When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it claimed to be removing the judiciary from the abortion debate. In reality, it simply gave the courts a macabre new task: deciding how far states can push a patient toward death before allowing her to undergo an emergency abortion.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit offered its own answer, declaring that Texas may prohibit hospitals from providing “stabilizing treatment” to pregnant patients by performing an abortion—withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
The ruling proves what we already know: Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
Except it is every clear that they don’t care about the life of the fetus either since the publicized cases pretty much all involve a fetus that would die within hours of birth.
6th Grade Biology taught us that an ‘ectopic pregnancy’ is, by definition, unviable. By their own Book, God creates ectopic pregnancies so They can have the pleasure of destroying an innocent soul.
Reminder that, in Ohio, Republicans pushed a bill that would have required doctors to reimplant ectopic pregnancies in the uterus. A medical technique that doesn’t exist. So doctors who didn’t do this non-existent technique would be “guilty of murder” and doctors who tried it and failed (because it’s not a thing we can do) would also be guilty. And either way, the woman would likely die.
Well, that’s the most insane thing I’ve ever seen in politics, bravo
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Between that and Gym Jordan they’re clearly vying for most north Florida of the states.
That’s the thing. It’s okay when their god kills a fetus for fun. But we’re never supposed to no matter what.
They literally want to investigate every miscarriage as a potential murder
Yes. The objective is to punish women for the crime of having sex.
Punish poor women.
The Rich and Politician daughters and mistresses will still have full access to abortions under the guise of health retreat/2 week vacation/etc etc.
Well, as long as daddy/hubby approve. In their ideal world, they’d be able to control this as well, and bring about the end of no-fault divorce, etc.
Punish other women
Sex with anyone but them, mind. You know they’d have no issues flying their mistresses to a more permissive state for an abortion.
Having unauthorized sex. Look at that GOP woman who was having three ways to ‘save her marriage.’ It was fine for her to have relations with another woman as long as the owner approved.
Which is absolutely insane, especially considering 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage (and that’s just confirmed pregnancies! The actual number is likely higher!)
From what I recall it’s actually the majority of pregnancies that end in miscarriage, it’s just that they usually occur before the woman can even really notice she was pregnant or is having a miscarriage. From the woman’s perspective she may of had a particularly unpleasant monthly period when it was actually a miscarriage. It’s one of those things no one likes to acknowledge because people find it disturbing and it completely undermines a lot of assumptions people like to make about “the miracle of life”.
Yes, I think if it ends in the first 4 or 5 weeks it’s considered a “chemical pregnancy” and doesn’t even count towards the stats. It’s extremely common. The whole point of not announcing your pregnancy in the first 12 weeks is because it’s so common to not make it past 12 weeks
Meanwhile, the backlog of untested rape kits keeps growing and growing…
Priorities.
Philosophically, the law should not involve itself in trading on lives. I actually find this heartless abortion position more consistent than the others and appreciate the soulless honesty of it.
The fact that nearly everyone agrees there should be at least some cases where abortions are legal means pretty much everyone believes that abortion should be legal and just hasn’t fully thought out the underlying ethics.
Because it means basically no one really believes in the unconditional right to life of a fetus - if it has an unconditional right to life, it doesn’t matter if it came from rape or incest and it doesn’t matter if it’s going to die within minutes of being born and it doesn’t matter if it’s life threatens the life of its parent. None of those factors should remove the right to life.
And so since pretty much everyone agrees there should at least be exceptions for some of these situations we must conclude that there is not an inviolable right to life. We clearly think that the right to life of a fetus is just fundamentally lesser from the right to life of an independent and viable living person.
Meanwhile the right to autonomy over your own body still looks pretty unimpeachable to me. Seems to be that the state continues to have no right to forcibly modify or control your body and that it can sooner limit basic freedoms like movement and association before it violates that. The only time we seem to think it’s okay to violate body autonomy is if the person has a fetus in their uterus.
What conservatives really want is to be able to dictate the calculus. They want to be able to tell people with a uterus what to do. They want to pick and choose who is and isn’t pregnant and offer as little agency as possible to the individuals. That’s always been the most important motivation and goal to these abortion bans. They want a breeding slave class and they’re just too dishonest with themselves to admit it.
A rape exception alone shows they are totally inconsistent on the question of “life” and “rights.”
The thing is, even an exception for the life of the mother shows that same moral inconsistency. If allowing a mother to come to harm through intervention that preserves the life of the fetus is acceptable, the other way around – allowing the fetus to come to harm through intervention that preserves the life of the parent – is just as acceptable. And it makes no difference if that preservation of life is 85 years or 15 minutes – the right to life isn’t contingent on how long your life may be.
These fake ethicists try to claim there’s a fundamental difference between performing an abortion and prohibiting an abortion, but both of these are positive actions taken by the state that engages in trading lives. If you want to argue on the morality of what a doctor or pregnancy’s choice to be part of an abortion, have at – there’s reasonably room for debate there – but there must be no intervention from the state.
I think it’s immensely charitable for a person to carry a baby to term. One of the most selfless things you can do. If you carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because you feel you owe it to this total stranger growing in you, you’re a damned saint. But our society does not mandate that kind of charity.
And pregnancy can be incredibly hard on a woman. My wife’s pregnancy was really tough. Especially with morning sickness, which she had for the whole nine months. She wanted a child as much as I did, but I never even broached the subject of having another kid, because of how hard it was for her to have the first one.
