Fetal personhood

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by nosborne48, May 5, 2022.

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  1. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Okay. If there absolutely, positively has to be a vote on this - let there be one. A public referendum - women voters only. And I think those in power would be best advised to shut up and go with the results, like 'em or not. U.S. ain't Taliban country -- at least not yet.
     
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  2. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    I like it. If it actually happened it would be fun seeing the conservative old men screaming about how unfair it is that they can't chime in on what women can do with their own bodies.
     
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  3. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    I wonder how the women would vote. I don't think it can be taken for granted either way.
     
  4. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    That's for women to decide. It's THEIR vote. That's what counts.
     
  5. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    It should. End of.
     
  6. Bill Huffman

    Bill Huffman Well-Known Member

    Over the last many years polling is 59% to 70% think Roe v. Wade should remain law. That is total, male, female, Republican and Democrat. For just women it is much higher.
     
  7. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Better yet, I think we should let the fetuses vote. It's their life, their choice.
     
  8. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Well, if the sentiment in a given state is so lopsided, there shouldn't be much difficulty in voting in State Legislators who will remove restrictions. If that isn't enough, Governors are elected state-wide. Gerrymandering doesn't work for Governors or Senators.

    That, btw, might be the real reason Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Mitch McConnell don't want to debate a federal abortion ban. Up until now, they could hide behind Roe. They can't anymore.
     
  9. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Abortion, I suspect, is one of those few issues where people don't necessarily say what they think either way. If I'm right about that, Pew or no Pew, states like Tennessee won't toss their Governor out even if he signs anti-abortion legislation. Those elections will give us a better idea of how people really think. In the absolute privacy of the voting booth, that's where the truth will emerge. Hm. Come to think of it, the average citizen can't hide behind Roe either.
     
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  10. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    The only meaningful question in the abortion debate is that of the fetus' right, or lack thereof, to life. Everything else is corollary. It should be obvious that caring about the fate of the unborn has nothing to do with hating women. But here we are, right? Supporting voter ID laws makes one racist and protecting life makes one a misogynist.

    Of course, it's it's always compartmentalized, isn't it? The unsubstantiated claim that voter ID laws inhibit black voters supposedly makes it black voter suppression, but the actual fact that a disproportionately high number of abortions are performed on black fetuses somehow, someway, isn't genocide, eugenics nor malthusian population control. Weird how that works, eh? But, don't mind me, I'm just a barbaric old draconian taliban racist misogynist from 1750 who, quite surprisingly, doesn't like double standards.

    So, about a woman-only vote. I'll be willing to discuss my thoughts on the matter when the left in this country is willing to define what a woman is. Without using a double standard. Because like every evil villain, I hate double standards.

    I have a collection of thought experiments that I use to try to make sense of the right-to-life question. Sometimes, the issue turns up very murky, but there is one consistent conclusion that I find entirely unavoidable - it's always better to err on the side of life.
     
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  11. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    Well, that's not completely correct. Thus far in the history of abortion rights, as it seems to me, no one has ever suggested in court that an unborn child has any rights. This is because no one is a "person" unless born alive and for some purposes, no one is a "person" unless he survives for 72 hours after birth. There are a lot of dry technical reasons for this having mostly to do with inheritance of property and vesting of contingent property rights. Non-persons have no legal rights at common law. This is not to say a government couldn't create such a right but as far as I am aware, no one has actually done so yet.

    The law instead focuses on the interest of the State in its future citizens, the interest of the mother in her own life and body, and in the past in the interest in the parents in having live children. Fathers, in modern times, have nothing to say about the abortion decision. So what Roe and its "progeny" (as lawyers call it) tried to do is balance the rights of the woman against the rights of the State. The infamous draft opinion says that under the U.S. constitution, the woman has no blanket right to an abortion for any reason or no reason and that the State alone may grant or withhold access to abortion as its constitution or laws prescribe. That's actually about all it says as a matter of fact.
     
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  12. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    I was speaking of the moral issue, not the legal issue. I'm not equipped to debate the law. Yet.
     
  13. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    I shouldn't leave it there because it sounds like Alito just spits on all women or something. That's not true. What Alito is really saying is that the States in enacting the constutition did not give the U.S. Supreme Court the power to do what it did in Roe.
     
  14. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    The problem with it being a moral issue is that the United States as a community hasn't arrived at anything like a consensus in the morality of abortion. Moral consderations are not laws.
     
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  15. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    I probably should have said ethical instead of moral, but I think we have it backwards here. I don't think that the law is (entirely) defined by ethics/morality, rather that ethics/morality isn't defined by law. However, since we're on the subject, if a law code can't do something as straightforward as ban people from ending the life of those who have the right to live, then the law is completely useless. So the question still goes straight back to the right-to-life issue. How to argue the legal issues from there is where I get lost and I couldn't have any kind of meaningful debate. Not until I do a whole lot more reading and thinking.

    [EDIT]One of my thought experiments is to imagine the hypothetical scenario where in some distant future, both science and moral philosophy have gotten to the point where the question is solved and humanity has determined once and for all whether or not a fetus has a right to live. Now, let's say that the law was wrong the whole time.

    Which is the worse situation?

    - The fetus has a right to live and millions of them were slaughtered because the law permitted it.

    - The fetus does not have the right to live and millions of mothers needlessly gave birth to "unwanted" children.

    Is it so worthwhile to prevent the existence of "unwanted" children that it's worth the risk of unrightfully killing them, or is it so worthwhile to prevent unrightful killing that it's worth the risk of millions of needlessly "unwanted" children.

    In every possible scenario, the best answer is to err on the side of life.
     
  16. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    You know that's not possible.
     
  17. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I'm not sure. Convince me. (1) Whose life? (2) And this you know, how?
    Everybody is free to express their opinion, of course. But you and me, Maniac, I don't think we should get to decide - for the reason I've stated a couple of times. We're guys.
     
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  18. nosborne48

    nosborne48 Well-Known Member

    If you want laws you must have either consensus or an authoritarian. That's why dictators can't bear an independent judiciary. Consensus rarely favors the dictator for long.

    "If the law supposes that...the law is a ass, a idiot." Mr Bumble (Chas. Dickens)
     
  19. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Sure it is. Give them a few years until they become an adult and can consent to any procedure performed on them, and then they can decide on whether they want their own life ended.
     
  20. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    I'm not sure what you mean, because I already made my case in the post you are responding to. Unless I'm just not understanding what answer you're looking for, which is quite possible.
     

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