A couple things stick out to me. First, that we cannot act based around what conservative media is going to say. The reason is simple: there could have been no protests at all, or they could have been following all the rules, and the right wing media would still be talking about how dangerous and violent the antifa democrat party is. We …
A couple things stick out to me. First, that we cannot act based around what conservative media is going to say. The reason is simple: there could have been no protests at all, or they could have been following all the rules, and the right wing media would still be talking about how dangerous and violent the antifa democrat party is. We know this, because they've done it with everything from caravans of migrants that don't exist to crime that is far lower than it was twenty years ago, but it still somehow a demonstration that the world is ending.
Second, while I don't believe in mob violence, reality is that it likely does not have an effect on the end result. Why do I say this? Because violence by conservative mobs has been a hallmark of conservative activism; whether it's throwing fetuses at people going to planned parenthood or people protesting at soldier's funerals claiming that 'god hates gays' it's been fairly normalized for decades. To go further, the right showing up to places armed, vandalizing things like black lives matter iconography, even vandalizing a church, has occurred, and it has not turned the public against the party that supports these things. And oh, an anti-abortion activist bombed the olympics, lest we forget. Again, didn't matter.
What has happened, and what I do not entirely grasp, is that the actions of the GOP electorate does not seem to get conflated with the GOP as a party, despite the fact that they are extremely close, while the actions of the Democratic electorate are conflated with the Democratic party, despite the fact that they are not close at all. The GOP has a very close relationship between its media, it's politicians, and it's base. The democratic party does not have that relationship. And yet, people protesting for abortion or anything else are immediately conflated with the party itself.
I mean sure, the GOP is about to ban a right that has been in place for half a century, and criminalize wide swaths of readily available birth control, and usher in a two-tiered set of rights that the US has not seen since Dred Scott was decided, but the real thing we all need to worry about is whether or not some protestors are being polite. It seems to me that the position of 'people should be allowed to make life unlivable for some people, but also be free from the blowback that produces' is untenable.
We possess, as a people, the right to assemble. And if we are more concerned with people protesting than the piles of dead women that will be made after Roe is struck down, then we are focused on the wrong things. The fact that the right actively supports armed insurrection when it benefits them is not a bug, it's a feature. And they want to make it seem, deliberately, that when they do it, it's fine. Overthrowing the government in service to theocracy is fine, but protesting outside a justice's house is somehow over the line.
At some point, media figures need to decide if they can actually report on reality, which is that the democratic party and the democratic base are not the same group, and the GOP party and the GOP base are.
Thanks for saying this. I vote for Dems now (was once a Republican) and no one in NJs democratic power structure has ever urged me or folks like me to do any of the bad thing folks are complaining that Dems are doing.
Dems have always had the support of a hard left element - so the ones who protested the Iraq war when nobody else wood. (And in this case they were right). But the protesters were not the Democratic pols nor the majority of voters.
It's coming. Griswold v Connecticut was decided on the basis of right-to-privacy and over the past few years more thana few Republicans have questioned at least certain birth control methods including IUD and the Pill.
It may not be the opinion of the Republican Party but the Republican Party will work to elect candidates who will pursue those idiotic policies. What they think and who they will vote for are two different things.
What happens in the states will be critical to how idiotic they will go.
They are going to try in several places, I have no doubt. Why would this come as a surprise? It is part and parcel of the whole sanctity of the unborn thing and has been a major constituent of more fundamentalist Christianity and of Catholicism for quite some time.
And same-sex marriage is definitely on the chopping block. Do you doubt that at all?
Define "they." Some idiots somewhere proposing something doesn't mean it's anywhere close to a majority of Republicans. That's like taking the most idiotic thing that AOC comes up and say that all Democrats support it. That's not the way it works.
These days it seems the most wack-job proposals by Trumpists are what legislatures are indeed proposing. It's what DeSantis is imposing and what Abbot enacted.
When has something being unpopular ever stopped Republicans from trying to enshrine it into law?
Rick Scott, the head of the NRSC, wants to end Medicare, Social Security, The Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and raise taxes on everyone making less than $100k.
How many Republicans want any of those things to pass into law? Do you think it will matter?
