I have one question about the abortion topic.
Why is it such a HUGE topic for republicans? Why not let the individual human choose if he/she wants an abortion?
This is so confusing for me I don’t understand why it is even a topic, like… it’s not my body and just let people do what they want to.
They should talk about how to have safer sex and pills in earlier grades and just keep the option open.
It’s not only that… what if you get raped and just want an abortion? Is that also included?
I am not american, maybe someone can tell me if rape is not included and if you are raped you can still abort though? This whole topic seems off for 2024, this sounds like a 1800s topic.
Sometimes I think america is so advanced and then I read the news and it’s always about pro guns and banning abortions…
The American version of Christianity has decided that a fetus is a person, and as such that an abortion is murder. They make it this emotional issue so that people don’t think too hard about it and just reflexively think “I can’t support murder!”
This is despite the Bible pretty explicitly defining life as beginning at the first breath, and treating causing a miscarriage as property damage.
It’s part and parcel of the Republican party essentially taking over the church and getting people to equate “Republican” with “Christian”.
Abortion used to just be a Catholic thing, but after the Civil Rights Act was passed political opportunists sought a new issue to drive southern evangelicals and abortion was it (and later gay people, but abortion was first).
Now however, the con has been bought by those in power and joined with the more toxic forms of longtermism which posits that humans must reproduce at all costs. And here we are today.
You forgot racism, a quiet cornerstone of the Southern Strategy. Not as quiet now, since it worked so well in growing a solid voter base who is now more encouraged when those parts are shouted loudly. Could be why Roe v. Wade was allowed to disappear, didn’t need that windmill to charge at anymore.
Republicans all care about life and babies until it comes time to give time off to raise the kids, provide welfare programs for poor families, provide schools with lunches. Can’t kill a fetus in the womb but they dont give a fuck if the child starves at 5.
They really just want more poverty-stricken and uneducated voters. That’s their core demographic: people easy to manipulate into believing they will fix all the issues created by their past policies.
If you’re pre-born, you’re fine. If you’re pre-school, you’re fucked
-Carlin
They would have no issue with the murder of a black or Hispanic person though… especially at their own hands or by ‘law enforcement’.
It’s sad all around.
“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It’s almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
Republicans are all about controlling what other people can and cannot do. Throw some evangelical “morality” on top of that and now a fetus is sacred and sex is sinful.
It’s a wedge issue. Its purpose is to align groups with the Republican party that might have otherwise chosen to support the only other viable party, the Democrats. The thinking goes like this:
Well, I can’t support murder, so I have to vote for Republicans no matter what and ignore all other issues. What could be more important? I feel good closing my eyes now to feeding the poor, healing the sick, etc!
Because it ultimately makes poor people even poorer. It helps to shackle people to the slave life. It also helps feed the army with poor desperate people so they can keep fighting their wars.
Christianity mate. I was raised evangelical, and it’s insane. People “speak in tongues” believing that the Holy Ghost is summoning unknown words of power through them. When someone was outed as a homosexual in a church I was raised in, every adult would take turns placing their hands on either side of their head and casting out the demon of homosexuality. The Flood covered the whole Earth, God designed each animal as they are, etc.
The abortion/reproductive rights topic is religion made political.
Logic, facts and compassion are very secondary and ignored completely if there’s a conflict with belief. The folks I grew up with would wholeheartedly say that behavior you and I would consider hateful was done out of love. When I left the church I discovered sayings like, “There’s no hate like Christian love”. That being said, there are good people and more people in each generation deprogram themselves and realize they’d rather be sane than saved (in the sense of evangelical salvation).
Here’s the issue: they say things like it’s returning the right to the state, which is a lie but it sounds correct. That right never belonged to any state. It was a right held by the people, then states tried to remove it so the Supreme Court gave it (very limited) protections from encroachment.
It’s always been a right that belonged to the people and any other rhetoric is trying to mislead. I’ve never heard a Democrat make this argument though, so they lost the election. They allowed Republicans to control the narrative while they squabled about how they want limits on abortion actually.
It’s the same argument as slavery. The federal government needs to protect the rights of people because states are trying to restrict them, and it is not their right to do so.
Trump has said he’d veto a national abortion ban, for whatever that’s worth. And to answer your question, to most peo-life activists, abortion is murder. It’s black and white to them.
Trump has said… for whatever that’s worth.
His words are worth their weight in gold!
Never failed to do anything he promised his first term! I mean he completely did… tax breaks for the rich… yep this dog got put down.
I’m not against abortion in cases where the mothers life is in danger and cases of proven rape (yeah, I know that one is going to piss people off because many on the pro-abortion side are also on the side of “believe all women no matter what because women never EVER lie about anything! Men are the scourge of the planet and should be eradicated”)
I am 100% against using abortion as birth control.
If we could reach a scientific consensus as to when “life” actually starts, I would be 100% for allowing abortion up to that point. But nobody wants to reach that consensus.
My current mindset is based on this: if we found a bundle of living cells (not even a fully formed human) on Mars, our entire world view would change dramatically! Everything would come into question: religion, politics, everything.
Why is it that here on Earth, a bundle of cells isn’t given as much weight as it would on another planet? Just because you might have to make sacrifices?
I don’t know whether or not we are snuffing out any consciousness when a fetus is aborted, but I do know that neither side of the argument wants to even discuss it because it’s either all or nothing, my way or fuck you!