Some people love pregnancy. Some pregnant women go through their pregnancy feeling terrific. They’re the lucky ones.
I’d like a lot of these anti-abortion people to look up what an episiotomy is. And watch a video of a C-section. Even safe pregnancy in a medical setting is really unpleasant and painful in so many ways.
Slight tangent that I feel worth mentioning. There is recent good news for women like your wife. After being ignored by medical science for who knows how long, a more solid understanding of the underlying cause of pregnancy sickness has been reached. The hormone human chorionic gonadotropin or sensitivity to it.
The lead researcher has a pretty tragic past due to having severe, intractible pregnancy sickness. I heard an interview the other day with her where she recounted being so ill that she was unable to even speak. At the same time, she was told by her doctor that it was all in her head and she was doing it for attention. Her pregnancy sickness got so bad that she was unable to carry to term and was very much at risk herself.
But out of her fucked up situation came her drive to prove that the cause was biological and, with this breakthrough, there are now targets for medications and therapies that can be explored.
Ah well. We’re in our middle forties. Too late for her now (not technically, but not a good idea). I’m glad other women will not go through it though.
Yeah. Likely late for my wife as well but, still nice to know that it is a definitively biological thing and that there is real hope for it to be treated for others.
I like your reasoning here and I will keep it in mind if I get sucked into another one of these conversations, since I don’t have a uterus and don’t think I should ever have any say in what people who do, choose to do with them. The only thing I’m uncertain about is:
One of the most selfless things you can do
I’ve always felt the opposite. Maybe I’m just a contrarian or a misanthrope, but deciding to be a parent always seems selfish to me. It may just be my limited experience, but for all their good intentions, even looking past minor character flaws, I’ve never seen a parent raise a child in a truly flourishing environment. It always feels like they’re trying to relive their youth vicariously through their kids and I see so many negative traits and fears reinforced until they become personality flaws. I’ll have to think about this more.
Well, that’s a little sad, that you’ve only seen the bad side. Personally, I’ve seen good parents that let their kids be themselves, and bad parents that try to relive their childhood through their kids or turn them into mindless copies.
I think they’re right that the action itself is selfless. But just like a person can donate to a charity just to make themselves look good, one can carry a child for the attention.
Many ethical stances around abortion aren’t phrased around the right to life, because usually ethics has a pretty hard stance on that right. So the real ethical question isn’t about the unconditional right to life, It’s actually about your right to another person’s body or bodily autonomy.
Generally it breaks down to, just because a person requires the use of your body to survive does not mean you have a moral or ethical requirement to provide sustenance (your body) for that person.
Qoute from a nytimes article:
The philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson, in 1971, put forth the most famous version of this argument as it related to abortion: Imagine that a woman woke in bed intravenously hooked up to a famous violinist, Thomson wrote in her seminal and controversial essay, “A Defense of Abortion.” The musician in this scenario suffered from a rare medical ailment, and only this woman’s circulatory system could keep him alive. His survival requires her to sacrifice her own bodily autonomy. Must she? Is she a murderer if she does not?
Phrasing it as right to life automatically discounts the real ethical question, does this being have a right to my body?
Thomson does directly address the right to life of the fetus in A Defense of Abortion, the underlying essay that the violinist parable comes from (it has several other allegorical arguments aside from this one that are, in my opinion, even better but weirdly don’t get referenced much). The violinist story only really addresses rape, but the others do not require a starting act of violence to make similar arguments.
She outright grants the life-from-conception argument. And argues for why it’s just not relevant by showing a series of examples that make plain the typical person’s instinct – that autonomy over your body is supreme to the right to life of another and refusing to be charitable to a stranger is not the same as murder.
In my mind, no one has ever come close to rebuking her argument, though many have tried. The fact that both pro-life and pro-choice people continue to argue about when abortion becomes unethical is very frustrating. I wish the whole “it’s just a clump of cells” crowd would shut up because that’s utterly unpersuasive to someone who believes in life from conception. It’s just a moot point. Even if the fetus is a full human being with all relevant rights from the moment of conception, abortion is still not murder; it is permissible.
I recommend the essay, it’s not a very challenging read (compared to the greater cannon of philosophical essays, at least). It’s probably been 15+ years since I last read it and it still lives strongly in my mind.
I appreciate the added context, but a bit thrown. I was trying to call out your comment that people don’t believe in a unconditional right to life, by trying to say it’s not the right to life that is questioned. But, you’re clearly well versed on the matter.
What part of the pro-choice movement do you think doesn’t believe in the unconditional right to life? Because to me, I don’t think anyone takes the stance that a fetus (baby?) that can survive on its own should be killed.
Or am I just being nit picky in your wording?
No one is advocating for killing babies. That’s kind of the point, though: abortion is not killing babies. If babies die after abortion, that isn’t murder. That’s just death. And whether or not the baby can survive post-abortion doesn’t factor into that, at least from a position of pure ethics.
But it’s preferable to not let the baby die. We didn’t deny it’s right to life. So if the pregnancy can be terminated without letting the baby die and without a serious adverse effect on the parent, we should do that. What’s fundamentally different after viability isn’t the morality, it’s just what is possible.
I’m pretty inarguably pro choice and I do not think we ought to ban any abortions. Yes, including late term, viable babies. The focus on viability is denying the unconditional right to life. It’s trying to negotiate about when that right emerges in order to make the arguments easier. And it’s an inherently weak strategy because it’s totally subjective. Even when the point of viability occurs is subjective.
