But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
The Pope criticises "Nato barking at Russia’s gate" and suspects the invasion was "facilitated by the West’s attitude". He also questions whether weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The less said by that kiddy fiddler institution the better it seems.
I don't agree with what he said, but calling the Pope a "kiddy fiddler" just demonstrates to us all (if we needed further evidence) what an ignorant unpleasant and unthinking right wing bigot you are.
Indeed and when Bartholmew Roberts posted under his name Phillip Thompson he said he would be happy to see the Troubles return to Northern Ireland as a price worth paying for a pure Brexit.
I think Barty Bobbins is a total ratbag. But I agree, we need to maintain this standard.
Mods might want to consider this issue.
A blind man on a galloping camel knows that xxxxx is Roberts. I don't agree with posters being able to whitewash their posting history. Though in the case of RT I can understand why he wants to do it. To have hero worshipped Johnson over 99,000 posts would have embarrassed anyone.
Doxxing is strictly forbidden, and I will ban posters who engage in it.
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
Leon’s got a point. Address Leon’s points.
One. If Putin goes into Austria and does a Mariupol on Vienna, what you going to do? Not even HY would send the tanks in.
Two. Austria not even in NATO. And what about those benefitting from NATO nuclear deterrent whilst spending their share on the nuclear deterrent money on their own health care system whilst, as the times says today, we have hospitals crumbling and dirty.
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
What really seems the big thing to me is the overturning of Roe vs. Wade would be just another massive notch on the list of stuff that eventually brings the USA to civil war or a massive acrimonious split/break-up. There's just too many elements of the political atmosphere there where even if there is a nuanced middle position there's no longer any real appetite to find it, which only leaves either one side "winning" and the other "losing", or both sides going their own ways.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
I'm just a ball of cells. You got a problem with that?
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
Whilst I believe we are on the same side as regards the abortion debate and many other liberal positions, your argument fails utterly because of that inconsistency. You cannot argue that States rights are wrong when they are about something you are opposed to such as restrictions on abortion but then argue they are right regarding the 2nd amendment. You have advocated literal minded consistency in one post and then argued against it in the next.
No, I'm gold. It goes like this -
Fundamental human rights should be enshrined. A woman's access to safe and legal abortion is one such. The right to bear arms is not.
People can disagree - both on whether fundamental human rights should be enshrined and if so on what they are - but there's no 'utter fail through inconsistency'. As if!
Nope you have just set an arbitrary definition of a 'fundamental human right' to justify your personal view and excuse your inconsistency. Again. You resort to literal minded consistency in one breath and then attack it in the next.
Nonsense. I've simply given my view on whether fundamental human rights should be enshrined - yes - and given an example of one I think fits the definition and one I think doesn't.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
Don't forget the pralines! Flat kind with pecan chucks sticking out of the cane sugar.
Unless medically contra-indicated. In which case, grab bag of coffee with chicory. OR Zatarain's seafood boil.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
But a fetus at 24 weeks sure looks like a baby, and can survive outside the womb, albeit with difficulty
So at some point between week 1 and the due date the fetus acquires the status of a human soul, worthy of fundamental protection - to my mind (and most people in the western world)
As SCOTUS says this has been argued for decades by philosophers and theologians and medics with no answer (there is no answer), all we can do is make vague attempts to appease both clashing arguments
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
The notion that an unborn child has the right to life is in no way outlandish. It is a crime to destroy an unborn child in this country and in many other jurisdictions, and not just an offence against the mother.
The Abortion Act 1967 provides a specific exemption from the offence of child destruction, but I think it's quite right that in principle, child destruction should be a criminal offence.
So, I think abortion is very clearly an issue of competing rights (as between child and mother) and a case of where one draws the line. The notion that the unborn child has no rights is without merit.
Agree completely. I posted likewise earlier, but also included the father in that difficult decision on weighing up the rights.
I respect the view that life begins at conception, but strongly disagree with it. In disagreeing you them have to balance the rights of the 3 parties involved. It is an impossible dilemma but I think we pretty much have it right in the UK. Maybe with medical advances reducing the time limit by 2 weeks.
The question is, if life doesn't begin at conception, when does it begin? If at birth, doesn't that open the door to abortion much later in the term than current consensus accepts?
The rule of thumb historically was at quickening. Which is c. 17-20 weeks gestation.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
Whilst I believe we are on the same side as regards the abortion debate and many other liberal positions, your argument fails utterly because of that inconsistency. You cannot argue that States rights are wrong when they are about something you are opposed to such as restrictions on abortion but then argue they are right regarding the 2nd amendment. You have advocated literal minded consistency in one post and then argued against it in the next.
No, I'm gold. It goes like this -
Fundamental human rights should be enshrined. A woman's access to safe and legal abortion is one such. The right to bear arms is not.
People can disagree - both on whether fundamental human rights should be enshrined and if so on what they are - but there's no 'utter fail through inconsistency'. As if!
Surely it is a birthgivers right to an abortion not a womans.
So many people so concerned about womens rights who would happily throw them under a bus for daring to want to protect their own sex based rights.
Not sure there's a big trans angle on this one tbh.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
Would be sensible, though it rather undercuts the "Covid FPNs are like speeding tickets and aren't a resigning matter" theory we have heard.
At some point the "I've waited years to be the Bally PM and I'm not going anywhere" theory will have to be made explicit, because there's nothing else left.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
A straw man. No one on PB at this moment - as far as I can see - is adopting the fundamentalist, theo-American, Ban All Abortion argument. Everyone is at least in favour of choice, at least early in the pregnancy. It is after that when it gets thorny. Obvs
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
Whilst I believe we are on the same side as regards the abortion debate and many other liberal positions, your argument fails utterly because of that inconsistency. You cannot argue that States rights are wrong when they are about something you are opposed to such as restrictions on abortion but then argue they are right regarding the 2nd amendment. You have advocated literal minded consistency in one post and then argued against it in the next.
No, I'm gold. It goes like this -
Fundamental human rights should be enshrined. A woman's access to safe and legal abortion is one such. The right to bear arms is not.
People can disagree - both on whether fundamental human rights should be enshrined and if so on what they are - but there's no 'utter fail through inconsistency'. As if!
The notion that abortion on demand is a fundamental human right is ridiculous.
Moreso that in a game of Rights Top Trumps it beats the right to life of the unborn child.
Access to safe and legal abortion with controls around reason and with term limits. The consensus settlement in the West after the struggles of the civil rights era. This is what is under threat in the US. Having been in the vanguard on female empowerment they now seek to roll it back. That's how it looks to me.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
It is perfectly rational to think a foetus has no more has a right to life than sperm does.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
A straw man. No one on PB at this moment - as far as I can see - is adopting the fundamentalist, theo-American, Ban All Abortion argument. Everyone is at least in favour of choice, at least early in the pregnancy. It is after that when it gets thorny. Obvs
For the record, I am not in favour of choice. And nor is the law in this country.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
Also, nobody believes they are relevant to this debate, because at that stage nobody can be arsed to detect or abort them, so what are you on about?
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Likely because, as others have mentioned, there is some essential fuzzy hard-to-define boundary in pregnancy when "initial tiny clump of cells" becomes "conscious living being".