The GOP candidate for Governor in Michigan is running explicitly against the very idea of democracy. His justification is that democracy always leads to communism and this isn't an abnormal view for today's Republicans. Mike Lee said very similar things. Ron Johnson thinks Hungary is a nation we should model.
Once you've embraced the idea of minority rule, what does popularity and support have anything to do with what is enshrined into law?
They being elected GoP politicians, holding offices that can actually legislate these things.
It doesn't matter if a majority of Republicans hold those positions, because these people are not catering to a majority of Republicans, let alone a majority of the American population. Authoritarians and theocrats don't care what a majority wants.
Some of these laws are already on the books, waiting for Roe to go poof.
The Right/MAGA media will tell whatever story they want to tell regardless of the level of hypocrisy, lies/misinformation, or quackery they need to use to do so. Does this behavior make it a little easier for them to do so? Yes. If there was none of it, do you think their narrative would be any different? Unlikely.
It is strange that the left lives in fear of stuff like this (being seen the wrong way, sending the wrong message) while the Right apparently does not. It is strange that the Right usually gets a walk on these things, while the left does not.
The reality is that the non-MAGA MSM reaches more people than Faux (also MSM, but they (and their fans) like to pretend they aren't) and has a great deal of power to shape the narrative--and the narrative they shape seems to be largely NOT friendly to the actual responsible political party.
So much for meaningful liberal bias.
The reality is that people have a right to be VERY angry. Is it wrong at some level to do what they are doing? Yes. Is doing what they have been doing up to this point done much good? It does not appear that way. Is that going to stop people? No.
A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that if they are going to be tarred with that brush, they might as well live it--and this is only going to get worse.
If the GoP House and Senate majority cooks the books in 2024 to elect Trump again.. will it THEN be time for this? Of course, by that time it will be too late.
And they aren't going to stop with Roe v Wade--that is already clear (despite what some apologists and non-alarmists are saying). The governor of Mississippi has not ruled out banning contraception when Roe v Wade is overturned. If that doesn't get any meaningful kickback, then others will follow.
I REALLY hate the whole domino chain argument thing, as it is not logically valid--other than it does often seem to play out in real life, regardless of its lack of logical validity.
I listened to Les Miserables 10th anniversary last night. "Do You Hear the People Sing" made me weep! It is the song of Urkaine now. But it is also the song of America's women and minorities and every American the Republican Party seeks to oppress and enslave while setting back the very idea of equality among people or nations. We need millions of women and children and elderly and poor and yes men in the streets singing: Do you hear the people sing? It is the song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again! When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums, there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes. WE WILL NOT GO BACK is the call of women my age who fought this fight 50 years ago. Fact is, liberty and equality must be protected and to be protected they must be appreciated if not loved. Ukrainians know this. Europe knows this. Americans do not. Republicans like Russia only know force and violence and remaining in power whatever it takes. So at some point you stop the bully or you just give him your lunch money and hope he doesn't kill you which he does anyway.
That's what makes the slippery slope fallacy so tricky. Because there are times when you are in fact slipping down the slope and breaking out the book to point out that it's a logical fallacy doesn't change the reality on the ground.
To pick another metaphor, give the GOP an inch and they'll absolutely go for taking the mile because that's how they stay in power. They haven't built their modern political operation around the governance of a functioning country, they've built it around the notion that the country is being illegitimately governed and must be taken back, and therefore no quarter can be given to those who belong to the illegitimate institutions or their supporters.
100% agree with this thoughtful post. Life-long Democrat who has winced over the past week about some of the reaction to the draft decision. On a basic level, I realize that my natural state is to be uncomfortable with high levels of public anger. On the other hand, as someone who loves history and especially looking at how the past is still present, I can see that without angry, imperfect protests, the progress we have enjoyed in many cases would not have happened.
Those who are protesting outside the homes of the SC justices, I believe, do not think they will change the minds of those justices. But their protests may very well bear other fruits. We can look to our recent past to see positive results, even if the methods were not always perfectly "peaceful."