If we want to keep babies alive, we should create incentives to prevent abortion and remove disincentives to carrying to term. In the case of a viable fetus, we should make sure the cost of giving birth is not higher than the cost of termination for someone who wants to not be pregnant anymore. But autonomy over your own body is always supreme over right to life. Always.
Not to even get into the fact that late term abortions are definitionally extremely complex , emotional, complicated situations where we definitely do not need the government imposing ridiculous catchall rules.
And in any event, once it’s out of the womb, it needs to get a job and pull itself up by its bootstraps and eventually stop eating avocado toast if it wants to afford a studio apartment.
Don’t forget not owning a phone, having Internet/Netflix and/or a TV.
I still chuckle about an article called “boomer economics”, or something like that, which demonstrated how much a certain set of people distort the costs of things like the above vs. the reality. Tvs are exceptionally cheap as compared to, say, 1970s prices, phones are nearly essential, as is the Internet and the cost of Netflix (and avocado toast) is negligible compared to making rent/mortgage.
Wait wait wait…… wasn’t “death panels” what the right was screaming about with Obamacare?
Death Panels are only good when Insurance Corporations and Republicans are making the decisions.
You’re thinking of the bad kind of death panels. Those are the good kind of death panels, obviously.
It’s always projection with fascists.
Yes, because “death panels” is just emotional language, not a well-defined thing. So polemicists on the left and right use it to try and make people angry about something they might not otherwise be angry about.
The fact that polemicists on the right labelled something as X in order to criticise it, but then later people on the right generally support something that polemicists on the left also labelled as X, is not indicative of anything at all, because there is no reason to think that the common labelling represents any actual similarity between the two things, or even represents any underlying truth whatsoever.
This is even more the case because the people who push these lines often deliberately (misguidedly, in my opinion) pick labels used by the other side for something they dislike, thinking it will aid the cause. This means there’s a motivation to stretch labels inappropriately.
That’s a lot of words for “both side bad”
I at least agree that a term like “death panels” is a loaded label. I can still agree that judicially restricting life-saving treatments is a terrible practice, without shorthanding it to a “death panel”.
EDIT: Fixed double negative
No, it’s not “both side bad” (and the implication there is that any time when someone says “both sides do this badly” is unhelpful, which I disagree with).
It’s “both sides are doing something similar here but that thing isn’t part of the reasoning or decision making of each side, and you’re treating it like it is.”
My original statement was an observation of the irony here, not a social commentary on what a “death panel” actually is. Whether the panels of death came about intentionally or not has nothing to do with the fact that they are creating what they were crying about years ago.
Using the term this way is to point out the hypocrisy. Republicans are against “death panels” in Obamacare. These were nothing but a means to decide how certain end of life care should be done, and exist in every medical system going back to when we were striking flint to make fire. Republicans have just handed women actually bad death panels in the form of judiciary and legislative branches that can hold back medical care until it’s too late.
No. The right mutters aloud what they’re thinking then cat he’s themselves and points a finger at the left saying “ummm… I mean… THEY want the thing I was just fantasizing to myself about”… later the right does the thing and the left calla it out.
The vernacular is the same bc the left is calling the right for the same behavior the right falsely accused them of.
Not bc both sides bad same
Shut the fuck up. Stop equivocating. One side has infiltrated the govt with an autocrat at the steps of the executive branch. The other are at worst disconnected over educated corporate-gifted, while releasing weed convictions, dropping student debt, and feeding poor kids.
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No.
Hahahahahahaha
The difference, of course, is that in this case there is an actual panel and death is actually on the table.
That’s a difference but there are many more, which is why them getting the same label is unimportant.
People who believe in a sky god are creepy as fuck.
Maybe so, but the war against abortion isn’t based on religious texts. It was ginned up by pieces of shit who tied it to the bible artificially by painting a complex issue as a black and white case of “murder”. Which is bullshit to anyone remotely understanding of reality.
It may not be directly tied to religious works. However, religion is being used to prop it up, as usual. I still agree that people can practice what they wish, though I’m beginning to feel strongly that religion is a plague and we’d be better off without it. Yet, I suppose, evil fools would just find something else to cower behind.
That’s pretty close to how I feel about it too.
In religion’s defense, many religions are also being used to prop up pro-choice. It just so happens 2 or 3 of the largest religions are very outspoken so the rest of them are getting ignored.
Stealing from Pew, almost all of Judaism, Universalism, and many of the major non-evangelical protestant religions are pro-choice. Even Islam is largely “limited pro-choice”. If I had to guess, the majority of religions weighted by adherents are either morally pro-abortion-rights, or at least pro-choice due to lack of mandate otherwise.
…if we look back at the US Civil War, the Christian churches fell on both sides of the Slavery argument fairly consistently, basically based on what their constituents wanted to hear.
Tell that to the Catholics
They’re wrong though. They pulled that shit out of their ass.
I mean, with asterisks? The Catholics only get away with that because they reject Sola Scriptura, and sometimes treat some of the words of their Church Fathers as “the next best thing”. Even then, they’ve gone back and forth on abortion (and largely treated it as a minor issue) until only the last few centuries.
…but along those lines, I’ve never really seen a Catholic argument against abortion try to lean too heavily on Biblical sources. Because they know they’d lose.
1000 flies eat shit. 1000 flies can’t be wrong.
That’s their mentality.
