The ideological underpinning of the current GOPers and their conservative apologists is the attempt to square individual liberty with moral government.
In other words, these people want to be able to (i) tell you what to do while (ii) being left alone to do as they please.
This is typical of the sort of "hyper bro" BS that I witnessed on campus and in law school, even among many of my friends.
It is the same attitude that generates insults against any female supervisors ("she is such a b*^*ch"), as well as their girlfriends and mothers.
Irony is, many of these assholes actually believe they are Libertarians, mainly because they support legalizing weed!
Cathy Young should understand by now that the ideas in Brent Orrell’s piece on what pro-lifers’ actions should be to support women and children have about as much chance of happening as there is of Amy Coney Barrett devoting her life to supporting Planned Parenthood. There are entire states that couldn’t be bothered expanding the ACA that would have included maternal health benefits. What makes her think the so-called “pro-life” movement would suddenly start to care about life after birth now?
Whether a baby is “wanted” or not isn’t the point. Pro-lifers have no scientific proof that a zygote is a human being and insist that a sound in a tube inside a developing fetus is a “heartbeat” when the fetus physically has nothing that looks or acts like a heart yet. And that they use religious beliefs of the existence of a soul, and that a microscopic mass of cells that may or may not become a human being is a baby to force a woman to accept into her life the enormous, life-altering commitment to a pregnancy she doesn’t want and doesn’t have the financial means to support - quite apart from whatever happens after the baby is born. As to adopting - if that were such a wonderful, easy and certain choice, why are there thousands of children being traumatized within the child welfare system this very moment?
The last issue, although there are many other fallacies in Cathy’s abortion opinions, that I would like to address, is that late term abortion is not ever a “choice”, because it is a dangerous and complicated medical procedure that requires a hospital, a medical team and a doctor who, as a medical practitioner, is not allowed to do the procedure except under the most agonizing and particular circumstances that always involve the viability of the fetus and/or the life of the mother. Late term abortions are never done just because a woman “changes her mind”. To believe otherwise is simple wrong-headedness and a deliberate choice not to accept facts. That is unless she believes that if the choice is between the life of the mother and the life of the fetus it must always be for the life of the fetus. That dictate is religiously and theologically based in the belief that the baby has a soul that must be dedicated to a specific god to keep the baby’s soul from going to hell. And that is religion and has no place in the laws of the land. Unless Cathy believes everyone should be ruled by one particular religious belief. And if that is so, she should admit her bias.
I missed the part where you say Cathy agreed it belongs at the state level. Perhaps I misread it? I thought she was simply stating what the court did. Not that she agreed with it.
I respectfully disagree with Cathy. This is not a states right issue. This radical court TOOK AWAY the individual's right and gave that right to the state. This given it to the "people" and the their "elected representatives" in the state is not true. It already was a right that a woman had. It was taken away from us and now the state governments which the republicans have created super majorities by gerrymandering which doesn't reflect the people. They have chosen their voters in a lot of these states and NOT having to fight for their elections by convincing the people that they should be elected. It's ALL smoke and mirrors and why? Listen to the comment by Rep. Miller from Illinois: " “President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday”. What does this even mean? Well, 60% of all abortions are from white mothers according to the statistics. This puts what this supreme court did in a different light. They are trying to stop or slow down the demographics shift from a numerical white majority to minority. And will it kill some white women? Yes. They are ok with that. Just like they are ok with children being killed by weapons of war. Will it kill disportionately women of color who have higher maternal mortality rates? Yes. They don't care and most likely welcome it. Do they care that they had to take away women's individual rights? NO. We do need to LEARN OUR PLACE.
Cathy Young offers important humane, practical advice to caregivers on both sides of the abortion legalization question or hopefully on neither side of the question. This is good because most of the talk is about the question itself.
