Outlawing Abortion

Kansas voted overwhelmingly to codify abortion rights. Now Pennsylvanians have collected 3/4 of a million signatures to put an abortion referendum on their ballot in November.

Hopefully other states will follow suit, unless Republican politicians prevent the will of the voters from being expressed. One pathway around the American Taliban court is to take it to the voters in each state. In just about every state--except maybe Mississippi--it would pass with double digit support.

John Roberts is aware his court has gone off the rails, and lost all legitimacy. When you have local DA and AGs openly defying SCOTUS decisions, the court's in trouble.

What will he do about it?

Probably not much he can do, with four intransigent ideologues on the Court with zero respect for the law. I think he's quietly begging for Congress to impeach a couple of the motherfuckers, and/or stack the court with real judges.

Republicans are trying to commit slow-motion party suicide. If they win the mid-terms and implement their nationwide ban, they'll never win dogcatcher again.

NoCoPilot wrote:

When you have local DA and AGs openly defying SCOTUS decisions, the court's in trouble.

SCOTUS has no enforcement mechanism. State AGs can simply decide to ignore their rulings. And they are.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Roe is history.

Clarence Thomas says contraception and gay marriage are next.

After that, the women's vote and slavery and interracial marriage.

Told ya.

The Irony here is this nutcase is Black. Clarence Thomas is Black. Will they take away Blacks' rights to marry and vote? To live free? Morons.

Science says the "fetal heartbeat" isn't a heartbeat because there is no heart yet.

Anti-abortionists lose their minds -- because there is no mind yet.

Herschel Walker is vehemently anti-abortion yet he paid one of his girlfriends to get one, then denied it happened.

Then says if he had, it would've been no big deal.

Chris Hayes the other night said he was perfectly fine with Walker aborting an unwanted child.  He said it's none of his business, that was between Walker and the woman.

But continuing to rail against abortion makes Walker a first-class hypocrite.

Here's the thing: hypocrisy does not seem to bother Republicans any more.  It's part of their DNA to be able to hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time, to believe in something and deny it at the same time.  Logical consistency is not the baseline.  They've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Threatening to blow your wife's brains out with a gun to her head is perfectly okay if you're committed to Christ.

The two sides on the abortion debate -- and it's a debate with two legitimate sides -- are talking past each other because they haven't agreed on terms. The pro-life side says human life begins at conception. The pro-abortion side says women's healthcare is a personal right.

Which is a shame, because science comes down clearly on the side of a clump of cells NOT being a human being, not for about 26 weeks. And the logical derivatives of the personhood argument quickly devolve into absurdity. And the power of the science argument very quickly takes the moral wind out of anti-abortionist sails, which is what they rely on.

It's a framing issue. The women's rights side framed it all wrong, and as a result lost devastatingly.

NoCoPilot wrote:

The two sides on the abortion debate -- and it's a debate with two legitimate sides -- are talking past each other because they haven't agreed on terms.  The pro-life side says human life begins at conception.  The pro-abortion side says women's healthcare is a personal right.

I disagree that the anti-choice side is legitimate. The axiom that human life begins at conception is simply wrong.

The logical nightmares of fetal personhood laws are FINALLY starting to get some press. People need to be screaming this from the rooftops.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/georgia-says-a-fetus-is-a-person-the-implications-are-terrifying_n_634f09afe4b03e8038d8fbae

The Senate apparently has the votes now, after the mid-terms, to codify gay marriage and interracial marriage.

Clarence Thomas may well move to rule against the former, but he wouldn't DARE touch the latter -- and hopefully Schumer moves to link them.

Now, if they have to votes for those two, how close are they to codifying Roe, with, what was it, five more states codifying it last Tuesday?

Here's a question: if the far-right GOP succeeds in codifying "personhood" as the beginning of the fetal heartbeat...

Will they then have to prove corporations have hearts in order to gain the rights of personhood, like free speech?

Was listening to Seals & Crofts this morning, and read that they torpedoed their careers in 1974 with an anti-abortion song. Had to listen to it on YouTube. Not a bad song, but once again, it confuses a cytoblast with a real human being. Why is the science so confusing to people?

People (real live separate people) just need to work through the consequences of fetal personhood to see the absurdities:

1. If a fetus is a "person" at conception, or at fetal "heartbeat", then their birthday isn't the day they were born anymore
   
2. Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry concealed AK-47s. Now somebody just needs to invent a miniaturized insertable one
   
3. Pregnant women must buy two airline tickets, two movie tickets, two gym memberships and two tickets to Disneyland
   
4. Pregnant women get two votes
   
5. Pregnant women get a child tax deduction
   
6. Census must start counting the unborn as citizens
   
7. Women who miscarry are guilty of second degree manslaughter
   
8. Women who have intercourse without getting pregnant also need to be arrested. 90% of fertilized eggs never implant

richard09 wrote:

The axiom that human life begins at conception is simply wrong.

I believe Ohio's new abortion language provides unrestricted access to abortion up to the point of fetal viability, which is 24 or 26 weeks.  

I think even most of us healthcare advocates could get behind some late-term restrictions. Obviously, likely harm to the mother, a fetus with life-threatening abnormalities, evidence of spina bifida or hydrocephalus or other major birth defects.  

