Abortion! Row: Write a better law.

Roe v. Wade has been sent to the states, I guess. And will be up for vote in the ballots later this year, I guess.

These debates over abortion, I feel, are about religious belief. The arguments that are being made about women’s health are really taking shape around the battle of religious belief, rather than about governance.

First off, the very idea of “inalienable rights” is it self a legal position. There is no such thing as in an alienable right that people are born with essentially; An inalienable right is a right that our government afford citizen people under the law.

It could be that people think an inalienable right is actually something we are born with as human beings regardless of governance, and that could be why no one wants to call out The fact that people are taking the religious position under the guise of science in women’s health — because then that might open up the inevitable insecurity about those people who believe that inalienable rights are not something that government gives us.

Question for those people: What good is an inalienable right if you don’t have the power to keep people from killing you over it?

It’s the inherent irony of religious belief.

However, if we keep governance about trying to keep the peace, and not about the religious questions of what life is or when it begins, then the decision becomes clear: Life is what we do when we’re living with other people.

The problem is that people are arguing about what is life, and not debating about whether or not people will kill each other over this. No one wants to talk about how we are killing people by making them have babies that they don’t wanna have. Because that would have to require of American citizens a little bit too much reflection upon their own ideas of belief and the ramifications of it in real world.

I feel like it’s an elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. I don’t hear it anywhere. The discussion is about science, or about life. I’m not sure whether these things have anything to do with governance or law in the United States.

I think it’s obvious that people who are pro life are trying to push through a religious agenda because they feel that the United States is a Christian country, or at least a 10 Commandments fairing country.

Perhaps that is an overgeneralization, but it seems all this bickering over Roe versus Wade and women’s rights is really missing the issue of abortion and government in the United States.

The role of government is to mediate between Parties so we don’t kill each other.

Aside from that argument, though, I think the pro-life position really is one which says that all human life is valuable, and so as soon as a fetus is conceived in the womb, it is a human life, and so is valuable, and so is protected under the United States government.

To me, pro-life movement seems like a pipe dream that doesn’t want to face the reality of the situation. They take their religious ideals and then find “science“ which appears to agree with it and support it under the notions of women’s health and etc…

It’s as if they wear blinders to the truth of the reality of the situation of pregnancy. It really is like saying that if someone ended up pregnant then it’s because God deemed that this human being should be allowed to continue to live, and that human beings shouldn’t interfere with that life or else it is murder.

…it’s utterly a religious issue in that respect.

For sure, though, I feel that there should be more resources, mental health, physical health, financial, education, etc. for people in general, let alone would be mothers. Yes, that’s true. Yes we should.

But to make people who end up pregnant continue with their pregnancy by virtue of the fact that they got pregnant, is really just saying that they got pregnant because they are immoral or irresponsible. And in this country, don’t you know, we think that people should be responsible for their actions.

Again, that’s an ethical question, that’s a religious question, because it doesn’t deal with the reality that more people are getting pregnant every day than any pro lifer advocate would want to admit, And getting pregnant more often than any sort of mental health or social system could help to absorb.

I agree, actually, that the question should be put to the states. I think that is the issue of the law, beyond the “inalienable rights” to health issue. The law was not written in such a way to be full-proof, and I think that’s what the Supreme Court is making notice of. So they are returning it to the states, basically, telling everyone that they need to write a better law if we are going to make this right of citizens in the United States to control their own bodies.

That’s my two cents

Comments

18 responses to “Abortion! Row: Write a better law.”

  1. landzek Avatar

    The irony and this whole thing, as you point out or make an example of. Is that if I pointed another person and say that, hey, I’m just trying I just want everyone to be able to live their life. Freely, in so much as it might affect another person in their activity. But you over there you’re making a theological presumptions about God and stuff. The irony is that they can argue back to me that mine is merely a belief as well. And so ultimately what we have is one side thinking that they are not in a religious debate, and the other side with holding that they are trying to push forth the religious agenda.

    But, I think that’s just how the world is. I think we’re gonna be fine anyway about it. This isn’t the end of the world with the abortion rights. Somehow humanity has survived 20,000 years or some thing without the issue of abortion threatening to take it down.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. landzek Avatar

    I’m not saying I am exception. But I am saying that I have a healthy understanding of where I can be effective. And the attempt, for example, to argue to someone who is a devout Christian, say, who believes in Jesus Christ as their savior, and that they have an individual soul that answers only to God ultimately— that kind of argument just confirms to the person that they’re believing is true. Since I am tolerating their myopia. I’m not gonna have an argument about government over whether a fetus is a person. That is an argument for the clerics and scholastics of the US theology. Lol

    I

    Liked by 1 person

  3. ejwinner Avatar

    You are confusing judicial decision and its implications with legislation.