However, on that question itself it cannot be said often enough despite its obviousness that the five which have overturned Roe have not and don't intend to answer that question. Instead they have agreed with the overwhelming majority of legal scholars of different political stripes that the task the Roe court took on in the words of Constitutional scholar John Hart Ely "sets itself a question the Constitution has not made the Court's business". Here's my reasoning: The Constitution enumerates the "right to life". So, nobody questions a compelling state interest to protect "life" as many have easily questioned a state interest in banning contraception or in limiting marriage to heterosexuals. In the case of abortion the Roe court thought that limiting state's interest in protecting the right to life of a blameless product of conception required them to create a definition of protected "life" out of the limited toolbox of the court of written, case and common law. Common sense and legal scholarship has judged this to be presumptuous and willful. I recommend a look at the section "Responses within the legal profession" in the "Roe v Wade" Wikipedia article. (Isn't Wikipedia wonderful?) Tribe and Dershowitz may try to trip each other in the halls of Harvard, but, they agree on this matter. Archibald Cox, Cass Sunstein, Ginsburg et al. thought that Roe's presumption was a bridge too far, many "arguing that a legislative movement would have been the correct way to build a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights."
Legislative movement is what we are going to get now, delayed for 50 years by Roe, whether we like it or not. Now your opinion matters. In my opinion it is good and true that this be put to a vote, not because it's "just a matter of opinion" but because it is a huge question and a tough call, to which we the people have never made explicit agreement. You can't just leave it to the individual because at some point in development we don't, so, you have to say when. (The Spartans thought it was ok to leave in the woods babies with hands too small to hold a sword.) No easy way out on this. OMG. No dead white guys to rely on.
How am I going to vote? Well, my mother once rode her bike to Washington to protest the legalization of abortion, but, I'm leaning toward the polls.
This probably is a question that’s been asked and answered but: why is it important/valuable/germane that Cathy is Jewish. Whatever else I think of her commentary, her religion of of no importance. I can only assume that it’s important to her. Yes?
Ms Young, you were being far too polite in your comments regarding Scott Horton. There is enough anecdotal & circumstantial things floating there to surmise that Mr Horton *may* be a wee bit Anti-Semitic, particularly if he is eager to vomit up Kremlin talking points that do ring as anti-Semitic. I was unaware that Jew-hating had a foothold in Libertarian thought--I guess I have been educated.
I live in Birmingham. Some issues I don’t debate, since the religions have assured people their souls are just fine, and people like me probably don’t have one. We see a strong trend these days to distort the Truth to win arguments. Not only with T for whom this technique is “just what he does”. Unpleasant facts are just as important as facts that seem desirable for forming Foreign Policy decisions, especially “getting entangled in the affairs of other countries”, which is a warning we were given some time ago.
Wouldn't the irony be the Senate blowing up the filibuster to codify Roe to offset Mitch's blowing up the filibuster to eradicate Roe...would certainly make for an interesting chapter in American history?
To quote Ultron "You're unbearably naive." Those compromises, later term, etc, were all available after Casey. The anti-choice crowd has never ever been willing to compromise. Each victory was merely the next island in the campaign leading back to the home island. 'pro-life' as term only exists as an emotional bludgeon, to win by sentimentality. This decision is unprecedented a recognized individual right rescinded. The line has been crossed and it can *never* be uncrossed. It has been established that the court can at its will remove a right from you. Today that may be rights you don't care for but it will not stay that way.
One Sunday morning shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, you wrote a post entitled, ‘The Hinge of Fate’ (which made me pull out my credit card an immediately subscribe). Our moment now makes me think of another turn of phrase from Churchill. In the month after WW2 ended a journalist asked Churchill, what he suggested that war be named , as WW1 had been called the ‘Great War’ there was popular discussion of what would be fitting.
Churchill responded without hesitation, “The
Unnecessary War, for never was there a war that could have been more easily avoided if the great democracies had stood together to stop Hitler when he first began his aggression”. The analogue to our world now is obvious but requires people to think of the future instead of only the now. I doubt it would change the minds of many non- interventionist types but maybe leading with
something to the effect of ‘we must avoid the unnecessary war….the war that is sure to come to the rest of Europe if we don’t arm our Allies in Ukraine’ would make the reader pause for thought. Thanks as always!