I'm on the fence about Downs.  These days many Downs babies live full productive lives, although requiring a parent to take on the added responsibility against their will... well, it's not a yes/no proposition. It's akin to (and related to) mental retardation, which can't be tested for in utero. And other non-defect reasons, for instance a divorce and the woman no longer wanting to be pregnant by her ex-husband after fetal viability... well, that makes me a bit squeamish.  That's what adoption is for. A woman who has carried a fetus for 26 weeks has to know what an awesome responsibility she carries inside her. I can understand there might be reasons she thinks she isn't ready for or doesn't want motherhood, but that late in the game, I also believe the fetus has to have more rights than pre-viability.

Anyway, the Ohio law sounds like a good template for a new nationwide abortion policy, after the Democrats regain the House in 2024.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I'm on the fence about Downs.  These days many Downs babies live full productive lives, although requiring a parent to take on the added responsibility against their will... well, it's not a yes/no proposition.

Exactly. And the one who gets to make the decision should be the one carrying the fetus, not some politician.

So, you would favor unrestricted abortion up until the day of birth?

Granted, that's the position of many abortion combatants.  The fetus has zero rights until birth, the mother has 100% of them.  And that's a defensible position.

But I think it's as extreme as the "life begins at conception" crowd, and so equally unlikely to gain a national consensus.

And I think one has to make a distinction between "the right to life" and full human rights. A 9-month pregnant lady shouldn't have to buy two movie tickets, or face manslaughter for a miscarriage. However engaging in risky behaviors (alcohol or drugs, or entering the ring as an Ultimate Fighter) should be discouraged as against common sense, behaviors that responsible mothers would avoid. After birth, some terrible parenting behaviors are proscribed. I think maybe, between viability (26 weeks) and birth (40 weeks) some similar restrictions might be reasonable.

Not every pregnant woman is responsible enough to raise a child. CPS takes care of that, post-birth. Pre-birth? Not an easy answer.

It's not nearly as extreme as the forced-birth crowd try to make out. The thing is, abortions in the third trimester don't happen on a whim. Women don't go through 6 or 7 months of pregnancy and then one day turn around and say "I've changed my mind". It doesn't happen. And if the pregnancy is 7 months plus, the physician won't abort a viable fetus anyway: he'll deliver it and give it a chance to live.

You only need to look at Canada. There are no Canadian laws about abortion, at all. It is simply a matter for the women and their health-care professionals. And Canada is better than the US on any relevant statistics. Fewer abortions, healthier women and babies, fewer teen pregnancies, whatever you want to look at.

Texas AG Ken Paxton overrules the doctors, and overrules the courts, in setting his own religious views above the law.

Kudos to plaintiff Kate Cox for taking her case to court, rather than just quietly obtaining healthcare in another state (she can plainly afford it).

But now my wish is that a doctor with courage will step forward and call Paxton's bluff by performing the abortion.  Somebody needs to start standing up against these bullies.

Quote :

“The idea that Ms Cox wants desperately to be a parent and this law might actually cause her to lose that ability is shocking and would be a genuine miscarriage of justice,” the judge said, following an emergency hearing on Thursday.

There's that screaming need for a thesaurus again.

Texas Supreme Court weighs in, putting the abortion on hold.

Again, some doctor should just do the damn abortion.  It can't be undone.  The majority of the country wants these white male non-doctors to get the fuck out of women's uteruses, so any doctor who stood up to these bullies would find a lot of support.  Courts have no enforcement power. If the police want to arrest the woman after her abortion, or the doctor, it would create a darn strong test case for overturning these Medieval xtian asswipes.

Kate Cox left Texas to get an abortion, so good for her.  The Texas Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, saying she could not get her abortion -- after she'd already left the state.

We'll see if she's arrested when (if?) she returns to her husband and two kids in Texas.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter says this extreme stance on abortion virtually insures the death of the Republican Party.

Monday night, Rachel Maddow had a quick history lesson on the abortion issue.  Every authoritarian government moves to remove women's autonomy, from Nazi Germany to fascist Italy to Communist China (who dictated a One Child policy).  France actually guillotined a woman doctor for performing abortions, under German occupation.

Missouri congressman Todd Akin torpedoed his career by stating that women's bodies had a way of preventing pregnancy if there was a "legitimate rape."

Why is it that men, who have such a distorted understanding of reproduction and bear no burden of it, put themselves in charge of making the rules?

If there's any Justice in the world, 2024 will prove Ann Coulter right (for once in her miserable life). Women are not chattel.  Women are not the property of men.

NoCoPilot wrote:

NoCoPilot wrote:

Roe is history.

Clarence Thomas says contraception and gay marriage are next.

After that, the women's vote and slavery and interracial marriage.

Told ya.

Gay marriage.

In vitro fertilization.

Contraception.

They're coming for morning-after pills, interracial marriage, and women's suffrage next. They literally want to reverse every piece of progressive legislation since 1877.

Maybe we'll go back to riding horses and forming posses to run the revenuers out of town.

Alabama ruled that IVF frozen embryos are children.

Okay. Every woman who has embryos on ice at a clinic should be able to claim them as dependents, and get a tax deduction on every single one. Fair is fair, dickweeds.

Quote :

“The bill before us today is a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far, far beyond ensuring legal access to IVF,” Hyde-Smith said on the Senate floor. Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) objected to a unanimous consent request from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.). The Republican senator claimed the bill would legalize human cloning and commercial surrogacy.

And implantation of mind control chips and genetic engineering to create kids with wings.

Science isn't taught in Mississippi, though, so there you go.

If Republicans thought overturning Roe was a vote killer, wait until the first election after outlawing IVF.