It’s more than that. You know all those stories of things God did in the Old Testament? The plagues and the disasters and famines and droughts? To them, those aren’t just stories, that’s shit that actually happened. That’s shit that they think should happen to people they think are evil. They believe that God has an active and vibrant presence on His Creation, and that He would never allow evil to prosper in it. To this date, no plagues of boils or locusts has descended upon them. None of their leaders have been smote by bolts of lightning from the sky. None of their megachurches have been razed to the ground by pillars of flame. None of their firstborns have mysteriously died in the night. In the lack of all this divine punishment, what other conclusion can they draw but “We must be doing something right!”? I mean how many times have we heard one of them say something like, “If what I’m doing is evil, then may God strike me dead!”? And then, the smiting doesn’t happen. What else could they think?
A lot of those bad thing have happened to them, but they just handwave that away with “god works in mysterious ways!” or “it’s a test!”
That’s fair. I feel like at this point God himself could literally say “I’m making all that shit happen because you’re being massive dicks! Cut it out!” And they’d flat out ignore it. If I were God, I’d straight up smite anyone who said “If what I’m doing is wrong, then may God smite me where I stand!” And my response would be, “Bet.”
I have seen Chritians stay Christian through a child dying of cancer and use those exact lines. How you could think that an omniscient/all powerful being, that let’s babies die from cancer, is good and benevolent is beyond me.
Nothing about the anti-choice movement is religious; it’s tribalism. Same way as gun rights have nothing to do with the sky god either.
If we’re being honest, the only strictly biblical argument on the topic of abortion leans heavily pro-choice and sometimes even pro-abortion-as-punishment. Throughout most of history most Christian branches have been neutral or passively negative on abortion, usually considering it a minor sin that it wasn’t their job to prosecute (yes, occasionally either banning or encouraging it as well). The idea that life begins with conception is distinctly non-traditional (Judaism or firstgen Christianity) and was picked up from the Pythagorians.
It’s important to differentiate cultural mores from religion. Organized Religion can make you convince yourself something is wrong when you are otherwise strongly predisposed to find it right (or vice versa). Cultural mores is more like “omg, you can’t see my ankles how dare you!”. They’re like behavioral “dialects”, much like happens in language. Technically, when I say something is wicked pissah, I “inhereted” that from the Mainers despite my not being from Maine. That doesn’t mean it came from my religious ties with them. My parents and peers taught it to me. Same as all my fucked up knee-jerk morals I grew up with.
Sky Daddy**
Sky Daddeh Baybeh
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Read a comment yesterday that the original religion came from us hearing our own thoughts (simplified). So they’re not just creepy AF. They’re the ultimate Darwinistic embodiment of batshit
They’ve done studies on this using an FMRI. They ask people what God thinks about things and the part of the brain that lights up is the same as when they’re asked what they think themselves. A different area lights up when they’re asked about what other people think.
Validating that these y’all qaeda barbarians are still there lol
Something needs to be done about the 5th circuit. They routinely make decisions that are directly counter to established law and the Constitution itself.
but do not counter state laws
the US has been letting states make decisions instead of making federal laws stick just like cannabis is federally illegal unless the state says so
State laws don’t trump federal laws. Weed is still federally illegal and you can’t own firearms if you smoke, regardless of what your state says.
I did not believe it at first, but they overturned that in August
I highly doubt anyone “overturned” the supremacy clause of the constitution.
I meant weed and Guns
It’s still federally illegal. As I explained to the other person, a state can allow marijuana users to apply for a carry permit, but they’re still federally prohibited from owning firearms.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/09/politics/appeals-court-firearms-illegal-drug-users/index.html
This says different as far as I can tell.
federal laws are only recognized when the state favors federal law
statutes and cases that upheld federal laws are being dismantled
can not have fifty states with fifty different set of laws and federal laws that contradicts some of the state laws demanding to be upheld without something breaking
wait that has happened before in US history over states wanting individual laws over federal laws
Friendly reminder that we literally fought a war over this, and the good guys absolutely won that war, and we’re the people fighting to secure federal supremacy.
“States rights” is almost never invoked unless it’s to oppress someone.
The proposed ballot initiative aims to sever this legal knot by removing language from Colorado law disqualifying concealed carry permit applicants if they’re federally ineligible to own a gun.
The law they’re trying to change is the carry permit law, which is a state by state law. Currently, residents of Colorado cannot obtain a license if they are not federally allowed to own firearms. This ballot measure only seeks to remove that language from the law, meaning even if the measure passes and Marijuana users can apply for a Colorado concealed carry permit, they are still federally barred from owning guns.
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That is where the law collides with practical reality. Enforcing the federal cannabis ban has become something that the government does not have the resources to enforce on its own. Blocking abortion bans on the other hand is comparatively a simple task for the federal government.
has it been a simple task?
not a federal thing anymore
I remember going through Roe v. Wade in law school and thinking how shaky the legal foundation was. This is a great case study of why we need to formally adopt laws in congress and not just rely on the whims of the court.
You’re not wrong. No one wants to hear it, but Roe was reasoned terribly. They attempted to appease everyone by protecting abortion but setting limits.
While laws are a better avenue, I do not believe Congress has the authority to regulate abortion. From where does the authority arise, interstate commerce?
The Supreme Court could have ruled that the most basic and fundamental right, which is woven throughout the constitution, is a right to bodily autonomy. The idea of controlling one’s own body is supported by a host of amendments. Incorporate the right with the 14th and abortion is protected everywhere.
