v Wade that the state has such an interest;  people who get all up in arms about upholding Roe v Wade tend to ignore that part of the decision.  Of course, the Court also found that the woman has a right to control her own body, and that there had to be a balance struck between that right and the state interest in protecting the fetus, and came up with the 3 trimester standard as the balancing mechanism.  And then I went on to say that I think that as a practical matter, that's a reasonable standard.

As for the government providing free or low-cost birth control, no I'm not in favor of that.  That doesn't mean that I'm against birth control;  I'm also against censorship, but I don't think that supporting freedom of the press means that the government has to give you money to run your own newspaper or broadcast station, either.

And you can disagree with me on any or all of the opinions I express here, and I can respect your differing opinions.  But fuck you if you think I'm going to have any respect for you claiming that I'm lying about my motivations for holding the opinions I have.

[crazy canuck]

While I fall on the "pro-choice" side and largely agree with Meri and Minsky, I don't agree that the other side is motivated mainly by the desire to exert control over women's bodies. If that were the case, we wouldn't have people bombing abortion clinics and sending death threats to doctors who perform abortions. There is something deeper there, more moral than logical, that truly motivates the other side. There are many people who are "pro-life" who devote much of their lives toward helping women, mothers, orphans, whoever, and do so peaceably and without contradiction.

Politically, the result may be the practical effect of denying a woman a choice in what happens to her body, but I think religious and moral precepts, ingrained in many people across many religions, largely motivates the other side of this fight.

There is nothing inconsistent with the motivation of exerting control over women and bombing abortion clinics and killing or injuring in an attempt to kill (there are not just threats being made) doctors who perform abortions.   Those actions are entirely inconsistent with the assertion they are "pro life".  The reason they bomb clinics and kill or attempt to kill doctors is because they are the things that are giving women agency. 

I do agree with you that there is deep value involved and that value is the misogynist views of Fundamentalist Christianity and particularly the variant practiced in North America.

[The Minsky Moment]

The sanctity of life is an important value, but it is not the only value and in most societies, including the USA, it is not even the most important value.  If life were truly paramount, we would have gotten rid of the second amendment long ago because the recreational rights of gun owners could not take precedence over general safety.  For the same reasons we would eliminate many civil liberties and institute total surveillance. We would jack taxes way up and spend a ton more money on health care, mental health and poverty alleviation.  We would open the borders and actively encourage migrants from war zones and other "shitholes" because life is life and we could easily save many thousands of lives that way.

When I see radical pro-lifers of the type that support the Georgia and Alabama laws supporting all these things, then and only then will I take their absolutist claims about life seriously. 

[Malthus]

The sanctity of life is an important value, but it is not the only value and in most societies, including the USA, it is not even the most important value.  If life were truly paramount, we would have gotten rid of the second amendment long ago because the recreational rights of gun owners could not take precedence over general safety.  For the same reasons we would eliminate many civil liberties and institute total surveillance. We would jack taxes way up and spend a ton more money on health care, mental health and poverty alleviation.  We would open the borders and actively encourage migrants from war zones and other "shitholes" because life is life and we could easily save many thousands of lives that way.

When I see radical pro-lifers of the type that support the Georgia and Alabama laws supporting all these things, then and only then will I take their absolutist claims about life seriously.

I doubt any here would disagree that the supporters of this Alabama legislation are motivated by religious extremism and/or "sticking it to the liberals and feminists"-style politics of factional resentment. Unfortunately, that just seems par for the course in US politics these days, at least on the Right.

[Valmy]

I always felt like we should be able to come together and find a way to give both sides as much of what they want as possible. That we could find policies and medical technology to give women control of their bodies and support the humanity of the fetus. I mean maybe not perfectly but we could really do much better. But it just never really happened. Even doing something logical in that context. like provide free birth control for women to reduce unwanted pregnancies seems to be hard to pull off. I always found that weird since that theoretically should be a no-brainer thing both sides should want.

[crazy canuck]

I always felt like we should be able to come together and find a way to give both sides as much of what they want as possible. That we could find policies and medical technology to give women control of their bodies and support the humanity of the fetus. I mean maybe not perfectly but we could really do much better. But it just never really happened. Even doing something logical in that context. like provide free birth control for women to reduce unwanted pregnancies seems to be hard to pull off. I always found that weird since that theoretically should be a no-brainer thing both sides should want.

You are assuming one of the sides is only interested in the well being of the fetus and not the control of the women that goes along with it.  If that assumption were correct then there would be a number of ways to resolve the issue to the satisfaction of both sides.

[Eddie Teach]

Such as?

[crazy canuck]

Such as?

Free birth control.  Sex education taught from an early age so that children grow up knowing how to use and expect to use birth control.  Fee health care so that women can gain immediate access to morning after pills if they are at all concerned that the birth control has failed, or the have been sexually assaulted.  Social policy changes which provide women with greater economic opportunity so that they can avoid being in relationships they do no desire simply to derive some small measure of economic security. 

I am sure if you start thinking about this from the perspective of a woman you will be able to come up with more.

[merithyn]

All the stuff I said would minimize abortions and was called a radical feminist for. Because common sense is not for women, you know. We must be radical to want to be consider more human that a clump of cells.

[dps]

I always felt like we should be able to come together and find a way to give both sides as much of what they want as possible. That we could find policies and medical technology to give women control of their bodies and support the humanity of the fetus. I mean maybe not perfectly but we could really do much better. But it just never really happened. Even doing something logical in that context. like provide free birth control for women to reduce unwanted pregnancies seems to be hard to pull off. I always found that weird since that theoretically should be a no-brainer thing both sides should want.

Kind of hard to try to come to a compromise with people who doubt--no, not just doubt, deny--the sincerity of my views even when I say that as a practical matter I'm OK with the 3 trimester standard the Supreme Court articulated in Roe v Wade simply because I suggest that it's possible that a developing fetus is a human being sometime before the completion of a full 9 month term pregnancy.  Guess they'll only be satisfied if we not only allow abortion on demand at any point before full term, but also outlaw providing medical care to preemies.