Whose cell/womb is it anyways?

[Wayward Son]

From what I understand, the Constitution forbids the government from forcing a person to give or provide use of any of the person's bodily organ, even if to save the life of another person.  You can't force someone to give blood; you can't force them to provide a kidney; you can't force them to provide a bone marrow transplant.  This article talks about it.

So by the same reasoning, the government can't force a woman to use her uterus to provide sustenance for a fetus, even if that would result in the death of the fetus.  The government cannot take control of a person's organs.  Otherwise, the government would also have the right to your kidneys, your bone marrow, your lungs, and other body parts that you would not require to survive, even if it might subject you to more danger of dying than if not, in order to preserve the life of another person.  Is anyone really OK with that?

[Mynnion]

Take it a step further. To force someone to provide blood or organs you would also have to force them to be tested and force those testing to share that information (bye bye HIPAA).

[Fenring]

So by the same reasoning, the government can't force a woman to use her uterus to provide sustenance for a fetus, even if that would result in the death of the fetus.  The government cannot take control of a person's organs.  Otherwise, the government would also have the right to your kidneys, your bone marrow, your lungs, and other body parts that you would not require to survive, even if it might subject you to more danger of dying than if not, in order to preserve the life of another person.  Is anyone really OK with that?

Just to be clear, are you strictly talking about the legal side of it, or are you addressing the moral issue about how to evaluate the fetus/mother relationship? These are not necessarily the same, nor would one's conclusions necessarily be the same on both.

[Wayward Son]

So by the same reasoning, the government can't force a woman to use her uterus to provide sustenance for a fetus, even if that would result in the death of the fetus.  The government cannot take control of a person's organs.  Otherwise, the government would also have the right to your kidneys, your bone marrow, your lungs, and other body parts that you would not require to survive, even if it might subject you to more danger of dying than if not, in order to preserve the life of another person.  Is anyone really OK with that?

Just to be clear, are you strictly talking about the legal side of it, or are you addressing the moral issue about how to evaluate the fetus/mother relationship? These are not necessarily the same, nor would one's conclusions necessarily be the same on both.

There certainly is a special relationship between a mother and the fetus.  However, that is mainly dependent on the mother's view, isn't it?   

So I would limit this discussion to the legal side, since the moral side is wide and would necessarily have to encompass a wide variety of views, and would have to address how to deal with such a wide variety--a whole can of worms in and of itself. 

Besides, morality is usually not in the Supreme Court's purview.

[Fenring]

So I would limit this discussion to the legal side, since the moral side is wide and would necessarily have to encompass a wide variety of views, and would have to address how to deal with such a wide variety--a whole can of worms in and of itself. 

Then my view, although I'm not a lawyer and don't have a legal opinion, is that the abortion issue has really never been tackled. The U.S. has avoided it thus far, sort of kicking the can down the road, and Canada likewise has no law defining whether the fetus, at any stage of development, may have any rights. It seems that Canada's unofficial view is that is has none, but this is not strictly speaking a legal precedent. In the U.S., where the social view that the fetus is a person has far more popular support, I think we would be entering a totally new field of legal inquiry to try to figure out how to protect legal rights of people not yet born. If that debate ever happens in a court of law I couldn't guess what its resolution would be. That there's a potential conflict of rights involves is pretty obvious. How it would play out is really beyond me to guess. As you and others have intimated, it ought to be a complicated matter to work out, and not as simplistic as some lawmakes would like to pretend it is.

[yossarian22c]

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/19/1100173223/oklahoma-legislature-passes-bill-banning-nearly-all-abortions

Oklahoma's legislature passed a bill Thursday that prohibits nearly all abortions beginning at fertilization.

The legislation builds on an Oklahoma bill passed earlier this month, which prohibits abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy — echoing a similar move in Texas.

At fertilization. Outlawing plan B and potentially some IUDs (they prevent implantation but some also prevent fertilization, definitely a legal gray area with that law). It didn't even take Oklahoma until Roe was officially dead to go all the way to fertilization. And you guys said we're all crazy for thinking that's where the right was headed.

[msquared]

But the Courts will fix it.

[Wayward Son]

I thought we were in this fix because the Court fixed it?   

[Wayward Son]

Interesting article on the abortion divide from FiveThirtyEight.

Basically, it argues that abortion is not really a men vs. women issue, but a traditional gender roles vs. no gender roles issue, specifically which gender has and/or should have the most power.

We could do a little survey here, too.  Answer the following yes-or-no, non-abortion related questions:

1. Women generally are too easily offended.
2. Men generally make better political leaders than women.
3. The country would be better off if we had more women in political office.
4. Access to birth control affects women's equality.
5. Lack of women in political office affects women's equality.
6. The MeToo movement was, in the balance, a good thing.
7. Systems in society give men more opportunities than women.

Pro-choice people will tend to have a distinctive set of opinions on these questions than anti-abortion people.

The one thing about the article is that it didn't address the tribalism in today's politics.  Being an anti-abortionist tends to drive a person toward the Republicans, just as being pro-choicer tends to drive a person toward the Democrats.  And joining either side pressures a person into embracing the party's other political beliefs.  I'm not sure if these gender attitudes are the cause of abortion divide or the result of it.

Still, an interesting perspective on the debate.

[Fenring]

Basically, it argues that abortion is not really a men vs. women issue, but a traditional gender roles vs. no gender roles issue, specifically which gender has and/or should have the most power.

Sounds to me like a typical position borne of the CRT training program: break down any disagreement into an innate power struggle and define the problem as merely being a disparity in power. So no, I don't think the way people think about gender has the slightest bit of relevance for almost anyone on either side of the abortion debate. It certainly has zero relevance to pro-lifers, and for pro-choicers, while many are obviously in the gender studies camp, their rationale are not based on their definition of gender. The gender issue came far after the abortion issue was already formed into its current divide. Once again this is CRT having no knowledge of history.

[TheDrake]

Is is possible that two bad arguments can just cancel each other out?

Whether or not there is a correlation of the many views suggested, does not suggest that the argument against abortion rests on those views. And meanwhile that is not what CRT is about, and how it found its way into a gender discussion is boggling.

[Wayward Son]

Basically, it argues that abortion is not really a men vs. women issue, but a traditional gender roles vs. no gender roles issue, specifically which gender has and/or should have the most power.

Sounds to me like a typical position borne of the CRT training program: break down any disagreement into an innate power struggle and define the problem as merely being a disparity in power. So no, I don't think the way people think about gender has the slightest bit of relevance for almost anyone on either side of the abortion debate. It certainly has zero relevance to pro-lifers, and for pro-choicers, while many are obviously in the gender studies camp, their rationale are not based on their definition of gender. The gender issue came far after the abortion issue was already formed into its current divide. Once again this is CRT having no knowledge of history.