I also wondered about the wisdom of O'Rourke and Ryan talking about supporting the right to abortion throughout pregnancy, and then I listened to a number of thoughtful podcasts pointing out that in the 2nd and especially the 3rd trimester, abortions are performed in the case of extreme birth defects where the baby isn't likely to be born alive or to die shortly after birth. Or cases where the woman is miscarrying and her health could be compromised if an intercession isn't made. They are extremely rare but sometimes necessary.
These are very nuanced situations, but late-term abortion is presented as infanticide instead of the heart-wrenching decision that it must surely be. It is illogical to think that a woman would carry her healthy pregnancy into her 7th or 8th month and then decide to end it for no other reason than inconvenience.
And then there is the presentation of adoption as a perfect cure, with little discussion of all the attendant issues with this "solution."
As with the healthcare debate, it's easier to neatly slogan the negative position, while supporters are stuck trying to persuade people who have little time for nuanced positions.
The myth of elective (Gee, I think I'll get an abortion today.") late term abortion is just another lie among the many lies that the anti-abortion movement tells.
The truth about the American public is that it does not care about nuance. It wants things, and it wants them now, and it does not care too much about how the sausage is made. But more than that, nuance often divides more than unites. The right has basically settled on 'abortion always bad.' What this means is that even if you don't hold this position, it's probably closer to what people who don't like abortion think. Most people are not all abortions should be illegal, but they tell themselves there will be exceptions. Whereas promoting 'abortions sometimes' as your maximalist argument means that you leave a lot out and a lot of people are split off from you. But then, it is always easier to be against something than for it.
I would say that third trimester abortions almost never happen unless the baby is already dead or seriously messed up somehow. Otherwise, we would call it 'birth.' I would know, I was born a full month early.
On some level though, this was always going to happen with abortion so long as we made the standard 'viability.' As science improved, the length of time that we could sustain a baby outside the womb grew longer, which meant the time to have a abortion before 'viability' became shorter. However, I didn't think they would just decide to throw the standard out all together.
Ironically, the people who say things like 'this issue is too important for the government to intrude on' most often are now saying that 'this issue is too important to leave to individuals to decide.'
Ryan will be 1/100th of the US Senate. His views on abortion will be tempered by the entire Democratic caucus which is pretty moderate.
Electing Vance will be empowering a Banana Republican caucus determined to kill democracy in the United States. Literally handing Mitch McConnell the power to continue his corrupt leadership of the Senate.
How is that you consider Ryan's position on abortion "insane" but Vance's extremist position not insane? As a moderate independent both give me pause but I also know that only Ryan will not facilitate the murder of Democracy in America.
I know nuance is a death knell. However, if you really dig down into the issues, I think you will find that Tim Ryan and Beto O'Rourke don't want restrictions because there are some--very rare--circumstances in which a late-term abortion is necessary to safe the life of the mother. A carte blanche ban on those abortions would mean that women--who wanted their babies very much and who did everything right and who are devastated to be in the position they are in--will die. That is why they oppose outright bans. It isn't because they support abortion on demand. It is because you can NEVER account for all the circumstances that may give rise to the need for a late term abortion, which, again, no one wants. A woman does not go through 6 or 7 months of pregnancy and all of the attendant hardship, and all of a sudden decide, "yeah, I changed my mind. ABORT!"
Are you saying Alito won't look out his window at the mob and have a Scrooge-like change of heart and agree to uphold Roe? Didn't Trump becoming moderate and responsible after the women's march in 2017 and didn't we leave Iraq after marches in 2002 against the war?
I couldn't agree with your sentiment more. These protests are performance art and the people there want their white progressive street cred badge to add to their shirt.
I wouldn't say they're performance art. They're emotional outlets. I had this discussion with someone, asking why people were protesting outside Kavanaugh's house. My view was that this didn't make sense, as the guy who was trolling everyone was Thomas, and the guy who authored the opinion was Alito, so it didn't make sense to me to protest outside of Kavanaugh's house. The response I got was that it was emotional, not rational. And that made sense to me.
Is there some performance art going on? Yeah. But I think that protests like these are generally an emotional outpouring where people don't know how or where to take their energy. This is made worse by a democratic party that fundamentally does not know how to use their grassroots the way the GOP does. As a result, private groups fill the gap.