I’ve always seen it more that the Roe decision is what happens when an anti-choice majority rules on abortion in “reasonably good faith”, leaving the opening for erosion when a 14th Amendment Decision would have been steelclad. I don’t think they wanted to appease everyone, they just didn’t want to compromise their legal ethics OR their personal morals.
And I guess I don’t think it would have been steeclad because Dobbs wasn’t about leaning around Roe insomuch as saying “Roe was wrong” because “the fetus is special and should be treated as such” (paraphrase because I’m too lazy to look up the offending line in Dobbs right now). Bodily Autonomy could easily be overturned by a bad faith judiciary by simply pointing out DUI laws, or even “the spirit of drug laws”… OR just saying “the fetus is special” the same as they did in Dobbs.
In fact, call me paranoid, but I question whether the current SCOTUS wouldn’t overturn a national abortion protection on States Rights grounds, finding some reason to disqualify the Commerce Clause from being applicable.
bad faith judiciary
This is what we certainly have now, given the recent decisions that are based on facts that are somewhere between cherry picked and outright false. Laws and precedent don’t, and won’t, matter if they’re acting in bad faith.
but I question whether the current SCOTUS wouldn’t overturn a national abortion protection on States Rights grounds, finding some reason to disqualify the Commerce Clause from being applicable.
They definitely would. And if the Commerce clause is where Congress finds its grant of authority, they wouldn’t be wrong. That’s why it bothers me every time someone laments that Dems should have passed a law, as if SCOTUS wouldn’t have struck that too.
Exactly. I liked RBG a lot, and/but I don’t like the way people keep taking her out of context when making wild claims about what we could or should have done to prevent Dobbs.
Before the 1/6 insurrection was a SCOTUS coup. It happened. And the one thing we shouldn’t do is blame the party that wasn’t involved in it.
Or, leave it to the states like a federalist country.
Yeah we see how well that has worked out with the few media posts about women fleeing states to get an abortion and the state AG is trying to hold the out of state hospital accountable. Where is the “leaving it up the states”, there?
Obviously it’s leaving it up to the states. How is that anything but leaving it up to the states? What’s left up to the states? Holding their citizens hostage and charging them for leaving the state, or the actions of other people, or for doing their jobs.
This country is going to hell in a hand basket what the fuck.
I am pretty sure we are coming from the same place here but I would like to point out anyway the hypocrisy of this seemingly strawman argument. If anyone has relocated to different states(like I have) they should know each one can be vastly different and for an issue as big as this and as impactful as this should not be left up to the states becuase of that fact. I again, realize I am just reiterating what has already been said but it is just so incredulous to believe that a percentage of the population thought that this was a good idea.
What do you mean? That is leaving it up to the states? If there were a national policy people would leave it up to the national government. It’s a lot easier to immigrate between states than because countries.
As long as we have a congress that’s split around the 50/50 line on issues like these, laws will never get passed.
Even if a law got passed, it would get repealed when the other side gets the majority. This needs a constitutional amendment and I really don’t see that happening ever.
Or a strong supreme court interpretation that argues that bodily autonomy is a fundamental right and already implied by the 1st, 3rd (if you consider your body to be a house) and 4th amendments (if you consider searching a uterus unreasonable). It is also EXPLICIT in the 5th amendment. Fetuses are not legally considered persons by any jurisdiction (otherwise they could be claimed as dependents) so the life of the person gestating them is protected while the life of the fetus is not. This interpretation is not very popular.
I looked it up this morning re: jurisdictions recognizing fetuses.
At present, Georgia recognizes a fetus as a dependent on state tax returns.
Virginia and Texas are mulling bills to recognize a fetus as a passenger in a carpool lane.
Brandi Bottone sued in Texas over the carpool lane issue in 2022. She succeeded in getting the citation dismissed. I believe she was making this argument to show the stupidity of Texas law, and came out victorious in court because Texas couldn’t change course on the narrative.
Anywho, little by little, chip by chip, state legislatures are indeed taking steps to total erosion of bodily autonomy.
As to the notion of a strong supreme court, that’s decades away as things presently stand.
Gotta impeach Thomas and nullify the appointments of Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch because the president who appointed them was illegitimate. Problem solved!
A constitutional amendment will never occur again, because it is an incredibly high bar to overcome even when the legislative process in the country isn’t as dysfunctional.
One party would need a super majority in both houses of Congress, where the bar is 2/3 but you’re probably going to need at least ten more than that to prevent the amendment from being scrapped by a contingent of Joe Liebermans.
Then that same party will need a majority in the state legislatures of 38 states to ratify the amendment.
It’s just not going to happen.
Could they not have codified it in the ACA?
I remember how US conserves would look at euthanasia laws in the Netherlands and falsely claim that there are death panels there who decide when you will die.
Turns out they weren’t just only lying, they were fantasizing
I’m so glad I got my tubes removed when I did, because there’s a long waitlist now. My sister just gave birth and had severe complications … I cannot imagine if we had lost her over a law like this. It sounds harsh, but you can always make another baby if the uterus is saved (or adopt one of the hundreds of thousands of orphans in the USA).
Yep. When DARVO-ists like Palin were bleating about “death panels” they were demonstrating their usual projection.
Conservatives and the Republicans are a death cult. They should never be allowed into office, ever.
withholding the procedure until their condition deteriorates to the point of grievous injury or near-certain death.
Where an individual reasonably believes an attacker poses a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm, any person is justified in using any level of force - up to and including lethal force - necessary to stop the attack.