While correlation does not prove causation, you can't just brush off the correlation as being simply "CRT" (whatever that means). 

If how people think about gender and power has nothing to do with abortion beliefs, why is there such a strong correlation?  A single question could be a coincidence, but a whole series of related questions?  The odds say there must be some sort of link.

[TheDrake]

Some people might be indoctrinated. But that still doesn't suggest why that group thinks that something is immoral, nor does it adjust for the correlation showing all other things equal. You'll probably also find that people who are anti-abortion think taxes are too high and that immigration is an invasion.

Meanwhile your examples aren't even correlated. Only 21% of the population say men make better leaders.

Anti-abortion advocates believe one relevant thing: An embryo is no different from a toddler in terms of its right to life.

[Fenring]

While correlation does not prove causation, you can't just brush off the correlation as being simply "CRT" (whatever that means). 

If how people think about gender and power has nothing to do with abortion beliefs, why is there such a strong correlation?  A single question could be a coincidence, but a whole series of related questions?  The odds say there must be some sort of link.

LOL, have you seen any of the websites showing "correlation" between ludicrous and unrelated things? I don't have a link off the top of my head but you can easily find them. The point is that correlation in and of itself is meaningless in a zero-dimensional analysis. The connection between gender theory and abortion position is so trivially irrelevant that it's hilarious that you would even defend it without having had a strong demonstration of why there should be such a connection. In other words the only reason you're not treating this as an "invisible elephant" claim is because the gender theory thing sits within your camp and it would suit you for your opponents to be doubly wrong rather than just wrong. If the correlation instead happened to show that being pro-choice correlated with lack of being conscientious on the conscientious/un-conscientious big-5 scale you'd call it right wing propaganda. So what?

[Wayward Son]

You're not thinking very deeply about this, Fenring.  This isn't just one correlation; it is about seven.

If I found a correlation between anti-abortionist and driving blue cars, I would agree, that is silly.  But what if I found correlation between driving blue cars, living in blue houses, and wearing blue clothing, and their favorite color being blue, and eating Blue Bunny ice cream, and having the Blue Boy painting in their houses, and staying at the Blue Bonnet Inn on vacations.  When similar correlations come up again and again and again, then the odds of it being just some random coincidence goes down significantly.

And I've already given two possible explanations.  One is my own, that anti-abortionists being drawn to the Republican party means that they have embraced other stances of the party.  Then there is their explanation, that the deep motive of those against abortion is that they want to cement the traditional roles of men and women, and being anti-abortion is simply one of the aspects of that.

Once again, this is not just one correlation.  This is a series of similar correlations.

As Goldfinger said, once is coincidence; twice is bad luck; three times is enemy action.  When you reach seven times, it is being stubborn to simply brush it off as simple coincidence.

[yossarian22c]

You're not thinking very deeply about this, Fenring.  This isn't just one correlation; it is about seven.
...

But his counter argument still stands. Politics has become tribal. You could have picked any 7 statements Republicans are more likely to agree to than Democrats and found the same result. Using this strategy you could show a relationship between attitudes about; guns and abortion, taxes and abortion, Trump and abortion, the wall and abortion, etc.

So unless you think there is some causation there, let this one go. Its either half assed social science research or half assed statistics by the people at 538. Unless you can point to some causal link one way or the other its just showing that if you chose statements one political party is more likely to agree on than the other you can show correlation between that and any other political topic.

[cherrypoptart]

The attempt at making a connection also misses the point of most of the people against recreational abortion. They believe that life begins at conception. Even the ones who are less against abortion the earlier it happens, the life there in the womb becomes more and more human as time goes on and by three months or so is human enough to have some rights.

So back to the connection between abortion and gender. Supposedly, if men were the ones to become pregnant, the argument is that the same people who believe that life begins at conception and becomes more and more deserving of human rights as a sentient being the older he or she gets, they wouldn't believe any of that if men became pregnant instead of women. That argument doesn't hold up well to scrutiny.

I know some vegans and understanding how precious they consider all animal life, there's nothing about gender in any of that. It's not so far fetched that so many humans, the ones against abortion, would feel at least as strongly about innocent human lives whether they are in the womb or not. And even vegans have been forced to admit the value of womb dwellers once they've achieved even higher levels of feeling and emotion compared to the other animals they care about. Nothing to do with gender in any of that.

[NobleHunter]

Sounds to me like a typical position borne of the CRT training program: break down any disagreement into an innate power struggle and define the problem as merely being a disparity in power. So no, I don't think the way people think about gender has the slightest bit of relevance for almost anyone on either side of the abortion debate. It certainly has zero relevance to pro-lifers, and for pro-choicers, while many are obviously in the gender studies camp, their rationale are not based on their definition of gender. The gender issue came far after the abortion issue was already formed into its current divide. Once again this is CRT having no knowledge of history.

CRT has no knowledge of history? Yet you claim gender issues post-date abortion? I must be misreading you.

So back to the connection between abortion and gender. Supposedly, if men were the ones to become pregnant, the argument is that the same people who believe that life begins at conception and becomes more and more deserving of human rights as a sentient being the older he or she gets, they wouldn't believe any of that if men became pregnant instead of women. That argument doesn't hold up well to scrutiny.

You underestimate people's ability to adopt beliefs based on personal convenience. If the patriarchy still existed, there would absolutely be consensus that life begins in very late pregnancy at the earliest and possibly not until birth (which some people still believe). That pregnancy would interfere with men's ability to participate in the public sphere would be an acceptable justification for abortion because otherwise it would undermine the entire argument that the public sphere is the domain of men and women are properly constrained to the private sphere (which they may stronger influence but still don't dominate).

While it's nice to believe that people come to their convictions through reason or personal experience, they're more likely to adopt (or have imposed) convictions and then tailor their recollections and logic to fit. That beliefs about gender roles correlate to beliefs about abortion seems almost tautological. While the "pro-life" (you'll note the Right's famously pro-life judges just said the state can murder someone because correcting mistakes at trial or appeal would be too inconvenient) side insists it's just about human life, prioritizing the embryo or fetus--or even just the idea of the pregnancy--over the woman is going to lead to regressive views on gender.

[rightleft22]

You underestimate people's ability to adopt beliefs based on personal convenience

What! Never happens  ):
Actually did a spit take.

that the deep motive of those against abortion is that they want to cement the traditional roles of men and women, and being anti-abortion is simply one of the aspects of that

In the community I grew up in that is not a correlation but a fact.

[Fenring]

CRT has no knowledge of history? Yet you claim gender issues post-date abortion? I must be misreading you.