It's because, if you believe even some of the allegations against Kavanaugh, he has a history of disrespecting women's bodily autonomy in his personal life. Despite this, he was elevated to a position of power. He has used his power to roll back the amount of bodily autonomy for all women in America. Thomas and Alito may claim to oppose Roe on a matter of principle or constitutional overreach or whatever. You can credibly argue though that Kavanaugh just doesn't care about women's bodily autonomy.
Maybe it's also a feeling that Kavanaugh is the most unfit of four unfit judges. The most unqualfied. Tying with Thomas for whiniest. Thomas and Alito are the most ideological, Barrett possibly the most radical but not always insane. To me Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett do NOT belong on the Court, have never been qualified or fit for it. Gorsuch, while illegitimately on the court in a stolen seat (as were all of Trump appointees IMHO but Gorsuch most obviously), is at least qualified.
The problem is that Gorsuch is effectively a pro-corporatist shill--which is why he got the spot ITFP. That is an aspect of this whole thing that a lot of people miss--it isn't JUST about abortion. There is a whole slew of things that the GoP wishes to do away with that these people would be behind because of their ideological position as "originalists."
That's exactly correct! Gorsuch (who is from CO and I am familiar with his family) is at least an experienced jurist. But he is part of the ideology of "originalist" which aims to raze the social safety net and social contract of the country.
BTW, "originalist" -- which Scalia raised to hide behind when indulging his own activism, while bemoaning the 9th circuit "activists" -- is not accurate the way it is used. The SCOTUS Republicans are no more honest than congressional ones and statehouse ones, especially in justifying their dishonest and unconstitutional behaviors. "Originalist" is Scalia meant "my interpretation." Kind of like the Marbury v Madison court which made itself the final arbiter over much more than the Constitution gave it to decide.
Even then an actually originalist reading of the Constitution isn't something that many contemporary Americans would actually like.
The contemporary US is largely a creation of the Civil War and it overturned a lot of the original concept of the US (because the original concept failed and failed pretty hard).
I wouldn't call these protests performance art but they are definitely in the category of "protests to create a narrative" and "protests to begin organizing" than they are protests designed to affect the outcome. I think most protestors probably think the outcome - Roe being overturned - is baked in.
People have been protesting in front of homes for awhile and I understand the mixed feelings on that, but I would hardly characterize these protests as "hostile."
Exactly. When they start bringing guns like what happened to the election officials, health officials, school board members, mask proponents, vaccine proponents, doctors and nurses, hospitals, etc...then it becomes hostile. These current protestors are well aware that there were ZERO consequences for all the armed protests. Unfortunately, this is what happens when real problems are routinely shrugged off. In a perfect world I would not agree with the home protests. Just like I was furious the last 2 years about all the home protests I mentioned that were actually armed, with signs and verbage and phone calls literally threatening lives. At this point though, as long as no one gets hurt, I am basically a what's good for the goose is good for the gander person. The right will predictably weaponize this, but their votes are already locked in. I do worry about how this will affect swing voters, however. They support the issue but may sour due to escalating protest tactics. They are the ones that really decide elections in many places, especially nationally.
I am not convinced that a group of people - specifically women who appear to be mostly over the age of 40 - holding signs and chanting non-violent slogans are a reasonable threat to anyone.
There were protests where no punches were thrown, no property was destroyed, and no arrests were made. About as non-threatening as a protest can get.
Then again, that a certain of people is terrified of women disagreeing them says a lot about their psyche.
You do realize, don't you, that Roe goes way beyond allowing "some" abortions. It requires states to allow ALL abortions during the first two trimesters.
A couple things stick out to me. First, that we cannot act based around what conservative media is going to say. The reason is simple: there could have been no protests at all, or they could have been following all the rules, and the right wing media would still be talking about how dangerous and violent the antifa democrat party is. We know this, because they've done it with everything from caravans of migrants that don't exist to crime that is far lower than it was twenty years ago, but it still somehow a demonstration that the world is ending.
