Any demarcation after conception (i.e. fertilization) is arbitrary since there's no one defining characteristic of being a human or "alive." This same process of arbitrarily defining who gets to be considered a human worthy of life is exactly what lead to the justification of the murder and slavery of millions during human history - i.e. black people aren't human/they're subhuman because xyz therefor we get to kill and enslave them. I don't think this arbitrary demarcation is really based on rationality, it's all post-hoc reasoning. Meaning, because these babies are an inconvenience to people, people are motivated to find reasons to rationalize why they should be able to kill them.
Incorrect. The earliest viabilty for life outside of the womb is aroud 24-25 weeks. The majority of people who are for access to safe abortion services agree this is a good limit for legal abortions (with exceptions made for rare scenarios for late term abortions described in earlier posts). As science improves/changes, we will need to have to look at this again as a popuation. But this is where the majority of americans sit on this. It is not hard a hard concept to grasp.
Is "viability" the definition of human life though? Plenty of people outside the womb that are not viable without human intervention - does that mean it's okay to kill them? Again, any demarcation or biological criteria for what makes someone deserving of life besides conception is just an arbitrary, post-hoc rationalization for murder.
No. You're a sad adult troll loser who spends way to much of his time on this website.
It's always telling how triggering this hypothetical is to the pro-lifers. They know they are in the wrong but their political obsessions won't let them admit it.
No, you're just an idiot. There's a difference between direct abortion and medical procedures meant to save a mother's life. Your inability to parse the difference between two things in every moral debate we have on LRC is pretty amazing.
So what if my wife and I are struggling in this economy to raise the two children we have already. Now I have to wear a condom for the rest of my life. Why don't you go ____ yourself.
It's always telling how triggering this hypothetical is to the pro-lifers. They know they are in the wrong but their political obsessions won't let them admit it.
No, you're just an idiot. There's a difference between direct abortion and medical procedures meant to save a mother's life. Your inability to parse the difference between two things in every moral debate we have on LRC is pretty amazing.
Ok, so you're fine with abortions when the life of the mother is in danger?
Absolutely this is the correct next step--allow the court to preserve what ever semblance of legitimacy it has and this also should not influence the Nov elections
Any demarcation after conception (i.e. fertilization) is arbitrary since there's no one defining characteristic of being a human or "alive." This same process of arbitrarily defining who gets to be considered a human worthy of life is exactly what lead to the justification of the murder and slavery of millions during human history - i.e. black people aren't human/they're subhuman because xyz therefor we get to kill and enslave them. I don't think this arbitrary demarcation is really based on rationality, it's all post-hoc reasoning. Meaning, because these babies are an inconvenience to people, people are motivated to find reasons to rationalize why they should be able to kill them.
You eat meat, how do you justify slaughtering of animals with higher cognitive abilities and ability to feel pain than a fertilized egg?
The right to privacy comes from the judicial interpretation of the 14th amendments prohibition on a state law that denies someone "life, liberty or property without due process of law." Since the 1920s, the courts have interpreted "liberty" to include a right to privacy. So, it is a bit interesting after right wingers have been shouting about "liberty" whenever they are asked to where a mask before going into a nursing home or cancer ward are now saying that "liberty" in the constitution is just surplusage (i.e. extra words that have no legal weight).
Judge Alito's claim that "liberty" should be defined by reference to historical constitutional standards is pretty amazing in that historical constitutional standards include limiting suffrage to white male property owners, women being considered chattel, black people being chattel slaves, raping your wife is legal, putting people in jail for interracial marriage, and so on. And LLCs did not exist at the time of the framers. So, how can they have a constitutional right to free speech by giving to political campaigns?
Roe is being reversed because the composition of the court changed not because Roe has no legal foundation. Roe is the end of nearly fifty years of supreme court cases on the right to privacy under the 14th amendment. This marks the end of stare decisis at the supreme court. The court's opinions are only as good as long as the court is packed to one side ideologically. As soon as that changes, the court will reverse itself.
Remind me what mask or vaccine mandate has ever been successfully challenged by the 14th amendment?
Women's suffrage was done by constitutional amendment. Slavery was abolished by constitutional amendment. The Constitution says nothing about abortion.
Corporations existed before the founding.
Has not been challenged successfully, but certainly has been the basis for the challenge.
"Opponents of mask mandates have even sued state governments to block them, arguing that the mandates violate individual liberty rights."
And the amendment process just proves my point. The idea that the framers and the early history of the constitution are perfect is directly contradicted by the fact that it took many amendments to bring the US in line with basic human rights. That is because the constitution is deeply rooted in a racist, sexist, elitist history and if that history binds the interpretation of broad concepts like "liberty", we are basically submitting ourselves to the morality of a group of slave owners who did not have electricity or the internal combustion engine to define "liberty" two and three quarters of a century later.
"The idea that we're going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child, based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard,”
~ Joe Biden tells us when asked about abortion before flight to Alabama this morning
Joe thinks it is a "child" that's being aborted.......
What happened to "fetus" or "clump of cells"?
If people jump on this, I feel like we'll see a lot of articles on CNN about Joe's dementia and how we shouldn't take anything he says too seriously.
Any demarcation after conception (i.e. fertilization) is arbitrary since there's no one defining characteristic of being a human or "alive." This same process of arbitrarily defining who gets to be considered a human worthy of life is exactly what lead to the justification of the murder and slavery of millions during human history - i.e. black people aren't human/they're subhuman because xyz therefor we get to kill and enslave them. I don't think this arbitrary demarcation is really based on rationality, it's all post-hoc reasoning. Meaning, because these babies are an inconvenience to people, people are motivated to find reasons to rationalize why they should be able to kill them.
