1866

There was a political compromise on the issue for 50 years, until people like you blew it up. The compromise broadly centered on permitting abortions up until the point of viability and mostly prohibiting them after that, with some exceptions related to legitimate medical concerns.

It was a compromise because it ceded to women some portion of their right to bodily autonomy while ceding to the unborn some portion of their right to life. Like all compromises, it failed to satisfy everybody, but nobody could point to a better one and, as a result, it had and still has majority support among all Americans.

Maybe you think you can suggest a better one, and I invite you to offer it up, but what I think is that your idea of compromise is “my side wins.”

What makes me so angry about this — beyond the massive rage I feel about our societies’ treatment of women — is that what is happening now is precisely what we told people like you would happen if you got your way, and now you’re expressing surprise and dismay and asking me to hold your hand and work with you to keep your allies from killing women who get abortions, as if it’s my fault and not yours that they’re in a position to do it.

1867

Tell me you’re white without telling me you’re white.

1868

Some folks are dead set against a world of pussy ownership by pussy owners. But if you want to drive stick on someone’s pussy, you’ve got to have the transmission for it, you’ve got to have deep gas tanks, and you’ve got to know how to parallel park. And most of all you’ve got to accept that you’re her chauffeur, not her dad taking away her car keys. And faith can’t make you that, any more than it can give you all-wheel drive.

1869

Hear fucking hear.

1870

Ah yes, the comment in Trump’s campaign that cost him the presidency in 2016.

1871

Yeah, this confuses

things they don’t want to do

with

things they don’t want to say out loud they want to do

1872

hee hee hee

1873

Replying again with a little less snark because I think were piling-on someone who is simply trying to politely explain the other side of the argument:

This is one of the holes you fall into when you are a single-issue voter. If you are one of the people that believe that saving unborn children from abortions is the #1 priority in your vote, it won’t matter if you think your candidate might be more extreme than you are, because the alternative (a pro-choice candidate winning) is worse.

So you’ll vote for the guy that wants to jail women for having abortions, even if you personally don’t think that is the proper way to go about it.

And to be clear - I’m not saying that Nightgaunt falls into that category. But 37% of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and most of those folks are going to vote for the pro-life “R” no matter what they say on the subject of jailing women.

1874

The even broader problem is the way we as a country have the conversation regarding religiously based morality.

What people have to be aware of is that their moral objections are opinions that they take as facts, because not everyone shares their same religious convictions and so will have different sets of “facts”. The reason abortion falls under this is that it’s entirely reasonable to believe a 1 day old fertilized embryo isn’t a “human being”, or that women can have less traditional roles, or that certain kinds of consensual behavior isn’t horrible.

It’s also basically impossible to live with a strict religious morality, especially when nobody agrees what that is anyway. From a certain point of view, we need to have a 99% tax on “rich” people, that we should abolish the military and ban divorce, prey in secret, give charity in secret, live like Diogenes the Cynic, and to tear families apart who disagree with you.

Since most people won’t do that it’s pretty arbitrary when some moral like crosses a ride or die threshold. Anyway the point is to address these moral objections as starting, not ending, points, and to recognize the right of people to disagree. But the desire to impose these views on all society comes from that religious certainty of divine approval that always leads to conflict and intolerance, and divine urgency and fear if they do not impose their views. The whole Protestant theological world view is the horror of standing alone in the universe against the infinite judgement.

The point of America is that we recognize the limitations of religion at building broader society. What conservatives see today instead is a contest to wrest democracy from secularism and impose their values “democratically”, the same way their ancestors supported slavery and Jim Crow (based on the Bible as well). That tension between America is Multitudes vs America is Slaveholding Puritans has never been resolved.

1875

Hillary Clinton said 1000 times that she wanted abortion to be “Safe, legal, and RARE.”

Anyone who claims the Left hasn’t tried to compromise or find common ground with the Right on abortion is either delusional or full of shit.

1876

The compromise is “if you give us what we want, we’ll let you give us what we want.”

1877

I’ll take “full of shit”, Alex.

1878

All we want is to recognize that different morals and different values can live together. The anti-abortion movement says that fundamentally that they cannot live in a separate but equal environment, that they cannot abide a society that does not confirm to their beliefs, because they believe these beliefs are divine. This is ultimately a very dangerous, corrosive thing that leads not to reconciliation but conflict. And it’s clear a substantial minority of that side would be happy for that conflict. This is obviously fundamentalism, but unlike the 90s we now have a party that revels in stoking that fundamentalism, even to the point of being captured by it.