One Sunday morning shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, you wrote a post entitled, ‘The Hinge of Fate’ (which made me pull out my credit card an immediately subscribe). Our moment now makes me think of another turn of phrase from Churchill. In the month after WW2 ended a journalist asked Churchill, what he suggested that war be named , as WW1 had been called the ‘Great War’ there was popular discussion of what would be fitting.
Churchill responded without hesitation, “The
Unnecessary War, for never was there a war that could have been more easily avoided if the great democracies had stood together to stop Hitler when he first began his aggression”. The analogue to our world now is obvious but requires people to think of the future instead of only the now. I doubt it would change the minds of many non- interventionist types but maybe leading with
something to the effect of ‘we must avoid the unnecessary war….the war that is sure to come to the rest of Europe if we don’t arm our Allies in Ukraine’ would make the reader pause for thought. Thanks as always!
Amazing how just five people have so much power to shape the destiny of over 300 million others, with no accountability and no end to their term in office other than voluntary resignation or death, and how some of them can flat-out lie during their confirmation hearings with no consequences. Arguments for expanding the Supreme Court, and for term limits, just gained traction with me.
It must be comforting to the radical conservatives to know that pretty much anything they feel strongly about can be taken all the way to this Supreme Court with home field advantage, regardless of the will of the majority of the people or the voices of other wise justices or longstanding legal precedent. I'm not convinced that this is what our Founding Fathers had in mind.
Cathy, you write as if there was a principled “other side”. It’s a fantasy of the moderate-conservatives as you call yourselves. These are christo-fascists and the sooner we understand this horroible state of affairs the sooner we can start to protect liberal democracy. Starting with re-establishing separation of Church and state.
The ideological underpinning of the current GOPers and their conservative apologists is the attempt to square individual liberty with moral government.
In other words, these people want to be able to (i) tell you what to do while (ii) being left alone to do as they please.
This is typical of the sort of "hyper bro" BS that I witnessed on campus and in law school, even among many of my friends.
It is the same attitude that generates insults against any female supervisors ("she is such a b*^*ch"), as well as their girlfriends and mothers.
Irony is, many of these assholes actually believe they are Libertarians, mainly because they support legalizing weed!
Oh well, smoke if you got'em.
"Pro-choicers are wrong to ...; pro-lifers are wrong to ...
A light equivalence may make for breezy prose, but where does the fact that pro-life advocates don't occupy the affected demographic fit in?
These aren't two sides of the same coin. We shouldn't play around with such a notion.
LQ
Cathy Young should understand by now that the ideas in Brent Orrell’s piece on what pro-lifers’ actions should be to support women and children have about as much chance of happening as there is of Amy Coney Barrett devoting her life to supporting Planned Parenthood. There are entire states that couldn’t be bothered expanding the ACA that would have included maternal health benefits. What makes her think the so-called “pro-life” movement would suddenly start to care about life after birth now?
Whether a baby is “wanted” or not isn’t the point. Pro-lifers have no scientific proof that a zygote is a human being and insist that a sound in a tube inside a developing fetus is a “heartbeat” when the fetus physically has nothing that looks or acts like a heart yet. And that they use religious beliefs of the existence of a soul, and that a microscopic mass of cells that may or may not become a human being is a baby to force a woman to accept into her life the enormous, life-altering commitment to a pregnancy she doesn’t want and doesn’t have the financial means to support - quite apart from whatever happens after the baby is born. As to adopting - if that were such a wonderful, easy and certain choice, why are there thousands of children being traumatized within the child welfare system this very moment?