If the claims made in this article are accurate (and they very well might not be), then In setting the standard of care at the point where a person reasonably fears “grievous injury or near-certain death”, the courts may have inadvertently justified the use of force in self-defense and/or defense of others against any executive using the power of their office to attack an individual.
Indeed, language like this puts a bullseye on healthcare professionals that already have/had one because of COVID and the fascists spreading wild conspiracy theories. This is almost a 2 birds with one stone stroke for them, you make abortion something any medical professional wants to distance themself from out of fear of their own life, but you also help undermine the whole medical field by would-be parents afraid to go to a hospital with complications as they may not come back out (or having suffered irreversible health effects).
While this would in theory work for justifying the actions of the mother it does nothing to help enable medical professionals in providing care. The court ruling basically tells all medical professionals that they may not perform abortions for any reason. It’s a death sentence pure and simple and now the hospitals are only allowed to sit back and watch.
Why wouldn’t health care professionals be able to assist?
In Texas, the Castle Doctrine is codified under the Texas Penal Code, specifically in sections 9.31, 9.32, and 9.33. Key provision for this would be: The use of deadly force is justifiable if the individual reasonably believes it is necessary to protect themselves or someone else from imminent death or serious bodily injury, or to prevent the commission of a violent crime such as aggravated kidnapping, murder, sexual assault, or robbery.
You could shoot me in Texas if I were robbing the gas station store with a deadly weapon, I would think that OPs argument that a health care professional could help and cite the Castle Doctrine as a defense.
I’ll fully admit that I was unaware of the Texas Castle Doctrine law. That would in fact be an interesting angle to pursue if hospitals had a backbone. But I will stick by my opinion that hospitals will refuse to treat these women as the laws stand now because they will never risk any chance at litigation to save a mother’s life.
Do the abortion at home yourself under Castle Doctrine. (I’m not actually advocating this, but it seems to be what Texas wants)
I think the court just made a legal contradiction. The hospital can’t perform an abortion until the woman is already in severe harm – but by castle doctrine they can also use deadly force to protect her from severe harm.
This puts Republicans in a hilarious position. The contradiction has to be resolved, and no matter how they do it, they lose:
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The use of deadly force to prevent some else from severe harm is illegal. You can no longer shoot someone who you think poses harm. Gun nuts are furious.
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The hospital can perform an abortion without the woman already suffering.
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You just can’t do it, okay?! This implies abortion is not “deadly force”, which has all sorts of implications against abortion laws. If it isn’t deadly force, there’s no reason it should prohibited, like any other well founded medical practice.
They could always try to force this outside of the legal framework, but if they ignore the law, there’s no reason to follow the law. They also risk reform, which seems increasingly likely.
Republicans fucked around with overturning Roe, and they’re going to keep finding out until it’s back as a national law.
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I agree, the real life metrics would win out. Some other people have pointed out it’s not all about that one clause either.
Go watch more yewtu.be videos about self defense. It always comes down to the portion of the statute about reason/reasonably/reasonable person. Any judge can instruct the jury on how X law makes a line of reasoning unreasonable. Even more likely: the jury in Texas anywhere outside of the big cities and their influence radii will decide that your reasoning is unreasonable.
You have to convince ~three/four sets of people to use self defense and get away with it: 1.) The initial bystanders/crowd. If any of them thinks what you did was wrong and has some courage, you may have a bad time. 2.) The cops. If they think you weren’t reasonable, you will be arrested and charged. 3.) The court/jury. Your argument might be a very logical A therefore B, I met A, therefore B, but that doesn’t mean the judge and jury will believe it, or not refute it otherwise. 4.) The general public. Beating the court case helps, as most people are content to mesh into our legal society and it’s rulings, but just as notable figures (think congressmen and such) sometimes get targeted by people who disagree with them, so might you. And remember that Texas has a lot of crazies, and they’re probably at least in your neighborhood, if not next-door.
a person is justified in using force against another when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful force.
Who is using unlawful force against the pregnant person here?
I want to stress that my focus is on the insane consequences of this court’s ruling, and how it potentially drags the abortion issue into the realm of self defense. I am not advocating that the appropriate solution to this problem is force, let alone deadly force. This problem should be rectified by either the state or federal legislature, or the Supreme Court reversing the 5th circuit’s decision. We should not need to resort to the laws governing use of force to resolve this problem.
The only ways the law has of authorizing lethal force to be used against her are through warfare, defensive force, and the death penalty. She is not a combatant, so warfare is out. Nor has she has not been convicted of a particularly heinous crime. With the exception of the fetus, none of the other people involved are imperiled, so are not justified in using defensive force against her. The fetus is imperiled, but by its own failure to thrive, not from any act of the mother. The fetus is imperiling the life of the mother without a legal justification to do so.
The source of the criminal act against her is either the fetus trying to kill her, or the doctors refusing to treat her, or the threats of punishment against the medical personnel trying to save her.
If it is the fetus causing the threat, the doctors are free to use lethal force to stop it as soon as she reasonably believes her life is in danger, and no alternative to force exists. This is the “imminent” standard. “Imminent” does not refer to a specific period of time, but to the causal chain. Being tied to active train tracks is an imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm, even if there won’t be a train passing by for another day. Upon finding yourself tied to the tracks, and only able to escape by using deadly force, you (and anyone acting on your behalf) are justified in using force now; you (and anyone else) are not obligated to wait until the train is in sight before acting.