    In Roe v. Wade the SCOTUS of that time determined, following interpretations of the Constitution in many prior decisions across a wide range of issues, that for certain Amendment assurances of right to even make sense, the Constitution effectively constructed a right-to-privacy for the individual strong enough to allow women to make their own decisions over their own bodies in the matter of birth. The current SCOTUS is saying that no such right-to-privacy exists, that the only rights defensible in law are those explicitly guaranteed in the Amendments. (Technically, from their point of view – the dogma of the Federalist Society which put them up for presidential nomination – the pre-amendment Constitution guarantees no rights, not even the right to vote, which isn’t referred to until the 14th Amendment post-Civil War). The point is that these decisions cannot be “sent back to the states,” because they did not originate with the states but from interpretation of the Constitution. The real import of the current decision is that 1) a SCOTUS decision need not incorporate or properly respond to precedent in order to advance the ideology of its majority; 2) no state need respect any “right” that is not explicitly stated in the Amendments; 3) the Amendments and the rights therein can, however, be interpreted to conform to accepted custom, traditions, and religious faith. It also suggests that this SCOTUS will respect Federal laws that conform to these principles (for instance, a federal ban on abortion) while striking down any that does not conform to it (federal gun control laws, for instance). It also means that individuals whose lifestyle choices or beliefs are considered outside “accepted customs, traditions, religious faiths” are to have far fewer recourses to legal protections against either state or private sector encroachment.

    “And in the end, ultimately, there will be a new law that gives women mothers the right to have an abortion.” I certainly hope so. However, we are a lot closer to at least one party trying to kill the other than we have been since the 1850s….

    Liked by 2 people

    1. landzek Avatar

      Well, that is the fundamental issue isn’t it. People believe that their ability to believe supersedes the state.

      Philosophically, the government of the United States and its democracy depends on people having faith in the order of system, in its ability to contain polemics.

      But then on a further perhaps philosophical speculation, corporations really run the world. And too many people benefit from the Internet and the web and corporate structure to have it fall apart just because someone wants everyone to keep their babies and let God sort it out.

      Where do we allow abortions or not, people die every day for all sorts of stuff. Some of it we call within our power, some of it we call nature, some of it we call beyond our power. But really people just die for different reasons. Our struggle is just to make sense of it.

      Liked by 1 person

    2. landzek Avatar

      ….and. It may just be that only smaller groups can decide the issue of abortion. Like the states. Each state. Then people will naturally move to where they are more welcome.

      Like

      1. ejwinner Avatar

        landzek,
        on another website, an issue came up that clarified my concern here – the question of whether a fetus can be considered not only human but a “person.”

        If the Supreme Court ever rules that a fetus is not simply “human” but an individuated person, it can reason a constructed “right to life” per the 14th Amendment, and outlaw abortion nationally by judicial decree with no recourse to either federal or state legislation. Thomas has indicated vaguely his thinking along these lines, and it is the real goal of the “right to life” movement, hence the label they’ve chosen for themselves. See, for instance “Once a human being is declared to be a legal person, there can be no exceptions to his or her inalienable right to life;” https://www.prolifewi.org/personhood. This is not about sending the matter “back to the states.” This about an America with laws of moral absolutes determined by a presumed will of God.

        Liked by 2 people

      2. landzek Avatar

        At some point I just have to admit that people are idiots. And then I just gotta go along with some of the idiocy. This is what I mean though, that the post modern ideal where everyone just gets to define their own reality, and similarly states get to make definitions that form worlds, this modern postmodern philosophical misunderstanding has dire effects: it opens the world to manipulations based on what people think they believe. Without such grand theological philosophy such as “we get to define our own world“ people just live their lives. It shouldn’t matter, actually, it shouldn’t be an issue for the state to define what a person is or what a life is. That is a religious question. It becomes more and more obvious as people get more and more “intelligent“, that their intelligence leads them into a theocracy, rather than a democracy. The latter being only about how other people active in the world limits other people’s ability to pursue life liberty and the pursuit of happiness etc.

        When it comes to religious questions, I’ll probably be dead before the real Inquisition comes down. Sad, yes, but I have such an opinion. But I have a healthy opinion about where I can be effective, and when it comes to whether or not people believe in Jesus Christ, or they believe that a government gets to define what life is for a legal statute, that’s pretty much beyond my effective reach.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. landzek Avatar

        … Our “modern world”, by designating “religion” to a certain set of definitions, misses the fact that a certain type of intellectualism is based in a religious way of coming up on the world. And what ultimately is happening is that the government is becoming more theological. That is called Intrinsic mythology: It is a belief system, a religion, that functions to grant a world. It can’t be reflected upon. It’s categories can only be reflected upon within the scheme. And it’s based on an ability for humans to believe certain things, such that I have an ability to make with my world creatively through having discussions with other people. People are not that smart to be able to reflect upon what they are actually doing. Actually, most of the people in the world have no reflection upon their lives at all. They are merely “believing” and it doesn’t really reflect some level of intelligence, and so much as it permeates every institution there is. It’s not that people who have degrees are more “intelligent“, it’s that they are able to argue and participate in the theological institution and get rewarded.