The last issue, although there are many other fallacies in Cathy’s abortion opinions, that I would like to address, is that late term abortion is not ever a “choice”, because it is a dangerous and complicated medical procedure that requires a hospital, a medical team and a doctor who, as a medical practitioner, is not allowed to do the procedure except under the most agonizing and particular circumstances that always involve the viability of the fetus and/or the life of the mother. Late term abortions are never done just because a woman “changes her mind”. To believe otherwise is simple wrong-headedness and a deliberate choice not to accept facts. That is unless she believes that if the choice is between the life of the mother and the life of the fetus it must always be for the life of the fetus. That dictate is religiously and theologically based in the belief that the baby has a soul that must be dedicated to a specific god to keep the baby’s soul from going to hell. And that is religion and has no place in the laws of the land. Unless Cathy believes everyone should be ruled by one particular religious belief. And if that is so, she should admit her bias.
Yes. You are correct. But...
I missed the part where you say Cathy agreed it belongs at the state level. Perhaps I misread it? I thought she was simply stating what the court did. Not that she agreed with it.
I respectfully disagree with Cathy. This is not a states right issue. This radical court TOOK AWAY the individual's right and gave that right to the state. This given it to the "people" and the their "elected representatives" in the state is not true. It already was a right that a woman had. It was taken away from us and now the state governments which the republicans have created super majorities by gerrymandering which doesn't reflect the people. They have chosen their voters in a lot of these states and NOT having to fight for their elections by convincing the people that they should be elected. It's ALL smoke and mirrors and why? Listen to the comment by Rep. Miller from Illinois: " “President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday”. What does this even mean? Well, 60% of all abortions are from white mothers according to the statistics. This puts what this supreme court did in a different light. They are trying to stop or slow down the demographics shift from a numerical white majority to minority. And will it kill some white women? Yes. They are ok with that. Just like they are ok with children being killed by weapons of war. Will it kill disportionately women of color who have higher maternal mortality rates? Yes. They don't care and most likely welcome it. Do they care that they had to take away women's individual rights? NO. We do need to LEARN OUR PLACE.
Disgusting and deceitful.
Cathy Young offers important humane, practical advice to caregivers on both sides of the abortion legalization question or hopefully on neither side of the question. This is good because most of the talk is about the question itself.
However, on that question itself it cannot be said often enough despite its obviousness that the five which have overturned Roe have not and don't intend to answer that question. Instead they have agreed with the overwhelming majority of legal scholars of different political stripes that the task the Roe court took on in the words of Constitutional scholar John Hart Ely "sets itself a question the Constitution has not made the Court's business". Here's my reasoning: The Constitution enumerates the "right to life". So, nobody questions a compelling state interest to protect "life" as many have easily questioned a state interest in banning contraception or in limiting marriage to heterosexuals. In the case of abortion the Roe court thought that limiting state's interest in protecting the right to life of a blameless product of conception required them to create a definition of protected "life" out of the limited toolbox of the court of written, case and common law. Common sense and legal scholarship has judged this to be presumptuous and willful. I recommend a look at the section "Responses within the legal profession" in the "Roe v Wade" Wikipedia article. (Isn't Wikipedia wonderful?) Tribe and Dershowitz may try to trip each other in the halls of Harvard, but, they agree on this matter. Archibald Cox, Cass Sunstein, Ginsburg et al. thought that Roe's presumption was a bridge too far, many "arguing that a legislative movement would have been the correct way to build a more durable consensus in support of abortion rights."
Legislative movement is what we are going to get now, delayed for 50 years by Roe, whether we like it or not. Now your opinion matters. In my opinion it is good and true that this be put to a vote, not because it's "just a matter of opinion" but because it is a huge question and a tough call, to which we the people have never made explicit agreement. You can't just leave it to the individual because at some point in development we don't, so, you have to say when. (The Spartans thought it was ok to leave in the woods babies with hands too small to hold a sword.) No easy way out on this. OMG. No dead white guys to rely on.
How am I going to vote? Well, my mother once rode her bike to Washington to protest the legalization of abortion, but, I'm leaning toward the polls.
This probably is a question that’s been asked and answered but: why is it important/valuable/germane that Cathy is Jewish. Whatever else I think of her commentary, her religion of of no importance. I can only assume that it’s important to her. Yes?