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
How can a flight be complex, if you are a passenger? You get on, sit down, and then after some time has elapsed you get up and get off. During that time you may be served some food, read a book, watch some TV or go to the toilet. Surely none of this is especially difficult or requiring of oblivion?
The Pope criticises "Nato barking at Russia’s gate" and suspects the invasion was "facilitated by the West’s attitude". He also questions whether weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The less said by that kiddy fiddler institution the better it seems.
I don't agree with what he said, but calling the Pope a "kiddy fiddler" just demonstrates to us all (if we needed further evidence) what an ignorant unpleasant and unthinking right wing bigot you are.
Indeed and when Bartholmew Roberts posted under his name Phillip Thompson he said he would be happy to see the Troubles return to Northern Ireland as a price worth paying for a pure Brexit.
I think Barty Bobbins is a total ratbag. But I agree, we need to maintain this standard.
Mods might want to consider this issue.
A blind man on a galloping camel knows that Thompson is Roberts. I don't agree with posters being able to whitewash their posting history. Though in the case of RT I can understand why he wants to do it. To have hero worshipped Johnson over 99,000 posts would have embarrassed anyone.
I'm not sure I'm understanding here, but surely Barty admitted he was PT when he changed his name here in his postings? Something to do with not using his real name to protect his work interests I think. Not sure it's doxxing if it's common knowledge.
I'm not certain if "doxxing" is technically accurate. Regardless, BR asked that his real name not be used and that should be respected. In particular, using his real name as ammunition is beyond the pale and flat-out trolling.
It’s also basically impolite. I have a trans friend named Julia, she was once Julian. She wants to be called Julia, so I call her Julia
If I went around calling her Julian I would be a pointlessly insolent oaf, I would cause her a deal of distress, and she would no longer be my friend.
Bart wants to be Bart, he/she is Bart. It’s quite simple
The original B. Roberts was an extremely nasty piece of work (assuming the pirate is meant, as the avatar somewhat implies). So there is a slight bad taste element in using that name, and expecting us to do so.
Of course it's the pirate, it's a tongue in cheek reference but pirates have long been romanticised. Roberts one of them, he's name checked in the Pirates of the Caribbean films as one of the authors of the Pirate Code (which he was in real life an author of) for the oft used "more guidelines than actual rules" quotation.
If you think that romanticisation of pirates is unpleasant that's more than just me you're up against. Though I adopted the pirate flag in response to others repeatedly using pirate as an insult against my beliefs.
"Not just the Spanish Main, love. The entire ocean. The entire world. Wherever we want to go, we'll go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs but what a ship is... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom."
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
Whilst I believe we are on the same side as regards the abortion debate and many other liberal positions, your argument fails utterly because of that inconsistency. You cannot argue that States rights are wrong when they are about something you are opposed to such as restrictions on abortion but then argue they are right regarding the 2nd amendment. You have advocated literal minded consistency in one post and then argued against it in the next.
No, I'm gold. It goes like this -
Fundamental human rights should be enshrined. A woman's access to safe and legal abortion is one such. The right to bear arms is not.
People can disagree - both on whether fundamental human rights should be enshrined and if so on what they are - but there's no 'utter fail through inconsistency'. As if!
The notion that abortion on demand is a fundamental human right is ridiculous.
Moreso that in a game of Rights Top Trumps it beats the right to life of the unborn child.
Access to safe and legal abortion with controls around reason and with term limits. The consensus settlement in the West after the struggles of the civil rights era. This is what is under threat in the US. Having been in the vanguard on female empowerment they now seek to roll it back. That's how it looks to me.
You just said "controls around reason". I agree with that. However, abortion on demand has no such controls.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
A straw man. No one on PB at this moment - as far as I can see - is adopting the fundamentalist, theo-American, Ban All Abortion argument. Everyone is at least in favour of choice, at least early in the pregnancy. It is after that when it gets thorny. Obvs
For the record, I am not in favour of choice. And nor is the law in this country.
Blimey, talk about harsh, didn't know the Fins could be so ice cold.
As one senior [Finnish] official puts it: “Please explain to me why Ireland is celebrating a centenary of its independence from the UK, yet, to defend that sovereignty, relies almost entirely on the UK?”
It's a good point, though, and it was certainly painfully true in WWII.
You mean, when the Irish were threatened with invasion from the UK?
Incidentally I saw your earlier post suggesting Francis was behaving towards Putin as Pius XII did towards Hitler. May I ask what insider knowledge you have that leads you to think Francis has tried to have Putin assassinated?
Yes, the UK did consider whether in the wider interests of saving European civilisation and tens of millions of lives from the most severe threat ever, it might be necessary to invade Ireland. Churchill showed the most amazing restraint in not doing so, but it would obviously has been morally justified if it had been required, not least in the interests of the Irish.
As for your second paragraph, hmmm..
Well, if you can't share your sources, fair enough. I was just intrigued, that's all.
I don't think 'not invading a sovereign country that was neutral and intended to stay that way' is a form of restraint. As Eamonn de Valera politely reminded Churchill in 1945.
When you're engaged in total war against the most dangerously evil regime in history - a regime which wouldn't have cared a fig for Irish neutrality and certainly wouldn't have respected the rights of Irish citizens once it had succeeded in its aim of hegemony over all of Europe - then, yes, it shows great restraint to respect the dubious neutrality of a state which is free-loading on your sacrifices.
The Irish position in WWII was an absolute disgrace.
Don't agree. Precisely because of its imperial history, Ireland was in a very difficult position, with a civil war startting the moment it plumped formally for one side or the other. The Irish also supported the UK a lot more than is often believed.
Talk me through the SNP’s Defence policy
As I understand it you are still fully committed to the swift removal of nuclear weapons from Scottish soil and waters. Because you revile nuclear weapons and regard them as unacceptable. Fair enough. Brave, but fair.
Except that your other big Defence position is to remain firmly in NATO, precisely because it is a nuclear alliance, with nuclear weapons provided by the US, UK, and France, and we all now see how important it is to have nukes, it means you don’t get invaded.
Except that you want to try and make it more difficult for the UK to wield a nuclear deterrent?
So you are simultaneously fiercely against, strongly in favour of, and fiercely against nuclear weapons, all at the same time? And you want Scotland to be not protected, and protected, and not protected, by nukes?
Colour me Unionist, but I am not sure this is entirely coherent, any more
Quite, it's difficult, especially now.
But it doesn't change the logic of the Irish situation in 1939-45.
At least you admit the problem. Commendable. Most PB Nats airily dismiss the notion there even IS a problem.
I guess Sturgeon has to succour a hardcore of anti-NATO, anti-nuke fundamentalist Nats, as they are her activists, but I see big trouble coming down the line, policywise. It’s as big a difficulty as the currency, debt, bank and pensions, perhaps much bigger
I agree with you on Ireland, they probably did the best they could in WW2, what with their ‘difficult’ history re Britain. The condolences on Hitler’s death were a step too far, however
Andrew Marr has a peice in last weekend's Newstatesman exploring the question of SNP and the nukes at Faslane.
He says it is going to be a massive issue if there is an indie referendum next year.
