So, never?
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That’s easy to say when it isn’t your rights and freedom being trampled underfoot. The Republican party have crossed my irredeemable line several times a week this year as far as I am concerned, but then my goal is to shift the Overton window to at least where anarcho-communism is understood by those who disagree with it.
…
Can I have a NYT opinion piece called “I am a pro-choice socialist, which makes me more pro-life than the forced birthers”? Abortions and contraception to those who want them, welfare to those who don’t (and their children).
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Because the goal of articles like this isn’t to figure out the roots of bigotry, but to deflect, yet again, from empathy for the victims of cruel policies.
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Yah, individual “pro-life” people probably aren’t bad people. But the political movement they’re supporting is unquestionably bad, both morally and pragmatically, and the people driving it are some of the shittiest in the US politics – and that’s saying a lot.
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Sometimes, they are. And they want to pass laws that takes away the rights of others. People need to take responsibility for holding fundamentally, anti-woman, anti-democratic beliefs. Double so, since these people spend much of their time judging the rest of us and trying to make a world where people aren’t free.
But hey… empathy matters for oppressors, I guess, just never for the oppressed. 
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Depends on how you define the term. The functional definition in the US isn’t “pro-life” it’s “forced birth.” That includes in situations of rape and incest. That’s fucking evil.
So, yes, they are bad people. They support torture and death for victims of abuse.
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I think maybe I need a definition then. For me “bad person” has generally meant something along the lines of “someone who doesn’t care if they hurt other people, or worse would actively like to see them hurt.” Apparently we are using some other standard here where that isn’t enough?
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Yeah.
I screwed up by not stating clearly that however decent these people might be as inviduals on personal level, it doesn’t matter much when they’re supporting the all-around awful people who are causing real and serious harm all the time. 
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I would say they are bad people but want to believe otherwise. They are so consumed by a desire to control the lives for others that it takes over other considerations.
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There is very little room for changing people’s minds about abortion morality. But ruling that out leaves brute political power as the only lever to get justice. Liberals end up mirroring the corrupt GOP as hating, winning and pwning take priority over liberal values like compassion and belief in redemption.
I guess I am unique in that I grew up seeing both sides of this; I had a parent who worked as a social worker for Catholic Charities despite being pro-choice and not Christian. Our heathen family’s livelihood came from the salary that the Catholic church paid to take care of unloved children. There are many mainstream Christians who actually do walk their talk in terms of valuing lives of kids as much as fetuses. Of course there are many who don’t walk their talk as well, and just want to take the easy route of supporting coercion.
I also come from a background informed by Nonviolent Communication (NVC): the idea that behind the good/bad and right/evil dichotomies we are all the same: simply trying to meet our needs. The main need that uterus-coercives are trying to meet is that of caring for others. Of course the strategies they use don’t actually meet that need. So the goal from an NVC perspective is to help them develop better strategies for meeting that need for caring for others.
Even if it doesn’t feel like it in this moment, this is actually happening as we speak among those who are persuadable. Every day the base of the religious right decreases as more and more people leave, realizing that their church doesn’t deliver the caring that was promised.
Reinforcing the reality that the left is about warm caring not shrill coercion, and that there is a place where we can ALL come together, is the way.
This is not about personal morality, this is about Constitutional law. That’s been re-inforced in several of the responses you’ve decided not to read.
Only one side of the debate is actively and cynically politicising what’s supposed to be an independent judiciary on this issue. Which exposes the false equivalencies in statements like the following:
If you want to persuade people of your position – even or especially if it’s a bogus one like yours – you do yourself a service by listening to them instead of relying on the authority of your supposed uniqueness while you talk past them.
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It is. But it’s also about rejecting equating people looking to preserve their rights as being just as bad as fascists looking to take those rights away. The two are not the same thing. AT ALL. And I’m a little sick of people who can never become pregnant telling ME and other people who can become pregnant, that we should shut up and be kinder to the fascists looking to take away our rights.
Let me REMIND everyone that when abortion is not a LEGAL option, it became a black market option, and that pregnant people die in much higher numbers. They are looking to wipe out hundreds of thousands of “sluts” because a ban on abortion will not stop abortions, only make them more dangerous, on top of American women lacking access to maternal care in general.
These people are murderers for their god. And anyone who wants to compare me to them can fuck right off.
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I was an altar boy. I’ve seen multiple sides.
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I’m sorry, but I feel like this applies.
The forced-birthers are absolutely intolerant of any other moral position than their own. They feel it must apply to every single person, and have been suborning our legal system in order to make that happen.
If you’re able to persuade forced-birthers to reconsider and change sides, that’s a wonderful thing, and I don’t grudge you the attempt to try. But we are not obliged to tolerate their intolerance or sit by quietly and passively while they attempt to steal away our bodily autonomy.
And yes, I do think anyone trying to take away my human rights is a bad person. I can respect the difference in opinion, but I cannot respect their attempt to force their moral code on me. At this moment, I’m far too furious to have an empathetic conversation with anyone who wants to make me a second-class citizen in my own country. If that makes me a bad person… well, so be it.
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I don’t doubt that such a place exists…but abortion rights really is not that place.
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No. Every attempt to present the two sides as mirror images tries the same sleight of hand, which is to leave out the right’s victims. Like McWhorter’s despicable failure to mention how many people were hurt and killed by Trump’s racism. The priority for the left here is not owning the conservatives, it is maintaining the health and autonomy of women, who you disappear from the picture when you make them equivalent. It’s disingenuous.
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where do you live that you see that happening? here in texas i see evangelicals on my facebook feed high-fiving each other while they engage in slut-shaming and talking about how we’re finally going to be punishing the immoral and not giving a rat’s ass about the needs of the newborn. the religious base around here is absolutely delighted with the leaked opinion and think it was about time.
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We are not people entitled to rights to them… we are gateways for their god’s army. These are theocrats. We need to stop pretending like they’re not.
This is not some fucking game or an intellectual exercise, which far too many rational men 
. This is a basic struggle for our existence as free human beings. I really don’t get why some people find that concept, that there are actual stakes involved for many of us (people who can get pregnant, the LGBQT+, POC, etc).
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Absolutely. You caught me in the middle of my response. I’m tired of BS false equivalencies from apologists for fascists.
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