In refusing to help her, the doctors and the executive agent are arguably attempting to commit a “depraved heart murder”; they are arguably engaging in “depraved indifference to human life” by observing the threat against her, being able to act, but refusing to act. Should she survive that “threat” against her life, their act of refusal still arguably constitutes “reckless endangerment”.
A person reasonably believed to be facing a credible, criminal, imminent, threat of death or grievous bodily harm justifies the use of any level of force, up to and including lethal force, they reasonably believe is necessary to stop that threat. Under self defense standards, any person would be justified in using force (or threat of force) against either the executive agent or the doctor, if they reasonably believed that use of force necessary to stop the harmful act.
Again, I am not advocating threats against the executive agent or the doctor. I am attempting to demonstrate the insanity of this ruling. As it currently stands before its inevitable appeal, this issue appears to have been thrown into the realm of defensive force.
You haven’t answered the question. Texas Law circumscribes when self defence is a justification for the use of lethal force, and the situation is laid out as above: there must be someone who is or is believed to be about to unlawfully use force against the person being protected.
The foetus is not “trying” to kill the mother, and even if it were doing so, no court or reasonable person would describe it as an “unlawful use of force.” It’s just growing, presumably in a way harmful to the mother’s life. Growing naturally is not “using force” and there’s no law against it, so even if it were it wouldn’t be unlawful.
Doctors, by declining medical care, are not using force, and unless there is a statute requiring them to provide care, also wouldn’t be doing so unlawfully. If there were such a statute, it and the abortion ban would be in conflict, which is a more realistic way the ban might be struck down in the courts.
In the case at hand the likelihood of the mother actually dying should in fact be low - not almost certain as would be required for a charge of depraved heart murder.
You are talking in general terms about self defence standards instead of the text of the law on Texas’ books.
The conservative judges would have quite the quandary should a dying woman shoot her ectopic fetus.
What the actual fuck.
This is going to put a lot of doctors and medical people in a dangerous spot.
Good luck hiding behind laws when you have a distraught husband who has just watched his wife, and the child he hoped to soon meet, die slowly and horribly.
But it’s also illegal for our hypothetical heartbroken and angry husband to beat a doctor to death, or just shoot them because texas, right? That makes it all better I’m sure.
GOP love this outcome since it gives them more tragedy fodder to push even more extreme measures that fail to address the problem and only serves the wealthy or privileged.
Blatant, flippant traitors.
When did they try to hide this? They’ve been pretty explicit about this for a while now
Roe’s demise has transformed the judiciary into a kind of death panel that holds the power to elevate the potential life of a fetus over the actual life of a patient.
I don’t see this as shocking? Courts have had the power of life or death since, you know, the death penalty.
Show me where pregnant women are being given anything remotely resembling a trial by jury and due process of law before being sentenced to death.
Show me where since the recent supreme court decision, a mother was explicitly denied an abortion and then died as a result of birth. It may have happened, but I haven’t seen anything about it
with a conservative anti-abortion Catholic Biden at the helm who supports state’s rights and an upcoming election with two people whose job performance as president was on par with each other even mirroring at times (not fulfilling campaign promises, finishing their presidency with a country worse off than when they got in, etcetera) we are really screwed
next news story is going to be how we removed the presidential term limits and will have the same two on the ballot depending on the state you live until the two candidates expire
Biden and Trump are the same, and the country is worse off now than in 2020? You are clinically insane.
They’re not the same.
A good analogy tho is skydiving instructers, you know when you first go and they have to strap someone to your back?
Republicans are suicidal instructors, who won’t pull the parachute no matter what. They’re going to divebomb into the ground and take us with them.
However some Democrats like Biden believe the only right time to pull the chute is at the absolute last second. To them pulling it a second early is just as bad as a second too late. They have a very specific point where it’s ok to open the chute.
So while they may not be intending to kill us, if anything causes the tiniest delay…
The result is the same. We smash into the ground and die.
Which isn’t as bad until we get to the point where any reasonable person would understand even if Republicans aren’t strapped to our backs, they’re going to do everything they can to interrupt Biden from pulling the chute.
You could argue that means the bad result isn’t Biden faults, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be mad that he’s still waiting for the last second to open the chute instead of just doing it as soon as he can.
The result is the same. We smash into the ground and die.
The economy has vastly improved.
We aren’t sucking up to Putin.
Queer people are not as scared and us parents of them are not as scared (although scared of what could happen this year).
The result is not the same.
The economy has vastly improved
Meh…
The wealthy are wealthier, everyone else is worse off.
And those economy gains are mostly from record breaking fossil fuels, and if you haven’t noticed, the climate isn’t exactly doing great.
In that example Biden isn’t failing to pull the chute, he strapped on a jet pack and hit the gas pointing straight at the ground.
Queer people are not as scared and us parents of them are not as scared (although scared of what could happen this year).
Have you ever even talked to someone who is transgendered? Shit isn’t exactly going great for that demographic.
Hell, even just for women. Abortion is kind of a big deal. Biden could" have used those two years to codify abortion, instead he did absolutely nothing.
Meh…
The wealthy are wealthier, everyone else is worse off.
No. Everyone is not worse off. That’s simply false. The economy was in free-fall when Trump left office and unemployment was sky-high. Yes, prices are higher now and that is not good, but people can now afford to pay for food because they have jobs.
And those economy gains are mostly from record breaking fossil fuels, and if you haven’t noticed, the climate isn’t exactly doing great.
Okay? That would have been the case regardless.