Interestingly, he claims he has been told by defence analysts that the MoD looked at the option of moving submarine base to S Wales or English South coast and concluded it would not be viable. There is, it is claimed, no place else for them. The idea has been mooted that we would bunk up with the French.
I have actually predicted on a few occasions that the winds of change are such that this could all be the undoing of the SNP. They can be depicted as Putin's idiots with their stance over trident. It was never a serious issue until now, it has just become one.
Certainly looks as if it will be a big issue next year unless ukraine war is sorted and Putin gone.
On the other hand I doubt there will be a referendum now. SNP wont risk another loss so soon.
They prefer to call for one, have it turned down by UK Govt, and claim "disrespect" etc. Works up the fanbase like a dream. And then smoothly continue drawing down the salaries, perks, etc., at Holyrood and Westminster. What's not to like?
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
Whilst I believe we are on the same side as regards the abortion debate and many other liberal positions, your argument fails utterly because of that inconsistency. You cannot argue that States rights are wrong when they are about something you are opposed to such as restrictions on abortion but then argue they are right regarding the 2nd amendment. You have advocated literal minded consistency in one post and then argued against it in the next.
No, I'm gold. It goes like this -
Fundamental human rights should be enshrined. A woman's access to safe and legal abortion is one such. The right to bear arms is not.
People can disagree - both on whether fundamental human rights should be enshrined and if so on what they are - but there's no 'utter fail through inconsistency'. As if!
The notion that abortion on demand is a fundamental human right is ridiculous.
Moreso that in a game of Rights Top Trumps it beats the right to life of the unborn child.
Access to safe and legal abortion with controls around reason and with term limits. The consensus settlement in the West after the struggles of the civil rights era. This is what is under threat in the US. Having been in the vanguard on female empowerment they now seek to roll it back. That's how it looks to me.
If the USA had legalised abortion in Congress, ie in the same manner as other western countries legalised abortion in their parliaments, then there wouldn't have been decades of argument and the current situation.
It's certainly not been an active election here in Newham. In most of the Wards, of course, they don't so much count the Labour vote as weigh it and for those looking for an end to the one-party state here, the truth is any opposition party is going to need at least a 20% swing to capture any seat based on the 2018 numbers.
No posters, just a few leaflets. I suspect turnout will be uninspiring. Last time Labour beat the Conservatives 67-15 across the borough with turnouts from 30-45% across the Wards (mine managed 43% so not bad).
This time, I think the Greens will come third simply because they are putting up a full slate for the first time - it'll be fascinating to see how close they get to the Conservatives - last time, the LDs got 6%, the Greens 5% and the Christian People's Alliance 4%. In 2018, the Greens put up 11 candidates, this time 66.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
It is perfectly rational to think a foetus has no more has a right to life than sperm does.
What really seems the big thing to me is the overturning of Roe vs. Wade would be just another massive notch on the list of stuff that eventually brings the USA to civil war or a massive acrimonious split/break-up. There's just too many elements of the political atmosphere there where even if there is a nuanced middle position there's no longer any real appetite to find it, which only leaves either one side "winning" and the other "losing", or both sides going their own ways.
I’ve been reading a lot of Civil War history these last days, as I travel the South, and I tend to agree. This feels eerily similar to the slavery debate, the same absolute difference on a profound moral matter, the same escalation of rhetoric and acrimony, the same polarization, then the first shots fired
Difference this time is that the underdogs, the pro-lifers - the South, as it were - have a much more defensible position, morally. When it comes down to it the pro-choicers are arguing for the fundamental right to vacuum a living fetus out of the womb and throw it away. That is an infinitely long way from “the right of a black man to walk free in the United States, and be owned by no one”
The pro-lifers urgently believe they occupy the moral high ground, as the anti-slavers of the Union believed THEY were correct. When you read the accounts of Southern soldiers and generals in the 1860s you can sense their moral hesitation as they tried to justify their position: they were attempting to defend their prosperity, at the expense of other humans. No matter how much they dressed it up, their position was questionable at best. Not so now
Moral certitude can get you a long way, in a war. Cf Ukraine
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
A straw man. No one on PB at this moment - as far as I can see - is adopting the fundamentalist, theo-American, Ban All Abortion argument. Everyone is at least in favour of choice, at least early in the pregnancy. It is after that when it gets thorny. Obvs
The vast majority of all abortions are early. When we talk about abortion, practically that nearly always means early abortion. If we all agree these have no issues and they should be legal, great. I am glad for this consensus, if you’re right that it exists.
However, we’re discussing this exactly because the Republican Party in the US do want to ban abortion, which means they want to ban early abortion.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
It is perfectly rational to think a foetus has no more has a right to life than sperm does.
Well, no, because a free standing sperm has radically different potential than a foetus
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
How can a flight be complex, if you are a passenger? You get on, sit down, and then after some time has elapsed you get up and get off. During that time you may be served some food, read a book, watch some TV or go to the toilet. Surely none of this is especially difficult or requiring of oblivion?
I’ve got three different connecting flights in a row. USA then Europe then Asia. 24 hours of continuous travel. YUK
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
But an informed and intelligent one. Which therefore outranks those that are neither. Where would we be if all opinions are deemed equally worthy of respect? In big big trouble.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
A straw man. No one on PB at this moment - as far as I can see - is adopting the fundamentalist, theo-American, Ban All Abortion argument. Everyone is at least in favour of choice, at least early in the pregnancy. It is after that when it gets thorny. Obvs
For the record, I am not in favour of choice. And nor is the law in this country.
Also contributing to the record, I have no real understanding or opinion on the issue, other than it should 100% be allowed in cases of rape or danger to the woman.
I'd just acknowledge that there is a wide spectrum of opinion, from bans on contraception all the way to full "choice".
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
It is perfectly rational to think a foetus has no more has a right to life than sperm does.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
It is perfectly rational to think a foetus has no more has a right to life than sperm does.
Well, no, because a free standing sperm has radically different potential than a foetus
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
How can a flight be complex, if you are a passenger? You get on, sit down, and then after some time has elapsed you get up and get off. During that time you may be served some food, read a book, watch some TV or go to the toilet. Surely none of this is especially difficult or requiring of oblivion?
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
How can a flight be complex, if you are a passenger? You get on, sit down, and then after some time has elapsed you get up and get off. During that time you may be served some food, read a book, watch some TV or go to the toilet. Surely none of this is especially difficult or requiring of oblivion?
I’ve got three different connecting flights in a row. USA then Europe then Asia. 24 hours of continuous travel. YUK
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
How can a flight be complex, if you are a passenger? You get on, sit down, and then after some time has elapsed you get up and get off. During that time you may be served some food, read a book, watch some TV or go to the toilet. Surely none of this is especially difficult or requiring of oblivion?
Everyone is different, but if I was faced with a horrendously complicated flight, the last thing I would want is to be drunk. I would probably end up losing my passport or something.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
It is perfectly rational to think a foetus has no more has a right to life than sperm does.
Well, no, because a free standing sperm has radically different potential than a foetus
It's no use crying over spilt semen.
Otherwise your tear ducts would be working non-stop!
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
How can a flight be complex, if you are a passenger? You get on, sit down, and then after some time has elapsed you get up and get off. During that time you may be served some food, read a book, watch some TV or go to the toilet. Surely none of this is especially difficult or requiring of oblivion?