Second, while I don't believe in mob violence, reality is that it likely does not have an effect on the end result. Why do I say this? Because violence by conservative mobs has been a hallmark of conservative activism; whether it's throwing fetuses at people going to planned parenthood or people protesting at soldier's funerals claiming that 'god hates gays' it's been fairly normalized for decades. To go further, the right showing up to places armed, vandalizing things like black lives matter iconography, even vandalizing a church, has occurred, and it has not turned the public against the party that supports these things. And oh, an anti-abortion activist bombed the olympics, lest we forget. Again, didn't matter.
What has happened, and what I do not entirely grasp, is that the actions of the GOP electorate does not seem to get conflated with the GOP as a party, despite the fact that they are extremely close, while the actions of the Democratic electorate are conflated with the Democratic party, despite the fact that they are not close at all. The GOP has a very close relationship between its media, it's politicians, and it's base. The democratic party does not have that relationship. And yet, people protesting for abortion or anything else are immediately conflated with the party itself.
I mean sure, the GOP is about to ban a right that has been in place for half a century, and criminalize wide swaths of readily available birth control, and usher in a two-tiered set of rights that the US has not seen since Dred Scott was decided, but the real thing we all need to worry about is whether or not some protestors are being polite. It seems to me that the position of 'people should be allowed to make life unlivable for some people, but also be free from the blowback that produces' is untenable.
We possess, as a people, the right to assemble. And if we are more concerned with people protesting than the piles of dead women that will be made after Roe is struck down, then we are focused on the wrong things. The fact that the right actively supports armed insurrection when it benefits them is not a bug, it's a feature. And they want to make it seem, deliberately, that when they do it, it's fine. Overthrowing the government in service to theocracy is fine, but protesting outside a justice's house is somehow over the line.
At some point, media figures need to decide if they can actually report on reality, which is that the democratic party and the democratic base are not the same group, and the GOP party and the GOP base are.
Thanks for saying this. I vote for Dems now (was once a Republican) and no one in NJs democratic power structure has ever urged me or folks like me to do any of the bad thing folks are complaining that Dems are doing.
Dems have always had the support of a hard left element - so the ones who protested the Iraq war when nobody else wood. (And in this case they were right). But the protesters were not the Democratic pols nor the majority of voters.
Wow! Perfectly formulated. Thank you for this.
Birth control is being banned? I missed that memo.
It's coming. Griswold v Connecticut was decided on the basis of right-to-privacy and over the past few years more thana few Republicans have questioned at least certain birth control methods including IUD and the Pill.
Please try to keep up--- although I know it is hard with the lightening pace the Banana Republicans are setting for their Post-Roe caliphate.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-are-wasting-no-time-pushing-dystopian-post-roe-v-wade-laws
So someone somewhere proposes such an idiotic policy and that's the majority opinion of the Republican Party? Uh, no.
It may not be the opinion of the Republican Party but the Republican Party will work to elect candidates who will pursue those idiotic policies. What they think and who they will vote for are two different things.
What happens in the states will be critical to how idiotic they will go.
They are going to try in several places, I have no doubt. Why would this come as a surprise? It is part and parcel of the whole sanctity of the unborn thing and has been a major constituent of more fundamentalist Christianity and of Catholicism for quite some time.
And same-sex marriage is definitely on the chopping block. Do you doubt that at all?
Define "they." Some idiots somewhere proposing something doesn't mean it's anywhere close to a majority of Republicans. That's like taking the most idiotic thing that AOC comes up and say that all Democrats support it. That's not the way it works.
These days it seems the most wack-job proposals by Trumpists are what legislatures are indeed proposing. It's what DeSantis is imposing and what Abbot enacted.
Actually, that seems to be exactly how it works.
When has something being unpopular ever stopped Republicans from trying to enshrine it into law?
Rick Scott, the head of the NRSC, wants to end Medicare, Social Security, The Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and raise taxes on everyone making less than $100k.
How many Republicans want any of those things to pass into law? Do you think it will matter?
The GOP candidate for Governor in Michigan is running explicitly against the very idea of democracy. His justification is that democracy always leads to communism and this isn't an abnormal view for today's Republicans. Mike Lee said very similar things. Ron Johnson thinks Hungary is a nation we should model.