Have you ever even talked to someone who is transgendered? Shit isn’t exactly going great for that demographic.
Yes I have, and it was much worse under Trump.
https://www.hrc.org/news/the-list-of-trumps-unprecedented-steps-for-the-lgbtq-community
Biden could" have used those two years to codify abortion
How? Exactly how could he have achieved this? Please detail it.
Giving Biden credit for more jobs after the pandemic is like saying Bill Clinton’s pro corporate policies caused the dotcom boom…
Or that it was his over zealous crackdown on nonviolent offenders that caused the decline in crime rate and not the normal effect of banning leaded gas decades earlier, something that we saw across the globe on the same timeline after they banned it.
You’re doing the same thing Republicans do, giving credit to your “team” for things that would have happened anyways.
And waaaaaay over exaggerating how much got fixed.
How? Exactly how could he have achieved this? Please detail it.
How does anything get made a law?
We had two years where Dems controlled the House, Senate, and presidency…
If you’re saying it’s not Bidens fault nothing got done, how is it he’s the one that got literally anything else done?
You’re making it out to be Biden has zero power, but you just gave him credit for increasing fossil fuels production?
Is there any logic behind this to you? Or are you just saying every good the ng is only because of Biden, and every bad thing is something he couldn’t do.
Who honestly believes that?
We had two years where Dems controlled the House, Senate, and presidency…
No. We had two years where Dems controlled the House and the Presidency and were challenged at every move by Sinema and Manchin. What specifically would have convinced Sinema and, especially, Manchin to agree to codify abortion? Because, if you weren’t aware, the Democrats did try to codify abortion and Manchin specifically blocked it.
So what should they have done to convince Manchin? Or do you think they could have convinced a Republican to take their side? Because I sure as hell don’t.
Hey, I’m trans, and I feel much safer right now than under trump. And I am very anxious about a second term for trump. Biden doesn’t want me dead and neither do his supporters.
maybe you won the geographic lottery and live in a good state and have the right to vote and are getting paid more and have extra rights and bodily autonomy
overall the economy is in the shitter between food costs, vehicle insurance and ownership costs, and pretty much everything else and since I have been born things have gotten worse every four years with no progress maybe some baby steps that have since stalled
not everybody is on that good bus
maybe you won the geographic lottery and live in a good state
I live in Indiana.
and have the right to vote
Why yes, I am a citizen and an adult and not a felon. What’s your point?
and are getting paid more
I am unemployed.
and have extra rights
Such as?
and bodily autonomy
Well yes, I’m male. That’s not my fault. I can’t make abortion legal again.
I’m not going to go past that. Maybe you can reassess your completely false image of me and we can continue.
I think Biden would be the instructor that pulls the shoot exactly as soon as he can, keeping you safe, but killing all of your fun and wasting your jump in the process. Trump would put you both in the ground and needs another instructor to save you both, after which Trump fires the other instructor and calls him a “very bad person” and has his family tormented for ages.
For that to be true…
I’d think Biden would have had plans to put in motion the day he assumed office and Dems had all the power.
Instead once in office he said he needed to “research” things he’d promise that he’d do.
And that “research” coincidentally took just long enough for Republicans to control the House, at which point Biden said he couldn’t do anything.
Which sounds a lot like not pulling the chute until the last second, and getting interrupted and causing us to crash I to the ground.
If hed pulled it asap, that would have been his first two years when Dems had all the political power.
Nah, Biden is absolutely not the sort to pull it asap in this analogy. Pulling the chord is implementing effective regulation and actually slowing the descent.
What part of doing literally nothing on several major fronts is, “pulling it asap”?
doing literally nothing
In case, like me, you weren’t sure if this person was arguing in good faith.
when he ran with obama they cuffed a presidential candidate to a chair for eight hours because they did not want her debating with them and the republicans
how is that different not to mention his conservative views on everything
What the fuck are you even talking about
Provide proof
LOL! out of this world take on that event
they repeated the facts. you just don’t like them.
I am going to second that needing a source thing
That’s fucked up they should not have tied them to a chair.
I can understand restraining them to keep them from entering the event that they are not welcome to on private property, but come on dude did they really need to handcuff them when they’re out numbered 6-1
Nah, they like term limits.
The people with the real power aren’t running for president.
The reason both parties supported term limits, was progressives like FDR who would keep getting elected while both parties had to make up excuses for why they were obstructing progress.
The rich who fund our political machines knows there’s no shortage of “pretty faces” they can throw up there. And if they’re a revolving door, they can keep telling voters either “it’s him or the other party” or “this one will be different I promise”.
Term limits are not the win/win everyone thinks they are. There are lots of very bad drawbacks.
Hear, hear! Term limits just mean that the wealthy have to spend a few minutes every two years looking for fresh faces. Also, term limits mean that the crooks in office have to hustle harder to make their fortune before getting kicked out.
Yep, a revolving door just means a steady supply of people who will do anything for a few million.
And consolidates the power to unelected people. Either donors or the people running the parties.
Because as the DNC argued in court:
A primary isn’t a real election. So we can influence as much as we want because at the end of the day if we wanted we could nominate anyone, so be happy we even hold primaries.
It’s funny that I’m getting down voted and you’re getting upvoted. We’re saying pretty much exactly the same thing.
I’ve found you need to be very specific when phrasing things on here.
With a lot less users, it only takes a few misunderstandings to have an effect.
And if you’re already negative, people often just carry on the momentum.
Not that internet points matter tho