I’ve got three different connecting flights in a row. USA then Europe then Asia. 24 hours of continuous travel. YUK
What really seems the big thing to me is the overturning of Roe vs. Wade would be just another massive notch on the list of stuff that eventually brings the USA to civil war or a massive acrimonious split/break-up. There's just too many elements of the political atmosphere there where even if there is a nuanced middle position there's no longer any real appetite to find it, which only leaves either one side "winning" and the other "losing", or both sides going their own ways.
I’ve been reading a lot of Civil War history these last days, as I travel the South, and I tend to agree. This feels eerily similar to the slavery debate, the same absolute difference on a profound moral matter, the same escalation of rhetoric and acrimony, the same polarization, then the first shots fired
Difference this time is that the underdogs, the pro-lifers - the South, as it were - have a much more defensible position, morally. When it comes down to it the pro-choicers are arguing for the fundamental right to vacuum a living fetus out of the womb and throw it away. That is an infinitely long way from “the right of a black man to walk free in the United States, and be owned by no one”
The pro-lifers urgently believe they occupy the moral high ground, as the anti-slavers of the Union believed THEY were correct. When you read the accounts of Southern soldiers and generals in the 1860s you can sense their moral hesitation as they tried to justify their position: they were attempting to defend their prosperity, at the expense of other humans. No matter how much they dressed it up, their position was questionable at best. Not so now
Moral certitude can get you a long way, in a war. Cf Ukraine
Moral certitude often works best when it gives you something to struggle against but not ultimately achieve.
How much support would banning abortion lose when its realised that it would lead to increased numbers of deprived and non-white people ?
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
A straw man. No one on PB at this moment - as far as I can see - is adopting the fundamentalist, theo-American, Ban All Abortion argument. Everyone is at least in favour of choice, at least early in the pregnancy. It is after that when it gets thorny. Obvs
However, the entire discussion was sparked by the moves in the US to ban abortion, including all abortion and from the earliest moments. Indeed, in Missouri, there was a proposal to ban even abortions of ectopic pregnancies (which can never be viable and if allowed to come to term, kill the mother).
In addition, posters have stated that life begins at conception (and implicitly that abortions at the earliest stages are wrong/ should be banned).
You may not be espousing that view, but both in the movements in the country that sparked this discussion and in this thread, it has been espoused.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
But an informed and intelligent one. Which therefore outranks those that are neither. Where would we be if all opinions are deemed equally worthy of respect? In big big trouble.
Good point, except that it is ignorant and stupid and not actually an opinion at all, just a profoundly dimwitted stipulation. What on earth is this baby vs ball of cells distinction? Genuine q. It sounds for about a femtosecond as if it meant something intelligent, then turns out not to
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
But an informed and intelligent one. Which therefore outranks those that are neither. Where would we be if all opinions are deemed equally worthy of respect? In big big trouble.
And a rather pompous and arrogant one too.
You seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you is your inferior.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
But an informed and intelligent one. Which therefore outranks those that are neither. Where would we be if all opinions are deemed equally worthy of respect? In big big trouble.
I agree with that, and instinctively join with you on this side of the debate.
I just think it's worth recognising that on stuff like this it really does boil down to opinion, informed or not.
For example, @IshmaelZ made a good point re: foetus v sperm.
The number of Irish passports being issued in the North has surpassed their UK counterparts for the first time on record, newly obtained figures reveal.
Her Majesty’s Passport Office in London has confirmed 48,555 citizens in Northern Ireland applied for a UK passport in 2020 – at least 356 fewer than those who opted for an Irish passport the same year (48,911).
Official figures on Irish passports in the region are only available for those issued through Northern Ireland Passport Express (NIPX), available through post offices, and do not include citizens who apply for their passports directly from Dublin.
Because of Brexit, Irish people in the UK have more rights than British people
Except that their homeland is ruled by diktat by unelected bureacrats in Brussels, and if Dublin steps out of fiscal line, their budgets have to go to Berlin first for approval, before they head to the Dail
Not something I would wish for the UK. Thank God the 40 year nightmare is over, for us
More anti EU drivel ! Irish people have more rights than Brits and can live and work in 27 EU countries and the UK .
Personally, I would remove the right of Irish people to live and work in the UK, until and unless Ireland steps up to the plate on Defence spending. Enough of their bollix, now
You want Ireland to participate in EU common defence policy? Is this really a sober assessment of the best strategic outcome for the UK in the long term?
Leon's drunk again.
I’m certainly not drunk. But I am now TRYING to get drunk on Kiwi Sauv Blanc, in the Desire Oyster Bar, FQ, NOLA. Last oysters before Munich!
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
How can a flight be complex, if you are a passenger? You get on, sit down, and then after some time has elapsed you get up and get off. During that time you may be served some food, read a book, watch some TV or go to the toilet. Surely none of this is especially difficult or requiring of oblivion?
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
Also, nobody believes they are relevant to this debate, because at that stage nobody can be arsed to detect or abort them, so what are you on about?
Republicans want to ban all abortion. They don’t make exceptions for the very early cases.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
Nano brained tilting against windmills. Who do you think is arguing either for, or against, the abortion of 2 week old foetuses?
The Pope criticises "Nato barking at Russia’s gate" and suspects the invasion was "facilitated by the West’s attitude". He also questions whether weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The less said by that kiddy fiddler institution the better it seems.
I don't agree with what he said, but calling the Pope a "kiddy fiddler" just demonstrates to us all (if we needed further evidence) what an ignorant unpleasant and unthinking right wing bigot you are.
Indeed and when Bartholmew Roberts posted under his name Phillip Thompson he said he would be happy to see the Troubles return to Northern Ireland as a price worth paying for a pure Brexit.
I think Barty Bobbins is a total ratbag. But I agree, we need to maintain this standard.
Mods might want to consider this issue.
A blind man on a galloping camel knows that xxxxx is Roberts. I don't agree with posters being able to whitewash their posting history. Though in the case of RT I can understand why he wants to do it. To have hero worshipped Johnson over 99,000 posts would have embarrassed anyone.
Doxxing is strictly forbidden, and I will ban posters who engage in it.
If 'doxxing' means referring to a previous poster's username isn't that inconsistent? A poster who keeps his original username can have posts from years ago dredged up whereas those who change their usernames presumably can't?
Makes no sense to me. Maybe I'll call myself Philip Thompson.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
Nano brained tilting against windmills. Who do you think is arguing either for, or against, the abortion of 2 week old foetuses?
Unexpectedly @SandyRentool seems close to espousing that argument. Is he Catholic?
It would be fascinating to see polling on this issue in the UK. I wonder how many have the absolutist no-abortion position. 10%? 15%?
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
Nano brained tilting against windmills. Who do you think is arguing either for, or against, the abortion of 2 week old foetuses?
The US Republican Party.
The Roman Catholic Church.
Anyone who says “life” begins at conception, very explicitly.
The Pope criticises "Nato barking at Russia’s gate" and suspects the invasion was "facilitated by the West’s attitude". He also questions whether weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The less said by that kiddy fiddler institution the better it seems.
I don't agree with what he said, but calling the Pope a "kiddy fiddler" just demonstrates to us all (if we needed further evidence) what an ignorant unpleasant and unthinking right wing bigot you are.