The real test over the next few years is how far, and to what extent, they push these bills into the national space, and how much they cover up the cost of those bills in their own states (like Texas hiding its WIC statistics as the worst in the developed world). The cost of abortion bans right now are being reported, but on a more local and regional level, and those stories are quickly getting lost in the flood… exactly as they want.

1879

I don’t think anyone really believes that, at least not in an absolute sense. There are lots of things that we don’t allow others to do. For instance, we wouldn’t let parents kill their children. We generally wouldn’t allow people to commit animal cruelty. There are lots of morality based lines that we draw, and that we don’t believe in compromising over.

But in this case with abortion, I think we have different issues at play, that further complicate things.

While this doesn’t apply to all pro life people by any stretch, I believe that a very large contingent, if not the majority of, the leaders of those political movements do not actually harbor genuine beliefs. I feel like abortion is generally used as a political prop.

If that’s the case, and someone is using an issue as a political prop for the purpose of rilling up a group, o don’t believe that meaningful compromise or dialogue is actually possible. Their fundamental purpose is not about abortion, or even about controlling women as some have suggested here. I think it’s literally just about grifting the marks, getting them to give you money and power.

In terms of genuinely held beliefs regarding abortion, I can appreciate both positions, even the extreme ones that I don’t agree with. But in the realm of politics, I think abortion tends to just be a tool, rather than a real issue.

1880

It’s absolutely a real issue, and there are politicians eager to stoke the flames because of it. But what a ‘real issue’ is, is in a sense contingent. What politicians tell the pro-life movement is that there’s a legitimate chance of them winning, and here’s how they win.

Texas secession is a ‘real’ movement, but it’s not a real issue, because there’s no political path laid before them to aid it along, no way to stoke the flames. Movements like that die out because there’s nothing, no wind, to kindle the sparks.

But it’s absolutely real. The ‘real’ question, like all these kinds of movements, is how much of this reality is being driven by the political movements themselves. Probably the nearest example is something like Mormon bigamy. It’s not a ‘real issue’ because nobody sees a path to move forward, and so it actually becomes less popular, becomes less an issue to people on a day to day level. If there were a national movement to legalize bigamy, suddenly it would be an issue where ordinary people feel compelled to take sides, support a party, do their part, ect. We have generations of people being told that not only is abortion is a sin but that they can do something about it, and so generation after generation has lived with the idea that they can, and their enthusiasm is a political issue that politicians can harvest and exploit. The same with gun control, more or less.

But at this point the issue has ‘taken off’ - it exists and is a real thing now. Abortion opponents have completely succeeded in radicalizing religious people across the US against it. And combating - directly combating - religious people is something the Democratic party is absolutely horrified to even contemplate. A motivated-to-death issue on one side an a reluctant opponent on the other that really wants it all to go away without any comment from their side is kind of the perfect storm for radicalization over time. But this is literally how the Taliban / Wahhabism / [name your poison] happens. Religious people can’t stand against more motivated religious people than they, and secular, moderate “social-religious” people can’t bring themselves to directly confront religiosity itself.

The ultimate crisis moment for the abortion debate is a Democratic politician on a national stage telling religious people, directly, that they’re wrong. As radicalized as things are now, that might well be a 1860 election debate moment. What will religious people do when they’re told to their face, by a national politician, that they’re full of bad ideas?

1881

Today in “dog catches car” news - Nebraska politicians are finding out that the radical contingent that supports outlawing all abortions in all cases with no caveats is going to lose them their moderate base.

Despite being a deeply red state, Nebraska didn’t have a trigger law on the books. There was an attempt to call an emergency session of the legislature to outlaw abortion when Roe v Wade fell. That failed. There was a “fetal heartbeat” abortion limiting bill introduced this year and it looks like . . . that is going to fail. Now the local Republicans are backpedaling furiously trying to find a compromise that won’t turn Nebraska into a purple state.

I still think the rural district representatives will push hard on the “fetal heartbeat” bill and may get it to pass, but it isn’t a slam dunk that red state + end of Roe V Wade = total abortion ban.

1882

Red state legislators frantically trying to remember where they last saw Roe v. Wade.

1883

Nebraska also is having the mother of all filibusters going on right now in their Senate over a trans ban. Three weeks now.

I don’t think they’re getting much done this year.

1884

Everything is fine. Everything is going as planned.

1885

The Ohio Ballot Board approved the language of a proposed constitutional ammendment that would gaurantee the right to terminate a pregnancy up until fetal viability.

Tonight I saw a TV ad warning Ohio moms that their daughters are online, where nefarious people are “forcing them to change sex and have an abortion”. I wish I was just making this up.