If by gender issues you mean the underlying realities (whatever they are) then obviously these go back to the Neanderthals and before. But I meant the public conceptualization of the alphabet soup gender spectrum, which absolutely did not exist in the 60's. And I'm being generous putting the timeframe in that era because realistically the conceptualization of abortion and its morally relevant features goes back way before the 1960's, and in fact was a serious issue of contention going back millennia. So yes, the idea that people's abortion beliefs are some sort of symptom of their beliefs about gender is patently preposterous. Many of the Christian beliefs about abortion go back right to the time of Christ, although obviously the medical detailing has improved. Life at conception vs life a few weeks later is an issue that was not as firm back then as it is now, for fairly obvious reasons, but the general principle of a fetus being a fully fledged human pre-birth is very, very old in Judeo-Christian thought. So yeah, CRT has zero conception of actual history.

You underestimate people's ability to adopt beliefs based on personal convenience. If the patriarchy still existed, there would absolutely be consensus that life begins in very late pregnancy at the earliest and possibly not until birth (which some people still believe). That pregnancy would interfere with men's ability to participate in the public sphere would be an acceptable justification for abortion because otherwise it would undermine the entire argument that the public sphere is the domain of men and women are properly constrained to the private sphere (which they may stronger influence but still don't dominate).

I know this wasn't directed at me, but...the times when the so-called patriarchy was at its strongest was the time most vehemently of the position that abortion was unacceptable. It's only been since the contraceptive revolution, women in the workforce, free love, and other such social/technological developments that there is strong pressure to consider a fetus a non-person. So if anything it was the anti-patriarchy movement taking the position you're indicating above. Note that the original anti-abortion position was taken by the early Christians, for instance, as a repudiation of various common practices which included abortion, exposing unwanted infants, and use of contraceptive potions. It was not a position taken from a position of power but rather one challenging the power elite in the attempt to defend the defenseless, among other theological motives. But the common thread of these motives was the maximum fostering and encouragement of life. Note that these positions can't really be divorced by other ways in which the early Christians differed from their pagan counterparts, for instance in not wanting to watch gladiators be eaten by lions. So back then the 'pro-life' position really meant that. Obviously once a minority position becomes the majority position in an eventual empire it's easy to think that these beliefs are designed to perpetuate some kind of oppressive anti-woman power structure, but again that's CRT-type thinking going all wrong. The actual beliefs predate all that, and the current moral positions on the topic are largely traceable back to those, obviously with more medical details being added. The fact that it's possible to take an old moral position and be a jerk is nothing new. Obviously some pro-life people are jerks and hypocrites, just as people in any camp can be. But the current pro-life position is not some brew concocted to bring back the good old days; it's a very old position.

[NobleHunter]

If by gender issues you mean the underlying realities (whatever they are) then obviously these go back to the Neanderthals and before. But I meant the public conceptualization of the alphabet soup gender spectrum, which absolutely did not exist in the 60's. And I'm being generous putting the timeframe in that era because realistically the conceptualization of abortion and its morally relevant features goes back way before the 1960's, and in fact was a serious issue of contention going back millennia. So yes, the idea that people's abortion beliefs are some sort of symptom of their beliefs about gender is patently preposterous. Many of the Christian beliefs about abortion go back right to the time of Christ, although obviously the medical detailing has improved. Life at conception vs life a few weeks later is an issue that was not as firm back then as it is now, for fairly obvious reasons, but the general principle of a fetus being a fully fledged human pre-birth is very, very old in Judeo-Christian thought. So yeah, CRT has zero conception of actual history.

You underestimate people's ability to adopt beliefs based on personal convenience. If the patriarchy still existed, there would absolutely be consensus that life begins in very late pregnancy at the earliest and possibly not until birth (which some people still believe). That pregnancy would interfere with men's ability to participate in the public sphere would be an acceptable justification for abortion because otherwise it would undermine the entire argument that the public sphere is the domain of men and women are properly constrained to the private sphere (which they may stronger influence but still don't dominate).

I know this wasn't directed at me, but...the times when the so-called patriarchy was at its strongest was the time most vehemently of the position that abortion was unacceptable. It's only been since the contraceptive revolution, women in the workforce, free love, and other such social/technological developments that there is strong pressure to consider a fetus a non-person. So if anything it was the anti-patriarchy movement taking the position you're indicating above. Note that the original anti-abortion position was taken by the early Christians, for instance, as a repudiation of various common practices which included abortion, exposing unwanted infants, and use of contraceptive potions. It was not a position taken from a position of power but rather one challenging the power elite in the attempt to defend the defenseless, among other theological motives. But the common thread of these motives was the maximum fostering and encouragement of life. Note that these positions can't really be divorced by other ways in which the early Christians differed from their pagan counterparts, for instance in not wanting to watch gladiators be eaten by lions. So back then the 'pro-life' position really meant that. Obviously once a minority position becomes the majority position in an eventual empire it's easy to think that these beliefs are designed to perpetuate some kind of oppressive anti-woman power structure, but again that's CRT-type thinking going all wrong. The actual beliefs predate all that, and the current moral positions on the topic are largely traceable back to those, obviously with more medical details being added. The fact that it's possible to take an old moral position and be a jerk is nothing new. Obviously some pro-life people are jerks and hypocrites, just as people in any camp can be. But the current pro-life position is not some brew concocted to bring back the good old days; it's a very old position.

Fail. Who's books were the Nazis burning again?  What is the Jewish stance on abortion? Where did WS mention trans issues or "alphabet soup gender spectrum"? How long has Christianity been arguing about the role of women in church leadership? What was the evangelical position on abortion prior to Roe vs Wade? Why do you think you can blithely argue for continuity over two thousand years of religious, scientific and philosophical developments? Why did you miss the fact that I was talking about men being pregnant and thus discussing an obvious counterfactual? Why do you keep mentioning CRT which has SFA to do with gender?

[rightleft22]

if men were the ones to become pregnant....That argument doesn't hold up well to scrutiny

I wonder if we will ever see any laws that require men/boys (family) who get a woman pregnant to be accountable for that new life..... not going to hold my breath

[Ouija Nightmare]

if men were the ones to become pregnant....That argument doesn't hold up well to scrutiny

I wonder if we will ever see any laws that require men/boys (family) who get a woman pregnant to be accountable for that new life..... not going to hold my breath

And the girl/woman’s loss of earnings potential over her life. Let’s make sure they buy the whole cow. Personal responsibility and all that.

[Fenring]

Fail.

Sorry for the delay getting back to you, I've been sick...

I'll answer the following questions, but I'm not sure on what grounds you're disputing what I wrote above. I'm not an historian by trade by the facts I mentioned are not exactly contentious vis a vis the history of modern anti-abortion views.