Indeed and when Bartholmew Roberts posted under his name Phillip Thompson he said he would be happy to see the Troubles return to Northern Ireland as a price worth paying for a pure Brexit.
I think Barty Bobbins is a total ratbag. But I agree, we need to maintain this standard.
Mods might want to consider this issue.
A blind man on a galloping camel knows that xxxxx is Roberts. I don't agree with posters being able to whitewash their posting history. Though in the case of RT I can understand why he wants to do it. To have hero worshipped Johnson over 99,000 posts would have embarrassed anyone.
Doxxing is strictly forbidden, and I will ban posters who engage in it.
If 'doxxing' means referring to a previous poster's username isn't that inconsistent? A poster who keeps his original username can have posts from years ago dredged up whereas those who change their usernames presumably can't?
Makes no sense to me. Maybe I'll call myself Philip Thompson.
Maybe Bart isn’t Pihlip Thompson? Who the F knows?
Why not just respect his desire to be addressed by his username and stop being a stupid dick
What really seems the big thing to me is the overturning of Roe vs. Wade would be just another massive notch on the list of stuff that eventually brings the USA to civil war or a massive acrimonious split/break-up. There's just too many elements of the political atmosphere there where even if there is a nuanced middle position there's no longer any real appetite to find it, which only leaves either one side "winning" and the other "losing", or both sides going their own ways.
I’ve been reading a lot of Civil War history these last days, as I travel the South, and I tend to agree. This feels eerily similar to the slavery debate, the same absolute difference on a profound moral matter, the same escalation of rhetoric and acrimony, the same polarization, then the first shots fired
Difference this time is that the underdogs, the pro-lifers - the South, as it were - have a much more defensible position, morally. When it comes down to it the pro-choicers are arguing for the fundamental right to vacuum a living fetus out of the womb and throw it away. That is an infinitely long way from “the right of a black man to walk free in the United States, and be owned by no one”
The pro-lifers urgently believe they occupy the moral high ground, as the anti-slavers of the Union believed THEY were correct. When you read the accounts of Southern soldiers and generals in the 1860s you can sense their moral hesitation as they tried to justify their position: they were attempting to defend their prosperity, at the expense of other humans. No matter how much they dressed it up, their position was questionable at best. Not so now
Moral certitude can get you a long way, in a war. Cf Ukraine
Moral certitude often works best when it gives you something to struggle against but not ultimately achieve.
How much support would banning abortion lose when its realised that it would lead to increased numbers of deprived and non-white people ?
Not really what the GOP base wants is it.
GOP base turns THAT argument on its (or rather your) head, saying, I concede your point: it's the Democrats who want to kill Black babies NOT us.
As for deprivation, they say a) my grandparents (or whatever) were poor, they worked hard and now we're ok; and b) Republican economic policies will result in prosperity that well help those willing to work and help themselves.
So loss of pro-life support on these grounds = zero
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
A potential PCC by-election. What a mouth watering prospect.
Voters of Nottinghamshire - better get practicing drawing a cock and balls.
Remarkably, turnout for the Wiltshire PCC by-election in August 2021 (after the winner of the May election could not take up his position) was a comparitively decent 16%. Terrible by any other election, but actually higher than the first such election in Wiltshire where turnout was only 15%, which considering the date and no other elections being on wasn't bad.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
From failure to implant through to stillbirth, there are plenty of conceptions that don't result in the birth of a child. The resulting level of sorrow increases from zero to devastation as the pregnancy progresses.
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
There's a really good, and now quite old, book called 'Triumph of the Embryo' by (I think) Lewis Wolpert. It's sort of amazing and it 's certainly informed my view in the area.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
Nano brained tilting against windmills. Who do you think is arguing either for, or against, the abortion of 2 week old foetuses?
Unexpectedly @SandyRentool seems close to espousing that argument. Is he Catholic?
It would be fascinating to see polling on this issue in the UK. I wonder how many have the absolutist no-abortion position. 10%? 15%?
I am not belittling it. Genuine question
I'm a Catholic Atheist. I guess my upbringing may have helped shape my position.
What really seems the big thing to me is the overturning of Roe vs. Wade would be just another massive notch on the list of stuff that eventually brings the USA to civil war or a massive acrimonious split/break-up. There's just too many elements of the political atmosphere there where even if there is a nuanced middle position there's no longer any real appetite to find it, which only leaves either one side "winning" and the other "losing", or both sides going their own ways.
I’ve been reading a lot of Civil War history these last days, as I travel the South, and I tend to agree. This feels eerily similar to the slavery debate, the same absolute difference on a profound moral matter, the same escalation of rhetoric and acrimony, the same polarization, then the first shots fired
Difference this time is that the underdogs, the pro-lifers - the South, as it were - have a much more defensible position, morally. When it comes down to it the pro-choicers are arguing for the fundamental right to vacuum a living fetus out of the womb and throw it away. That is an infinitely long way from “the right of a black man to walk free in the United States, and be owned by no one”
The pro-lifers urgently believe they occupy the moral high ground, as the anti-slavers of the Union believed THEY were correct. When you read the accounts of Southern soldiers and generals in the 1860s you can sense their moral hesitation as they tried to justify their position: they were attempting to defend their prosperity, at the expense of other humans. No matter how much they dressed it up, their position was questionable at best. Not so now
Moral certitude can get you a long way, in a war. Cf Ukraine
Moral certitude often works best when it gives you something to struggle against but not ultimately achieve.
How much support would banning abortion lose when its realised that it would lead to increased numbers of deprived and non-white people ?
Not really what the GOP base wants is it.
GOP base turns THAT argument on its (or rather your) head, saying, I concede your point: it's the Democrats who want to kill Black babies NOT us.
As for deprivation, they say a) my grandparents (or whatever) were poor, they worked hard and now we're ok; and b) Republican economic policies will result in prosperity that well help those willing to work and help themselves.
So loss of pro-life support on these grounds = zero
But that's the moral certitude allowing big talk.
How many really want more deprived and more non-white ?
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
My brain is able to reject clutter and off the point meanderings and trite analogies, is what you mean. Please stop with the typos.
Who's saying abortion is not debatable? I'm certainly not. Of course it is.
And yes (yawn) there are "competing rights". The aforesaid debate is how to balance them. So, what reasons for a termination are acceptable? What term limits should apply? Up to the point of independent survivability? Bit more or less? Exceptions? Etc etc.
Fwiw we have it about right here imo.
What I'm condemning is the plan in parts of the US to ban abortion under almost any circumstances. To reverse a social reform which is fundamental to female empowerment and which women fought so hard to achieve. It's scandalous.
And you agree! Which is good to hear. I'd have been surprised if you didn't but, still, it's good to hear.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
From failure to implant through to stillbirth, there are plenty of conceptions that don't result in the birth of a child. The resulting level of sorrow increases from zero to devastation as the pregnancy progresses.
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
When a (born) child dies from natural causes, we mourn the death. We raise funds for medical research to prevent such deaths. We fight all we can to save that life.
When a very early embryo “dies” of natural causes, we don’t do any of that. No-one actually treats that ball of cells as “an unborn child”. Except when they want to ban abortion. Then they pretend, they make up stories. That ball of cells is a “child” when we want to control women’s lives, when we want to moralise about sex, but not otherwise.
