Exactly. If the GOP couldn’t make appeals to single-issue voters on abortion and firearms, it would have been dead in the water 30 years ago. I can name Dem politicians who are anti-choice and who oppose gun control (I don’t agree with them, but they exist and usually have Republican opponents who are more extreme); naming a proudly pro-choice or pro-gun control GOP politician is near impossible.
Also, as your earlier comment implies, Planned Parenthood v. Casey exists only in the context of Roe v. Wade. If the former is a landmark case then the latter is a foundational one. The anti-choicers may have an ideology grounded in superstition and sexism, but they have the political cunning to understand that if you chip away at an edifice’s foundation the whole thing eventually gets destroyed. This is also why the focus of both sides remains on the 1973 case and why the public discourse revolves around it.
Oh, I fully agree with you about it being used for political manipulation. More so by conservatives than liberals. But it is certainly used by both to drum up votes (or tar an opponent), only to do jack while in office. Or do something for show. Which is why simple arguments piss me off. It doesn’t allow for any variation of view. It means we elect those who best echo us instead of people who can think. No need to think if all you need to do is echo a checklist and caricature the other side (Trump being a fine example of using this to gain power).
I wonder how much they paid her? How much money does it take to completely reverse your ideals? I can kind of understand if you’re flat broke and out of options, but she did this for years and with apparent passion. It’s crazy.
McCorvey was an unsophisticated working class woman, never destined to be one of capitalism’s winners; you can rest assured the anti-choicer leadership knew this and bought her support as cheaply as they would that of others in her position.
According to a different article I read:
As a result of that confession, Sweeney went on to find documents showing at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from the anti-abortion movement to McCorvey.
Divided over 25 years, that’s an average $19k/annum to be their “big fish” poster child. Just the kind of chiseling cheapskates you’d expect those conservative grifters to be.
I’m willing to extend it to anyone else she asks for advice. “Asks” being the very important word.
Hm. Art imitating life, apparently, to some degree.
Minus the 2nd degree murder-by-shotgun charge?
Pretty much.
No, you are misinterpreting both my words and the ruling. Whether or not you are doing so intentionally I do not know and will not speculate.
I will not argue whether or not the phrase “prenatal life” has any legitimacy in either law or biology. I will reiterate the fact that the state has NO legitimate interest in prenatal life. None at all. Period. And again, protecting the life of a living woman who needs an abortion must, and in any sane society would, take precedence over protecting the “life” of a thing which may never develop into a baby. In promulgating laws which limit or forbid abortion, the state is trying to sell the idea that protecting the existence of a lump of cells trumps any right a pregnant woman has to determine what happens within her own body, thus effectively putting the state in the position of seizing control of that woman’s body and denying her any rights to make her own decisions about her body and what is in it. There is a word for the condition of having all decisions about your own body being made by someone else who forbids you from having control over your own life - that word is slavery. Laws which restrict or outlaw abortion are an imposition of a peculiar form of slavery, which is unConstitutional. Therefore, laws which restrict or outlaw abortion are unConstitutional.
I’m not misrepresenting your words. I believe you are pretty clear the state should have no say. But I am quoting the ruling which says the state does. Those would be in conflict. So it would appear that you believe that part of the ruling should be overturned as being unConstitutional.
Everyone assumes that overturning Roe V Wade can only mean making abortion completely illegal. That’s only one possible outcome. What you advocate could be the other.
On the other hand, you refer to lump of cells. Maybe you are focusing on the first trimester or two. In which case you are in harmony with Roe v Wade (trimester was later amended to viable life or some such) and have my apologies.
Or terrorism for that matter.
I’m happy to hear from anyone who supports my right to bodily autonomy.
Will remember this the next time the right starts conspiracizing about paid crisis actors.
Yeah, I feel at this point any crazy confusing conspiracy theories thrown by the right is pretty much a criminal confession. If I were a journalist, I’d start treating them as hot tips to check into.
According to the religious right, women’s bodies are public property and so are the souls of others. This is the kind of thing that made me leave Christianity (I consider myself a Christian Gnostic but I don’t go to any church as a result).
Content warning: Personal story about miscarriage
I flushed what I regarded to be as my first child down a toilet. It was not my pregnancy, but I had gone home at 4 am to clean up the blood so it wouldn’t be there when my pregnant partner came home. There are places in the US I could be charged with desecrating a corpse and put in prison for that.
The fight is not between people who think abortion is a good thing and people who think abortion is a bad thing. It’s between people who think there should be criminal laws around who can have an abortion, when and why, and people who think that the law should be left out of that.
When someone ends up dead under mysterious circumstances the police investigate to see if there was a crime. When a woman has a miscarriage in some states, police investigate to see if a crime was committed. There are women in prison in the United States right at this moment for having miscarriages.
I get that people can sound sanctimonious and get on high horses. But if you are listening to those people you are letting yourself be distracted from the actual facts of the matter. One side of this “debate” wants to terrorize women with the threat of prison, the other’s entire wishlist is just that we don’t do that. I don’t have any interest in excoriating you for saying both sides of full of shit, but I genuinely believe that if you think about what’s really going on, you’l,l realize that one side is right and the other is wrong (morally, not logically).
…anyone. Agree %100. Just make sure it’s the woman’s choice.
Choice being the key word here.
That’s a rather fair response. However, my irritation comes from people believing there is a simple, one size fits all, solutions. Pro-life demands that abortions be banned from the moment of conception. Pro-Choice appears to demand no restriction to abortion until birth.
I say appears because I think many (if not most or all) who espouse Pro-choice aren’t “baby killers” as the Pro-life side caricature’s them who would be fine with an on demand abortion when there is no danger to the mother just a day before term.
And that leads me to what is irritating. Each side is so intent on defeating the other, they won’t concede any point to the other. They use absolutist language and woe unto anyone who doesn’t.
Someone might not agree, but most people are comfortable with:
Available abortion when the health of the mother is at stake should be a given. Even in 3rd trimester.
Banning late term abortion when the fetus is viable.
But even those are murky. How much must the mother’s health be at risk? Somewhere between acne and death? What constitutes viable? Somewhere between artificial womb and overdue to be born?
That’s not even getting into the core controversy of when does a clump of cells become human? When there is 1 cell or when it is outside the body?
It’s easy to be an absolutest. They get to avoid thinking about the messy edge cases. And you have a pool of people that espouse the exact same thing. There’s no chance of being wrong because the answer is the same in every situation.
I find it irritating. There is some point between being a clump of cells and being born that something changes and there’s a person. I don’t think it’s a sudden change such as the act of fertilization or drawing breath. Nor do I think it’s a gradual something from conception to birth. I don’t know. And neither does anybody else.
It’s messy. There might be an answer, but probably not one that fits on a bumper sticker.
What pisses me of is when the argument moves to the point where people feel compelled to point out the foibles of the other side, that’s stupidly irrelevant and meant to manipulate thinking. i.e. Why should the asshattery of conservatives bear on whether abortion should be legal or not? If they weren’t asshats, should it be outlawed? Then why is pointing out that they are asshats of any relevance to legality. It’s a sideshow.
Humbabella, I think I found your post less irritating than most is you were arguing the criminal perspective. It was a refreshing perspective.
And again folks, what’s with all the trying to convince me of your viewpoint? It’s like being around a bunch of evangelicals trying to claim another soul for Jesus. It’s not your viewpoint that bugs me. It’s how you present it. Guess what? Many of you caused me to face-palm. Were you trying to give me examples so I would point out the sloppy logic? Was I being trolled? Here are the two common mistakes: making stipulations that support your argument and skipping steps. You very well might be right, but don’t make me accept sloppy logic.