Once you've embraced the idea of minority rule, what does popularity and support have anything to do with what is enshrined into law?
They being elected GoP politicians, holding offices that can actually legislate these things.
It doesn't matter if a majority of Republicans hold those positions, because these people are not catering to a majority of Republicans, let alone a majority of the American population. Authoritarians and theocrats don't care what a majority wants.
Some of these laws are already on the books, waiting for Roe to go poof.
The Right/MAGA media will tell whatever story they want to tell regardless of the level of hypocrisy, lies/misinformation, or quackery they need to use to do so. Does this behavior make it a little easier for them to do so? Yes. If there was none of it, do you think their narrative would be any different? Unlikely.
It is strange that the left lives in fear of stuff like this (being seen the wrong way, sending the wrong message) while the Right apparently does not. It is strange that the Right usually gets a walk on these things, while the left does not.
The reality is that the non-MAGA MSM reaches more people than Faux (also MSM, but they (and their fans) like to pretend they aren't) and has a great deal of power to shape the narrative--and the narrative they shape seems to be largely NOT friendly to the actual responsible political party.
So much for meaningful liberal bias.
The reality is that people have a right to be VERY angry. Is it wrong at some level to do what they are doing? Yes. Is doing what they have been doing up to this point done much good? It does not appear that way. Is that going to stop people? No.
A lot of people are coming to the conclusion that if they are going to be tarred with that brush, they might as well live it--and this is only going to get worse.
If the GoP House and Senate majority cooks the books in 2024 to elect Trump again.. will it THEN be time for this? Of course, by that time it will be too late.
And they aren't going to stop with Roe v Wade--that is already clear (despite what some apologists and non-alarmists are saying). The governor of Mississippi has not ruled out banning contraception when Roe v Wade is overturned. If that doesn't get any meaningful kickback, then others will follow.
I REALLY hate the whole domino chain argument thing, as it is not logically valid--other than it does often seem to play out in real life, regardless of its lack of logical validity.
I listened to Les Miserables 10th anniversary last night. "Do You Hear the People Sing" made me weep! It is the song of Urkaine now. But it is also the song of America's women and minorities and every American the Republican Party seeks to oppress and enslave while setting back the very idea of equality among people or nations. We need millions of women and children and elderly and poor and yes men in the streets singing: Do you hear the people sing? It is the song of angry men. It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again! When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums, there is a life about to start when tomorrow comes. WE WILL NOT GO BACK is the call of women my age who fought this fight 50 years ago. Fact is, liberty and equality must be protected and to be protected they must be appreciated if not loved. Ukrainians know this. Europe knows this. Americans do not. Republicans like Russia only know force and violence and remaining in power whatever it takes. So at some point you stop the bully or you just give him your lunch money and hope he doesn't kill you which he does anyway.
That's what makes the slippery slope fallacy so tricky. Because there are times when you are in fact slipping down the slope and breaking out the book to point out that it's a logical fallacy doesn't change the reality on the ground.
To pick another metaphor, give the GOP an inch and they'll absolutely go for taking the mile because that's how they stay in power. They haven't built their modern political operation around the governance of a functioning country, they've built it around the notion that the country is being illegitimately governed and must be taken back, and therefore no quarter can be given to those who belong to the illegitimate institutions or their supporters.
100% agree with this thoughtful post. Life-long Democrat who has winced over the past week about some of the reaction to the draft decision. On a basic level, I realize that my natural state is to be uncomfortable with high levels of public anger. On the other hand, as someone who loves history and especially looking at how the past is still present, I can see that without angry, imperfect protests, the progress we have enjoyed in many cases would not have happened.
Those who are protesting outside the homes of the SC justices, I believe, do not think they will change the minds of those justices. But their protests may very well bear other fruits. We can look to our recent past to see positive results, even if the methods were not always perfectly "peaceful."
I also wondered about the wisdom of O'Rourke and Ryan talking about supporting the right to abortion throughout pregnancy, and then I listened to a number of thoughtful podcasts pointing out that in the 2nd and especially the 3rd trimester, abortions are performed in the case of extreme birth defects where the baby isn't likely to be born alive or to die shortly after birth. Or cases where the woman is miscarrying and her health could be compromised if an intercession isn't made. They are extremely rare but sometimes necessary.