        Whoa. I think I drink too much coffee!! 🤣

        Liked by 1 person

      4. landzek Avatar

        But all that being said. I am pro-choice and about women’s right to choose for their own bodies. All the rest of it I just get so fed up with. 😵‍💫

        Like

  4. microglyphics Avatar

    Spot on. The abortion debate is entirely religious, particularly Christian, even more particularly Catholic.

    Misogynists
    – John G. Roberts, Jr. (Catholic)
    – Clarence Thomas (Catholic)
    – Neil M. Gorsuch (Catholic, Episcopalian)
    – Brett M. Kavanaugh (Catholic)
    – Amy Coney Barrett (Catholic)
    – Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (Catholic)

    Women as Persons
    – Sonia Sotomayor (Catholic)
    – Stephen G. Breyer (Jewish)
    – Elena Kagan (Jewish)

    The US are a dysfunctional theocracy. Aspirational Taliban without the head coverings. Sharia Law Lite.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. landzek Avatar

      Wasn’t there I time when the US was afraid to have Catholics in the fed government? Like jfk times ?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. microglyphics Avatar

        And now you know why. 🤣

        Liked by 1 person

      2. landzek Avatar

        However. I think they are simple rule of law, regardless of why they did it, I think it should go back to the states. Because, it means that the law was not written well enough. And honestly, I think it is because that it’s based on something that has become a religious issue. Whereas before it wasn’t seen as a religious issue. But now it is obvious. And whether anyone really admits it, the law will have to be written in such a way that takes account for these new religious attitudes that have come to light to be offensive. And in the end, ultimately, there will be a new law that gives women mothers the right to have an abortion. Whether it takes 20 years or 50 years, it will happen by the sheer fact of the basis of the system of democracy in the United States. It is the system that is able to hold drastically divergent views so long as one of those parties doesn’t decide that they’re going to kill the other party. (That was my point really in my post😆 )

        It’s not that religious opinions are bad, but that the United States system of democracy is able to absorb different opinions no matter how drastic they are, so long as people adhere to the faith in the system. And honestly, I think ultimately people will see that they don’t want to die, they don’t want to shoot one another, they don’t want to kill one another, and ultimately if they do, the next generation will see just how silly it was. And so it goes…

        Liked by 1 person

      3. microglyphics Avatar

        But the irony of it all. The mythos of the US of A is that the pilgrams were emmigating to evade religious persecution. In principle, there is a notion of separation of Church and State. In practice, this is threadbare and deteriorating. Religious belief is categorically on the decline, even in the Bible Belt strongholds that drive up the average,

        Counter to Europe, the US are big on negative liberties—freedom from—, but not when it comes to religion. They’ll claim ‘presecution’ at the drop of a hat. Most states, by statute, won’t even allow a professed atheist onto the ballot. Many ‘morality’ laws are only on the books because of Christians.

        If I had a magic wand, I’d rid the world of religion. I am not sure that this would be my first act. Hopefully, I’d get more than one wish. Isn’t three standard fare? But I digress.

        As for 50 years, historically, empires have an average life span of 250 years. That’s 2026 for the States. It feels that the US many be reaching expiry. It’s already been souring for a generation or more by now. They are fighting for relevance and to not be replaced by China. I think this may explain whence some of the deparate measures are coming. Only time will tell. But given how below average the US are by most measures—unless, of course, you ask the average American (lol) — they may not have to endure through 2026.

        [File this under old man yells at clouds. lol]

        Liked by 1 person

      4. landzek Avatar

        Lol. Or: are you guided by clouds !

        2026 might be an inflection point. But I bet as with any empire, there was never a time of lived experience with someone said the empire is done, and it was over at that moment. Just like we can never be sure when the sun actually goes down, or rises!

        Liked by 1 person

      5. landzek Avatar

        Wait.. isn’t Joe Biden Catholic as well?

        Like

      6. microglyphics Avatar

        Wait for it. Wait… Lmao

        Like

  5. Ashley L. Peterson Avatar

    I agree, religion is the real issue here. I find the juxtaposition of “pro-life” and pro-gun to be a rather odd one.

    Ideally this would be an issue decided by legislators rather than the courts, but whether governments stacked with wealthy old white men will make decisions that reflect the belief and wishes of the majority is a whole other matter.

    Liked by 3 people

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