Who's books were the Nazis burning again?

Actually I don't know, I've never studied the particulars of the titles they chose. According to Wiki they burned any views that would cause problems to Nazism, which I guess goes under duh. It says they burned things ranging from socialist/communist, to Jewish books, to pacifism books, and "sexology" books. It would appear, basically, anything not in line with their program. But I'm not sure why you're asking?

What is the Jewish stance on abortion?

From what I understand the strict religious position (which should not be confused with common secular Jewish opinions) is that it's not kosher, excepting certain cases such as danger to the mother and so forth. I don't know offhand what a Talmudic scholar would say about the moment "life begins," but seeing as Judaism does not have a centralized teaching authority like Catholicism does they may well be divergence on points like this.

Where did WS mention trans issues or "alphabet soup gender spectrum"?

He didn't, so there are some hidden premises I failed to mention to make that connection. Basically when an article now features talk about gender roles I have to assume it is in context of what "gender" is technically taken to mean in the modern context, which involves the alphabet soup designations both on the gender and sexuality front. But I will admit I threw that in and it probably distracted from my main point, which is that the social/political movement regarding traditional gender roles is itself at most decades old, whereas many of the contemporary views on abortion go back centuries or further. If you like you can disregard my remark about alphabet soup and understand my point in this way.

How long has Christianity been arguing about the role of women in church leadership?

Actually good question, if you're talking about clerical roles I have no idea when the first inklinks were of whether to have woman priests, or women rabbis for that matter. If you're talking about non-clerical roles (like church administrators and so forth) then I suspect this is more of a 'women in the workplace' issue than a strictly doctrinal religious issue. So my guess there would be post-WWII, but I'm definitely not studied on this.

What was the evangelical position on abortion prior to Roe vs Wade?

Seeing as how there are tons of different Christian sects it's really hard for me to address this. I'd have to be much better versed in the particularities of specifically U.S.-based evangelical groups. Like, even among current Seventh Day Adventist groups I can find sources saying abortion is wrong, but also sources saying it's sometimes done, and so on. It's messier and less centrally controlled than just 'yes' or 'no' since by definition Protestants protest a central authority. To go back to 1930 or something I'd have to find some old documents about it, which I guess would be a neat research project, but sorry to say I'm not up to it right now. I may delve into that one day, it would be interesting.

Why do you think you can blithely argue for continuity over two thousand years of religious, scientific and philosophical developments?

Well you would have to just go and read some of the church fathers to see what they say? You don't really have to take my word for it. That's for Catholicism. For Judaism it's harder because I have found it difficult to trace direct continuity between current Rabbinic Jewish views and, say, the Pharisees, or the Jewish groups that spread out after the second temple was destroyed. So I think modern Jewish ideas about abortion might be traceable, or at least be concordant with, some older Talmudic sources, but how far back that continuity goes I'm not certain. You do realize this is an enormous topic of study, right? It's not like *you* can just blithely assume that modern abortion ideas are obviously recent inventions when you have no idea about the history. I'm not the one making the positive assertion, I might remind you, that anti-abortion positions are probably self-serving positions of convenience to serve a gender-roles agenda. *That* is the positive assertion I'm arguing against.

Why did you miss the fact that I was talking about men being pregnant and thus discussing an obvious counterfactual? Why do you keep mentioning CRT which has SFA to do with gender?

I didn't address it precisely because it's a counterfactual that is only being introduced because it sounds like it demonstrates bad faith on the anti-abortion side. Its general tenor was to reinforce the idea that abortion stances are just a fig leaf for sexism, which is precisely why I brought up the early Christian period where there is just no honest way to claim those anti-abortion (and anti-infaniticide) positions were intended to be sexist. We're talking about a group that was uniformly persecuted, men and women alike, but those who very much wanted to keep these practices in society. It seriously undermines any attempt to show the anti-abortion position as such as being inherently designed to oppress women. The reason I keep bringing up CRT is because the mode of analysis which suggests that the issue of abortion can more or less be broken down into a gender roles power struggle is a fundamentally CRT-trained type of position. It's a short circuit approach to any topic where instead of studying actual history and learning details one can instead just handwave away that immense storehouse of detail and instead break it down into someone oppressing someone else. It's Marxist analysis translated into the social sphere. What I find hard to belive is why so many find it hard to see this for what it is.

I have no problem agree with the premise that many louses out there use a real argumentative position as a fig leaf to cover up their true sexist or domineering position. Everyone knows that happens. In a very corrupt society or institution it can happen a lot, or even a majority of the time. But that has no relation whatever to the actual validity of the positions these people hide behind. Murderers like Stalin hid behind "equality" and "the working man"; does that mean we should reject any arguments favoring equality and the working man?

[NobleHunter]

So you don't know what people thought but you were still positing that there were consistent and continuous beliefs on the subject for two thousand years. Perhaps you should limit yourself to claims where you are better informed.

The question on Judaism was aimed at the phrase "Judeo-Christian" which can easily be replace with "Christian but needs to sound more inclusive." Christian and Jewish thought/philosophy/theology diverged about two thousand years ago and can't really be meaningfully grouped together (also worth noting is that protecting the life of the mother is now a decidedly pro-choice position. I expect there will be a first amendment challenge on those grounds).

The role of women in the church is, in fact, discussed in the Bible, so it doesn't get any older.

The evangelical position on abortion prior to Roe vs Wade that it was mostly something the basically pagan Catholics worried about. Which speaks to the point of continuity, saying that Christian beliefs on the subject date back to the early church erases Christians (even by the narrowest definition) have held different beliefs on the subject over time and space. This isn't an ironclad and foundational tenet of the faith that the "pro-life" side would have you believe. Any more than transubstantiation is. Discontinuity is the null position because continuity requires effort and deliberate action. 

Further to continuity, there basically isn't any between the early Christians and the current pro-life movement. Contrary to the mythology, the pro-life movement did not organically arise in horror due to Roe vs Wade but from the need to find a new coalition after the defeat of segregation. If it had been organic, it would have been Catholic-centered as they have a much stronger history of anti-abortion activism. So you can't use the early church to argue for the purity of the current movement. Sure, it's possible to be anti-abortion without intending to oppress women but that's not the mainstream position of the pro-life movement. As demonstrated by WS's link.

Nor does early Christian concern about abortions necessarily map to an idea of "life begins at conception/implantation or even quickening." Pre-modern methods of abortion are basically drink poison or induce physical trauma and hope you miscarry before you die. It may also be difficult to parse out their position on abortion from their opposition to infanticide. Historical persons rarely cooperate in making their precise beliefs plain. Not to mention pro-choice advocates would be as horrified at forced abortions as forced births.