These are very nuanced situations, but late-term abortion is presented as infanticide instead of the heart-wrenching decision that it must surely be. It is illogical to think that a woman would carry her healthy pregnancy into her 7th or 8th month and then decide to end it for no other reason than inconvenience.
And then there is the presentation of adoption as a perfect cure, with little discussion of all the attendant issues with this "solution."
As with the healthcare debate, it's easier to neatly slogan the negative position, while supporters are stuck trying to persuade people who have little time for nuanced positions.
The myth of elective (Gee, I think I'll get an abortion today.") late term abortion is just another lie among the many lies that the anti-abortion movement tells.
The truth about the American public is that it does not care about nuance. It wants things, and it wants them now, and it does not care too much about how the sausage is made. But more than that, nuance often divides more than unites. The right has basically settled on 'abortion always bad.' What this means is that even if you don't hold this position, it's probably closer to what people who don't like abortion think. Most people are not all abortions should be illegal, but they tell themselves there will be exceptions. Whereas promoting 'abortions sometimes' as your maximalist argument means that you leave a lot out and a lot of people are split off from you. But then, it is always easier to be against something than for it.
I would say that third trimester abortions almost never happen unless the baby is already dead or seriously messed up somehow. Otherwise, we would call it 'birth.' I would know, I was born a full month early.
On some level though, this was always going to happen with abortion so long as we made the standard 'viability.' As science improved, the length of time that we could sustain a baby outside the womb grew longer, which meant the time to have a abortion before 'viability' became shorter. However, I didn't think they would just decide to throw the standard out all together.
Ironically, the people who say things like 'this issue is too important for the government to intrude on' most often are now saying that 'this issue is too important to leave to individuals to decide.'
Ryan will be 1/100th of the US Senate. His views on abortion will be tempered by the entire Democratic caucus which is pretty moderate.
Electing Vance will be empowering a Banana Republican caucus determined to kill democracy in the United States. Literally handing Mitch McConnell the power to continue his corrupt leadership of the Senate.
How is that you consider Ryan's position on abortion "insane" but Vance's extremist position not insane? As a moderate independent both give me pause but I also know that only Ryan will not facilitate the murder of Democracy in America.
So you're just going to what? Some sort of vote protest that will make it easier for J.D. Vance to win?
If you can't vote FOR Ryan at least vote for Ryan as a giant NO to Vance.
Please?
Perhaps he KNOWS the middle is where this country is?
I know nuance is a death knell. However, if you really dig down into the issues, I think you will find that Tim Ryan and Beto O'Rourke don't want restrictions because there are some--very rare--circumstances in which a late-term abortion is necessary to safe the life of the mother. A carte blanche ban on those abortions would mean that women--who wanted their babies very much and who did everything right and who are devastated to be in the position they are in--will die. That is why they oppose outright bans. It isn't because they support abortion on demand. It is because you can NEVER account for all the circumstances that may give rise to the need for a late term abortion, which, again, no one wants. A woman does not go through 6 or 7 months of pregnancy and all of the attendant hardship, and all of a sudden decide, "yeah, I changed my mind. ABORT!"
Are you saying Alito won't look out his window at the mob and have a Scrooge-like change of heart and agree to uphold Roe? Didn't Trump becoming moderate and responsible after the women's march in 2017 and didn't we leave Iraq after marches in 2002 against the war?
I couldn't agree with your sentiment more. These protests are performance art and the people there want their white progressive street cred badge to add to their shirt.
"Didn't Trump becoming moderate and responsible after the women's march in 2017?" Absolutely not.
I wouldn't say they're performance art. They're emotional outlets. I had this discussion with someone, asking why people were protesting outside Kavanaugh's house. My view was that this didn't make sense, as the guy who was trolling everyone was Thomas, and the guy who authored the opinion was Alito, so it didn't make sense to me to protest outside of Kavanaugh's house. The response I got was that it was emotional, not rational. And that made sense to me.