You eat meat, how do you justify slaughtering of animals with higher cognitive abilities and ability to feel pain than a fertilized egg?
These people claim to get their 'morals' from a book of folk tales written by some farmers in the middle east 3000 years ago. Consistency is too large a word for them.
Thanks for explaining my points better than I do. Almost all people would agree that a 5 year old dying of natural causes is a tragedy. Almost no people think that a fertilized egg that doesn’t attach to the uterus and is miscarried is an equivalent tragedy. Maybe we’re all psychopaths?
Yes, you're a psychopath. If you're implying that "no one would feel sad if they were dead" is a justification for killing someone, then you're a psychopath. Morality is not, and should not, be based on how sad or happy a decision makes us feel.
To be clear, you’re saying that you would be equally as impacted by the death of five year old child as you would by the ejection of an embryo in early development?
Or do you not understand that we’re not saying, “it’s ok to kill this one because we don’t feel bad about it” it’s that, “we don’t feel the same about an embryo as we do a full term baby or child because we recognize that there’s a significant difference between the first and the latter two.”
These are decisions you need to make before your have sex with someone...
People have sex for pleasure. That's not going away, and we shouldn't judge people for how they choose to live (US government for example cannot force everyone to go to church on Sunday). We've tried legistlating Alcohol use before for moral reasons and that DID NOT go well. Birth control can fail, even planned pregnancies need access to abortion services sometimes because not everything works out perfectly all the time. The best option would be prevention, but it does not always work, and so yes, access to abortion services is needed.
Even the reddest of states allow for abortion for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.
The disparity is the evangelicals who think life begins when you zipper goes down and the leftists who think full term abortion is constitutional right.
Hearing a lot of Leftists, from Obama to Whoopi, say that abortion is a "difficult choice." Okay, please explain why. The only answer: because there is the life of a preborn child involved. Now explain why your personal interests allow for its death.
Explain why the women carrying same said unborn child cant decide and why a bunch of strangers get to decide? Abortion is part of health care which as the most developed country to ever exist we should be expanding and improving NOT moving back to the dark ages.
What other Pro-life/Anti abortion measures are you willing to support?
Improved and more readily available sex-ed?
Free contraception?
Both have proven to reduce abortion rates drastically without banning a potentially life saving medical procedure.
But the goal here is not to reduce abortion but to inflict a religious based moral code on a single gender who you view whose only purpose is to produce children.
What's next for the supposed freedom loving extreme right movement in the US?
I don't think you should assume positions of anyone beyond the immediate discussion. I happen to oppose abortion yet fully support readily available sex ed, including LGBTQIA initiatives, as well as universal, free contraception.
It IS possible that pro-lifers really are just that and nothing more - pro LIFE, in all forms and stages of development - not bible thumping, holier-than-thous forcing a "strict religous code" on the masses, or exerting masculine control over womens' bodies in a medieval power move.
Please remember... humans are complex. Simplified, generalized views are almost always incorrect. Making assumptions about those who disagree with you is really at the core of the problems here.
You eat meat, how do you justify slaughtering of animals with higher cognitive abilities and ability to feel pain than a fertilized egg?
These people claim to get their 'morals' from a book of folk tales written by some farmers in the middle east 3000 years ago. Consistency is too large a word for them.
You get yours from Twitter... I'll take the farmers.
Our current system runs on the labor and exploitation of disadvantaged people.
Overturning Roe will disproportionately affect disadvantaged groups.
They don’t actually care about “the unborn” they just need more bodies for their war machine and they capitalize on the reactionary opinions on both sides of the aisle.
No, you're just an idiot. There's a difference between direct abortion and medical procedures meant to save a mother's life. Your inability to parse the difference between two things in every moral debate we have on LRC is pretty amazing.
Ok, so you're fine with abortions when the life of the mother is in danger?
Simple yes/no question. No need to get so upset.
Every abortion law includes an exception for mothers in life-threatening danger. That's not even a controversial question.
Incorrect. The earliest viabilty for life outside of the womb is aroud 24-25 weeks. The majority of people who are for access to safe abortion services agree this is a good limit for legal abortions (with exceptions made for rare scenarios for late term abortions described in earlier posts). As science improves/changes, we will need to have to look at this again as a popuation. But this is where the majority of americans sit on this. It is not hard a hard concept to grasp.
Is "viability" the definition of human life though? Plenty of people outside the womb that are not viable without human intervention - does that mean it's okay to kill them? Again, any demarcation or biological criteria for what makes someone deserving of life besides conception is just an arbitrary, post-hoc rationalization for murder.
Many people would put it down to brain development/viability. In an embryo/fetus, there’s a point in gestation where the brain is sufficiently formed that you have a fully fledged person.
So if you have a case where the brain hasn’t formed to any degree, we shouldn’t force that pregnancy to be carried to term. To be sure, this isn’t the same as someone with some other level of mental disability. Many humans can have severe mental disability but still have a sense of self.
This is along the lines of someone who’s suffered a debilitating event and becomes brain dead, pulling life support isn’t murdering that person.
It is surprising that the media (and posters in this thread) have not discussed this point made by Alito when discussing pro-life supporters:
“Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population. It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black.”
He makes a compelling point. There is a significant negative disparity in the numbers of black and white aborted fetuses. I can't think of any other instance where such a disparity is not attributed to racism. Is abortion a racist practice? Is abortion part of systemic racism in the US? The numbers sure seem to indicate so, but I can't recall anyone except Alito referring to it.