Ms Young, you were being far too polite in your comments regarding Scott Horton. There is enough anecdotal & circumstantial things floating there to surmise that Mr Horton *may* be a wee bit Anti-Semitic, particularly if he is eager to vomit up Kremlin talking points that do ring as anti-Semitic. I was unaware that Jew-hating had a foothold in Libertarian thought--I guess I have been educated.
I live in Birmingham. Some issues I don’t debate, since the religions have assured people their souls are just fine, and people like me probably don’t have one. We see a strong trend these days to distort the Truth to win arguments. Not only with T for whom this technique is “just what he does”. Unpleasant facts are just as important as facts that seem desirable for forming Foreign Policy decisions, especially “getting entangled in the affairs of other countries”, which is a warning we were given some time ago.
Wouldn't the irony be the Senate blowing up the filibuster to codify Roe to offset Mitch's blowing up the filibuster to eradicate Roe...would certainly make for an interesting chapter in American history?
Thank you for the recommendations to the pro-choice activists going forward. I hope they follow them.
To quote Ultron "You're unbearably naive." Those compromises, later term, etc, were all available after Casey. The anti-choice crowd has never ever been willing to compromise. Each victory was merely the next island in the campaign leading back to the home island. 'pro-life' as term only exists as an emotional bludgeon, to win by sentimentality. This decision is unprecedented a recognized individual right rescinded. The line has been crossed and it can *never* be uncrossed. It has been established that the court can at its will remove a right from you. Today that may be rights you don't care for but it will not stay that way.
2 min ago
One Sunday morning shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, you wrote a post entitled, ‘The Hinge of Fate’ (which made me pull out my credit card an immediately subscribe). Our moment now makes me think of another turn of phrase from Churchill. In the month after WW2 ended a journalist asked Churchill, what he suggested that war be named , as WW1 had been called the ‘Great War’ there was popular discussion of what would be fitting.
Churchill responded without hesitation, “The
Unnecessary War, for never was there a war that could have been more easily avoided if the great democracies had stood together to stop Hitler when he first began his aggression”. The analogue to our world now is obvious but requires people to think of the future instead of only the now. I doubt it would change the minds of many non- interventionist types but maybe leading with
something to the effect of ‘we must avoid the unnecessary war….the war that is sure to come to the rest of Europe if we don’t arm our Allies in Ukraine’ would make the reader pause for thought. Thanks as always!
One Sunday morning shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, you wrote a post entitled, ‘The Hinge of Fate’ (which made me pull out my credit card an immediately subscribe). Our moment now makes me think of another turn of phrase from Churchill. In the month after WW2 ended a journalist asked Churchill, what he suggested that war be named , as WW1 had been called the ‘Great War’ there was popular discussion of what would be fitting.
Churchill responded without hesitation, “The
Unnecessary War, for never was there a war that could have been more easily avoided if the great democracies had stood together to stop Hitler when he first began his aggression”. The analogue to our world now is obvious but requires people to think of the future instead of only the now. I doubt it would change the minds of many non- interventionist types but maybe leading with
something to the effect of ‘we must avoid the unnecessary war….the war that is sure to come to the rest of Europe if we don’t arm our Allies in Ukraine’ would make the reader pause for thought. Thanks as always!
Amazing how just five people have so much power to shape the destiny of over 300 million others, with no accountability and no end to their term in office other than voluntary resignation or death, and how some of them can flat-out lie during their confirmation hearings with no consequences. Arguments for expanding the Supreme Court, and for term limits, just gained traction with me.
It must be comforting to the radical conservatives to know that pretty much anything they feel strongly about can be taken all the way to this Supreme Court with home field advantage, regardless of the will of the majority of the people or the voices of other wise justices or longstanding legal precedent. I'm not convinced that this is what our Founding Fathers had in mind.
Cathy, you write as if there was a principled “other side”. It’s a fantasy of the moderate-conservatives as you call yourselves. These are christo-fascists and the sooner we understand this horroible state of affairs the sooner we can start to protect liberal democracy. Starting with re-establishing separation of Church and state.