I would rather err on the side of caution. Maybe we should not be so willy nilly about ending possible life. Also, maybe we should come to some kind of acceptable consensus.
Please proceed to post all of your “fuck you for thinking about anything other than unrestricted abortion access!!” comments below:
Edit: I am not a religious person. Pretty far from it. I shouldn’t have to make that point since online forums like this have made it perfectly clear that religious people in the US are totally not being persecuted, but I know that many of you will probably just brush off my comments as “religious loony shit” if I don’t make my position on religion crystal clear.
many of you will probably just brush off my comments as “religious loony shit”
The problem doesn’t have anything to do with your faith. The problem is that you have personal ideas that you are using as justification to control someone else’s healthcare decisions.
Your feelings about abortion are perfectly valid. Wanting to tell someone else that they can’t have a medical procedure unless it meets YOUR justification standards is asinine and should be met with ridicule. There is no compromise on a fundamental right like this. Stay out of people’s healthcare decisions.
But you are still completely rejecting the idea that the fetus has any right to exist. You still have it fixed in your thoughts that the “bundle of cells” is not actually a form of life. As I said, if there was a scientific consensus on this, that would be a different story. But again, nobody wants to come to that consensus.
Totally not even related (/s): what is your stance on the meat processing industry? Do you feel sympathy for the creatures that do not have a voice?
But you are still completely rejecting the idea that the fetus has any right to exist.
There’s plenty of existing philosophical arguments over this that you can find online, but the idea that a fetus has a right to exist is not mutually exclusive with the idea that a woman has the right to bodily autonomy.
A fetus can have the right to exist, and a woman can have the right to refuse to provide nutrients for an unwanted fetus. If the latter precludes the former, the former precludes the latter—leading to an impasse. As a compromise, most of society has deemed “fetuses” rights do not supersede that of their mothers’ until a certain point where they gain personhood, such as when they have a heartbeat (which is the medical requirement for being alive).
You’re welcome to believe that the rights of a fetus unconditionally supersede that of the mother, but you would need to make a very convincing argument to not come across as being unsupportive of women’s rights.
I would be absolutely fine with allowing for abortion up to the point of hearing a heartbeat if that’s the scientific consensus for the definition of life.
Unfortunately, heartbeat bills have been demonized to no end because (again) “it’s my way or fuck you!!”
I am not unsupportive of women’s rights, I am willing to be supportive of the rights of those who may not be able to speak for themselves.
Heartbeat bills don’t actually cover a heartbeat. They cover electrical signals that are not a heartbeat, but they can be detected much earlier.
An actual heart beat can be detected around 17 to 20 weeks. Heart beat bills kick in at 6 weeks when there is no heart yet. It’s not even a fetus until 8 weeks. You have to deny all the science to pass these laws.
Dude… Hate to break it to you but you are unsupportive of women’s rights.
I think its just best that we don’t force people who don’t want or can’t handle the responsibility of rasing a child into raising a child. People generally are not good at things they don’t want to do and being a parent is a pretty important job that often lasts for life.
So then you agree with the death penalty, yes? Since those people can’t handle the responsibility of being a functional part of society?
No because the Justice system is not infallible.
I am 100% against using abortion as birth control
The underlying assumption that women are having abortions for funzies is incredibly sexist on top of being untrue.
Abortion is a medical procedure between a woman and their doctor. You and no one else has any right to take that away.
If you are in a burning building and only have the time to save either 100 fertilized eggs (or fetuses) or a baby, what would you choose?
Do you have any idea the process to prove rape? You want women to suffer for months with an unwanted pregnancy just to qualify for abortion?
Why is rape even a qualifier here? It’s not yours or the States decision.
Exactly what cases do you want to criminalize abortions? Early term, mid term, late term?
I think is a little bit more than a threat to rights. As I’m looking at it right now, driving through the suburbs and all the Trump fanatics, the US could deteriorate into civil war with 100,000s dead. Trump economy will fail and he’ll refuse to give up power by rsorting to violence and his followers will be happy to oblige him. They have lost all reason.
Hey now, that’s 100,000’s less people producing carbon emissions…yay?
Even if all the Democrats quietly left the country, MAGA policies could lead to civil war.
They are dead set on it, whether Trump had won or not.
Instead of focusing on the bad, let’s focus on the good things a 2nd term will bring. Anybody got anything?
The tariffs will tank consumption and possibly reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
Blue states can raise taxes since the fed government will lower taxes and provide a kickass quality of life without funding the red states.
Since they love the 10th amendment, blue states can go hog wild with running things in a sane manner.
Hell, maybe the US will split into 3: Pacifica on the West Coast, magastan, and Atlantica (East Coast)
Nope. I got nothing.
It literally the fire under my seat to get my documentation in order and learn about Canada’s fast pass immigration system
4 years of quality Leopards ate my face content…
He won’t be able to run again
That’s a tradition, not a law.
no, that’s the 22nd amendment.
of course with this scotus the constitution doesn’t mean anything now.
It’s a tradition turned law. Neither mean he can’t though. He just legally can’t (right now).
If the Constitution and related things persist, it will be the last Trump term. And maybe some lessons learned on the way on why the GOP in control is a bad thing.
I keep thinking we will learn that lesson but we never do.
Hardcore, ska, punk and every anti-whatever music genre are going to be lit as shit over the next ten years.