The Pope criticises "Nato barking at Russia’s gate" and suspects the invasion was "facilitated by the West’s attitude". He also questions whether weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The less said by that kiddy fiddler institution the better it seems.
I don't agree with what he said, but calling the Pope a "kiddy fiddler" just demonstrates to us all (if we needed further evidence) what an ignorant unpleasant and unthinking right wing bigot you are.
Indeed and when Bartholmew Roberts posted under his name "whatever" he said he would be happy to see the Troubles return to Northern Ireland as a price worth paying for a pure Brexit.
I think Barty Bobbins is a total ratbag. But I agree, we need to maintain this standard.
Mods might want to consider this issue.
A blind man on a galloping camel knows that xxxxx is Roberts. I don't agree with posters being able to whitewash their posting history. Though in the case of RT I can understand why he wants to do it. To have hero worshipped Johnson over 99,000 posts would have embarrassed anyone.
Doxxing is strictly forbidden, and I will ban posters who engage in it.
If 'doxxing' means referring to a previous poster's username isn't that inconsistent? A poster who keeps his original username can have posts from years ago dredged up whereas those who change their usernames presumably can't?
Makes no sense to me. Maybe I'll call myself...
If you think someone is lying about changing their mind then it's probably more of a waste of time than usual arguing with a stranger on the internet.
But if you want them to show you the respect of not lying in your debate then you should show them the respect of using their chosen name.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
Nano brained tilting against windmills. Who do you think is arguing either for, or against, the abortion of 2 week old foetuses?
Unexpectedly @SandyRentool seems close to espousing that argument. Is he Catholic?
It would be fascinating to see polling on this issue in the UK. I wonder how many have the absolutist no-abortion position. 10%? 15%?
I am not belittling it. Genuine question
On the recent DIY abortion law, 35% backed it, 22% only during Covid, 12% wanted abortion to only be in a clinic and 6% wanted no abortions at all (with Conservative voters, Northerners and Scots the largest percentage of that group).
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
A potential PCC by-election. What a mouth watering prospect.
Voters of Nottinghamshire - better get practicing drawing a cock and balls.
Remarkably, turnout for the Wiltshire PCC by-election in August 2021 (after the winner of the May election could not take up his position) was a comparitively decent 16%. Terrible by any other election, but actually higher than the first such election in Wiltshire where turnout was only 15%, which considering the date and no other elections being on wasn't bad.
Another Tory criminal law breaker.
They are coming on a weekly basis.
Fag end of a government long overdue a refresh in oppisition.
What a low the party is plumbing these days.
Surely even PB tories must admit the party now needs a period in opposition and sort out the sleaze and criminality and the kinds of people it makes as candidates.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
From failure to implant through to stillbirth, there are plenty of conceptions that don't result in the birth of a child. The resulting level of sorrow increases from zero to devastation as the pregnancy progresses.
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
A potential PCC by-election. What a mouth watering prospect.
Voters of Nottinghamshire - better get practicing drawing a cock and balls.
Remarkably, turnout for the Wiltshire PCC by-election in August 2021 (after the winner of the May election could not take up his position) was a comparitively decent 16%. Terrible by any other election, but actually higher than the first such election in Wiltshire where turnout was only 15%, which considering the date and no other elections being on wasn't bad.
Another Tory criminal law breaker.
They are coming on a weekly basis.
Fag end of a government long overdue a refresh in oppisition.
What a low the party is plumbing these days.
Surely even PB tories must admit the party now needs a period in opposition and sort out the sleaze and criminality and the kinds of people it makes as candidates.
Only a period? I'm starting to think they deserve an eternity.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
From failure to implant through to stillbirth, there are plenty of conceptions that don't result in the birth of a child. The resulting level of sorrow increases from zero to devastation as the pregnancy progresses.
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
When a (born) child dies from natural causes, we mourn the death. We raise funds for medical research to prevent such deaths. We fight all we can to save that life.
When a very early embryo “dies” of natural causes, we don’t do any of that. No-one actually treats that ball of cells as “an unborn child”. Except when they want to ban abortion. Then they pretend, they make up stories. That ball of cells is a “child” when we want to control women’s lives, when we want to moralise about sex, but not otherwise.
Without spending the rest of the evening reading medical journals to confirm, I am fairly confident that there is medical research into the causes of failure to implant, which can result in some women having considerable difficulty in having children.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
From failure to implant through to stillbirth, there are plenty of conceptions that don't result in the birth of a child. The resulting level of sorrow increases from zero to devastation as the pregnancy progresses.
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
When a (born) child dies from natural causes, we mourn the death. We raise funds for medical research to prevent such deaths. We fight all we can to save that life.
When a very early embryo “dies” of natural causes, we don’t do any of that. No-one actually treats that ball of cells as “an unborn child”. Except when they want to ban abortion. Then they pretend, they make up stories. That ball of cells is a “child” when we want to control women’s lives, when we want to moralise about sex, but not otherwise.
You do seem to be a revoltingly silly little man. Ever been to a 14 week scan to learn quite unexpectedly that the ball of cells is fucked?
The Pope criticises "Nato barking at Russia’s gate" and suspects the invasion was "facilitated by the West’s attitude". He also questions whether weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The less said by that kiddy fiddler institution the better it seems.
I don't agree with what he said, but calling the Pope a "kiddy fiddler" just demonstrates to us all (if we needed further evidence) what an ignorant unpleasant and unthinking right wing bigot you are.
Indeed and when Bartholmew Roberts posted under his name "whatever" he said he would be happy to see the Troubles return to Northern Ireland as a price worth paying for a pure Brexit.
I think Barty Bobbins is a total ratbag. But I agree, we need to maintain this standard.
Mods might want to consider this issue.
A blind man on a galloping camel knows that xxxxx is Roberts. I don't agree with posters being able to whitewash their posting history. Though in the case of RT I can understand why he wants to do it. To have hero worshipped Johnson over 99,000 posts would have embarrassed anyone.
Doxxing is strictly forbidden, and I will ban posters who engage in it.
If 'doxxing' means referring to a previous poster's username isn't that inconsistent? A poster who keeps his original username can have posts from years ago dredged up whereas those who change their usernames presumably can't?
Makes no sense to me. Maybe I'll call myself...
If you think someone is lying about changing their mind then it's probably more of a waste of time than usual arguing with a stranger on the internet.
But if you want them to show you the respect of not lying in your debate then you should show them the respect of using their chosen name.
If this is any sort of a community then one of it's appeals is that you know who you are talking to. Everyone has their own style and if year zero is going to be the moment they choose a new username then it becomes much less interesting. I have no interest in anyones identity. Just consistency. Most people know where the different posters are coming from. This will no longer exist. Imagine Big_G changing his username. A whole life story disappears!
OT. Liverpool now 15/1 on Ladbrokes. A very worthwhile bet I would say
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
From failure to implant through to stillbirth, there are plenty of conceptions that don't result in the birth of a child. The resulting level of sorrow increases from zero to devastation as the pregnancy progresses.
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
A fertilized ovum is not a child.
So when does it become one? And does that matter in this debate?