Lastly, pro-choice is 100% a question of gender roles in society. There is no pretense that it's about protecting women's autonomy over their own bodies and therefore their ability to participate in the public sphere. The two are inextricably linked. Which would be another reason why anti-abortion beliefs correlate with beliefs about "traditional" gender roles.

[TheDrake]

The Southern Baptists didn't have a position on abortion on Roe v Wade. In 1910, all states outlawed abortion. So there wasn't much need to have a pro-life stance at that time.

Between 1967 and 1973, four states — Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington — repealed their abortion bans entirely, while 13 others enacted reforms that expanded exceptions.

At the time of Roe v Wade, residents of most states didn't have thousands of unborn lives to save - well of course, they weren't being saved, they were being aborted anyway but let's table that.

In particular, southern states were not among the groundbreaking ones that had made any change. So naturally they weren't spending a lot of time pondering something that was pretty much how they'd like it to be. Most clearly, they also were not in favor of abortion reform.

As Fenring points out, there is no overarching "Protestant" body, so you'd have to look separately at everyone from Methodists to Seventh Day Adventists to try and form an opinion about their historical opinions on abortion - but where would that get you?

[Wayward Son]

I think it would be more accurate to say that the Southern Baptists didn't have a single, consistent position on abortion.

In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.

When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.” ...

“Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

I challenge anyone to find a Southern Baptist leader that holds a similar view today. 

If Southern Baptists once officially applauded Roe v Wade, I think it is safe to assume there has not been a consistent position on abortion by Protestants for the last 2000 years.

[msquared]

Especially since they have not been around for 2,000 years.

[Fenring]

So you don't know what people thought but you were still positing that there were consistent and continuous beliefs on the subject for two thousand years. Perhaps you should limit yourself to claims where you are better informed.

I think you are confusing my arguments. I said the positions can be traced back to then. I didn't say that all current groups espousing those positions can be traced back through history, nor that their motives for doing so are the same as those from 2,000 years ago. I am talking strictly about the argument and logic, not about the people. People have all sorts of reasons for saying what they say and believing what they believe, but many people through history have been against abortion, for many of the reasons argued 2,000 years ago. So the "pro-life position" is certainly not predicated on modern politics. But I also made the proviso several times that it is obviously possible for people to espouse the argument while having other motives.

The question on Judaism was aimed at the phrase "Judeo-Christian" which can easily be replace with "Christian but needs to sound more inclusive." Christian and Jewish thought/philosophy/theology diverged about two thousand years ago and can't really be meaningfully grouped together (also worth noting is that protecting the life of the mother is now a decidedly pro-choice position. I expect there will be a first amendment challenge on those grounds).

Check the rabbinic sources if you want, but I think you'll find the preponderance of Medieval and scholastic Jewish thought on the side against elective abortion. The specific scenario of whether the life of the mother takes precedence over the life of the fetus (or at least can be chosen above it) may have some disagreement, as we might expect. But overall, yeah, the Jewish historical tradition is going to be in line with the Catholic one enough for both to pretty obviously fall within "pro-life". It's not like pro-lifers necessarily agree on every single bit of minutiae either.

The role of women in the church is, in fact, discussed in the Bible, so it doesn't get any older.

Role of women, yes. Gender roles vs "no gender roles" (as WS put it)? No, the concept of 'no gender roles' aka everyone does the same things is an innovation essentially borne of tech and industrial innovation. That was never part of the issue about abortion.

The evangelical position on abortion prior to Roe vs Wade that it was mostly something the basically pagan Catholics worried about. Which speaks to the point of continuity, saying that Christian beliefs on the subject date back to the early church erases Christians (even by the narrowest definition) have held different beliefs on the subject over time and space.

This is a continuance of the earlier misunderstanding I mentioned. The ideas have continuity, not the denominations. That new groups can take up old ideas does not make the ideas new.

Further to continuity, there basically isn't any between the early Christians and the current pro-life movement.

Seriously, go look up arguments against abortion circa 100-250 A.D. and compare to current arguments made. You'd think it was all a bunch of bloggers of the same era, other than the language used. So it sounds like you're saying the current pro-life groups are not...Catholics? I'm not sure what other argument you could be making. Because the ideas are totally old ones. Now again if you want to asbribe nefarious motives to various groups espousing these arguments, ok, I can even probably get behind you on that on a case by case basis. But that does not undermine the arguments themselves, which is what the article apparently thinks it's doing.

There is no pretense that it's about protecting women's autonomy over their own bodies and therefore their ability to participate in the public sphere. The two are inextricably linked. Which would be another reason why anti-abortion beliefs correlate with beliefs about "traditional" gender roles.

This, actually, is true, and is one of the problems in current pro-life argumentation. So long as we're taking the ideas seriously I think one can indeed find certain issues with the current theory, or even life philosophy, of the pro-life side. The fact that participation in the public sphere seems to find itself at home with the pro-choice side is a powerful factor, and one the pro-life side does not seem to take seriously. So you see if one is being honest about the logic of both sides, there is room to debate the issue in good faith. But arguing that one's opponents are really just sexists, and using this logic to undermine their position without actually addressing the issues, is the nonsense I was disputing.

[NobleHunter]

The current pro-life position *is* a product of modern politics. Continuity is more than just using the same arguments and logic. Otherwise you could argue there is significant continuity between the US government and the First Nations since they non-monarchies on the North American continent. Just because the current movement is recycling old arguments doesn't mean there's any connection between the two groups. And I should go look up the primary sources as I expect they sound more like "please save my baby from the pater familias" than "life begins at conception." I also expect finding accurate translations to be difficult.

Gender roles vs "no gender roles" (as WS put it)? No, the concept of 'no gender roles' aka everyone does the same things is an innovation essentially borne of tech and industrial innovation. That was never part of the issue about abortion.

How to tell me you're unfamiliar with pro-choice thought without telling me you're unfamiliar with pro-choice thought.

Catholics are a bit player in the American pro-life movement. They might make noises about excommunication or try to embarrass pro-life Catholics but they aren't getting people elected.

The fact that participation in the public sphere seems to find itself at home with the pro-choice side is a powerful factor, and one the pro-life side does not seem to take seriously.

And why don't they take it seriously? Because keeping women at home is part of their objective. Given the groups involved in the pro-life movement, if abortion (and birth control) didn't make it easier for women to be independent, they wouldn't care at all. As evidenced by the historical lack of concern over the issue until Roe vs Wade and the development of medically safe abortions.

Also keep in mind that the pro-life movement's position (as shown by the laws being put in place) are no abortions, ever. Which makes even the strictest rabbi pro-choice.

