2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Josquius]

You might as well say basically any form of surgery should be safe, legal and rare though.
It'd be great if nobody got hit by trucks, fell off ladders, cut their hand with a saw, etc...

Yes...and?

Of course there is not a powerful political force out there trying to prevent people from getting surgery to repair ones hand. Not yet anyway, who would have thought there would be a powerful political force out there trying to get whooping cough and measles out there again?

Whooping cough is out there. I had it this year. :p

But yes. Thats where the weirdness of this expression comes in. You want any surgery to be rare obviously. Why even state it.

[Barrister]

Such "beyond the pale" positions should be quite narrowly construed, and I don't think abortion is one of them.  Reasonable people can have differences of opinion on abortion.

I thought similarly.

But the horror show that has unfolded in the US since Roe was overturned is narrowing the scope of reasonable opinion on the issue as I see it. The theory that it is possible to have a pro-life policy with strong supports in place and respect and compassion for women simply does not reflect any remotely achievable reality, at least not in America.  And that means continuing to embrace a pro life policy entails very ugly consequences.

So look - the extremes on either side are kind of horrible.  On the pro-life side you do yes hear about women going into sepsis due to miscarriages that doctors are refusing to treat.  On the pro-choice side you do hear about extremely late-term abortions.  The fact that either of those scenarios are rare does not mean that either is acceptable (in my opinion).

That doesn't mean you can't, or shouldn't, have the conversation.

And just so my position can be clear - I support robust sex ed, easy access to contraceptives, easy access to "morning after" medication, strong maternity leave and early child care, promotion of adoption, and an absolute ban on late-term abortions except in case of the health of the mother.  But you can hate/disagree with me all you want - the conversation is worth having.

[Josquius]

Define "late term abortion".
Rational people discussing this mean like 20 weeks.
Politically it is pushed by the anti choice bunch to mean 38 weeks.

[grumbler]

So look - the extremes on either side are kind of horrible.  On the pro-life side you do yes hear about women going into sepsis due to miscarriages that doctors are refusing to treat.  On the pro-choice side you do hear about extremely late-term abortions.  The fact that either of those scenarios are rare does not mean that either is acceptable (in my opinion).

Roe v Wade avoided both of those scenarios.

Roe v Wade did result in bans on late-term abortions except for the health of the mother, but even after it was struck down the number of late-term abortions hasn't gone up.  If a woman has been voluntarily carrying her pregnancy for eight months, she's not going to want to get an abortion in the ninth.

[Admiral Yi]

But the horror show that has unfolded in the US since Roe was overturned is narrowing the scope of reasonable opinion on the issue as I see it. The theory that it is possible to have a pro-life policy with strong supports in place and respect and compassion for women simply does not reflect any remotely achievable reality, at least not in America.  And that means continuing to embrace a pro life policy entails very ugly consequences.

The theory that it is possible to have a pro-choice policy with strong supports and respect and compassion for the fetus simply does not reflect any remotely achievable reality, at least not in America.  And that means continuing to embrace a pro choice policy entails very ugly consequences.

[Barrister]

So look - the extremes on either side are kind of horrible.  On the pro-life side you do yes hear about women going into sepsis due to miscarriages that doctors are refusing to treat.  On the pro-choice side you do hear about extremely late-term abortions.  The fact that either of those scenarios are rare does not mean that either is acceptable (in my opinion).

Roe v Wade avoided both of those scenarios.

Roe v Wade did result in bans on late-term abortions except for the health of the mother, but even after it was struck down the number of late-term abortions hasn't gone up.  If a woman has been voluntarily carrying her pregnancy for eight months, she's not going to want to get an abortion in the ninth.

So the problem with Roe v Wade is not that it struck the wrong balance.  I mean you can quibble, but the justices were trying to strike a reasonable compromise.

The problem with Roe v Wade is that they read in a right to abortion into a constitution that clearly had never contemplated such a thing, which had the effect of politicizing the court for the next 50 years (and is still ongoing).

[The Minsky Moment]

Roe v Wade avoided both of those scenarios.

'

Exactly.  And that is why the decision came to enjoy such broad public support.