The Pope criticises "Nato barking at Russia’s gate" and suspects the invasion was "facilitated by the West’s attitude". He also questions whether weapons should be sent to Ukraine.
The less said by that kiddy fiddler institution the better it seems.
I don't agree with what he said, but calling the Pope a "kiddy fiddler" just demonstrates to us all (if we needed further evidence) what an ignorant unpleasant and unthinking right wing bigot you are.
Indeed and when Bartholmew Roberts posted under his name "whatever" he said he would be happy to see the Troubles return to Northern Ireland as a price worth paying for a pure Brexit.
I think Barty Bobbins is a total ratbag. But I agree, we need to maintain this standard.
Mods might want to consider this issue.
A blind man on a galloping camel knows that xxxxx is Roberts. I don't agree with posters being able to whitewash their posting history. Though in the case of RT I can understand why he wants to do it. To have hero worshipped Johnson over 99,000 posts would have embarrassed anyone.
Doxxing is strictly forbidden, and I will ban posters who engage in it.
If 'doxxing' means referring to a previous poster's username isn't that inconsistent? A poster who keeps his original username can have posts from years ago dredged up whereas those who change their usernames presumably can't?
Makes no sense to me. Maybe I'll call myself...
If you think someone is lying about changing their mind then it's probably more of a waste of time than usual arguing with a stranger on the internet.
But if you want them to show you the respect of not lying in your debate then you should show them the respect of using their chosen name.
If this is any sort of a community then one of it's appeals is that you know who you are talking to. Everyone has their own style and if year zero is going to be the moment they choose a new username then it becomes much less interesting. Most people know where the different posters are coming from. This will no longer exist. Imagine Big_G changing his name. A whole life story disappears!
OT. Liverpool now 15/1 on Ladbrokes. A very worthwhile bet I would say
Except I haven't attempted to deny who I am. I kept my avatar the same, my views remain my views, and I don't mind people associating my views of the past to my views of the present.
I just ask for the respect of not having my real life name used. Just because you know my name is not a reason to say it and doxx me.
But I’m struggling to get worked up over Roe v Wade.
It’s not covered by the constitution, nor by common law, and as far as I can tell the original SC justification was weak.
So let States decide, as ghastly as that must be for the poor women who have to live in said States.
I agree. I’m also highly pro-choice but if you actually look at the leaked, draft decision, it has merit. There is nothing in the US constitution which says women have a basic right to terminate a fetus. Finessing this as a right to privacy is bogus
The voters must decide in individual states, that’s democracy. Equally, democracy allows the president and senate to pass a law explicitly allowing abortion everywhere if they have enough votes in DC
This decision arguably allows such a vote to ban abortion nationwide, too. https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1521311115392737280 If the Alito opinion savaging Roe and Casey ends up being the Opinion of the Court, it will unravel many basic rights beyond abortion and will go further than returning the issue to the states: It will enable a GOP Congress to enact a nationwide ban on abortion and contraception.
I’m not sure even the GOP are that stupid . To ban abortion nationwide would cause such a furore that they would be pulverized in future elections . And banning contraception would be unbelievable given most Americans aren’t Catholic.
The democracy angle is a red herring imo. An outright ban on abortion is removing a fundamental right of women that I think should be protected regardless of which party happens to be in power, state or federal level, at any one time. States' Rights - ie "democracy" - was offered in the 1960s as for why racial segregation should continue in parts of the South. It didn't wash then, as a reason for allowing something appalling, and for me it doesn't scrub up any better now.
Funnily enough, I bet you’d argue exactly the opposite way with regard to gun laws and the 2nd Amendment
I would, yes, and I'd be right to do so. Literal minded consistency, regardless of nuance and context, is the enemy of good judgement.
You are so brilliantly boring
Just brilliant, I think you mean. Fat fingers?
But let's not bicker about this abortion banning monstrosity - we clearly agree about it and that's rather precious.
We agree in practice, but I maybe see nuance where you apparently don’t. The unborn child also has rights as @Sean_F eloquently puts it downthread (better than me). Otherwise we’d have no moral problems with third trimester abortion of perfectly viable babies
When do those rights commence? It’s the devil of a question and I respect the beliefs of those who might put it at conception, even if I disagree
No, we don't have a "nuance" issue. I support the right to abortion but with controls around reasons and term limits. I don't support an outright ban or anything close to it.
Sean was making the obvious sound deep. He has a talent for that. So do lots of you grinders on here.
Ooo bitchy!
(but I love you all)
Your brain is so weirdly narrow.
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
A ball of cells is not a baby. A ball of cells does not have fundamental rights. Calling it a “baby” doesn’t make it a baby. No-one actually treats the early embryo as if it is a baby outside of the abortion debate, because it’s not.
That's just your opinion, bro.
It is demonstrably true that no-one treats early embryos as babies outside of the abortion debate. Lots of early embryos fail to implant in the uterine wall and “die”, without the mother even noticing. If we thought these were babies, we would care about them, we’d want to know about them, we’d mourn them. We don’t. We pay them no attention. You probably had a “sibling” that failed to implant in your mother’s uterine wall. Have you ever mourned this sibling?
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
However, people feel a deep loss following a miscarriage in the early months of pregnancy. Why is that, unless they have lost a baby?
Show me someone who has felt deep loss for a failure to implant/miscarriage in the first *fortnight*, a deep loss like that felt when, say, a 6 month a baby dies. No-one does.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
From failure to implant through to stillbirth, there are plenty of conceptions that don't result in the birth of a child. The resulting level of sorrow increases from zero to devastation as the pregnancy progresses.
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
A fertilized ovum is not a child.
So when does it become one? And does that matter in this debate?
Comments
There can be no “fundamental right’ in this debate, not when it comes down to a clash between the fundamental right of a baby to live, versus the fundamental rights of a woman to govern her own body
It’s like saying there is a “fundamental right of a home owner to shoot a burglar dead” or a “fundamental right of a woman to stab her abusive husband”
This is fiercely debatable stuff. It IS nuanced - because two basic rights are clashing
One. If Putin goes into Austria and does a Mariupol on Vienna, what you going to do? Not even HY would send the tanks in.
Two. Austria not even in NATO. And what about those benefitting from NATO nuclear deterrent whilst spending their share on the nuclear deterrent money on their own health care system whilst, as the times says today, we have hospitals crumbling and dirty.
I have a horrendously complex flight coming up, I need to be oblivious for most of it
A Tory police chief who pledged to crack down on speeding has been caught driving too fast five times in three months.
Caroline Henry, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Nottinghamshire, was caught breaking a 30mph limit in a blue Mercedes and a silver Lexus with a personalised number plate between March and June last year.
The five offences took place while she was still campaigning to be the new crime commissioner and after she was elected to the role in May 2021.
Mrs Henry, 52, admitted the offences, including two committed on consecutive days, at a previous hearing in February at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court.
Magistrates were told Mrs Henry, who is the wife of Darren Henry, Broxtowe MP, had written a letter to the court saying she was “very sorry, embarrassed and ashamed”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/tory-police-chief-caught-speeding-five-times-three-months/
Unless medically contra-indicated. In which case, grab bag of coffee with chicory. OR Zatarain's seafood boil.