[Fenring]

The current pro-life position *is* a product of modern politics. Continuity is more than just using the same arguments and logic.

It sounds like your main argument is the same one we've already established, which is that all sorts of different views have gotten lumped in with politics, and specifically tribal politics. That makes is true that the right-wing is the party of pro-guns and also the party of anti-abortion, and as yossarian mentioned all sorts of other views that are baked into a R ticket. That these views come as part of the same tribal basket is sort of trivially obvious. That is not the same as arguing that arguments about abortion are fundamentally reduceable to views on the other items sitting in the same basket (such as views on gender roles). The real question to ask is why pro-life arguments got bunched in with all these other right-wing positions. That would be a good question, and one which is far more complex than "well gee I guess Republicans are all regressive sexists." I would likewise ask why it's the case that pro-social safety net arguments all sit on the left-wing, and so forth. Harder questions to answer than just "cause the other side is regressive".

So I would agree that the current cluster of positions is a product of modern politics (and media). But I do not agree that the actual positions on abortion have anything to do with politics in and of themselves. Only if you take those positions to be fake, i.e. not in good faith, can the abortion position be reduced to a position on some other topic.

Catholics are a bit player in the American pro-life movement. They might make noises about excommunication or try to embarrass pro-life Catholics but they aren't getting people elected.

Historically Catholics in the U.S. were sidelined, yes. Now I think there are more of them and they're taken more seriously, but that's not really part of my general argument. Again, I was talking about the historical continuity of the logic of the positions.

The fact that participation in the public sphere seems to find itself at home with the pro-choice side is a powerful factor, and one the pro-life side does not seem to take seriously.

And why don't they take it seriously? Because keeping women at home is part of their objective.

If you're talking some ultra-religious communities, like Mormon, ultra-orthodox Jewish, super Bible Belt evangelical, then maybe some of them do believe strongly in traditional family organization like this and literally don't want women to work. I wouldn't bet that this is the majority of pro-life people. Your question and your answer to it are once again a short circuit, though. You have to be much more invested in analyzing both sides of the argument if you're going to be serious about addressing why pro-life people don't take the participation in society argument seriously enough. It's a notable hole in the position, and I've looked at it a lot. I see no evidence on your part or on the part of other pro-choice advocates of having any interest in why a pro-life person wouldn't take it seriously, but if you did want to have a side discussion for real about that I'd be happy to. First you'd have to understand that practicality can be in conflict with morality, sometimes so severely that there is no neat engineering solution to just settle both sides of it. And you'd also have to realize what many of the great playwrights did, that sometimes moral imperatives can be in conflict with each other so that you cannot pursue both at once in the same worldly sphere. It is a very serious philosophical topic, one covered by plays such as Hamlet, the Oresteia, and many more. Before recognizing the existence of this area of thought there's no room for a serious discussion on the topic.

Given the groups involved in the pro-life movement, if abortion (and birth control) didn't make it easier for women to be independent, they wouldn't care at all. As evidenced by the historical lack of concern over the issue until Roe vs Wade and the development of medically safe abortions.

Until the thing people cared about was challenged no one fought about it, proving they didn't actually care about it? That sounds like circular reasoning to me. TheDrake also addressed this point just earlier.

Also keep in mind that the pro-life movement's position (as shown by the laws being put in place) are no abortions, ever. Which makes even the strictest rabbi pro-choice.

I agree that these laws are not a good representation of moral discussion on the topic. I don't agree that this means that pro-life people all think the same thing, i.e. the thing the proposed laws say. I do agree that blanket laws with no nuance are problematic. I don't agree that therefore there should be no laws on the books about various things in the world.

[NobleHunter]

Abortion can be linked to other topics because humans like to have consistent beliefs and once you go ride-or-die against abortion it's hard to be consistent without reducing women to baby-makers. Especially since vanishingly few people reason their way to being pro-life without regards to other beliefs and assumptions. In a lot of cases, the starting point is that women's primary purpose is to make babies and then justification is sought for why abortion is wrong. It's not an accident that most people end up agreeing with the dominant beliefs of their surroundings.

The problem with your philosophizing is that the other side is actually regressive. Sure, not all pro-life people or Republicans are working for a theocratic white ethnostate but they're perfectly happy to caucus with those who are. I mean, if you believe that the Republican Justices are done eviscerating civil rights then I absolutely have a bridge to sell you.

[TheDrake]

I've come to think the exceptions business has always been a copout. If you think that a two month old fetus is a person with rights, then how could there be exceptions? You can't kill a two year old who is the product of rape, incest, or one who has a birth defect. To make that work you have to cobble together a whole new class of quasi-human to whom murder applies selectively. Knowing that this is the most blameless scenario makes it more clear that the effort has been more about holding women responsible for being promiscuous than it is about a determination of life. If the fetus is not a person, then it has no more right to life than a cyst.

[Fenring]

I've come to think the exceptions business has always been a copout. If you think that a two month old fetus is a person with rights, then how could there be exceptions? You can't kill a two year old who is the product of rape, incest, or one who has a birth defect. To make that work you have to cobble together a whole new class of quasi-human to whom murder applies selectively. Knowing that this is the most blameless scenario makes it more clear that the effort has been more about holding women responsible for being promiscuous than it is about a determination of life.

I think your suggestion that part of it is holding people responsible for being promiscuous has more merit than the idea that it's about gender roles. In this case it's actually specified verbatim, that people should have to own up to the consequences of their actions. And this view - about personal responsibility - actually does line up with other right-wing views that are not specifically about abortion. In this case the promiscuity is seen as a negative, and tbh it's not only right-wingers who happen to hold that particular view (plenty of liberal people get uptight at the idea of outright promiscuity, as differentiated from simply having sex before marriage), but it's the right-wingers who will also hold the views regarding taking taking the consequences of it. Since I personally view this as being a very limited way of understanding personal agency (I don't think agency can really be disentangled from environment) I can see why many liberals see this whole line as being kind of callous. But one thing it isn't is merely self-serving, as in, a fake position that merely offers the group espousing it some advantage. So again it's an issue riddled with cross-currents with other moral positions. And yes, these can reinforce each other. In way they should...why would you want your various views to be contradictory with each other?