Is there some performance art going on? Yeah. But I think that protests like these are generally an emotional outpouring where people don't know how or where to take their energy. This is made worse by a democratic party that fundamentally does not know how to use their grassroots the way the GOP does. As a result, private groups fill the gap.
It's because, if you believe even some of the allegations against Kavanaugh, he has a history of disrespecting women's bodily autonomy in his personal life. Despite this, he was elevated to a position of power. He has used his power to roll back the amount of bodily autonomy for all women in America. Thomas and Alito may claim to oppose Roe on a matter of principle or constitutional overreach or whatever. You can credibly argue though that Kavanaugh just doesn't care about women's bodily autonomy.
Maybe it's also a feeling that Kavanaugh is the most unfit of four unfit judges. The most unqualfied. Tying with Thomas for whiniest. Thomas and Alito are the most ideological, Barrett possibly the most radical but not always insane. To me Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett do NOT belong on the Court, have never been qualified or fit for it. Gorsuch, while illegitimately on the court in a stolen seat (as were all of Trump appointees IMHO but Gorsuch most obviously), is at least qualified.
The problem is that Gorsuch is effectively a pro-corporatist shill--which is why he got the spot ITFP. That is an aspect of this whole thing that a lot of people miss--it isn't JUST about abortion. There is a whole slew of things that the GoP wishes to do away with that these people would be behind because of their ideological position as "originalists."
That's exactly correct! Gorsuch (who is from CO and I am familiar with his family) is at least an experienced jurist. But he is part of the ideology of "originalist" which aims to raze the social safety net and social contract of the country.
BTW, "originalist" -- which Scalia raised to hide behind when indulging his own activism, while bemoaning the 9th circuit "activists" -- is not accurate the way it is used. The SCOTUS Republicans are no more honest than congressional ones and statehouse ones, especially in justifying their dishonest and unconstitutional behaviors. "Originalist" is Scalia meant "my interpretation." Kind of like the Marbury v Madison court which made itself the final arbiter over much more than the Constitution gave it to decide.
That is why it was "originalist."
Even then an actually originalist reading of the Constitution isn't something that many contemporary Americans would actually like.
The contemporary US is largely a creation of the Civil War and it overturned a lot of the original concept of the US (because the original concept failed and failed pretty hard).
I hadn't connected that. Good point.
I wouldn't call these protests performance art but they are definitely in the category of "protests to create a narrative" and "protests to begin organizing" than they are protests designed to affect the outcome. I think most protestors probably think the outcome - Roe being overturned - is baked in.
The problem is that the narrative of being hostile outside residential homes is not the narrative they are probably trying to do.
Women have gotten screamed at and called names while entering and exiting Planned Parenthood for years.
People have been protesting in front of homes for awhile and I understand the mixed feelings on that, but I would hardly characterize these protests as "hostile."
Exactly. When they start bringing guns like what happened to the election officials, health officials, school board members, mask proponents, vaccine proponents, doctors and nurses, hospitals, etc...then it becomes hostile. These current protestors are well aware that there were ZERO consequences for all the armed protests. Unfortunately, this is what happens when real problems are routinely shrugged off. In a perfect world I would not agree with the home protests. Just like I was furious the last 2 years about all the home protests I mentioned that were actually armed, with signs and verbage and phone calls literally threatening lives. At this point though, as long as no one gets hurt, I am basically a what's good for the goose is good for the gander person. The right will predictably weaponize this, but their votes are already locked in. I do worry about how this will affect swing voters, however. They support the issue but may sour due to escalating protest tactics. They are the ones that really decide elections in many places, especially nationally.
I am not convinced that a group of people - specifically women who appear to be mostly over the age of 40 - holding signs and chanting non-violent slogans are a reasonable threat to anyone.
There were protests where no punches were thrown, no property was destroyed, and no arrests were made. About as non-threatening as a protest can get.
Then again, that a certain of people is terrified of women disagreeing them says a lot about their psyche.
You do realize, don't you, that Roe goes way beyond allowing "some" abortions. It requires states to allow ALL abortions during the first two trimesters.
I don't think you're right about that.
Apparently it doesn't, because that isn't what happens.
I meant performative in that they won’t change the opinions of any justice.