A Growing Share Of Americans Think States Shouldn’t Be Able To Put Any Limits On Abortion
A Growing Share Of Americans Think States Shouldn’t Be Able To Put Any Limits On Abortion
Huh.
If only there was supreme court legislation that fit what the majority of Americans have always wanted.
Most Americans are dumb
This is pretty much why many of the founding fathers were against democracy. They wanted the rich, property owning men to be able to vote but thought that the poor and the working class (such as it was at the time) needed to be controlled lest they try to take away the property that rightfully belonged to the people who inherited it. They weren’t looking to secure the rights of ethnic minorities (obviously). They feared that popular elections would lead to a loss of property for the wealthy, whom they thought were the best positioned by virtue of education, influence, and an inborn sense of noblesse oblige to act in the best interests of the country as a whole. Rich people were obviously not going to be in it for themselves. The rich are the most likely to be selfless, and in any case their interests were most closely aligned with the interests of the country.
I think political science has moved past that model and has generally come to recognize that oligarchy is anti-democratic. Democracy would recommend free and widespread public education to try to make Americans less dumb.
There’s a party that is in opposition to that.
I have a feeling a lot of the issues are introduced by people who are interested in taking public education private. There’s a strong push from the US right to spend tax money funding privately run charter schools or to simply fund religious education as opposed to public schools.
I think, like with health care, the US should look at models from other countries that work better than ours. For now, US universities rank among the best in the world, but politicians like Ron DeSantis are coming for them, too.
Too bad it’s not based on either right now. Majority rule is far from perfect, but minority rule tends to be worse. Law exclusively based on logic and reason may be a noble goal, but the most dangerous and extreme ideologues believe their arguments to be perfectly reasonable. At some point someone has to decide what is logical. Who? And how are they selected?
Until we have good answers to these questions I’m in favor of democratic systems.
supreme court legislation
The supreme court does not legislate. No court of any kind should be legislating. That’s the damn problem.
The reason the US is in the position it’s in is because while the rest of the world was going through its bodily autonomy revolution and democratically legislating abortion access, the US relied on a judicial decision (without a lawmaker being involved) based on a fragile foundation of “right to privacy”.
The problem is that federal representatives only represent their states. More often than not they don't give a flying fuck about anyone else. Which means they will burn the world to the ground as long as they get even the smallest concessions for their own voters. It might not be a bad idea to have a more fluid form of representative, where there's overlap between represented areas, but no two senators represent the exact same base. You'd leave the House alone, excepting to maybe expand it so it better reflects its representative states.
Obviously a pretty radical change that'd never happen, and kind of a spur-of-the-moment kind of thought by someone with literally no political training or experience... but it sounds better than what we have, at least in my internet addled brain.
With a direct democracy you increase the problem I talked about a million-fold. Instead of a few hundred people selfishly taking care of their own interests instead of those of the whole country, you have a few hundred million doing the same.
If we had a much more educated and empathetic population, it'd be effective. But we're so far from that right now it's laughable.
I’ve never killed anyone, and I almost certainly never will. Should we make it law to say I can, just because we’re sure I won’t?
You’re shitting on the very concept of a thought experiment and of a hypothetical. What you’re doing is like saying “The law should say you should be able to murder whoever you like so long as the sky is green, because the sky is never green”. This is a tactic to avoid addressing the issue. Namely, even if you don’t think something is going to happen, why would you allow it, if it absolutely musn’t?
They say it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it, but if you absolutely refuse to entertain it for strategic reasons, change the date. A healthy fetus, a few days passed due date, maybe no more than week from labour, could easily be induced, mother decides “Actually nah”, takes a bunch of pills to kill it - you good with that?
So you just absolutely refuse to engage in the thought experiment if the result of it proves you wrong.
If you can terminate the pregnancy without killing the fetus, go for it.
If you can end the pregnancy without killing the fetus, but you kill the fetus, should that be illegal?
What does “once it’s born” have to do with this conversation? And why are you dodging my question:
If you can end the pregnancy without killing the fetus, but you kill the fetus, should that be illegal?
Do you know how loudly dodging this question speaks? You’re basically admitting it.
I think you’re not thinking through the complications of the question. If you had to kill the fetus to save the life of the mother rather than allow it to be born, should that be legal? If the fetus is discovered to have a fatal flaw that will allow it to live only a few days in severe agony if it isn’t put out of its misery immediately, should that be legal?
Or should we allow all pregnancies that are viable in terms of a successful birth happen that way regardless of circumstance?
So what you’re saying is that it depends? Yeah, I agree. And we both therefore disagree “States Shouldn’t Be Able To Put Any Limits On Abortion”. We also therefore agree it’s fine for the government to have some control over your body.
What is you think we disagree on, and why?