So at some point between week 1 and the due date the fetus acquires the status of a human soul, worthy of fundamental protection - to my mind (and most people in the western world)
As SCOTUS says this has been argued for decades by philosophers and theologians and medics with no answer (there is no answer), all we can do is make vague attempts to appease both clashing arguments
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/if-roe-v-wade-is-overturned-whats-next
The author has argued before the court, so she’s better informed than most of us.
That Roger Stone has spotted a "satanic portal" hovering over the White House.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/roger-stone-born-again-christian-satanic-portal-white-house
Originally I took this to be a spoof. But appears not to be.
It's getting harder to tell by the day
You hear people saying that heart disease is the biggest cause of death. Or maybe it’s meant to be cancer. If that ball of cells is a baby, then neither heart disease or cancer are the leading cause of death. It’s failure to implant in the uterine wall, that’s the leading cause of death, your logic says. Why do we spend £billions on treating and researching heart disease but basically nothing on the failure to implant in the uterine wall? Because no-one really believes these early embryos are actually people.
Voters of Nottinghamshire - better get practicing drawing a cock and balls.
At some point the "I've waited years to be the Bally PM and I'm not going anywhere" theory will have to be made explicit, because there's nothing else left.
"Going the Limit for Broxtowe - and Beyond"
"Not Stopping or Slowing - for You"
"Fast and Furious Road Safety Testing"
"I was hurrying to a work-related event in Downing Street"
EDIT - Roger Stone is definitely fits MY definition of a Satanic rear portal . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzVHjg3AqIQ
Instead it was done by court cases.
It's certainly not been an active election here in Newham. In most of the Wards, of course, they don't so much count the Labour vote as weigh it and for those looking for an end to the one-party state here, the truth is any opposition party is going to need at least a 20% swing to capture any seat based on the 2018 numbers.
No posters, just a few leaflets. I suspect turnout will be uninspiring. Last time Labour beat the Conservatives 67-15 across the borough with turnouts from 30-45% across the Wards (mine managed 43% so not bad).
This time, I think the Greens will come third simply because they are putting up a full slate for the first time - it'll be fascinating to see how close they get to the Conservatives - last time, the LDs got 6%, the Greens 5% and the Christian People's Alliance 4%. In 2018, the Greens put up 11 candidates, this time 66.
Difference this time is that the underdogs, the pro-lifers - the South, as it were - have a much more defensible position, morally. When it comes down to it the pro-choicers are arguing for the fundamental right to vacuum a living fetus out of the womb and throw it away. That is an infinitely long way from “the right of a black man to walk free in the United States, and be owned by no one”
The pro-lifers urgently believe they occupy the moral high ground, as the anti-slavers of the Union believed THEY were correct. When you read the accounts of Southern soldiers and generals in the 1860s you can sense their moral hesitation as they tried to justify their position: they were attempting to defend their prosperity, at the expense of other humans. No matter how much they dressed it up, their position was questionable at best. Not so now
Moral certitude can get you a long way, in a war. Cf Ukraine
However, we’re discussing this exactly because the Republican Party in the US do want to ban abortion, which means they want to ban early abortion.
Trust me, it certainly feels complex
I'd just acknowledge that there is a wide spectrum of opinion, from bans on contraception all the way to full "choice".
That is a baby waiting to be born. Absurd
I'd say drinking is a necessity.
How much support would banning abortion lose when its realised that it would lead to increased numbers of deprived and non-white people ?
Not really what the GOP base wants is it.
In addition, posters have stated that life begins at conception (and implicitly that abortions at the earliest stages are wrong/ should be banned).
You may not be espousing that view, but both in the movements in the country that sparked this discussion and in this thread, it has been espoused.
As time passes, that ball of cells becomes more and more of a person, so of course we can understand the deep loss people feel at later miscarriages. But the anti-abortionists say life begins at conception. I’m saying that, in reality, people do not act as if life begins at conception outside of abortion debates.
If you want to argue life “begins” at 1 month post-conception, or 2, or 3, those are more nuanced debates. Perhaps they are more nuanced than a political betting comments section can handle. I respect people may differ when quite they want to draw a cut-off date.
But the idea that “life” begins at conception is untenable with our natural biology where the majority of zygotes never make it.
You seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you is your inferior.
I just think it's worth recognising that on stuff like this it really does boil down to opinion, informed or not.
For example, @IshmaelZ made a good point re: foetus v sperm.
They have an open goal to kick the ball through in fighting Woke, and instead decided to reopen a very old wound.
As unbelievable as that may seem now.
Makes no sense to me. Maybe I'll call myself Philip Thompson.
It would be fascinating to see polling on this issue in the UK. I wonder how many have the absolutist no-abortion position. 10%? 15%?
I am not belittling it. Genuine question
The Roman Catholic Church.
Anyone who says “life” begins at conception, very explicitly.
Why not just respect his desire to be addressed by his username and stop being a stupid dick
As for deprivation, they say a) my grandparents (or whatever) were poor, they worked hard and now we're ok; and b) Republican economic policies will result in prosperity that well help those willing to work and help themselves.
So loss of pro-life support on these grounds = zero
However, these are all natural processes, very different to active intervention to end the life of an unborn child.
Why you (probably) should stop worrying about the bomb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxOO0hCCSk4
How many really want more deprived and more non-white ?
Who's saying abortion is not debatable? I'm certainly not. Of course it is.
And yes (yawn) there are "competing rights". The aforesaid debate is how to balance them. So, what reasons for a termination are acceptable? What term limits should apply? Up to the point of independent survivability? Bit more or less? Exceptions? Etc etc.
Fwiw we have it about right here imo.
What I'm condemning is the plan in parts of the US to ban abortion under almost any circumstances. To reverse a social reform which is fundamental to female empowerment and which women fought so hard to achieve. It's scandalous.
And you agree! Which is good to hear. I'd have been surprised if you didn't but, still, it's good to hear.
When a very early embryo “dies” of natural causes, we don’t do any of that. No-one actually treats that ball of cells as “an unborn child”. Except when they want to ban abortion. Then they pretend, they make up stories. That ball of cells is a “child” when we want to control women’s lives, when we want to moralise about sex, but not otherwise.
I see Roger's point. Also see RCS's that the rule is the rule. Just what IS the rule?
AND is it being applied with reasonable consistency?
Recognizing that PB is proprietary to OGH and he has rights & responsibilities - legal, mineral & vegetable.
But if you want them to show you the respect of not lying in your debate then you should show them the respect of using their chosen name.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/survey-results/daily/2020/03/31/ffdd2/3
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/1895932#Comment_1895932
Although I note it doesn't mention doxxing.
If I am mysteriously banned it's possibly because I searched for 'diss Radiohead' and 'Carter Ruck' to find it.
They are coming on a weekly basis.
Fag end of a government long overdue a refresh in oppisition.
What a low the party is plumbing these days.
Surely even PB tories must admit the party now needs a period in opposition and sort out the sleaze and criminality and the kinds of people it makes as candidates.
And I certainly don't moralise about sex.
I have
OT. Liverpool now 15/1 on Ladbrokes. A very worthwhile bet I would say
I just ask for the respect of not having my real life name used. Just because you know my name is not a reason to say it and doxx me.