Now about the 'exceptions', the issue here is both moral and legal. The Rabbinic tradition, in arguing that the life of the mother can be taken as superior to the life of the fetus, is not making an exception to the premise that the life of a fetus has value, but merely assigning greater value to the life of the mother if a conflict arises between these. It's not an exceptional case but a statement of fact (in their view) about the general value system involved. So there is no inherent reason to say "abortion to save the life of the mother" is an exception to the idea that the fetus is a person. On the other hand, if the child is the product of rape then, yes, that would be creating a strange exceptional case where a life is not a life if it was produced in an unfortunate way. So I think one must be clear about not only the various scenarios but also the reasoning behind them. And as we've pointed out already, there is not exactly a unified view on abortion on either side. Some of the arguments are very old, but that doesn't mean everyone is using the same arguments. In fact even the pro-choice arguments are shifting over time. Just as an example on this latter point, it seems that an increasing number of pro-choice arguments seem to actually grant that the fetus has something which we might call rights or 'life value', but that other concerns must override this (which is probably where both sides could agree if they were being reasonable, i.e. in that there's a conflict of rights in play).

[cherrypoptart]

Could allowing rape not to be an exception actually encourage rapists?

The urge to foster progeny is one of the strongest in every form of life. If it wasn't, most life wouldn't exist at all. Humans included.

And forcing a woman who was raped to carry her rapists child to term seems grotesque. But if the exceptions for all abortions including rape are at a cutoff of two or three months, that doesn't seem unreasonable, except of course to the ardent pro-lifers, then rape abortions get tucked into that time frame. Nothing against the ardent pro-lifers but if the consensus comes down to abortion is legal up to three months then that seems like a pretty good compromise for most people. Anyone who is raped should be on top of the situation as far as pregnancy goes so they catch it very early.

I'm sure there are pro-lifers who believe that abortion is equally wrong whether happens at conception or as a partial birth abortion, but the vast majority of people probably see it as getting more and more wrong the more developed the fetus becomes. Unless abortion becomes totally illegal, and even the states coming up with anti-abortion laws for the most part haven't gone that far, then the rape exception shouldn't be that much of an issue except in a relatively small number of exceptional cases where the pregnancy can't be discovered early on.

Bottom line, the rape exception doesn't lead to any contradictions if abortions are allowed up to two or three months post conception.

[Fenring]

And forcing a woman who was raped to carry her rapists child to term seems grotesque. But if the exceptions for all abortions including rape are at a cutoff of two or three months, that doesn't seem unreasonable, except of course to the ardent pro-lifers, then rape abortions get tucked into that time frame. Nothing against the ardent pro-lifers but if the consensus comes down to abortion is legal up to three months then that seems like a pretty good compromise for most people. Anyone who is raped should be on top of the situation as far as pregnancy goes so they catch it very early.

If there was a 2-3 month cutoff then discussing it as an exception would be unnecessary. If, however, there is not a 2-3 month cutoff, then bringing this type of exception into it would be seriously problematic on a legal level: how do you prove rape in 2-3 months? Presumably you'd need a criminal trial to have been brought and completed within the necessary timeframe to actually establish there was in fact a rape. Otherwise everyone would just say rape, right?

[TheDrake]

arguing that the life of the mother can be taken as superior to the life of the fetus, is not making an exception to the premise that the life of a fetus has value, but merely assigning greater value to the life of the mother if a conflict arises between these

I deliberately left out that exception because it does have more merit, but I will posit that there is still an inherent distinction. We don't let people kill their two year old and harvest their liver to save their life.

[NobleHunter]

I deliberately left out that exception because it does have more merit, but I will posit that there is still an inherent distinction. We don't let people kill their two year old and harvest their liver to save their life.

We also don't forcibly take people's kidneys to save two-year-olds either.

[Wayward Son]

And forcing a woman who was raped to carry her rapists child to term seems grotesque. But if the exceptions for all abortions including rape are at a cutoff of two or three months, that doesn't seem unreasonable, except of course to the ardent pro-lifers, then rape abortions get tucked into that time frame. Nothing against the ardent pro-lifers but if the consensus comes down to abortion is legal up to three months then that seems like a pretty good compromise for most people. Anyone who is raped should be on top of the situation as far as pregnancy goes so they catch it very early.

I'm sure there are pro-lifers who believe that abortion is equally wrong whether happens at conception or as a partial birth abortion, but the vast majority of people probably see it as getting more and more wrong the more developed the fetus becomes. Unless abortion becomes totally illegal, and even the states coming up with anti-abortion laws for the most part haven't gone that far, then the rape exception shouldn't be that much of an issue except in a relatively small number of exceptional cases where the pregnancy can't be discovered early on.

Bottom line, the rape exception doesn't lead to any contradictions if abortions are allowed up to two or three months post conception.

The thing is, cherry, what you are describing here is pretty much the Roe v Wade decision.  As Wikipedia summarizes:

In January 1973, the Supreme Court issued a 7–2 decision in McCorvey's favor ruling that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides a "right to privacy" that protects a pregnant woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion. It also ruled that this right is not absolute and must be balanced against governments' interests in protecting women's health and prenatal life.[4][5] The Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the three trimesters of pregnancy: during the first trimester [up to 12 weeks], governments could not prohibit abortions at all; during the second trimester, governments could require reasonable health regulations; during the third trimester, abortions could be prohibited entirely so long as the laws contained exceptions for cases when they were necessary to save the life or health of the mother.[5]

The Court could have (or still could?) tweaked Roe v Wade in saying that States had the right for reasonable health regulations from the moment of conception.  But, instead, it appears to plan to throw out everything, saying that there is no "right to privacy" when carrying a child, nor a right to choose how your own organs are used if it may result in the death of another human.  Look forward to mandatory blood and kidney donations in the future.

All in all, it sounds like you're more on the pro-choice, status quo side of this debate.

[TheDrake]

All in all, it sounds like you're more on the pro-choice, status quo side of this debate.

IIRC, cherry disliked Roe for the mechanism more than the outcome.

[Fenring]

The 'stealing each other's livers' analogy unfortunately doesn't work. Pregnancy is a unique situation not comparable to other medical scenarios. There is the "we are attached to each other in a hospital bed" scenario, and others. Bottom line, pregnancy is just its own situation. It's a hard scenario to crack using nothing but quick arguments.

[TheDrake]

To me it is all very simple. It isn't a tough nut to crack, it's not Schrodinger's Baby, both a person and not a person at the same time. Not that any of the arguments matter anyway. People are going to decide based on astrology, what their mom or dad told them to believe, or what Pastor Bob said was right, or what Jesus whispered to them, or what a doctor said. Probably not what some rando posted on a backwater part of the internet.

[Wayward Son]

Here's another example of what happens when a person is not in control of her own body:

Layla Houshmand was eight weeks pregnant in the spring of 2021 when she woke up to find her field of vision smeared with a hazy sheen, like Vaseline rubbed on the lens of a camera. She was already worried about her own health. She’d spent the day before nursing herself through the pain of a migraine. But now the headache was worse and her vision was blurring and Houshmand was even more scared. Then the vomiting began. Nothing would stay down. During one 90-minute appointment with an ophthalmologist, she remembered vomiting 20 times.