[Sophie Scholl]

Just so you know the source - The Dispatch was formed by former National Review writers but Trump skeptics (though not to the point they would endorse Harris).  The writer Kevin Williamson is another former National Review writer.  He was perhaps most famous for being hired, then within days fired, by the NYT once they discovered he was actually pro-life

Two things:

1) It was The Atlantic he was briefly employed by, not the NYT.

2) He was let go because he suggested that women who have abortions should be hanged. That is not just a matter of being pro-birth. That is an absolute fringe and horrible belief. He even doubled down on it.



To save the effort of linking all of the articles, I'm going to commit the sin of linking the wiki which has links to a host of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_D._Williamson

[Barrister]

Just so you know the source - The Dispatch was formed by former National Review writers but Trump skeptics (though not to the point they would endorse Harris).  The writer Kevin Williamson is another former National Review writer.  He was perhaps most famous for being hired, then within days fired, by the NYT once they discovered he was actually pro-life

Two things:

1) It was The Atlantic he was briefly employed by, not the NYT.

2) He was let go because he suggested that women who have abortions should be hanged. That is not just a matter of being pro-birth. That is an absolute fringe and horrible belief. He even doubled down on it.



To save the effort of linking all of the articles, I'm going to commit the sin of linking the wiki which has links to a host of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_D._Williamson

While I will acknowledge Wiki's short-comings, I will not mock anyone for linking to it.

I will also acknowledge my mis-remembering and confusing The Atlantic with the NYT.  I may have been confused with Williamson's one-time NR colleague David French, who did in fact go to the NYT (despite some over-the-top criticism of him for his pro-life position).

Finally, and to engage with Williamson's actual argument on abortion - I don't think it's 100% fair to say that he was genuinely saying that women who have abortions should be hanged.  I mean he wasn't going at it like a Swiftian "Modest Proposal" either, but rather that for most pro-life advocates they would say that "abortion is murder". but while they would say that perhaps doctors should be punished for performing abortions, they wouldn't really deal with what should be done with the women.  He was more being contrarian in that "look, if we say that abortion is murder, shouldn't we actually act like it?".  And in particular when he talked about "hanging" he said "look if the state is going to use violence, let's not obfuscate what we're doing".  (quotes are not quotes, only my summarization".

Like I said, Williamson's position isn't my own.  But his position was pretty clearly in the public record, so it spoke poorly of The Atlantic (which I otherwise quite enjoy) that they caved to public pressure so quickly over something that should have been obvious.

And to go even further back - my point was simply to point out a really well-written article about migrants in Springfield, Ohio, from a person very clearly Of The Right who nevertheless was not taking any bullshit from JD Vance or Trump.

[garbon]

No thank you, Beeb, for bringing such trash to our consciousness.

[Barrister]

<delete>

[Barrister]

No thank you, Beeb, for bringing such trash to our consciousness.

Well fuck you too, you fucking fuckheaded fuck.

[Sophie Scholl]

The Editor-in-Chief of said National Review, Rich Lowry, had quite the little slip up in language on The Megyn Kelly Show while talking about the Hatian migrants.

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/17/g-s1-23411/rich-lowry-national-review-haitian-migrants-racial-slur

[Admiral Yi]

Two things:

1) It was The Atlantic he was briefly employed by, not the NYT.

2) He was let go because he suggested that women who have abortions should be hanged. That is not just a matter of being pro-birth. That is an absolute fringe and horrible belief. He even doubled down on it.



To save the effort of linking all of the articles, I'm going to commit the sin of linking the wiki which has links to a host of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_D._Williamson

I skimmed the wiki, and hit the #13 reference link, the one about Kevin wants to execute women who have an abortion.  That one didn't show me said that, it claimed he did.  I followed a link in that article and got the same thing.  Can you direct my search to where he actually says it?

[Sophie Scholl]

Here's one that covers some things. Is mediamatters an ok source for you? Do you want me to do more googling for you? It appears the original tweets have been lost or deleted. It was a decade ago and lots of older posts have been lost under Elon's reign, but there seem to be numerous articles all mentioning it and agreeing on the details.

https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/kevin-williamson-also-said-his-podcast-people-whove-had-abortions-should-be-hanged