Something was clearly going horribly wrong with Houshmand’s body. Her ophthalmologist suspected a stroke in her optic nerve and told her the condition can be caused by pregnancy, but Houshmand was stuck in a Catch-22: The pregnancy was now also preventing treatment. Doctors told her that she needed steroids and blood thinners and a specific type of MRI that could make sure there wasn’t something even more serious happening. But she couldn’t get any of those things because they could endanger her fetus.

Houshmand decided she wanted an abortion. She wasn’t willing to risk losing eyesight and continuing to be in pain, vomiting over and over, with no solution … not for an eight-week pregnancy. But her doctors couldn’t help her — abortion wasn’t even an option they brought up. Houshmand had to find a private clinic that could treat her on her own. After the abortion she found out the truth: She had a life-threatening infection in her optic nerve.

As long as she was pregnant, none of the doctors Houshmand encountered would do the things that needed to happen to diagnose her — or treat her. Without an abortion, she was just a sick pregnant woman, rather than a woman who needed an abortion to save her life.

... Some, like Houshmand, will be people who are seeking abortion because of the way a pregnancy is affecting their health. In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem, thanks to exceptions for the life of the mother that are common, even in the strictest abortion bans. But the medical professionals, legal experts and researchers we spoke to said those exceptions are usually vague, creating an environment where patients have to meet some unspoken and arbitrary criteria to get treatment.

When it’s not clear what is legal, patients are often treated as though nothing is. It can be hard to prove your medical emergency is enough of an emergency to get an abortion in a doctor’s office or hospital, or to get Medicaid and other insurers to pay for it. Uncertainty breeds fear and stigma for doctors, who might delay treatment so they can evaluate just how close a person is to dying. In some situations, patients are simply shuttled from one facility to the next like a hot potato until they find a place willing to offer care.

There are a lot of unknowns about what will happen in the wake of the Dobbs decision. But doctors say they do know at least one thing: Overturning Roe v. Wade will lead to more situations where the health and safety of a pregnant person comes second to doctors’ own risks and fears. They know this because it’s already been happening for years. ...

Houshmand felt trapped between the parts of the medical system that were ideologically opposed to her choice, and the parts that were too afraid of controversy to help her.

And it is pretty common for sick pregnant people to end up squeezed in that vise, said Dr. Lisa Harris, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan who specializes in treating pregnant patients with complex medical problems. While she can remember cases where death was certain if an abortion couldn’t be performed — a patient with heart and lung failure, for example — they only come up maybe once a year in her work. But patients like Houshmand happen all the time, she said. “Maybe it’s a 30 or 50 percent chance that someone might die. And they might not die immediately. Maybe it would be in the next week or month, or even year or beyond.”

Abortion bans and abortion restrictions nearly all contain exceptions that allow abortion to save the life of the mother, and, in some cases, preserve her health as well. But every law and statute that contains this exception is written a little differently, and most of them are ambiguous about what constitutes “life-threatening” and how that should be determined.

The whole article is quite enlightening.

This is how anti-abortion legislation is going to cost people's lives. Not through callous disregard of obvious, certain death, but borderline cases where maybe only 30 percent of the patients will die.  But once you start applying this for thousands of patients, you're talking about hundreds of deaths.  Hundreds of certain deaths.

Remember the costs, and pray that your loved-ones won't have to pay them someday.

[Fenring]

That article is from spring 2021, when Roe was still in effect. How does the narrative it presents make sense, that this is what happens when women aren't allowed to get abortions, from a time when they could get them? Was the issue just that certain medical practitioners did not want to offer a treatment that would kill the fetus out of their own personal moral conviction? If so, is your argument that doctors should not be allowed to follow their own consciences in medical matters?

[Wayward Son]

The argument is that these things were happening when abortions were legal and doctors did not face severe criminal penalties for unnecessary abortions.  Now that they could be sent to prison for the rest of their lives if they guessed wrong about the health of the mother will only make matters worse.

And tell me--would you really be OK if your mother or sister or wife or daughter died because her doctor refused to treat her, or even diagnose her, because he was "following his conscience" and thought her fetus was worth more than her life?? Don't you think she should have some say in the matter?  In fact, a very, very large say?

[Fenring]

The argument is that these things were happening when abortions were legal and doctors did not face severe criminal penalties for unnecessary abortions.  Now that they could be sent to prison for the rest of their lives if they guessed wrong about the health of the mother will only make matters worse.

But the situations aren't comparable. In one case you're talking about a doctor who was frankly the wrong doctor for this person, although I'm not entirely happy about the marketplace argument in medical matters. The bakery analogy doesn't hold water when comparing to a time sensitive emergency, which to me is more an issue of the general problems in the U.S. medical system. In principle a doctor acting on his conscience is not the same at all as the state banning something. In practice this might mean people would need to scout for doctors well in advance of any sexual activity to make sure that in a crunch they know who to go to so that they don't have a doctor whose beliefs conflict strongly with their own.

That being said, I personally have a hard time believing that any doctor could face legal sanction of any kind of offering a legitimate medical service that has an unfortunate side effect. Maybe some of these fool legislators think they can ban cancer treatment for pregnant women, but I doubt anything so ridiculous would hold water when challenged in court. FWIW it's an annoying system to have to wait until someone sues before untrained (or immoral) legislators are told what is actually a legal law and what isn't.

[NobleHunter]

Maybe some of these fool legislators think they can ban cancer treatment for pregnant women, but I doubt anything so ridiculous would hold water when challenged in court

Except cancer treatment isn't a right deeply rooted in American history and tradition.

[Fenring]

Maybe some of these fool legislators think they can ban cancer treatment for pregnant women, but I doubt anything so ridiculous would hold water when challenged in court

Except cancer treatment isn't a right deeply rooted in American history and tradition.

Um, I'm not so sure. I really wouldn't be able to venture a guess about law as it intersects with medical ethics, but I have at least a suspicion that legislators cannot legislate away medical ethics (such as barring lifesaving treatment). This could be a human rights issue, which in theory would supersede any legislative powers granted to a legislature or governor.

[NobleHunter]

I would not put anything past this Supreme Court.

And at the moment, medical professionals seem to be assuming that the law beats medical ethics or they wouldn't be waiting for ectopic pregnancies to go critical before treating the mother.

[Ouija Nightmare]

Echoing the high court’s language in striking down Roe, the Alabama appeal filed on Monday argued that the state has the authority to outlaw puberty-blocking hormones and other therapies for transgender minors in part because they are not “deeply rooted in our history or traditions.”

And with that we continue sliding down that slope into poorly reasoned madness.